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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 elemen

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
      I'm not disputing that one's starting position is important, I'm just saying it's not an unchangeable fact of life. One of the reasons YC exists is to help people find the opportunity to become wildly successful by making some of the necessary conditions (money, connections) more accessible to those with talent. And that's a wonderful thing. Even for myself, I used to do grunt work in a factory. Now I work from home at a cushy software job thanks to things I obtained here. Maybe I won't ever make billions, or become the next Elon Musk, but I'm happy enough just to celebrate my own successes and work to improve my own lot in life.
  - task_queue 11y ago
    The thing about wealth transfer is it doesn't depend on genes at all. I'm sure there are literal lapdogs endowed with more net worth and power than I have by their owners. edit: I should clarify that wealth is not correlated with gene quality or fitness, but it may follow familial/social/emotional connections of the wealthy that seem to point to a "good lineage". Case in point: royal families
    - Natsu 11y ago
      You misunderstand, I'm saying the traits that allow one to succeed (e.g. intelligence) can be inherited and correlate with the accrual of wealth. Though you are absolutely correct that social connections to other wealthy people create new opportunities as well. Inheritance, assuming the families have on average more than one child in each generation and the split is even, dilutes a family's fortunes over time. It would be correct to point out that the rules of some dynasties take this into account (head vs. branch families) and prevent this.
- pdeuchler 11y ago
  That's a tautology, like saying the largest predictor of how many languages you will speak is if you are born into a multilingual home regardless of how well your language centers develop. The better metric would be correlating someone's socio-economic class at birth with deltas in wealth later in life. I'd be very surprised to find a radically different conclusion, but at the least it'll give us more actionable data. After all, trying to eradicate advantages-by-birth might be the most futile exercise in human history but maybe we can adjust for them as we grow to learn more about the statistical relationship.
  - minikites 11y ago
    > After all, trying to eradicate advantages-by-birth might be the most futile exercise in human history A 100% inheritance tax would be nigh-impossible in practical terms but in abstract it would go a long way to further the end of creating a society more closely based on merit.
greggman 11y ago
This reminds of the game Kudos http://www.positech.co.uk/kudos/ http://www.positech.co.uk/kudos/ It's a game where each game day you get to make 4-6 choices what to do with your time. Like relax and watch TV from 7 to 10pm or take a class. Based on your choices new opportunities open up or don't. It was so in my face to see my life presented like that. Sure it's obvious but more though provking in a compressed time span. That is not in anyway to imply that everyone has the same opportunities or that people born into poverty don't have serious hurdles that the rich don't. But, there's also a huge middle ground of people in the middle class who choose not to take advantage of the choices they have. I've done the same. I've wasted years playing games or watching TV or reading HN. I'm not judging that to be a bad choice of my life and certainly there's a balance of entertainment, relaxation and other. At the same time, at least for me, someone that grew up middle class, I can clearly look back and see all that time I could have done something that would have made me rich or at least far better off by now that I didn't do.
- Lambdanaut 11y ago
  I bought this game because of your reply and spent all of my Saturday on it. Totally worth it.
hnnewguy 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." This is true, but misses the point. The point is that people believe they "deserve" things they've obtained through pure luck- that they've earned it- which has implications regardless of how much of the "game of life" is stochastic or random.

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
    I'm not disputing that one's starting position is important, I'm just saying it's not an unchangeable fact of life. One of the reasons YC exists is to help people find the opportunity to become wildly successful by making some of the necessary conditions (money, connections) more accessible to those with talent. And that's a wonderful thing. Even for myself, I used to do grunt work in a factory. Now I work from home at a cushy software job thanks to things I obtained here. Maybe I won't ever make billions, or become the next Elon Musk, but I'm happy enough just to celebrate my own successes and work to improve my own lot in life.
- task_queue 11y ago
  The thing about wealth transfer is it doesn't depend on genes at all. I'm sure there are literal lapdogs endowed with more net worth and power than I have by their owners. edit: I should clarify that wealth is not correlated with gene quality or fitness, but it may follow familial/social/emotional connections of the wealthy that seem to point to a "good lineage". Case in point: royal families
  - Natsu 11y ago
    You misunderstand, I'm saying the traits that allow one to succeed (e.g. intelligence) can be inherited and correlate with the accrual of wealth. Though you are absolutely correct that social connections to other wealthy people create new opportunities as well. Inheritance, assuming the families have on average more than one child in each generation and the split is even, dilutes a family's fortunes over time. It would be correct to point out that the rules of some dynasties take this into account (head vs. branch families) and prevent this.
pdeuchler 11y ago
That's a tautology, like saying the largest predictor of how many languages you will speak is if you are born into a multilingual home regardless of how well your language centers develop. The better metric would be correlating someone's socio-economic class at birth with deltas in wealth later in life. I'd be very surprised to find a radically different conclusion, but at the least it'll give us more actionable data. After all, trying to eradicate advantages-by-birth might be the most futile exercise in human history but maybe we can adjust for them as we grow to learn more about the statistical relationship.
- minikites 11y ago
  > After all, trying to eradicate advantages-by-birth might be the most futile exercise in human history A 100% inheritance tax would be nigh-impossible in practical terms but in abstract it would go a long way to further the end of creating a society more closely based on merit.

greggman 11y ago

This reminds of the game Kudos http://www.positech.co.uk/kudos/ http://www.positech.co.uk/kudos/ It's a game where each game day you get to make 4-6 choices what to do with your time. Like relax and watch TV from 7 to 10pm or take a class. Based on your choices new opportunities open up or don't. It was so in my face to see my life presented like that. Sure it's obvious but more though provking in a compressed time span. That is not in anyway to imply that everyone has the same opportunities or that people born into poverty don't have serious hurdles that the rich don't. But, there's also a huge middle ground of people in the middle class who choose not to take advantage of the choices they have. I've done the same. I've wasted years playing games or watching TV or reading HN. I'm not judging that to be a bad choice of my life and certainly there's a balance of entertainment, relaxation and other. At the same time, at least for me, someone that grew up middle class, I can clearly look back and see all that time I could have done something that would have made me rich or at least far better off by now that I didn't do.

Lambdanaut 11y ago
I bought this game because of your reply and spent all of my Saturday on it. Totally worth it.

hnnewguy 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." This is true, but misses the point. The point is that people believe they "deserve" things they've obtained through pure luck- that they've earned it- which has implications regardless of how much of the "game of life" is stochastic or random.