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I agree with most all of this. The author only gets in trouble towards the end (when he's making his point, unfortunately) "...In my perfect world, this reflec

I agree with most all of this. The author only gets in trouble towards the end (when he's making his point, unfortunately) "...In my perfect world, this reflection would lead these people to use their power to make similar levels of luck more likely for a wider variety of people. Given the chance, I bet their skills can take them from there..." The story he left out was the one that needs to be told more: the guy who kept failing and failing until one day he was a huge success. To hear Madigral tell it, the onus is on the successful to make similar levels of luck more likely for folks. The problem is manyfold. One, aspects of success is rarely predetermined. You don't know where it's going to happen. So where would you assist? Two, because there are way more failures than successes, the goal here is to create people who will "happily fail" -- trying as hard as they can, learning some good lessons, then moving on. This ability is an internal attribute. You can't make somebody have it. Finally, he has the model all wrong. Very rarely in these stories does some outsider come in and decide to make life better for somebody just because of his good graces. Much more likely, hard-working and resilient founders run into people who are more than happy to use them for their own purposes -- which also helps the founders along. Yes, absolutely, it's luck. But its a special kind of luck. It's not chance. This isn't winning the lottery. It's 99% what's going on inside the head of the person combined with playing a game with 1-in-20 odds. The minute you start externalizing all of that -- saying that an external agent can directly and purposefully "make" somebody lucky? The train has left the rails. Your model is all wrong. The reason the multiple failure story needs to be told more is that no matter how you jigger the external setup, you're never sure you're headed in the right direction. So keeping trying, pivoting, and so forth are much more indicative of success than some kind of environmental issue. Successful people do it from anywhere. Might take them 40 years, but they don't stop. They just keep playing the game. That's as big of a success factor as luck. If the odds are 1-in-20, and it takes 2 years to fail? Looks like you've got 40 years of work. Most all of us can't handle that, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible, either. You can manage your luck. We can't change the "variety of people" that are successful by external factors. You can't engineer market efficiency by fiat. If you could, you could just skip all that messy hard work and chance stuff and just hand out some nebulous thing called "opportunity" to folks. Doesn't work that way. Can't do outcome-based entrepreneurial configuration, as much as many really smart and really rich people would like to try.

dasil003 14y ago
The other problem is that a person's area of greatness is not something manufactured by sober committee decision-making. It's the confluence of personality and circumstance. They would not become great if they were stuck wringing their hands about what they owe the world and how they can raise everybody up. Don't get me wrong, a particular great man's calling may be precisely to raise up his fellow man, but "greatness" is not a fleeting attribute that one is magically blessed with and then must arbitrarily direct.
elemenohpee 14y ago
I think this misses the point of the article and these types of discussions in general. To me, the value of this perspective is that it takes the ego out of this self-directed narrative, and places it in the proper context as a local manifestation of a long running evolutionary process. To see people not as god-like conjurers but as products of whimsical evolutionary circumstance is, I think, the proper seed for developing a deep and universal compassion, the type of compassion that renders the answer to your question of "where to assist" quite obvious, and exposes the goal of creating people with this "willing to fail" attribute as hopelessly naive. The ability to "fail happily" is less an intrinsic trait as it is having support structures in place that allow for an individual to take bold action without jeopardizing their ability to eat or provide for their family. In this way it is much easier for a kid from a rich family to take the kind of risks that in rare cases lead to great success than it is for a kid from a poor family to do the same. No one can deny that the successes lead to the creation of great social wealth, and so it is in our species' interest to remove the various pressures that keep people locked into safe but stagnant pathways, and allow everyone to take the kinds of chances that produce new mutations for evolution to select from. Note that I don't think the state should be providing this safety net, this is more of an abstract observation. I have my own ideas on how I think it should be implemented, but I don't think it's particularly relevant to the point here. I'm not particularly convinced by arguments about incentives, although I realize that may be the main objection people have and I think that does have a place in the debate.
- DanielBMarkham 14y ago
  I'm really interested in how you can take agency out of evolution, since agency evolved as a survival trait. I don't think you have to focus on ego, but neither can you toss it out. That's what makes it such an interesting conversation. It's not all ego, and it's not all environment. It's the mix. I understand the desire to reduce this to a simpler model where you can control all the levers. But quite frankly I can't see such a model being created. You have to ask yourself whether you want to analyze and manipulate the world you live in, or create another world where problems are solved in a much more direct and simple manner. Sorry, not trying to troll or start a fight. I just found you comment diametrically opposite of mine and that was fascinating to me.

dasil003 14y ago

The other problem is that a person's area of greatness is not something manufactured by sober committee decision-making. It's the confluence of personality and circumstance. They would not become great if they were stuck wringing their hands about what they owe the world and how they can raise everybody up. Don't get me wrong, a particular great man's calling may be precisely to raise up his fellow man, but "greatness" is not a fleeting attribute that one is magically blessed with and then must arbitrarily direct.

elemenohpee 14y ago

I think this misses the point of the article and these types of discussions in general. To me, the value of this perspective is that it takes the ego out of this self-directed narrative, and places it in the proper context as a local manifestation of a long running evolutionary process. To see people not as god-like conjurers but as products of whimsical evolutionary circumstance is, I think, the proper seed for developing a deep and universal compassion, the type of compassion that renders the answer to your question of "where to assist" quite obvious, and exposes the goal of creating people with this "willing to fail" attribute as hopelessly naive. The ability to "fail happily" is less an intrinsic trait as it is having support structures in place that allow for an individual to take bold action without jeopardizing their ability to eat or provide for their family. In this way it is much easier for a kid from a rich family to take the kind of risks that in rare cases lead to great success than it is for a kid from a poor family to do the same. No one can deny that the successes lead to the creation of great social wealth, and so it is in our species' interest to remove the various pressures that keep people locked into safe but stagnant pathways, and allow everyone to take the kinds of chances that produce new mutations for evolution to select from. Note that I don't think the state should be providing this safety net, this is more of an abstract observation. I have my own ideas on how I think it should be implemented, but I don't think it's particularly relevant to the point here. I'm not particularly convinced by arguments about incentives, although I realize that may be the main objection people have and I think that does have a place in the debate.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago
I'm really interested in how you can take agency out of evolution, since agency evolved as a survival trait. I don't think you have to focus on ego, but neither can you toss it out. That's what makes it such an interesting conversation. It's not all ego, and it's not all environment. It's the mix. I understand the desire to reduce this to a simpler model where you can control all the levers. But quite frankly I can't see such a model being created. You have to ask yourself whether you want to analyze and manipulate the world you live in, or create another world where problems are solved in a much more direct and simple manner. Sorry, not trying to troll or start a fight. I just found you comment diametrically opposite of mine and that was fascinating to me.