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Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

nautil.us

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Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#251

Post by Waterluvian »

ergothus wrote: post #33

My father and I have somewhat productive political conversations: He's fiscally conservative, I tend towards the liberal side of the scale. Drilling in to find what we really disagree about, it seems to boil down to two concepts: (1) I view success as a matter of luck that your effort can make better or worse. He views effort as the single most important deciding factor in success in life (2) I'm willing to tolerate…

Have you ever tried to frame "help people don't deserve" as being a selfish act? Ie. I like social programs not because I want to give out free help but because I want to increase the demographic of who can buy my products, reduce who may try to hurt me, etc.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#254

Post by marknutter »

Waterluvian wrote: post #251
ergothus wrote: post #33

My father and I have somewhat productive political conversations: He's fiscally conservative, I tend towards the liberal side of the scale. Drilling in to find what we really disagree about, it seems to boil down to two concepts: (1) I view success as a matter of luck that your effort can make better or worse. He views effort as the single most important deciding factor in success in life (2) I'm willing to tolerate…

Have you ever tried to frame "help people don't deserve" as being a selfish act? Ie. I like social programs not because I want to give out free help but because I want to increase the demographic of who can buy my products, reduce who may try to hurt me, etc.

That would require faith in the assertion that giving free help to those people will actually result in those things happening. A lot of people's skepticism about free help is the lack of hard evidence that it actually improves people's lives. For instance, if someone is the type of person who is willing to physically harm other human beings, it's unlikely that more money is going to change their mind about that.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#255

Post by marknutter »

100k wrote: post #107
snarf21 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also the biggest luck factor of all, that being how/when/where you were born. Most of us were born in the US into a family. We did nothing to deserve that but it already makes us in the top 1% richest people globally. What would our path look like if we had been born in rural Nicaragua instead? I'm not "woe is me" but I was raised in a super conservative family, taught to avoid risk and that a steady paychec…

This is a big point that Robert Frank makes in "Success and Luck" (the book this interview is about). Being born in a developed country is one of the luckiest things you can have happen to you. He talks about his time in Nepal for the Peace Corps and a man who worked for him, who was one of the most talented people he's ever worked with. He was also illiterate and living in a developing country, so his prospects were…

But doesn't that require us all to agree that life is provably better for people in developed countries? We have the highest rate of anti-depressent usage in the world, and also happen to be the richest nation in the world. I reject the concept that simply being born into a wealthier country or wealthier family automatically means your life is going to be "better" than someone who was born poor.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#256

Post by marknutter »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #92
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We systematically waste the human capability of millions of people because the system essentially randomly gives much better opportunity to some over others. We don't do anything. The nature of reality is that there is not equal distribution of [anything]. The universe is a dynamical system - portions of the system will through probability always get stuck at local/global minima.

Sure, but the universe is also a place where it rains on your head, and then the sun burns your skin off, and wolves casually stroll in and eat your children. That's what the universe does when left to its own devices, and we don't like that, and we change it. "It is the way it is because it's natural" is a pretty naive fallacy.

> and we don't like that, and we change it.

And the ones who do the work to change it reap the biggest rewards that come from those changes.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#257

Post by marknutter »

kyleschiller wrote: post #18

Debating the actual importance of luck seems a lot less important than developing the proper attitude towards luck. 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…

I think you need to view luck the same way you view misfortune: it's random, and there's nobody to thank/blame for it. That way, you're not spending your time feeling like you need to grovel at somebody's feet because something went your way, nor do you need to spend your time punishing someone for the bad things that happen to you in your life.

In other words, you don't sweat it and instead focus on the parts of your life that you do have control over (which is more than most people think).

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#258

Post by andrewaylett »

hx87 wrote: post #116
AstralStorm wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tracking purchases requires time and skill, both of which are often lacking in the poorest. Rich would hire a person to do it. (and also to game the system)

It requires saving and organizing receipts and doing basic arithmetic. Surely even the poorest can do at least that?

Not really, no. Or rather, the ability to do that is not so much tied to wealth as education and upbringing: you have to be functionally literate and numerate in order to do that, and many of the people who would need the most support aren't.

Many more have the basic numeracy but lack the background to plan finances at all. The UK government recently changed the way they pay rent for people with housing benefit. Instead of direct to the landlord they pay a lump each month, while rent is typically due weekly. Many have fallen into arrears as a result: they didn't want to be given the money, and they don't know how to deal with having a balance in their account that they must budget.

Perhaps you might consider someone unable to cope with that change unworthy of support, but when there's a whole class of affected people I don't think it's helpful to write them off as a group, rather than trying to understand the reason why they find it hard and trying to set up the system to mitigate those difficulties -- just like if your users fail to understand a feature in your project, you'd be wise to redesign it to be usable. Only with somewhat higher stakes.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#259

Post by voxic11 »

hnal943 wrote: post #175
Frondo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed that the government should reward hard work, but I'm always uncomfortable with the discussion around what is hard work. Some poor people I know, they work harder than most of us desk monkeys, because they're doing back-breaking labor day after day. Holding down two, three jobs, shuffling around town on the bus to work 60, 80 hours a week for very little money. This is not even an uncommon story. People working…

Value creation is what we want to reward, I think.

This can be very hard to nail down though at the large scale. For instance Trump managed to secure the largest tax break in New York history in the 80s by convincing the government that his buildings for the Uber rich would be very valuable to the city.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#260

Post by emodendroket »

__derek__ wrote: post #213
emodendroket wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your position is that we should just all believe outright falsehoods if it's "useful?"

To be ever so slightly pedantic: regardless of whether we should, we do. We're afflicted with a slew of cognitive biases.

I don't really see that as relevant to this particular discussion.
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