

Is getting ahead about fate or free will? - haksudol
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/how-to-get-ahead/?ex_cid=538twitter

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tgflynn
Interesting because there is so much variation in the results and so much of
that variation seems counterintuitive.

I have a major doubt though that this study may have been severely biased by
the manner in which the questions were translated. A study like this should
really publish the translated questions in all languages used (even though no
single person could evaluate all of them), and I didn't see that in the full
report.

A result I find especially strange is the large difference between France and
the US/English speaking countries on the importance of hard-work and
education. I've worked in both countries and I find it very hard to believe
that so many French people would think that "working hard" was not important.
The potential problem I see here is that "working hard" is such a common
cultural idiom in the US that accepting that term would be almost automatic
for many people. Depending on how this was translated though it could have
been seen in French as being something like "doing hard labour". I have the
same problem with the results for the importance of education. Education is
probably more important to success in France than in just about any other
western country and I think that is widely believed there. However if the
question was poorly translated it might have been understood as something like
having "a good upbringing" rather than education in the English sense.

