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Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

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Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#51

Post by dsacco »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #45
fullshark wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what you define as success. Hard work generally does lead to gainful employment and the ability to afford a home/car which used to be the canonical symbol of success in America. If you think success is "be as rich and respected as I desire to be" then that absolutely will not hold.

Not really... I've known hard workers, they work hard, no success, they work hard, an unlucky event intervenes, they work hard, still no success, so on and so on and so they ask: what's the point in hard work? Can you blame them? Even to be a hard-worker implies that you've been lucky enough in life to see a correlation between hard-work and success.

What does "no success" mean in this context?

Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#52

Post by falcolas »

One model I don't see here is "success requiring a certain amount of capitol to obtain". If you don't have the, say, 6 capital to invest in an opportunity, you can't get the rewards for that opportunity. This applies even if you provide debt, since going into debt typically requires having existing assets in excess of the debt amount.

My hypothesis is that the starting capital will impact the distribution of capital more than talent.

Another potential model: Vary the chance to participate in opportunities. Not everyone has equal chance to take advantage of opportunities; someone living in NY will have more opportunities they can leverage than someone living in Iowa (and being able to move to NY is an opportunity in itself).

My hypothesis here is that the chance for being able to take advantage of opportunities will play as big of a role in the final capital distribution as talent.

Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#53

Post by Cthulhu_ »

fullshark wrote: post #21
newyankee wrote: post #2

One of the biggest lie sold in the West is that if you work hard, give everything you should succeed. This has grave implications on policy and really blinds people born with a silver spoon to the real problems in society as they have a 'i deserve it and they don't syndrome'. Contrast this with a poor society that is growing rapidly where you see islands of wealths with certain individuals, at least people over there…

Depends what you define as success. Hard work generally does lead to gainful employment and the ability to afford a home/car which used to be the canonical symbol of success in America. If you think success is "be as rich and respected as I desire to be" then that absolutely will not hold.

Depends on what you define as hard work. There's stories on Reddit's late stage capitalism subforum about a graduated biochemist entertaining customers at Starbucks with random facts; it was considered cute by the original poster, like, wow, a smart barista. While it was sad that he worked hard to get his papers but couldn't land a job.

Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#54

Post by simonebrunozzi »

newyankee wrote: post #2

One of the biggest lie sold in the West is that if you work hard, give everything you should succeed. This has grave implications on policy and really blinds people born with a silver spoon to the real problems in society as they have a 'i deserve it and they don't syndrome'. Contrast this with a poor society that is growing rapidly where you see islands of wealths with certain individuals, at least people over there…

Please, it's not the West: it's the anglo-saxon West (US, UK), or in general countries with a strong calvinist influence. Mediterranean countries (Italy, Spain, to some extent France) don't share that same mindset.

Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#55

Post by yulaow »

kaolti wrote: post #44
rectang wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on who you are. If there are structural factors arrayed against you, less success and more failure will come your way for the same amount of work.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean that "work hard and you'll succeed"is a lie.

If you keep it as it is, it is an absolute statement as in "I can guarantee that every single time any random person works hard, he will be successful after time X" which is clearly empirically false because ignores all the (extremely numerous) boundary conditions.

The problem is exactly that, there are people who think that it is an absolute statement so poor people, unhealthy people, people in bad life conditions, etc are so just because they didn't work hard so they do not deserve any help.

Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#56

Post by rectang »

kaolti wrote: post #44
rectang wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on who you are. If there are structural factors arrayed against you, less success and more failure will come your way for the same amount of work.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean that "work hard and you'll succeed"is a lie.

If you take the fairness out, that phrase is worse than meaningless. It applies to slaves: those who work harder are rewarded to some extent. Does that mean a slave society fulfills the ideals of meritocracy?

Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#57

Post by lbriner »

There are plenty of "soft factors" at work in being successful or not. Confidence adds a lot of perceived value to an individual; their ability to work smart instead of just hard; their ability to prove they can do well in the specific context of their job rather than just be generally intelligent but not practical; their ability to make others look good or feel confident in their ability will make them get promotions sooner.

There are obviously lots of practical conditions outside of our control such as local conditions, state of the job market, being willing to relocate etc. There is also the understanding that you need to look better than the other applicants rather than just look good in isolation.

Another major issue that is rarely covered is personality types and the fact that insecurity, paranoia or other physical conditions that are obvious to the interviewer will cause you to look bad, regardless of whether they actually measure your ability to do a job.

And then there's luck!

Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#58

Post by sol_remmy »

Everyone in this thread directly supports inequality through their buying decisions and I'm callin' them out.

Anytime you use Netflix, Google, HackerNews is supporting inequality. Every time you bought a Harry Potter book as a kid you supported inequality. You're giving more money to the winners.

If you want to reduce inequality, then buy books from unpopular authors. Use unpopular OSes like TempleOS instead of giving even more market share to Google/Apple/Microsoft. Drive cars made by less popular manufacturers. Don't read the New York Times, Fox News, or Washington Post - only blogs or magazines with a small subscribership. And don't watch anything Disney.

Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#59

Post by jsweojtj »

commandlinefan wrote: post #18
chongli wrote: post #4

Is talent not just a form of luck? It doesn't matter how hard you work at your low post game, you'll never learn to be seven feet tall. Those who are of that height are extremely lucky, giving them a huge advantage over other contenders for that NBA center position. Other forms of athletic talent are less visible than height but I see no reason not to attribute them to luck (genetics, access to nutrition, coaching et…

His conculsion also rests on the premise that talent is something you can measure and put a number on. In professional sports, for the most part, you can do that: your "talent" is (indirectly) measured by the number of goals you score. The more goals you score, the more talented you are. I suspect that's one of the reasons that professional athletes are a) so rare and b) so highly compensated: it's near-trivial to co…

Nothing about the conclusions relies on talent being measurable. It's basically going, "say talent was distributed like X, and it had effects Y on the world, what would things look like?" This doesn't imply or suggest or require that talent is measurable or knowable by anyone.

Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#60

Post by Cthulhu_ »

k__ wrote: post #27
rb808 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chris Dillow is my favorite economics blogger. http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com One of his quotes from memory is "Meritocracy is the myth that justifies inequality", which explains a lot of the current world.

Some parties here in Germany actively pushing this. They talk about equality of opportunity and not equality of outcomes. But what can you do? You're phenotype is mostly determined by stuff you can't control. If you have low conscientiousness and a low IQ, you're basically f*cked and you can't control this either. Even if you're high on openness and have a average to high IQ, you're still playing a high risk game.

I do agree to equality of opportunity and not equality of outcome; those people with low IQ won't end up in the high tiers of e.g. the scientific world, simply because they can't.

Equality of opportunity does not rule out a proper socialist system. You give everyone the same opportunities at life and work by e.g. affordable health care and insurances for everyone, but also scholarships for everyone so they can follow what they want to do instead of be restricted by e.g. what their parents earn. And if you can't work because of whatever reason, you don't have to end up on the streets.

Equality of opportunity gives everyone the chance to graduate university; equality of outcome gives everyone a university degree regardless. I'm probably misinterpreting it.

But give everyone the opportunity, and there will be enough social mobility so that people now born in poverty can grow up to become e.g. software developers, and pay that little equal opportunity was paid for them during their education back tenfold within just a couple years of working in that industry.

That's my experience anyway, my dad was a not-greatly-paid metalworker with a high interest mortgage (as was the times back then) and three kids, I'm a college graduate and my first job paid almost as much as his.

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