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The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

joshuaballoch.github.io

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Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#131

Post by dingbat »

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.

amusing that a comment designed to mock the irrationality and simple-mindedness of "Americans", itself provides a strong example of overgeneralizing entire populations, society and culture into simple, easy-to-understand tropes suitable for simpletons.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#132

Post by tokai »

wmsiler wrote: post #109

This is not directly related to this article (which I liked), but instead to the topic in general. I heard of a study a few years ago where researchers divided a bunch of teenagers into a few groups (each of which was quite large), and each teen was allowed to go to a website and hear a collection of songs (same songs for everyone). Each person could then vote on which was their favorite and, importantly, they could…

Sounds like the good old Matthew Effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#133

Post by Quarrelsome »

BlackFly wrote: post #130
Quarrelsome wrote: post #36

I think generally modelling life in 2d grid with simplifications such as talent = 0.0 - 1.0 and events doubling or halving capital with a deterministic number of "good/bad" events isn't going to give you anything real as output. I don't like this sort of science, it stinks of foregone conclusion. Running the model itself is irrelevant as the outcome is pretty obvious by the maths put into it. How far is it really fro…

They introduced talent as a bias in capitalizing on doubling events (the less talent, the less doubling events in proportion). A priori you would consider that this should lead to the talented being overrepresented in the higher percentiles of capital, yet they discover this bias does not dominate over the underlying uniform randomness of merely encountering a doubling event. So no, I wouldn't say the conclusion is f…

> So no, I wouldn't say the conclusion is foregone.

With the distribution of people and events over space and the distribution of talent the end result was a given because its more likely for an arbitrary person to trigger multiple good events than for very specific "talented" people to trigger multiple good events even if their factor means they don't need as many good events to be "even". Same way that if you had more events then people then the outcome would completely change because then "talent" would become a bigger factor than "finding an event".

Its just about what they decided to make scarce (events) in the model.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#134

Post by giardini »

drieddust wrote: post #66

Where Warren Buffet would have landed if he was born in Afghanistan? I have thought about this question a lot recently without any satisfaction.

My tendency is to say "Well, but that didn't happen, so discussing it isn't fruitful."

But counterfactuals seem to be part of our reasoning processes ("If i had turned left at the last light I would be closer to the restaurant.") and they do often capture the imagination (alternative histories, etc.):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_conditional

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#135

Post by marcosdumay »

thanatropism wrote: post #83
scott_s wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Look for collapse due to power concentration, not wealth.

You will find plenty of examples, but we usually call them "revolution", not "collapse".

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#136

Post by Ancalagon »

sebastos wrote: post #123

Absolute junk science. A negative contribution to net human insight. >The simulations show that although talent has a Gaussian distribution among agents, the resulting distribution of success/capital after a working life of 40 years, follows a power law which respects the ”80-20” Pareto law for the distribution of wealth found in the real world. As opposed to what? What kind of distribution might you expect? Based on…

This paper reminds me of an article I read yesterday about how we are no longer in the information age, but rather the "reputation" age. Goes to show, even science that might seem reputable to the average layperson can be complete garbage.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#137

Post by drieddust »

giardini wrote: post #134
drieddust wrote: post #66

Where Warren Buffet would have landed if he was born in Afghanistan? I have thought about this question a lot recently without any satisfaction.

My tendency is to say "Well, but that didn't happen, so discussing it isn't fruitful." But counterfactuals seem to be part of our reasoning processes ("If i had turned left at the last light I would be closer to the restaurant.") and they do often capture the imagination (alternative histories, etc.): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_conditional

I don't think your argument makes sense given the question.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#138

Post by agumonkey »

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.

It's funny how old religious ideas are simple observations in a way. By doing something everyday you just accumulate lots of subtle knowledge and roots in any domain. So mathematically you have lots of chances to get it right at one point. More than "luck" to me the main factor is a blend of inner desire and context that allows you just enough time to think and do.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#139

Post by sdhgaiojfsa »

sebastos wrote: post #123

Absolute junk science. A negative contribution to net human insight. >The simulations show that although talent has a Gaussian distribution among agents, the resulting distribution of success/capital after a working life of 40 years, follows a power law which respects the ”80-20” Pareto law for the distribution of wealth found in the real world. As opposed to what? What kind of distribution might you expect? Based on…

My status on this is that the model could be a good model, but that hasn't been established. You cannot reason from "the outcomes look like reality" to "the parameters and mechanisms in the model are the same as the parameters and mechanisms in reality." That is backwards.

One thing you can say is, "IF reality's parameters and mechanisms are like this model's, you would expect the outcome that we in fact observe in reality." This is evidence, if not particularly strong evidence. There are infinitely many models that lead to the similar outcomes that we observe in reality, and an even larger infinitely many models that don't.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#140

Post by scarmig »

thanatropism wrote: post #83
scott_s wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Not in itself. Even the various Communist revolutions cited in other comments don't correlate well with inequality: Tsarist Russia in 1905 and 1917 had lower levels of inequality than Victorian England.
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