The self-made man • Hacker News Board

Re: The self-made man

#21

Post by spindritf » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 1:28 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #16

spindritf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

any person who succeeds does so by some combination of both individual grit, and support from society and loved ones And genetics, and the general culture, and luck, which is just a word we use for many factors we can't even name yet mixed with true randomness. And then there's a fair bit of interplay between all the factors. Why do some people work 60 hours a week when others barely crack 10? That "grit" doesn't com…

I work 60 hours a week because I was fortunate enough to be born with aptitudes that cause employers to want to pay me a lot of money for those hours. If my employers were fighting to keep me under 30 hours so they wouldn't have to pay benefits, and to pay $7.50 for each incremental hour, with zero upward mobility, my incentive to work those hours would vanish. Moreover, you shouldn't get credit for genetics. That's…

you shouldn't get credit for genetics

Why not? Seems like a completely arbitrary standard. And pretty hard on everyone else. Are you not viscerally impressed by beautiful women, high IQ speakers, and so on?

Even if you somehow get people to agree, and at least partially implement it, how can you credit anything then? Is there a human quality we care about not heavily influenced by genetics?

How do you disentangle von Neumann's ability from his achievements? How do you discount Brigitte Bardot's beauty or Michael Jordan's height?

Re: The self-made man

#22

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 1:31 PM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #17

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same results have been reported by many other studies. The facts are clear - for the poor the US is a land of economic handicap, not a land of opportunity. There will always be individual exceptions to this, but they'll be single data points. Put crudely, for every heart-warming success you see interviewed in Forbes, there will be millions of failures no one hears about. The most useful picture is broad-based and…

Meanwhile average mobility in the US continues to be worse than mobility in other countries. What's the best study you can find that demonstrates this? I haven't seen any that don't appear to succumb to the flaws I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, such as measuring relative mobility instead of absolute mobility.

We should probably define terms first.

Which definitions of absolute and relative are you using? (There are a few, and they're not identical.)

Re: The self-made man

#23

Post by rayiner » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 1:33 PM UTC

spindritf wrote: post #21

rayiner wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work 60 hours a week because I was fortunate enough to be born with aptitudes that cause employers to want to pay me a lot of money for those hours. If my employers were fighting to keep me under 30 hours so they wouldn't have to pay benefits, and to pay $7.50 for each incremental hour, with zero upward mobility, my incentive to work those hours would vanish. Moreover, you shouldn't get credit for genetics. That's…

you shouldn't get credit for genetics Why not? Seems like a completely arbitrary standard. And pretty hard on everyone else. Are you not viscerally impressed by beautiful women, high IQ speakers, and so on? Even if you somehow get people to agree, and at least partially implement it, how can you credit anything then? Is there a human quality we care about not heavily influenced by genetics? How do you disentangle von…

You may not agree with it, but its not arbitrary to say that the economy should strive to give people credit for what they choose to do, rather than what you luck into. Its a distinction based on a well-defined criterion.

I'm not really interested in discussing outliers like Michael Jordan, or tiny segments of the economy like sports or entertainment. I'm talking about how we distribute the proceeds of our industrial economy, or at the very least, how we assign moral culpability to people based on things they have little control over.

That is to say, it might be inevitable that pretty people or smart people will have advantages. But the only difference between attractiveness and intellect is that on places like HN, its socially acceptable to be smug about the latter.

Re: The self-made man

#24

Post by waterlesscloud » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 1:39 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #23

spindritf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you shouldn't get credit for genetics Why not? Seems like a completely arbitrary standard. And pretty hard on everyone else. Are you not viscerally impressed by beautiful women, high IQ speakers, and so on? Even if you somehow get people to agree, and at least partially implement it, how can you credit anything then? Is there a human quality we care about not heavily influenced by genetics? How do you disentangle von…

You may not agree with it, but its not arbitrary to say that the economy should strive to give people credit for what they choose to do, rather than what you luck into. Its a distinction based on a well-defined criterion. I'm not really interested in discussing outliers like Michael Jordan, or tiny segments of the economy like sports or entertainment. I'm talking about how we distribute the proceeds of our industrial…

The only difference?

If you were stranded in the wilderness and needed to survive from scratch, would you rather be with a group of attractive people or a group of smart people?

Re: The self-made man

#25

Post by rayiner » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 1:45 PM UTC

waterlesscloud wrote: post #24

rayiner wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may not agree with it, but its not arbitrary to say that the economy should strive to give people credit for what they choose to do, rather than what you luck into. Its a distinction based on a well-defined criterion. I'm not really interested in discussing outliers like Michael Jordan, or tiny segments of the economy like sports or entertainment. I'm talking about how we distribute the proceeds of our industrial…

The only difference? If you were stranded in the wilderness and needed to survive from scratch, would you rather be with a group of attractive people or a group of smart people?

I'd rather be with a group of backwoods rednecks to be perfectly honest.

But I digress. The economy isn't about heros fighting nature to save the day. Its about everyone working together to make an environment where creation is possible. You take Zuckerberg and leave him in the middle of the woods, and what happens? Does he still create wealth? No, he's useless without being plugged into the larger economy. That larger economy is made up of ordinary people. They are poorly compensated not because their contribution doesn't matter, collectively, but because they are fungible. Is fungsbility a fair criterion for structuring an economy?

Re: The self-made man

#26

Post by spindritf » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 1:47 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #23

spindritf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you shouldn't get credit for genetics Why not? Seems like a completely arbitrary standard. And pretty hard on everyone else. Are you not viscerally impressed by beautiful women, high IQ speakers, and so on? Even if you somehow get people to agree, and at least partially implement it, how can you credit anything then? Is there a human quality we care about not heavily influenced by genetics? How do you disentangle von…

You may not agree with it, but its not arbitrary to say that the economy should strive to give people credit for what they choose to do, rather than what you luck into. Its a distinction based on a well-defined criterion. I'm not really interested in discussing outliers like Michael Jordan, or tiny segments of the economy like sports or entertainment. I'm talking about how we distribute the proceeds of our industrial…

the economy should strive to give people credit for what they choose to do, rather than what you luck into

The choices you make are heavily influenced by factors you lucked into, like intelligence, family, culture. And the choices you are presented with are even more influenced by your country of origin.

It's not just outliers. What do you do at 90th or 50th percentile of intelligence? Those two people can make the same choices, say majoring in CS, with very different outcomes.

How do you reward choices under those conditions? You could pay only for the results you like. But we pretty much already do that. What else is there?

This is like a just world fallacy episode 2: the world may not be fair but surely we can make it so.

Re: The self-made man

#27

Post by rokhayakebe » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 1:51 PM UTC

spindritf wrote: post #10

lukifer wrote: post #7

Humans have a problem with complexity and compound causality in general; any person who succeeds does so by some combination of both individual grit, and support from society and loved ones (even if indirectly), regardless of what the proportions happen to be (if one could even measure such a thing). Thinking that success must derive exclusively from either society or the individual is sheer absurdity, driven by a ne…

any person who succeeds does so by some combination of both individual grit, and support from society and loved ones And genetics, and the general culture, and luck, which is just a word we use for many factors we can't even name yet mixed with true randomness. And then there's a fair bit of interplay between all the factors. Why do some people work 60 hours a week when others barely crack 10? That "grit" doesn't com…

Why do some people work 60 hours a week when others barely crack 10? That "grit" doesn't come from nowhere.

Are you suggesting the people "cracking" only 10 lack the ability to work 60 hours weekly?

Re: The self-made man

#28

Post by orwhat » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 2:01 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #23

spindritf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you shouldn't get credit for genetics Why not? Seems like a completely arbitrary standard. And pretty hard on everyone else. Are you not viscerally impressed by beautiful women, high IQ speakers, and so on? Even if you somehow get people to agree, and at least partially implement it, how can you credit anything then? Is there a human quality we care about not heavily influenced by genetics? How do you disentangle von…

You may not agree with it, but its not arbitrary to say that the economy should strive to give people credit for what they choose to do, rather than what you luck into. Its a distinction based on a well-defined criterion. I'm not really interested in discussing outliers like Michael Jordan, or tiny segments of the economy like sports or entertainment. I'm talking about how we distribute the proceeds of our industrial…

What would you think if I said there were indications that most conscious decision making isn't fully conscious at all? That, to a degree, free will is an illusory shadow of subconscious processes and that by the time you choose something, you've really already chosen it? And that genetics, prenatal development, and cultural influences all have a great say in those subconscious processes?

For example, if a child becoming a very aggressive person were totally predictable based on behavioral characteristics of the biological parents, would that matter in this discussion?

I know this is a departure from the way we typically like to think about ourselves, but there is actually some good evidence to indicate that we may not have as much control as we think.

Re: The self-made man

#29

Post by waterlesscloud » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 2:01 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #25

waterlesscloud wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only difference? If you were stranded in the wilderness and needed to survive from scratch, would you rather be with a group of attractive people or a group of smart people?

I'd rather be with a group of backwoods rednecks to be perfectly honest. But I digress. The economy isn't about heros fighting nature to save the day. Its about everyone working together to make an environment where creation is possible. You take Zuckerberg and leave him in the middle of the woods, and what happens? Does he still create wealth? No, he's useless without being plugged into the larger economy. That larg…

>You take Zuckerberg and leave him in the middle of the woods, and what happens? Does he still create wealth?

If I were to bet on it, I'd bet very heavily on him creating wealth under those circumstances. As measured by creating a system for survival. Obviously not as well as someone trained in such things (as implied by your dodge), but better than someone who lacked his intelligence, and more importantly, his drive.

Ordinary people are compensated ordinarily because their contributions to the economy are ordinary. That actually does seem quite fair to me. I appreciate the work cleaners do, but their jobs simply don't contribute to the economy as much as building a large company like Facebook does.

That's not to say everyone who is highly compensated contributes highly to society, we all know that isn't true. But that's also not really what we're discussing.

Re: The self-made man

#30

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 2:05 PM UTC

waterlesscloud wrote: post #29

rayiner wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather be with a group of backwoods rednecks to be perfectly honest. But I digress. The economy isn't about heros fighting nature to save the day. Its about everyone working together to make an environment where creation is possible. You take Zuckerberg and leave him in the middle of the woods, and what happens? Does he still create wealth? No, he's useless without being plugged into the larger economy. That larg…

>You take Zuckerberg and leave him in the middle of the woods, and what happens? Does he still create wealth? If I were to bet on it, I'd bet very heavily on him creating wealth under those circumstances. As measured by creating a system for survival. Obviously not as well as someone trained in such things (as implied by your dodge), but better than someone who lacked his intelligence, and more importantly, his drive…

Maybe it only seems ordinary to you, because it doesn't interest you. Its upper-middle-class arrogance showing, that nobody's job is as important as jobs like mine. What makes cleaning 'ordinary'? Try firing your cleaner/garbage man/street sweeper for a month and see how that impacts you.

And what on earth does it mean, to contribute to an economy wherein only 'non-ordinary' folks benefit? That's pretty circular reasoning. I'd argue that the esoteric jobs of building web gadgets are the fluff and foam of our economy, unimportant to real health and welfare, and way, way overcompensated.