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> I even said some dumb things like, 'Why should they have granite countertops when I don't.' However, I've come around. This sort of "crab mentality" makes ev

> I even said some dumb things like, 'Why should they have granite countertops when I don't.' However, I've come around. This sort of "crab mentality" makes even discussing things like basic income, minimum wage, or projects like this so difficult, let alone implementing them. People come to believe they deserve their position in life when so much of it is due to advantages/disadvantages outside their control: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business-jan-june13-makingsense_06-21/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business-jan-june13-makingsen... > The rich players are determined randomly by coin toss, the game rigged so they cannot lose. And yet, says Piff, despite their presumably liberal bent going in, [w]hen we asked them afterwards, how much do you feel like you deserved to win the game? The rich people felt entitled. They felt like they deserved to win the game. And that’s a really incredible insight into what the mind does to make sense of advantage or disadvantage. Successful people believe they deserve to be successful and they believe that unsuccessful people must have acted in a way to deserve it, because attributing your success and their destitution to factors outside anyone's control is scary and difficult.

Red_Tarsius 11y ago
I'm all for basic income and minimum wage, but I think the luck mindset is quite detrimental. It strips men of their own agency and fosters cynicism. > I even said some dumb things like, 'Why should they have granite countertops when I don't.' However, I've come around. Unfortunately, he ends with However, I've come around to realize that this makes financial sense. Silly me, I thought the change of mind was about empathy.
- scotty79 11y ago
  Empathy does not result in social change. Economy does.
  - seszett 11y ago
    Yes - I'm sure that's how slavery came to be abolished for example.
    - rwallace 11y ago
      It was a significant contributing factor. Consider, for example, the American Civil War - the outcome would have been very different if not for the fact that the North's non-slave industrial economy worked.
    - fwn 11y ago
      This is in fact a highly interesting debate. Other than economic circumstances, I would argue that we have little reason to believe that human empathy changes substantially. Slavery went away for farming and balancing reasons, child labour for productivity reasons and working women came for demand reasons (e.g. war).
- dghf 11y ago
  > Unfortunately, he ends with However, I've come around to realize that this makes financial sense. Silly me, I thought the change of mind was about empathy. Enlightened self-interest that results in action is worth any amount of empathy that doesn't.
- learnstats2 11y ago
  > Silly me, I thought the change of mind was about empathy. It's important that it's economic. If I work my median job, and live my median lifestyle, and I observe that people who don't work are getting more than I am, that's very challenging. I immediately feel resentful about the fact that I had to work for this when others didn't. It makes it seem like the economic system is broken and unfair. As soon as that happens, there's no chance you will feel empathy to those people who are benefiting more. Recognising that the economics is OK is therefore very important - it allows you to start to have empathy.
  - knodi123 11y ago
    > I immediately feel resentful about the fact that I had to work for this when others didn't. I already feel this to a shameful degree in regard to wealthy scions like the Walton kids, or children of mega hollywood stars. The economic system is broken and unfair.
    - learnstats2 11y ago
      Ah, yes, I agree the economic system is broken and unfair. Unfortunately the way to fix this is not by giving you the wealth of the Waltons. It's by bringing everyone else up to the level of personal security that you already have.
- stephengillie 11y ago
  Luck is applied probability. Good and bad happen randomly. It's up to us to use the events around us as tools to shape reality and the future into patterns of events that we want. While we cannot influence all cosmic events related to ourselves and others, we can still influence some.
- sospep 11y ago
  > Unfortunately, he ends with However, I've come around to realize that this makes financial sense. Silly me, I thought the change of mind was about empathy My guess would be that the "formerly homeless" of Medicine Hat, appreciate the "roof over their head", much more than any amount of "empathy"
- na85 11y ago
  >It strips men of their own agency and fosters cynicism. Does it do the same to women?
RobertoG 11y ago
Agree. I think we should change how we talk about this. Instead of talking about “the successful people” or “the rich” we should say “when we are successful we believe we deserve to be successful, when we are poor [..]”. In psychological terms, there are not difference between we and them, and that should show in the way we speak. There are bias that we all suffer when we are poor and when we are rich: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865583328/Does-money-corrupt-A-controversial-study-explores-the-effects-of-money-on-human-behavior.html?pg=all http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865583328/Does-money-corr... This is not a moral fault of the rich in the same way that it's not a moral fault of the poor. Only if we go beyond this confrontational mindset we can learn something. As Ortega y Gasset put it: I am I and my circumstance
tcfunk 11y ago
Yet it's pretty incredible that he not only came around to accept the idea, but even admitted to having said things like what you quoted. Quite a flip in mentality!
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  He's a flip-flopper! We can't have those!
notahacker 11y ago
The flip side is that many proposals such as Basic Income proposals unconditionally rewarding people with above world-average wages simply for being Swiss citizens, or offers of free, permanent and decent housing for people who find themselves homeless in the right municipality, seem to increase the likelihood of position in life being a consequence of fortune rather than effort to take advantage of it... There might be a lot of luck in being born rich, and usually a lot of misfortune in being homeless, but there's also a lot of work and effort that goes into being just about solvent but not able to afford granite worktops, and its actually often people in those positions that are most inclined to gripe at perceived profligacy. Whilst few of them would be keen to have to deal with the difficulties of the average [ex]homeless person, particularly for something as trivial as granite worktops, it's also a little hard to blithely dismiss them as overly privileged.
- notahacker 11y ago
  Not sure what's attracting the drive-by downvotes here? I know BI is popular here, but is there anything actually wrong about my observation that it targets people lucky enough to be born in a particular country rather than unlucky enough to have fallen upon financial hardship? Or that people who think granite worktops are a luxury probably aren't emblematic of the selfish rich?
  - PopeOfNope 11y ago
    You committed badthink, so you get downvoted. Try not to take in personally. It's just what happens here these days. As for what you said, I don't think it's useful it put everything in camps of "lucky" and "unlucky." It assumes that there's nothing an individual can do himself to improve or worsen his station. In the USA and Canada, of all places, that's manifestly untrue. While rags to riches stories are rare, poor to upper middle class stories are extremely common, especially in tech.
ryanjshaw 11y ago
> 'Why should they have granite countertops when I don't.' Can you explain what's dumb about a statement like this? > People come to believe they deserve their position in life when so much of it is due to advantages/disadvantages outside their control I read through that entire article. I don't think it's as a cut & dried as they make it out to be. For example, they do not define 'deserved' - do people say they feel they "deserved to win" because they committed to playing well even though they didn't need to, given their advantages? Is it fair to dismiss somebody's high self-esteem just because luck was a necessary component of it - thereby discounting the fact that hard work was also a necessary component? This is no different, to me, from a team winning a sports game and teasing the losers. Maybe the researchers thought of that, maybe they didn't, but the author didn't address it and it's crucial. It also implies a false dichotomy. It seems to imply people become assholes as they become richer. Perhaps we're all naturally assholes and being poor makes us more aware of our dependence on others because the costs of being an asshole and isolating oneself is too high for poor people. It assumes that being "way more generous, way more charitable, way more likely to offer help to another person" to always be a good idea but neglects to ask why, when our brains are given the option to be less generous, less charitable, less helpful, our brains take it? > attributing your success and their destitution to factors outside anyone's control is scary and difficult. I don't understand this. I don't deny being fortunate. It's precisely because I'm aware of that, and the role of chance in life, that I don't follow this argument. I live in one of the most unequal societies in the world. Roughly 25-40% unemployment, depending who you ask. The number of 0-4 year olds currently is twice that of the active tax payer base. I already pay ~35% tax, aside from 14% value added tax on products and services. Am I bad because I don't want to share more of my good fortune? I couldn't be where I am without ridiculous amounts of luck - but I also do work hard. Don't I "deserve" a happy and safe life, if I have the opportunity? Why do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? The economics of my society simply don't forecast very well compared to other societies. Am I a bad person because I save money and find ways to escape to countries with greater equality? I think I'm being quite rational, but it feels like the articles I'm reading here are saying I should feel bad for not wanting to help others more. Sometimes I think things are beyond help, and you need to put yourself first.
- rmxt 11y ago
Lambdanaut 11y ago
Because winners of purely stochastic games believe they deserve the win does not imply that our real game of life is purely stochastic. It has stochastic elements, for sure, but the player himself has an enormous amount of possible moves that you could label "free will". Success in life is an incredibly complex game, maybe the most complex game. There are strategies one can follow and build upon to up their chances of success in life, and hypothetically if one were omniscient so that they could understand all of the random variables then they could judge whether somebody else "deserved their lot in life". If the player made all the best strategic moves given his input, and he also reaped those rewards, then he truly deserved his lot in life. If he didn't reap the rewards, then it's obvious he didn't deserve his lot. This is apposed to a purely stochastic game in which the omniscient individual would only be able to determine that the game's outcome had nothing at all to do with the player's moves. In a hostile game in which other players are neck to neck with you(like the government and the capitalist elite in our corrupt game), you still have free will, it's just that exercising it in the most precisely strategic ways has become very, very valuable.
- qanael 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure the largest predictor of your wealth during your life is whether you were born wealthy, regardless of how strategic you are.
  - Natsu 11y ago
    It might be predictive, but given that inherited traits exist and that there are selection effects that favor the stronger traits, that may not tell the whole story.
    - glibgil 11y ago
      Um, it almost tells the whole story. Other traits are hardly interesting compared with how much wealth you are born with.
      - Natsu 11y ago
maxlybbert 11y ago
> I even said some dumb things like, 'Why should they have granite countertops when I don't.' However, I've come around. Why do they get granite countertops (assuming they do)? Is it impossible to build a house with linoleum countertops?
- eropple 11y ago
  Solid surface countertops (I'm guessing they're not actual granite) wear a lot better and are cheaper, long-term, to maintain. I'd put them in a place if only to reduce later maintenance spending.
  - maxlybbert 11y ago
    That makes sense. Additionally, I realized after posting my comment that not all of these houses are newly-built; so it could be an issue of what's available on the market.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
undersuit 11y ago
I experience these same feelings occasionally in respect to housing in my city. A number of the new housing developments are only for the low income earners in my town. As a single software developer I make well above my cities average family income, which invalidates me from moving into these new low income units, but the extra money didn't make me any happier that I rented a garage-turned-house for two years.

Red_Tarsius 11y ago

I'm all for basic income and minimum wage, but I think the luck mindset is quite detrimental. It strips men of their own agency and fosters cynicism. > I even said some dumb things like, 'Why should they have granite countertops when I don't.' However, I've come around. Unfortunately, he ends with However, I've come around to realize that this makes financial sense. Silly me, I thought the change of mind was about empathy.

scotty79 11y ago
Empathy does not result in social change. Economy does.
- seszett 11y ago
  Yes - I'm sure that's how slavery came to be abolished for example.
  - rwallace 11y ago
    It was a significant contributing factor. Consider, for example, the American Civil War - the outcome would have been very different if not for the fact that the North's non-slave industrial economy worked.
  - fwn 11y ago
    This is in fact a highly interesting debate. Other than economic circumstances, I would argue that we have little reason to believe that human empathy changes substantially. Slavery went away for farming and balancing reasons, child labour for productivity reasons and working women came for demand reasons (e.g. war).
dghf 11y ago
> Unfortunately, he ends with However, I've come around to realize that this makes financial sense. Silly me, I thought the change of mind was about empathy. Enlightened self-interest that results in action is worth any amount of empathy that doesn't.
learnstats2 11y ago
> Silly me, I thought the change of mind was about empathy. It's important that it's economic. If I work my median job, and live my median lifestyle, and I observe that people who don't work are getting more than I am, that's very challenging. I immediately feel resentful about the fact that I had to work for this when others didn't. It makes it seem like the economic system is broken and unfair. As soon as that happens, there's no chance you will feel empathy to those people who are benefiting more. Recognising that the economics is OK is therefore very important - it allows you to start to have empathy.
- knodi123 11y ago
  > I immediately feel resentful about the fact that I had to work for this when others didn't. I already feel this to a shameful degree in regard to wealthy scions like the Walton kids, or children of mega hollywood stars. The economic system is broken and unfair.
  - learnstats2 11y ago
    Ah, yes, I agree the economic system is broken and unfair. Unfortunately the way to fix this is not by giving you the wealth of the Waltons. It's by bringing everyone else up to the level of personal security that you already have.
stephengillie 11y ago
Luck is applied probability. Good and bad happen randomly. It's up to us to use the events around us as tools to shape reality and the future into patterns of events that we want. While we cannot influence all cosmic events related to ourselves and others, we can still influence some.
sospep 11y ago
> Unfortunately, he ends with However, I've come around to realize that this makes financial sense. Silly me, I thought the change of mind was about empathy My guess would be that the "formerly homeless" of Medicine Hat, appreciate the "roof over their head", much more than any amount of "empathy"
na85 11y ago
>It strips men of their own agency and fosters cynicism. Does it do the same to women?

RobertoG 11y ago

Agree. I think we should change how we talk about this. Instead of talking about “the successful people” or “the rich” we should say “when we are successful we believe we deserve to be successful, when we are poor [..]”. In psychological terms, there are not difference between we and them, and that should show in the way we speak. There are bias that we all suffer when we are poor and when we are rich: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865583328/Does-money-corrupt-A-controversial-study-explores-the-effects-of-money-on-human-behavior.html?pg=all http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865583328/Does-money-corr... This is not a moral fault of the rich in the same way that it's not a moral fault of the poor. Only if we go beyond this confrontational mindset we can learn something. As Ortega y Gasset put it: I am I and my circumstance

tcfunk 11y ago

Yet it's pretty incredible that he not only came around to accept the idea, but even admitted to having said things like what you quoted. Quite a flip in mentality!

sliverstorm 11y ago
He's a flip-flopper! We can't have those!

notahacker 11y ago

The flip side is that many proposals such as Basic Income proposals unconditionally rewarding people with above world-average wages simply for being Swiss citizens, or offers of free, permanent and decent housing for people who find themselves homeless in the right municipality, seem to increase the likelihood of position in life being a consequence of fortune rather than effort to take advantage of it... There might be a lot of luck in being born rich, and usually a lot of misfortune in being homeless, but there's also a lot of work and effort that goes into being just about solvent but not able to afford granite worktops, and its actually often people in those positions that are most inclined to gripe at perceived profligacy. Whilst few of them would be keen to have to deal with the difficulties of the average [ex]homeless person, particularly for something as trivial as granite worktops, it's also a little hard to blithely dismiss them as overly privileged.

notahacker 11y ago
Not sure what's attracting the drive-by downvotes here? I know BI is popular here, but is there anything actually wrong about my observation that it targets people lucky enough to be born in a particular country rather than unlucky enough to have fallen upon financial hardship? Or that people who think granite worktops are a luxury probably aren't emblematic of the selfish rich?
- PopeOfNope 11y ago
  You committed badthink, so you get downvoted. Try not to take in personally. It's just what happens here these days. As for what you said, I don't think it's useful it put everything in camps of "lucky" and "unlucky." It assumes that there's nothing an individual can do himself to improve or worsen his station. In the USA and Canada, of all places, that's manifestly untrue. While rags to riches stories are rare, poor to upper middle class stories are extremely common, especially in tech.

ryanjshaw 11y ago

> 'Why should they have granite countertops when I don't.' Can you explain what's dumb about a statement like this? > People come to believe they deserve their position in life when so much of it is due to advantages/disadvantages outside their control I read through that entire article. I don't think it's as a cut & dried as they make it out to be. For example, they do not define 'deserved' - do people say they feel they "deserved to win" because they committed to playing well even though they didn't need to, given their advantages? Is it fair to dismiss somebody's high self-esteem just because luck was a necessary component of it - thereby discounting the fact that hard work was also a necessary component? This is no different, to me, from a team winning a sports game and teasing the losers. Maybe the researchers thought of that, maybe they didn't, but the author didn't address it and it's crucial. It also implies a false dichotomy. It seems to imply people become assholes as they become richer. Perhaps we're all naturally assholes and being poor makes us more aware of our dependence on others because the costs of being an asshole and isolating oneself is too high for poor people. It assumes that being "way more generous, way more charitable, way more likely to offer help to another person" to always be a good idea but neglects to ask why, when our brains are given the option to be less generous, less charitable, less helpful, our brains take it? > attributing your success and their destitution to factors outside anyone's control is scary and difficult. I don't understand this. I don't deny being fortunate. It's precisely because I'm aware of that, and the role of chance in life, that I don't follow this argument. I live in one of the most unequal societies in the world. Roughly 25-40% unemployment, depending who you ask. The number of 0-4 year olds currently is twice that of the active tax payer base. I already pay ~35% tax, aside from 14% value added tax on products and services. Am I bad because I don't want to share more of my good fortune? I couldn't be where I am without ridiculous amounts of luck - but I also do work hard. Don't I "deserve" a happy and safe life, if I have the opportunity? Why do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? The economics of my society simply don't forecast very well compared to other societies. Am I a bad person because I save money and find ways to escape to countries with greater equality? I think I'm being quite rational, but it feels like the articles I'm reading here are saying I should feel bad for not wanting to help others more. Sometimes I think things are beyond help, and you need to put yourself first.

rmxt 11y ago

Lambdanaut 11y ago

Because winners of purely stochastic games believe they deserve the win does not imply that our real game of life is purely stochastic. It has stochastic elements, for sure, but the player himself has an enormous amount of possible moves that you could label "free will". Success in life is an incredibly complex game, maybe the most complex game. There are strategies one can follow and build upon to up their chances of success in life, and hypothetically if one were omniscient so that they could understand all of the random variables then they could judge whether somebody else "deserved their lot in life". If the player made all the best strategic moves given his input, and he also reaped those rewards, then he truly deserved his lot in life. If he didn't reap the rewards, then it's obvious he didn't deserve his lot. This is apposed to a purely stochastic game in which the omniscient individual would only be able to determine that the game's outcome had nothing at all to do with the player's moves. In a hostile game in which other players are neck to neck with you(like the government and the capitalist elite in our corrupt game), you still have free will, it's just that exercising it in the most precisely strategic ways has become very, very valuable.

qanael 11y ago
I'm pretty sure the largest predictor of your wealth during your life is whether you were born wealthy, regardless of how strategic you are.
- Natsu 11y ago
  It might be predictive, but given that inherited traits exist and that there are selection effects that favor the stronger traits, that may not tell the whole story.
  - glibgil 11y ago
    Um, it almost tells the whole story. Other traits are hardly interesting compared with how much wealth you are born with.
    - Natsu 11y ago

maxlybbert 11y ago

> I even said some dumb things like, 'Why should they have granite countertops when I don't.' However, I've come around. Why do they get granite countertops (assuming they do)? Is it impossible to build a house with linoleum countertops?

eropple 11y ago
Solid surface countertops (I'm guessing they're not actual granite) wear a lot better and are cheaper, long-term, to maintain. I'd put them in a place if only to reduce later maintenance spending.
- maxlybbert 11y ago
  That makes sense. Additionally, I realized after posting my comment that not all of these houses are newly-built; so it could be an issue of what's available on the market.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

undersuit 11y ago

I experience these same feelings occasionally in respect to housing in my city. A number of the new housing developments are only for the low income earners in my town. As a single software developer I make well above my cities average family income, which invalidates me from moving into these new low income units, but the extra money didn't make me any happier that I rented a garage-turned-house for two years.