Are You Successful? If So, You've Already Won the Lottery

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/upshot/are-you-successful-if-so-youve-already-won-the-lottery.html

by isaacdl • 10 years ago

19 13 10 years ago

Chance events play a much larger role in life than many people once imagined.

Wrong wrong wrong. If your parents are wealthy you're successful because of them. If you're white you're successful because of your race. If you're male, tall... Don't forget if you're good looking and outgoing! /s

At some point we'll exhaust all excuses for success in life other than grit, dedication, and plain old hard work. Chance is just another one down the line.

pavel_lishin• 10 years ago

Your parents and your genetics are the randomest outcome of all; you don't get or pick where you're born, or to whom.

davesque• 10 years ago

What about people in South Sudan? How much does their hard work pay off? The article makes a lot of good points if you can look past your distaste for its arguments. For example, the fact that we collectively undervalue education can't mean good things for the country.

aaroninsf• 10 years ago

Do the math.

Vast numbers of people demonstrate grit, dedication, and work hard at the expense of enjoying the rest of life.

Very very few of them succeed on the terms they are being told and sold they deserve.

One of the biggest problems with the current extreme accumulation of wealth in a very thin crust of super wealth is that the number of people who enjoy the trappings of modest/qualified success is rapidly diminishing. I remember the dream that was _the middle class_.

Sure, you wouldn't know it to drive around the Bay Area, but the Bay Area is in another bubble fueled more by precisely the kind of unearned largess you mock.

The rest of the US, minus the other urban darlings of international wealth looking for a place to park or chasing some, any, return when interest rates are globally low, is turning into a place no amount of grit or hardwork will avail to rescue you from something not too far from permanent subsistence-level existence.

IIlllIllIIIIlII• 10 years ago

Who is telling them the terms? Who is telling them they "deserve" something for working hard? Specifically?

Because it doesn't take very much thought to realize "hard work" is not the key to success, it's hard work in an area that is demanded by employers. Spend your 10,000 hours learning underwater basket weaving? Good for you, but good luck getting paid to do it. Spend your 10,000 hours learning a career in demand? Now we're talking.

If "no amount of grit or hardwork" is going to prevent subsistence-level existence, what about all the people who get college degrees in areas with high demand -- electrical engineers, software developers, accountants, chemical engineers -- and get good, quality-paying jobs?

What about the people who start companies making a technology that other companies are willing to pay for?

orestes910• 10 years ago

Quantify hard work and "grit" into a unit of measurement - call it a wK.

Mitt Romney's sons simply don't need the same amount of wKs to be hedge fund managers as a black kid born in west Baltimore. The kid from Baltimore who becomes a hedge fund manager is an anomaly - extraordinary. To "exhaust all excuses for success in life other than grit, dedication, and plain old hard work" is to expect the majority of any under represented demographic to be extraordinary, which just doesn't add up.

coldtea2• 10 years ago

How is it "wrong, wrong, wrong"? The article gave many examples, several of them from actual studies and statistics.

You merely labelled the whole thing as "excuses" in an argument-free comment.

At some point we'll exhaust all excuses for success in life other than grit, dedication, and plain old hard work. Chance is just another one down the line.

I can fathom how some people really believe they did more "grit, dedication and plain old hard work" than hundreds of millions of other working-to-the-bone poor that never get nowhere, from poor African Americans to third world sweatshop workers...

Inevitable link:

http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate

I can only excuse this mentality in "rags to riches" people, because, even though they are clearly outliers, their life's story and survivorship bias makes them to overlook the whole issue, and turn it into: "hey, If I've made it out from poverty into millionaire, everyone can, it just takes hard work", while forgetting the non-work-dependent chances they got that others didn't.

But they also forget the more important part: that what's important is not whether "everyone can do it" (period) but whether "everyone can do it with EQUAL effort".

If a poor black person has to put 3x the effort to make it compared to a white guy who just had it easy because of rich parents, college funds, encouragement, etc -- then sure, it's not IMPOSSIBLE to do it. But it's hardly FAIR (level starting point), and it's far harder and thus rarer (plus, if it takes 3x the effort it might not even mean we'll have only 3 times less poor black successful persons as percentage. It might even get it to 1/10 or 1/20, because the breaking point that makes you fail or give up might not scale linearly with effort).

rayiner• 10 years ago

But talent and effort are not enough. Luck also matters.

It's interesting that the author distinguishes between talent and luck. Talent is to a great extent a matter of luck. Your draw in the genetic lottery may well preclude you from being a successful physicist, basketball player, or musician.

dikdik• 10 years ago

You have a point, but I think it is a useful distinction when it comes to work. Talent and skill (while affected by things out of an individual's control) set the baseline of what you are able to accomplish/your potential. Luck plays a bigger role in whether or not you get the opportunity to use and/or grow those skills/talents.

Think about manufacturing a 2.6GHz processor. Many of them come out of the line unable to reach 2.6GHz, some come out to 2.6, and some can even achieve greater speeds. That is your talent/skill (which is predisposed on your luck during the manufacturing process). The processor has no control where it ends up (though the QC process will have some effect), it could end up in a scientific computing cluster where it continually works on complicated problems. Or it could end up in a soccer mom's PC where it is used for email and light web browsing.

This is an imperfect analogy as a processor is not a biological medium so they degrade, whereas a biological medium would more likely improve/strengthen when stressed. So while there is luck in creating talent/skill/potential, there is still a need for distinction between luck and the talent you are born with.

known• 10 years ago

http://www.monbiot.com/2011/11/07/the-self-attribution-falla...

Are You Successful? If So, You've Already Won the Lottery

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