If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance
technologyreview.com
If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance
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Re: If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance
#2They did a experiment which demonstrated that music popularity was arbitrary by showing how social interaction and recommendations arbitrarily focus on a couple of tunes and people prefer to gather momentum behind a few and that's how popularity comes from: some arbitrary randomness that meets a certain threshold then gets momentum and attracts backers purely from momentum.
Wealth creation in isolation would be no different.
Re: If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance
#3All of us who haven't achieved fabulous success find this very comforting, of course.
But I'm still going to put in effort, because I don't believe in any of this fate crap, etc.
Re: If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance
#4I mean, did Michael Jordan just get lucky every time he shot a basketball? No, he had talent. Maybe not 10000x the talent of some street baller, but then maybe wealth doesn't scale linearly with talent.
Re: If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance
#5I mean, did Michael Jordan just get lucky every time he shot a basketball? No, he had talent. Maybe not 10000x the talent of some street baller, but then maybe wealth doesn't scale linearly with talent.
Not sure that a game of basketball has enough parallels with the activities involved in generation of significant wealth for this to be a sound comparison.
Re: If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance
#6It's hardly "just chance".
Wealth is a fitness landscape. The way to climb it is a function of talent, intelligence, perseverance, connections, leverage, charisma, mindshare, labor capital, financial capital, "right place, right time" (chance), and a multitude of other factors in an n-dimensional, m-agent game that is simultaneously cooperative and competitive.
You can start at an advantage or disadvantage. You can make choices that put you closer to an upwards (or downwards) slope. You can take low-energy paths. Comfortable paths. Wrong paths, expending your energy doing the wrong thing.
There are so many ways to explore.
Re: If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance
#7If you're smart or talented, then that gives you a huge boost. It's yours to lose. But without effort, talent is of no use. I have seen people who have talent squander it by not putting in the effort. Family wealth obviously helps too , but of the top Substack authors I follow...most succeeded by raw talent and some effort, with otherwise minimal connections or family wealth. Same for top start-up founders...most seem to only come from middle class households.
Re: If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance
#8One of the best predictors for financial success is your ZIP code.
Re: If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance
#9It's hardly "just chance". Wealth is a fitness landscape. The way to climb it is a function of talent, intelligence, perseverance, connections, leverage, charisma, mindshare, labor capital, financial capital, "right place, right time" (chance), and a multitude of other factors in an n-dimensional, m-agent game that is simultaneously cooperative and competitive. You can start at an advantage or disadvantage. You can m…
It seems like the article might be addressing a slightly different question, which is "How should you distribute research funds"
(and if you're smart and want to get rich) you should distribute them evenly.
Re: If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance
#10They did a experiment which demonstrated that music popularity was arbitrary by showing how social interaction and recommendations arbitrarily focus on a couple of tunes and people prefer to gather momentum behind a few and that's how popularity comes from: some arbitrary randomness that meets a certain threshold then gets momentum and attracts backers purely from momentum. Wealth creation in isolation would be no di…
>Wealth creation in isolation would be no different.
Unless you think "wealth creation in isolation" involves valuing assets with no relation to fundamentals, there's no reason to believe why that would be the same as popularity contests for popular media.