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The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

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Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#81

Post by KozmoNau7 »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #48
thanatropism wrote: post #8

I still think the focus on wealth/income inequality rather than on absolute poverty is irrational. I've seen people justify it to me on the grounds that people care about relative poverty, which to me reads "people are jealous". But then the result is: 1) A focus on inequality is irrational. 2) People focus on inequality for irrational reasons. This means that if policy-makers and intellectuals fully give in to the p…

Inequality is intensely tied to social mobility. Check out the Great Gatsby Curve or this talk on snowball inequality. The common sense way to think of it is that as the rich entrench themselves further and further apart from the rest of us, it becomes harder and harder to jump the gap, the rich stay rich, the poor stay poor and we move from meritocracy to aristocracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Gatsby_curve…

I would say we have already reestablished a de facto aristocracy.

The richest live like kings. Actually they enjoy a level of luxury that even the richest kings of old couldn't possibly have imagined. They basically live like gods, with virtually unchecked power, influence and wealth.

For one of the more extreme examples, consider this private dwelling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilia_(building)

It is possibly the most lavish private home in the world, and it overlooks the absolutely crushing poverty of Mumbai's worst slums. The sheer level of cognitive dissonance is mindboggling.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#82

Post by amelius »

Some time ago there was a post on HN where they had an even simpler model (not based on talent). Everybody was given an equal amount of capital at the start. Then at every tick of the clock, everybody would give 1 dollar to a random person (if they had the money). After many iterations, an exponential wealth distribution resulted.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#83

Post by thanatropism »

scott_s wrote: post #49
pron wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great inequality of wealth is virtually always an inequality of power, and so it is "problematized". You're right that all social dynamics are complex (even economics, or "the dynmaics of wealth", isn't known to the way it can be effectively controlled), but at the end of the day, policies are made based on values. A society that values the maximization of freedom would fight against growing wealth inequality beyond…

I agree with your comments, but I want to add to it. I agree that wealth inequality leads to power inequality. And I agree that curtails freedom. But I think it also tends to societal instability. Closing the loop, we care about wealth inequality because we don't want society to collapse.

Are there historical examples of societal collapse due to wealth inequality?

(Honest question)

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#85

Post by ranie93 »

spicymaki wrote: post #44

America's aversion to the role of luck is based on the Protestant work ethic. There is no chance and everything is predetermined by God's grace. God's grace is demonstrated by hard work, frugality, and discipline. There is a concept of double predetermination where you already need to be saved to be saved. Which means the poor is poor not because of chance, but because they lack God's grace.

Romans 9:21-23

https://biblia.com/bible/nasb95/Rom%209.21-23

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#86

Post by enoch_r »

noelwelsh wrote: post #67
aje403 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a distortion. Young men see rich men with beautiful women flying to anywhere they want on the planet. Only a few of them will get that when they're older, and it oftens boils down to intelligence, work ethic, cleverness, other abilities like athletics and looks, and a few lucky breaks that they take advantage of. Exceptions being inherited wealth. Law of averages, those who do make it are hard working and int…

Research suggests that intelligence (which is difficult to define) is not better than being born into wealth. Exhibit 1: "intelligence is a powerful predictor of success but, on the whole, not an overwhelmingly better predictor than parental SES or grades." https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2007-strenze.pdf Exhibit 2: You can also look at measures of class mobility, which suggest that the rich are staying rich, and the p…

Er, the quote for exhibit 1 actually suggests that intelligence is a better (but not "overwhelmingly" better) predictor than parental SES ("being born into wealth")--and reading the paper, that's in fact the correct interpretation:

> Meta-analysis demonstrated that parental SES and academic performance are indeed positively related to career success but the predictive power of these variables is not stronger than that of intelligence (see Table 1). In fact, intelligence exhibited several correlations with the measures of success that were larger than the respective correlations for other predictors suggesting that intelligence is, after all, a better predictor of success.

Since intelligence is just one of many personality factors that might increase productivity (e.g. diligence or conscientiousness are important for a successful career) the fact that intelligence alone is a better predictor of SES than parental SES is actually kind of surprising in the other direction.

(This is especially striking since "high parental SES" means not only "being born into wealth," but also "having the genes of people with high SES." If SES is correlated with things that are heritable--it is--we should absolutely expect parental SES to have a large effect on outcomes no matter what.)

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#87

Post by pcurve »

mapcars wrote: post #2

I'm not quite getting how can you put talent vs luck, when talent is based on luck you got from your genes, parents, environment etc. I see it as the same thing.

There's an old saying that goes something like, whether you will be successful in life or not will largely be determined by the following 3 things in the order of importance.

1. What country you were born. 2. What teacher and friends you end up having. 3. Your parents. ($, gene, personality, parenting)

Of course, I would add just random luck as 4th factor.

None of these, you have any control over.

We're all here mostly through our good luck. Yes, some of us work very hard, but so do most people in impoverished countries.

Let's take a minute to count our blessings. :)

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#88

Post by thanatropism »

pron wrote: post #38
thanatropism wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting answer. But I'm not sure if inequality-of-power-driven-by-inequality-of-wealth can be problematized (put into the discussion and on the agenda) and fought in such a way that equalizes power. We're shuffling power around and the dynamics of power inequality aren't clear at all.

Great inequality of wealth is virtually always an inequality of power, and so it is "problematized". You're right that all social dynamics are complex (even economics, or "the dynmaics of wealth", isn't known to the way it can be effectively controlled), but at the end of the day, policies are made based on values. A society that values the maximization of freedom would fight against growing wealth inequality beyond…

Yes, yes. I agree with all of this (well, "grows sub-linearly" is grossly speculative, but matches the marginal utility of consumption, etc.) But you misunderstand my question.

To counteract the power of wealth, some other sort of power is needed. Doesn't this lead to power inequality again? Do we know anything about power inequality dynamics that lets us choose this or that structure of coercion?

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#89

Post by monktastic1 »

zzzeek wrote: post #32

> There’s a serious risk of this runaway momentum building an ever-growing chain of misguided agreement. to think we might alter our society to redistribute wealth to those who are most lacking, lifting people out of poverty and improving the world, when we DIDNT EVEN HAVE TO, turns out those losers were talentless and therefore deserve nothing. Horrifying.

In that sentence he's talking about the risk of propagating flawed research. A few paragraphs up he makes it clear that he doesn't hold the view you ascribe to him:

> I care deeply about the issue of growing wealth inequality, and would love for research to be done that finds concrete evidence of how luck and privilege play a role in it.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#90

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #81
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inequality is intensely tied to social mobility. Check out the Great Gatsby Curve or this talk on snowball inequality. The common sense way to think of it is that as the rich entrench themselves further and further apart from the rest of us, it becomes harder and harder to jump the gap, the rich stay rich, the poor stay poor and we move from meritocracy to aristocracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Gatsby_curve…

I would say we have already reestablished a de facto aristocracy. The richest live like kings. Actually they enjoy a level of luxury that even the richest kings of old couldn't possibly have imagined. They basically live like gods, with virtually unchecked power, influence and wealth. For one of the more extreme examples, consider this private dwelling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilia_(building) It is possibly…

I basically agree, Gregory Clark is an economic historian and he's published some stuff which suggests that advantages last for something like 10-15 generations which is absolutely mind-blowing. Check out that voicerepublic link, it has a take on inequality/meritocracy which is different from the usual attacks on meritocracy but I think a lot stronger, it at least gave me a lot to think about.
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