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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

#161

Post by pdubbs90 »

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…

"People are jealous" seems to me like the uncharitable formulation. I'd phrase it more along the lines of: "we evolved in small tribes and are more acutely aware of relative status than absolute welfare." Most people's assessment of how well off they are comes from comparison with their neighbors rather than absolute knowledge of weather they have enough.

I agree though that eliminating severe poverty is a more worthy humanitarian goal than trying to produce equity.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#162

Post by aje403 »

darpa_escapee wrote: post #160
aje403 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should probably bow out after this one; I don't think there is much room for rational discussion for my viewpoints here. I agree that walmart is a piece of crap, but you don't really know what suffering is. Please ask your grandparents what options their grandparents had in life. If you have some notion that corporations that try to profit are a blight on society and that their abolition will lead to some dream world…

> I don't think there is much room for rational discussion for my viewpoints here. I agree, you refuse to address the arguments people bring up in favor of attacking straw men and relying on sarcastic hyperbole.

Funny, your comment is self referencing

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#163

Post by tinymollusk »

Rescis wrote: post #145
hfdgiutdryg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, everyone still wants the hot girl and the jet. I'd settle for decent healthcare and enough stable income to raise a family. Should the group, who by and large, has contributed more to the society not have proportionally more say? 1) They haven't and 2) no. You appear to be advocating plutocracy.

> 1) They haven't I'm a bit confused by this statement. In the vast majority of cases where an individual purchases something, they do it because they want it (food is purchased because the body desires food, phones are purchased because the brain likes communication and connectedness, medical care is purchased because people realize it helps them, etc). Therefore, for someone to have accumulated a large amount of pr…

Your second paragraph is problematic. First, truly free markets are unlikely to be an accurate statement of where someone earned their money (e.g. the US is nowhere near that, so that excludes every wealthy American). Second, the use of earn -- does that exclude people who extract a large amount of money, like Martin Shrekli? Finally, it does not address the elephant in the room, that most people who have lots of money have inherited it, not necessarily earned it themselves.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#164

Post by jstanley »

maxxxxx wrote: post #93
aje403 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what to tell you, people who have built organizations that employee thousands of people have contributed more to society than average. If that needs further justification then I'm not even sure how to respond to that. You're reading things into what I'm saying - if Elon Musk raises a campaign fundraiser for his favorite candidate, do I mind that? Do I mind him having more "power" in that people listen to…

"I'm not sure what to tell you, people who have built organizations that employee thousands of people have contributed more to society than average. If that needs further justification then I'm not even sure how to respond to that." I hear that often but is it really true? Maybe they just have found a way to funnel money to themselves instead of it going to other businesses. For example has Walmart created anything o…

They sold things more cheaply than other businesses could do. That's almost the purest example of benefiting others you can come up with, it's only one step short of literally putting money in their customer's pockets.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#165

Post by pron »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #117
pron wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with everything you've said. I think that an interesting way to gauge the accuracy of the model without doing major empirical research is to create models where talent is the decisive factor, and then compare which model's assumptions better capture what we know about the world. My guess is that for a variable to be a decisive factor, it must correspond to excessive control over others, thus not ma…

"empirical research" would be sociology, which a contrarian would reject out of hand.

Correct, and I certainly don't reject it at all (although I have a feeling some on HN would).

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#166

Post by pron »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #63
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.

It has to do with universal commodification. Check out Michael Walzer and 'Spheres of Justice.' He makes the case for a kind of 'complex equality' where power in one sphere doesn't bleed into another. Thus having a lot of money would allow you to buy fancy paintings and a nice car and typical commodities but when it comes to something like healthcare, we'd be better off if money couldn't be used to buy a better versi…

That's a nice idea, although I suspect it would garner much opposition if it were workable at all. One of the main reasons for accumulating wealth beyond a certain point is, I would assume, to gain power :)

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#168

Post by b4lancesh33t »

js8 wrote: post #146
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…

I'd love to see your model. Criticizing a model is relatively easy, coming up with something that describes the reality (in this case, Pareto distribution of wealth) yet better is much harder. > As opposed to what? What kind of distribution might you expect? For one thing, they might have expected the result not to be dominated by luck. > It bears literally no relationship to reality, where random massive doublings o…

I don't think that's how it works. A model doesn't become a good model simply because it's hard to or nobody has bothered to make a better one.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood

#169

Post by edmccard »

jnordwick wrote: post #155
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…

R/economics went over this a bit too. There are other issues with the model that and to make it very poor: * - fixed rate of return (doubled or halved) make luck play an oversized role. One of talents greatest contributions is knowing how to let your winners run and cut your losses. The setup is close to a random walk by definition. - risk reduction is hugely important. High earners especially when speaking of financ…

>...One of talents greatest contributions is knowing how to let your winners run and cut your losses...

>...talent would understand what events are more likely to succeed...

If we already know that these things are the result of talent and not luck, and if it's a foregone conclusion that the model gives an "oversized role" to luck, then I guess these kinds of investigation are doomed from the start.

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