The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners • Hacker News Board

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#131

Post by actually_a_dog » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 6:03 PM UTC

jandrewrogers wrote: post #106

sidlls wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because few people are objective enough to put aside their deep emotional attachment to the notion that their particular bit of hard work and skill meant nothing without that luck. I’m wealthy now: very wealthy by any standard (mid 7-figure net worth). I came from humble beginnings (nearly homeless frequently as a youth with a single mom), but I am quite intelligent (PhD in physics) and I worked hard. I would have re…

Many people with your net worth grind it out without any windfalls, the product of consistent hard work and reasonable choices over decades. It was always a possibility. Most people don't require an IPO to achieve that. Luck can accelerate that outcome but it is not necessary in any meaningful sense. It requires significantly greater extremes of wealth before luck plays a more frequent role. I know people well into 8…

That’s not true. To start with, you have a huge leg up being born in a place where opportunities such as getting a PhD in physics (to take the GP post example) are available, or even in a place where schools that can prepare one to go to university in order to even think about such things. It also helps a lot to grow up in an environment that’s supportive of such things.

How can you “hard work” yourself into any of that?

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#132

Post by wholinator2 » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 6:03 PM UTC

friedman23 wrote: post #113

amelius wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game features a set of dice, so anecdotes such as this one are not impossible, it's just that you need to be extremely lucky.

No, if it was actually like monopoly there is 0 chance of succeeding once people have established themselves. You have a finite number of bets you can make in your life, if you waste them by partying, gambling and being high on drugs then yeah, I can see how it can feel like it's impossible to succeed. And life is a lot easier than these board games, there isn't one winner in life.

I think it's interesting that partying and drug use make 2 out of 3 slots in your list of useless bets that are sure to make you fail. Aren't there whole classes of extremely wealthy people who are known for drugs use and constant partying? The real central point here is wasting time. If your partying and drug use is using money for no return, your time is not paying off and you're heading down. But parties and drugs can absolutely be tools of social connection and creative exploration, which can be rewarded very highly depending on who your socializing with and what you create.

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#133

Post by SamoyedFurFluff » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 6:03 PM UTC

jandrewrogers wrote: post #106

sidlls wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because few people are objective enough to put aside their deep emotional attachment to the notion that their particular bit of hard work and skill meant nothing without that luck. I’m wealthy now: very wealthy by any standard (mid 7-figure net worth). I came from humble beginnings (nearly homeless frequently as a youth with a single mom), but I am quite intelligent (PhD in physics) and I worked hard. I would have re…

Many people with your net worth grind it out without any windfalls, the product of consistent hard work and reasonable choices over decades. It was always a possibility. Most people don't require an IPO to achieve that. Luck can accelerate that outcome but it is not necessary in any meaningful sense. It requires significantly greater extremes of wealth before luck plays a more frequent role. I know people well into 8…

It is lucky they didn’t have a calamity that affected their personal finances, particularly in blue collar where injuries are relatively common. I’ve heard it takes 7 years of no unexpected expenses to grind oneself out of poverty. That means no healthcare scares, no dependents, no victim of crime, not even a car breaking down randomly.

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#134

Post by epicureanideal » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 6:03 PM UTC

jandrewrogers wrote: post #106

sidlls wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because few people are objective enough to put aside their deep emotional attachment to the notion that their particular bit of hard work and skill meant nothing without that luck. I’m wealthy now: very wealthy by any standard (mid 7-figure net worth). I came from humble beginnings (nearly homeless frequently as a youth with a single mom), but I am quite intelligent (PhD in physics) and I worked hard. I would have re…

Many people with your net worth grind it out without any windfalls, the product of consistent hard work and reasonable choices over decades. It was always a possibility. Most people don't require an IPO to achieve that. Luck can accelerate that outcome but it is not necessary in any meaningful sense. It requires significantly greater extremes of wealth before luck plays a more frequent role. I know people well into 8…

I’d be very interested in hearing how a blue collar grinder can get to 8 figures.

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#135

Post by Zircom » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 6:04 PM UTC

friedman23 wrote: post #116

angarg12 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not accounting for luck as a factor of success is one of my pet peeves. I'm reading "So good they can't ignore you" and although I'm loving it, it's also guilty of that. Cal Newport tells the story of a Clean Tech VC and how he got the job using a personal connection to VC. But then he dismisses it by saying that "such small breaks are relatively common". Why is it so hard to admit that someone success is partially d…

> Not accounting for luck as a factor of success is one of my pet peeves. Why do you model life as a single bet where you have a 1 or 2% chance of winning? In reality you are making bets every day, each with a range of odds of succeeding and each success can produce a range of outcomes. Look at poker, a game that has a massive "luck" component, people still consistently win.

Poker is a well studied, and more importantly, closed system where all of the variables are either known or known unknowns. We literally have bots now that can play poker better than any human.

The amount of decisions you make in a game of poker vs the amount you make in a lifetime are not even remotely comparable. And unlike life, in poker there's no risk in making bad decisions during the game while you're still learning. Worst case scenario you just start a new game until you get the hang of it. Life is not like that. There's no practice run, and when you make what turns out to be the wrong decision it can follow you around for the rest of your life.

His point is that it's extremely possible, and in fact happens every day, that you can be a talented, hard worker who put in the same amount of hard work and time that someone else did, and make all the objectively correct choices, and the difference between the levels of success you both achieve can and will be huge.

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#136

Post by actually_a_dog » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 6:06 PM UTC

friedman23 wrote: post #116

angarg12 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not accounting for luck as a factor of success is one of my pet peeves. I'm reading "So good they can't ignore you" and although I'm loving it, it's also guilty of that. Cal Newport tells the story of a Clean Tech VC and how he got the job using a personal connection to VC. But then he dismisses it by saying that "such small breaks are relatively common". Why is it so hard to admit that someone success is partially d…

> Not accounting for luck as a factor of success is one of my pet peeves. Why do you model life as a single bet where you have a 1 or 2% chance of winning? In reality you are making bets every day, each with a range of odds of succeeding and each success can produce a range of outcomes. Look at poker, a game that has a massive "luck" component, people still consistently win.

Let’s start with you have to grow up in an environment where you can the rules of the game, generally by watching others. If you know how to “hard work” yourself into growing up right, I’d like to know how.

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#137

Post by epicureanideal » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 6:06 PM UTC

beefield wrote: post #125

onos wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’re saying the poor have much more to gain through hard work and shouldn’t be discouraged?

So you’re saying the rich have much less to gain through hard work and shouldn’t be incentivized?

There’s probably a lot more of a self actualization and entertainment component to it at that level.

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#138

Post by actually_a_dog » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

onos wrote: post #94

Qem wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nailed it. If you're Elon Musk, do some dumb mistake and lose 200 billion, your life barely changes. If you live on minimum wage, and loses half of it, starvation ensues for your family. The impact of losses is disproportional between rich and poor.

So you’re saying the poor have much more to gain through hard work and shouldn’t be discouraged?

Quite the opposite. While a $200M loss for Elon Musk might be nothing significant, a $200 loss for someone who is truly poor could be a huge setback. The poor have to play the game much more conservatively than the rich, which means they can’t make the big bets that have those huge upside outcomes.

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#139

Post by ZeroGravitas » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 6:10 PM UTC

angarg12 wrote: post #86

epistemer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also disregards the type of lottery game that is a part of wealth accumulation. Of course, it is not all luck but to believe wealth accumulation is a type of purely deterministic meritocratic game without a giant stochastic factor is ridiculous. That might even be the dumbest aspect of our society. Believing the powerball lottery winner is a genius for picking the numbers they picked is obviously stupid. Yet we ba…

Not accounting for luck as a factor of success is one of my pet peeves. I'm reading "So good they can't ignore you" and although I'm loving it, it's also guilty of that. Cal Newport tells the story of a Clean Tech VC and how he got the job using a personal connection to VC. But then he dismisses it by saying that "such small breaks are relatively common". Why is it so hard to admit that someone success is partially d…

There's a theory that admitting you have no control over you own life is too scary for most people.

Believing that your local witchdoctor/economist can predict the weather/economy is perhaps stupid. Believing in Karma might be too. But what's the alternative? Accepting you live in an uncaring universe where you have no control and terrible things could happen to good people at any time?

Much more psychologically safe to blame the victim as a way to ward off the thought that you could suffer the same fate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

Re: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

#140

Post by actually_a_dog » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 6:10 PM UTC

roughly wrote: post #101

epistemer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also disregards the type of lottery game that is a part of wealth accumulation. Of course, it is not all luck but to believe wealth accumulation is a type of purely deterministic meritocratic game without a giant stochastic factor is ridiculous. That might even be the dumbest aspect of our society. Believing the powerball lottery winner is a genius for picking the numbers they picked is obviously stupid. Yet we ba…

> It also disregards the type of lottery game that is a part of wealth accumulation. The article does not disregard this - luck and family wealth are the two factors they propose as causative.

In other words, luck and luck. That is, unless you know how to control what family you’re born into.