11–20 of 303 posts
I think a lot of people are emotionally unable to deal with a world that is as dramatically unfair as ours is, so they fall back to the childish notion that people who have fallen on hard times deserve it and successful people controlled their own destiny to get there, because the alternative is too uncomfortable to think about.
The author illustrates this major point with an example of the "TOP" cellist in the world:
"One [cellist] earns eight or nine figures a year while the cellist who is almost as good is teaching music lessons to third graders in New Jersey somewhere. . . The person who is eventually successful got there by defeating thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of rivals in competitions that started at an early age. . . [but] the luckiest one . . [is] that person who is going to win the contest most of the time."
EG - you need to put in the hours of preparation & subject yourself to competition of the highest order to even have a chance at being the "luckiest" in your field.
I'm a strong determinist. Effort, hard work and skill is irrelevant (any relevance comes from the fact that you're already in your statistical band for expected success and are trying to maximize within that). I believe most of your success is determined before you even take one step on this planet. Step one is acknowledging the truth: your initial circumstances dictate your future. Once this is acknowledged, we as a…
I would rather believe in Existentialism. I come from a very poor background. Much of my childhood friends are either dead, in prison or working minimum wage. If I would have "acknowledged" the truth, like most of them did, I would have ended in the same position. Humans are not animals. We can evolve of our own free will. Statistics do not apply at the individual level.
I'm a strong determinist. Effort, hard work and skill is irrelevant (any relevance comes from the fact that you're already in your statistical band for expected success and are trying to maximize within that). I believe most of your success is determined before you even take one step on this planet. Step one is acknowledging the truth: your initial circumstances dictate your future. Once this is acknowledged, we as a…
> Jean-Paul Sartre:
"What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, man turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be."
Society sees luck in terms of fairness. This article used the word fair or fairness zero times. Fairness is a HUGE issue in deterministic thought especially dealing with how we perceive others around us.
I'm a strong determinist. Effort, hard work and skill is irrelevant (any relevance comes from the fact that you're already in your statistical band for expected success and are trying to maximize within that). I believe most of your success is determined before you even take one step on this planet. Step one is acknowledging the truth: your initial circumstances dictate your future. Once this is acknowledged, we as a…
When you say "determinist" do you mean in the physical sense or some abstract social sense? Because if you mean in the physical sense, that has no bearing whatsoever on the role of hard work.
Physics -> (Chemistry -> Biology -> Physiology -> Psychology) -> Ability -> Success.
Pretending luck doesn't exist can lead to arrogance and a lack of empty for people who haven't succeeded. On the other hand, believing that luck controls everything can lead to fatalism.
It might seem best to find a happy medium, but being wishy washy about this whole thing just gives you opportunities to blame your own failure on circumstances outside your control, while continuing to take credit for success. In the general case, looking for balance between opposing ideologies makes no guarantee that you'll walk away with the best parts of both instead of the worst.
In practice, it's probably best to drop the determinism/indeterminism dichotomy completely and just focus directly on the desired end attitudes.
On a side note, the reason American society is obsessed with meritocracy has nothing to do with a belief about the nature of luck. Denying luck as the path to success is just a way to make people work harder.
Progressive consumption tax is ridiculous. It requires your tax rate at the point of sale to be dependent on all your purchases to that point in time. That's just not practical. Or it may require every purchase you make to be recorded for tax-time when you then pay the taxes. Either way it requires the government to know every purchase you make, or at least the price. This is not something anyone should want.
Some government programs really do spread opportunity, but that requires close examination and criticism; I don't just buy into it because a politician calls it opportunity. Is college an opportunity? It can be a huge opportunity to get ahead in life; but it can also just subsidize a partying lifestyle and a phony major for four years. It depends on the college, the student, and the structure of the opportunity.
It's hard to tell the difference between spreading opportunity and spreading results. It often requires looking at the details, measuring along the way, and it is often different for different people.