
Talent vs. Luck: the role of randomness in success and failure - manusachi
https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068v2
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sctb
Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16530423](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16530423).

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abetusk
N agents are placed in a square grid, each with T_k "talent", chosen from a
Normal distribution with mean, m, and variance, v, (chosen to be in the
neighborhood of [0,1], e.g. m = 0.6, v = 0.1) and C_k initial capital, with
all C_k chosen to be the same initially. N/2 "events" are also placed on the
grid, with p of them being "lucky" and (1-p) of them being "unlucky".

The simulation is run with the "events" wandering around randomly. If an event
"hits" an agent, the agent doubles their capital (C_k) with probability T_k,
trying to encapsulate the idea of "when preparation meets opportunity". In
other words an agent's capital doubles proportional to their "skill" if a
"lucky" event hits them.

An agent's capital is halved if an unlucky event hits them.

After running the simulation for a certain amount of time, a Pareto
distribution is observed for the distribution of capital (C_k). That is, with
an initial distribution of "skill" as Gaussian/Normal, the wealth distribution
that results is power law.

~~~
amelius
Consider N agents, each with initial equal capital C. At every beat of the
clock, each agent gives 1 unit of capital to a random other agent (or does
nothing if their capital is zero). After running the simulation for a certain
amount of time, the wealth distribution is exponential.

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chucksmash
"The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives" by Leonard Mlodinow
seems topical based on the abstract. I would recommend it as a fairly quick
read that presents a perspective you might not have thought much about.

I avoided it when I first came across it because I was worried (based off of
the subtitle) that it'd just be fodder for learned helplessness. It turned out
quite good though, and anything but (unless you're a movie studio executive).

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eruci
You may also attribute the possession of various types of intelligence to luck
and you are done!

Richard Wiseman argued quite convincingly that luck is mostly self-made.

[http://richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf](http://richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf)

In the famous picture-counting experiment, people were grouped into two
categories (those who were considered successful/lucky and those
unsuccessful/unlucky) and given the the task of counting the number of
pictures in a newspaper. People in the "lucky/successful" group found the
correct number in less than half the time it took people in the
"unlucky/unsuccessful" group.

There was a small footnote in the front page of the newspaper: "This paper has
47 pictures." Guess which group was more likely to notice that.

~~~
grosjona
If you specifically select a bunch of successful people and pitch them against
a bunch of random people then of course the successful people group will
perform better.

I'm sure though, that if someone finds a group of successful people (even
billionaire level), I can easily find a group of poor/unsuccessful people who
will beat them at any specific task.

It's no coincidence that people often complain about their boss being an
idiot. It's probably true. People don't get into leadership roles because of
their talent or intellect - They get lucky; right company, right time.

~~~
eruci
Perhaps. Some bosses are idiots for sure, I've had a few in the past - and
even now I'm my own boss :)

We need more studies to back up this claim though.

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32qwef
Cue the people saying "yeah but we all make our own luck" or "luck favors the
prepared"

Which misses the point. Of course you have to be good AND lucky to succeed.
But not everyone can be lucky. So think of that the next time you're looking a
few rungs down the ladder.

~~~
adnzzzzZ
You miss the point of people saying that "we all make our own luck". It's not
about whether you get lucky or not, but the mindset with which you approach
the world and how that mindset helps you or not. I wrote about this here if
you want a more extended argument
[https://github.com/SSYGEN/blog/issues/38](https://github.com/SSYGEN/blog/issues/38)

~~~
tert45ty54wy
I have to read your essay in more detail. I see a lot i disagree with. But if
the gist of what your saying is is "ignoring luck will help you persevere" I
can see the logic.

However, I'm not advocating a cynical mindset. I'm advocating a compassionate
one, and a realistic one. If you don't think luck matters, you can delude
yourself into thinking the people below you didn't work hard enough, or that
you must be especially talented and driven to have gotten where you are.

I've also seen people hurt themselves with that mindset. The guy who risks
everything on some business venture that's doomed to fail, yet he thinks he
can beat the odds because he's smarter or more hard-working.

How about having an absurdist approach towards luck. "I'm probably going to
fail, and I'm going to do it anyway." It's honest, it's compassionate, and it
doesn't discourage you from trying the impossible. That's how I think, and
it's worked well for me.

~~~
mercer
I think the distinction between how you see yourself and how you see others is
particularly important, and I find that it's often conflated when I have
arguments about things like poverty.

Attributing things too much to luck in your own endeavours might lead to
learned helplessness, among other things. Whereas assuming that the bum on the
streets quite possibly got into his predicament because of bad luck seems like
a safer and more compassionate assumption to make.

But factually speaking, I'd say much more than we'd like to admit is out of
our control, which is one of the reasons why I am in favor of societies with
strong safety nets and hefty base-line of compassion.

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ta1234567890
FTA "almost never the most talented people reach the highest peaks of success,
being overtaken by mediocre but sensibly luckier individuals."

It's also interesting that regardless of anything, in the end your genes and
where/when you were born determine pretty much your whole life, and that's
just luck. In the end success attribution to anything but luck is just ego.

~~~
imgabe
> "almost never the most talented people reach the highest peaks of success,
> being overtaken by mediocre but sensibly luckier individuals."

One can be talented at many different things. Perhaps the people at the top
were talented at a less obvious but more relevant skill than those who didn't
"succeed".

Looking strictly at monetary success, people who succeed purely and obviously
by luck (lottery winners) generally do not stay successful very long. They
quickly lose their money.

AFAIK, the bankruptcy rate for people who get rich via working on something is
far less than people who were randomly assigned riches. This would seem to
imply that the former are doing _something_ differently.

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grosjona
It's interesting that 10 years ago, people avoided this subject completely -
The authors of such papers would have been accused of being jealous and lazy.

Now, the idea that we are not a meritocracy is basically common knowledge, it
seems that more or less everyone (even among the rich) accepts that this is
the reality. I don't think that society has ever been in such a state of
economic self-awareness before. Unfortunately, all this doesn't seem to change
people's attitude towards wealth; if anything, the rich are getting even
richer and the poor are literally being wiped out in the opiate epidemic.

It seems that luck plays a bigger role than ever and yet the consequences of
winning or losing are becoming more extreme at the same time.

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projectramo
TL;DR: Talent (inputs) are normally distributed but wealth (outcomes) have a
power law distribution. So talent doesn't determine wealth. What does? Luck.
(They do some simulations.)

I wonder if they're measuring the right kind of input though. IQ is
distributed in a bell curve but that is one input. There is hard work, common
sense, ambition, and energy. I wonder if you have a multi dimensional bell
curve as inputs, you may end up with a power distributed output (all the
elements have to line up for success).

Although, as someone pointed out, talent too is often a matter of luck.

~~~
amelius
> Talent (inputs) are normally distributed but wealth (outcomes) have a power
> law distribution. So talent doesn't determine wealth.

It seems to me that if the most talented are the most wealthy (etc. for the
remainder of the people), then even if the distributions are not the same,
talent can still determine wealth (?)

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amelius
The (flawed) assumption that hard work inevitably leads to success is perhaps
the biggest reason why capitalism is so successful.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
If by successful you mean effective for the benefactors of luck to entrench
their advantage at the expense of the less lucky, then I agree.

