
On Cumulative Advantage and How to Think About Luck - imartin2k
https://ofdollarsanddata.com/why-winners-keep-winning-4e7f221f5b84
======
otalp
There's a similar experience I've seen with YouTube. The first hundred
subscribers(assuming you don't ask friends and family to subscribe) is always
the hardest, and even if you're putting out higher quality content than the
big channels, it's difficult to break that barrier. Once you cross that
barrier, getting from 100->1000 usually takes half the time, and it becomes
successively easier to get more views and subscribers with less effort. Once
you're in the hundred thousands you can earn a decent side-income from just
putting out a video a day, and once you're in the millions you can be set for
life with little effort assuming you don't have high production costs.

It is a snowballing effect, but most people never cross the initial tough
barriers(after 10k, it becomes relatively easy to keep growing). In order to
cross it, it either involves luck, or you have to know someone more popular
than you who can boost your channel.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
Out of curiosity, how difficult would it be to "buy" your way in?

I'm thinking you could more or less hire influencers to recommend your
channel/content?

~~~
otalp
I doubt the really big ones would do it - and anyone moderately successful is
still going to ask for like thousands of dollars. But yeah, if you have money
to burn that can probably boost you - but most people don't, so it again
favours the people who already have an advantage.

------
ec109685
> J.K. Rowling published a book called The Cuckoo’s Calling under the pen name
> Robert Galbraith only to be outed by someone performing advanced text
> analysis with a computer.

That is highly misleading. She was outed by a person with inside knowledge
(anonymous tip), which was confirmed by automated text analysis.

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-did-
comput...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-did-computers-
uncover-jk-rowlings-pseudonym-180949824/)

~~~
petters
Further, they only compared Rowling to three other authors and Rowling ended
up second in at least one of the tests. The analysis likely did not prove
anything by itself.

------
jpfed
It's an interesting exercise to try to design board games that have economy-
like systems. You'll notice that it's _very_ easy for rich-get-richer effects
to emerge.

Now, rich-get-richer effects can be desirable in a board game in which the
starting conditions are perfectly symmetric and luck plays no role, because
the more skilled player is going to the one to acquire that snowballing
advantage. But in asymmetric games, or games in which luck creates asymmetry,
rich-get-richer effects obscure the relative skill of the players.

~~~
Xylakant
I don’t think that rich-get-richer effects are desirable in any game (1) since
that makes the game degrade into a lopsided endgame where the poor have no
shot at winning the game, leading to frustration. A game should always allow a
shot at winning to stay interesting.

(1) unless it’s an educational game aimed at demonstrating the effect.

~~~
chongli
_A game should always allow a shot at winning to stay interesting._

While that sounds good in principle, it doesn't always work so well in
practice. I have played board games that were designed that way and I began to
realize that my choices early on did not matter very much. This had the effect
of making the whole game feel pointless until the last turn where somebody
would quickly grab the win.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Many games handle it poorly. The idea is to disincentivize poor planning and
poor decisions such that winning becomes more difficult, but never so much
that it becomes impossible. No matter what the situation is, a player should
ideally be able to see a path to victory, or at least a spiteful form of
failure, it just might involve rather significant gambles. The player on top
should also ideally feel that their position is constantly one poor decision
and some really bad luck away from being taken from them. Hidden information
is frequently employed to this end, allowing players to imagine that their
opponents are in a better or worse situation than they actually are, as well
as providing the opportunity to intentionally deceive others about one's
position.

------
hyperpallium
Stephen King vs Richard Bachman is a wonderful illustration of _market_ vs
_merit_.

Does merit have similar increasing characteristics?

Does it apply in non-competitive contexts?

Market success, notoriously, has non-merit factors: a comment on reddit has to
have merit to get a few votes. But to go from a few to thousands, it has to be
early, visible in the thread, the thread has to be visible, the story has to
be visible on the front page, it has to stay there a long time. ("karma
train")

One of the sub-factors is people like to read what others read - regardless of
quality - in order to be on the same page, get the same jokes and references
etc. To know what's going on - like the news.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
Like Stephen King himself said, the experiment did not have enough time to
reach maturity. I don't think it's contradictory to suggest that reputation is
a component of merit. Most people do not succeed, yet those who do have a
habit of succeeding over and over again. And so when you view something with
an unknown track record it's expected value is going to be much lower than
something from an author with a track record of dozens of successes.

In today's era where reviews and award often consider many factors besides
just the book quality alone, they've become quite useless. So how are people
supposed to find new books? You end up going from a handful of reviewers who
tend to like the material you like, or by going to the same author over and
over. In either case, it takes new entrants some significant amount of time to
reach their full potential. I don't think this inherently means the market is
broken.

~~~
hyperpallium
To suggest that reputation is a component of merit is a category error.
Reputation isn't part of merit; it doesn't cause merit. Merit may cause
reputation.

You probably mean reputation has some positive correlation with merit, so that
reputation can be used as a predictor of merit. And of course, you're right.

However, I wasn't addressing how consumers can ascertain merit, but whether
merit has similar increasing chacteristics to market success, as described in
the article.

That is, if someone starts with a little extra merit than someone else, does
it also compound as they practice?

I wanted to exclude competitive factors. For example, Gladwell's _Outliers_
claims that Canadian hockey players have birthdays biased to part of the year,
and that this was because the slight age difference makes child players more
successful against their sub-year younger opponents in the same age-group.
They get more practice and confidence, and get selected for extra training.
But, this competitive aspect gives an artificial advantage to players who are
slightly _relatively_ better. And also, this advantage is not present just
once, but every time they play, for years.

BTW both the points you and I made regarding the merit-market relationship are
mentioned in the literature posted by gwern
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17052074](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17052074)
(last link):

> in part because people use the popularity of products as a signal of
> quality—a phenomenon that is sometimes referred to as “social” or
> “observational learning” (Hedström 1998)—and in part because people may
> benefit from coordinating their choices; that is, listening to, reading, and
> watching the same things as others (Adler 1985). \-
> [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3785310/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3785310/)

------
incompatible
Does this happen in software too? Would Git be languishing unknown on
SourceForge if it hadn't been written by Torvalds?

Edit: I'm sure it's a big factor in app stores.

~~~
im3w1l
I'm sure it does. But it goes both ways. Because if you're famous people will
start using it based on trust and if it turns out to be crap people will feel
betrayed and be angry and you'll lose the trust.

~~~
bartread
It does indeed. Think Peter Molyneux and Godus.

~~~
incompatible
If they are famous they can probably withstand the occasional flop, although I
suppose writers, actors etc., have been known to fall out of fashion entirely.

~~~
bartread
The manner of the flop is important as well. The reason Peter Molyneux's
reputation has taken such a pummelling over Godus is the way he handled - or
mishandled - the crowdfunding.

------
arnold8020
I was wondering about this in the context of the 80-20 rule, and believe I
have a simple answer. Basically you need two things: 1) Some slight advantage
2) The network effect, that is, the probability of competing depends on the
current winnings.

If you have these two things, you get 80-20 like distributions, you get the
explanation for why winners keep winning. If you are interested, you can find
my simulation and analysis at

[http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~arnold/research/80-20/](http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~arnold/research/80-20/)

Kind of shocking how well this works. The intuition is, why has coke won, well
they had some initial advantage, and so they won a bit. Now that they have won
a bit, they can finance themselves into more competition. For example, they
can place themselves into more stores, into more restaurants etc. Now they get
a chance to compete more.

~~~
static_noise
Your rules are basically "the winner takes it all in the long run". This is
similar to reality but real actors can disappear. Individuals have a limited
lifespan. Their offspring have slightly different abilities.
Corporations/Nations/Organizations are run by individuals (chosen not
randomly) and may face technological/political challenges but here it's not
clear that these structures need to disappear.

Do you see a good way to factor in these things?

~~~
arnold8020
Interesting that you see it as 'winner takes all'. Wondering why you say that.
The simulation can be run in various ways. When I run with rules:

r1) Actors have normally distributed abilities,

r2) Actors are chosen randomly based on current winnings, the more you have
won, the more you compete,

r3) Winner of competition wins one point from the loser,

You get interesting results, for example, in the two columns below, the left
is Household income in 1970 broken into quintiles. The right column is
simulation results.

    
    
        4.1%                         6.7%
    
       10.8%                        11.5%
    
       17.4%                        16.0%
    
       24.5%                        23.3%
    
       43.3%                        45.6%
    

Interesting how well the top 3 or 4 quintiles match between the simulation and
the real world data.

If you run the simulation with different rules, the real world quintiles do
not match the simulation quintiles nearly as well. You can tweak the
simulation to see this as well.

The simulation can be tweaked to handle cases such as inheritance, so an actor
with different ability inherits the wealth of a past actor. It would be
interesting to see how many generations it takes to loose the wealth to test
the adage that wealthy families loose their wealth in 3 generations.

[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/globe-
wealth/...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/globe-
wealth/eroding-family-fortunes-how-the-cycle-can-be-broken/article33757468/)

Ill try it and get back to you.

~~~
arnold8020
I modified the simulation as follows:

I allowed it to evolve for a single generation, enough time for the top 20% of
the population to have 80% of the wealth. I now choose a random sample from
the top 20% of the population to follow, lets call them T20.

I now repeatedly

1) pass the wealth of all actors to actors with new, random abilities

2) let the new actors compete for a generation (the same number of
competitions we used above)

Result: After 3 generations of steps 1 and 2 above, 80% of T20 has lost almost
all their wealth, 10% has lost 75% of their wealth, 10% has done really well,
growing it by a factor of 8, due to capable ancestors for three generations.

Amazing, it matches the statistics in [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-
investor/globe-wealth/...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-
investor/globe-wealth/eroding-family-fortunes-how-the-cycle-can-be-
broken/article33757468/)

------
gravity_123
Winning and losing have a lot to do with confidence and ability to take risks.
Winning reinforces confidence which allows one to take more risks if they have
a growth mindset(also equally important).

PS: The add-on[1] I use to avoid redirects doesn't like these medium hosted
blogs. These links redirect to medium[2] which redirects to original link and
I am stuck in an infinite loop.

[1]:[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/skip-
redirect...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/skip-redirect/)

[2]:[https://medium.com/m/global-
identity?redirectUrl=https://ofd...](https://medium.com/m/global-
identity?redirectUrl=https://ofdollarsanddata.com/why-winners-keep-
winning-4e7f221f5b84)

------
api
Examples like King/Bachman are the sorts of things that to me debunk the
notion of meritocracy and support things like wealth redistribution and
affirmative action. If success is largely a product of randomized path-
dependent effects and feedback loops, then success is not really earned. It's
basically lottery winnings.

That being said I'm not sure I accept that premise universally. It seems like
this is true in domains that are popularity contests: pop culture, politics,
etc., but I have no proof of that and have never seen anyone do any kind of
comprehensive analysis of it. Maybe I just don't want to believe that success
beyond a certain point is random.

~~~
mpweiher
> [King/Bachman] debunk the notion of meritocracy

Not sure that is correct, because (if you agree that King is good), you do
need to be good to be successful, and I think that is what meritocracy wants
to accomplish for society: that those who are successful are good, rather than
bad. For society, it is not necessary that everyone that's good is also
successful, just that the bad doesn't rise to the top (too much).

What it debunks is the (incorrect) corollary that if you are not successful,
you must be bad/lazy (or that if you are good you are guaranteed to have
success). Which of course does not follow (A→B does not imply not(A)→not(B)),
particularly if there are multiple necessary factors for success, such as for
example quality AND luck/path dependencies. If it is quality AND luck, then
it's not the same as lotto, though the random part does play a role.

And yes, wealth redistribution makes a lot of sense for societies, and yes,
the "no success → bad/lazy" fallacy is often used to justify not having such
mechanisms.

------
hari_seldon_
Not from the article, but this makes me think of something that we learned
back in my college probability course: "wealth gravitates towards the
wealthy." Even in fair games and situations, it is much harder to come out
ahead when you start out behind. Think of how the house always wins in Vegas,
or how a random walk can experience heavy drift.

~~~
basementcat
I would argue that wealth gravitates toward those who are better at
accumulating wealth (Warren Buffet, George Soros, Peter Lynch). There may be a
correlation between those who are good at accumulating wealth and those who
have accumulated a large amount of wealth.

~~~
sidlls
That's a bit tautological. Also, what do you mean by "good"?

Also many things cost less for wealthy people. They literally spend less as a
fraction of their wealth than anyone else for credit, for example. Wealth will
naturally gravitate towards them even if they do nothing more than act like
anyone else because of that kind of thing.

~~~
darkerside
People who are good at making money make more money. Yes, it's tautological,
which doesn't make it untrue. People who are good at scoring the basketball
get a lot of points. People who are good at cooking make delicious food. I
think you're questioning whether someone can really be good at "making money",
and the answer is yes. Money follows rules and laws that appear random to
those who are not skilled. Just like some people might not understand the laws
of electricity, making electricians seem like wizards. That doesn't mean the
laws don't exist. And those who understand the forces behind money are able to
take advantage of them, like a surfer uses the force of a wave to propel
himself. Effortless. The wealth just seems to find you.

Your second point is accurate, but not really a rebuttal.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
You miss the point. It’s vastly easier to be successful at making money if you
start with a lot of it, and vastly harder if you start with nothing.

A few very unusual people in each generation start with nothing and become
billionaires, but for most of the population a running start will get them
much further towards a comfortable life than almost any combination of luck
and talent.

This is a problem, because many of our social myths suggests that the most
reliable and predictable way to become richer is through hard work - and
therefore rich people are more socially valuable than the poor, who stay poor
because of laziness.

Both of those beliefs are absolutely untrue.

~~~
darkerside
When you say that I miss the point, that usually means the true disagreement
is over what we're talking about. Like I said, you're talking about the power
of compound interest, economies of scale that encourage pooled investing, and
other systemic effects. And you're not wrong.

What the OP was pointing out was that, there are people who understand money
and people who don't, and that plays just as big a role as having wealth (see
lottery ticket example cited in sister comment). I think I've demonstrated I
understand your point; do you think you really understand that one?

Also, > the most reliable and predictable way to become richer is through hard
work

Do you know a more reliable and predictable way to become richer? It may not
be fast and it may not be fair, but in a capitalist society, I believe it to
be true.

------
incompatible
The article didn't even mention the field where the effect seems to be
biggest: visual arts. The value of a painting depends almost entirely on the
fame of the artist, as I understand it.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
That's because the value of this kind of art, in this context, is as a form of
social signaling. The actual talent of the artist, and the meaning the work
communicates to the owner, these are not really considerations for this
metric.

------
adnzzzzZ
I really dislike when people focus on luck this much. If you have in your mind
the notion that luck is real and that it affects the outcome of your efforts
in any way, sooner or later (and often times without really noticing that
you're doing it) you will use that notion to excuse your failures and to
explain away other people's successes, and that will prevent you from
achieving your goals as fast as you would have otherwise.

While it is useful to understand the nature of how markets operate and the
role of luck in them, I find that worrying too much about this is harmful for
my personal development and that taking a stance that is something like "luck
doesn't exist" is more useful.
[http://ssygen.com/posts/luck](http://ssygen.com/posts/luck)

~~~
affinehat
You can't lump together all forms of luck into a single "objectively true,
pragmatically false" category without considering the magnitude of impact luck
has on what you intend to do. In the extreme, playing the lottery is almost
entirely luck, and it's very much pragmatic to believe that it is so.

It's not a binary choice between 0% luck / 100% power, and 100% luck / 0%
power. There's a whole continuum in between, and the exact luck/power
breakdown for any given action is a matter of objective fact. Where we run
into trouble is when our perception of the breakdown does not match the
objective reality, and we waste our time on impossible tasks or don't bother
to try tasks that could have benefited us.

And the breakdown of luck/power is objectively skewed in favor of power for
those who are white, and skewed in favor of luck for those who are minorities.
So while white privilege and white supremacy might both be wrong, they are
certainly not wrong to the same degree. While privilege is a view closer to
the objective reality and is thus probably overall beneficial as long as you
don't take it too far. Likewise for feminism/incel.

~~~
adnzzzzZ
As I've stated in the article, it's about the mindset you take and not what is
objectively true. You're not helping minorities by pointing out that their
success in life will be mostly due to luck, you're just giving them excuses to
not try harder.

~~~
jonnybgood
> You're not helping minorities by pointing out that their success in life
> will be mostly due to luck, you're just giving them excuses to not try
> harder.

You really think they’re not trying hard enough? What is trying hard to you?

I don’t know if you’re American but it’s not unusual for black Americans to
work twice as hard as their white counterparts to receive equal recognition,
or success.

~~~
adnzzzzZ
There are minority groups in America that do well despite all their minority
status, like asians. This happens because they have the correct mindset with
which to approach the world. Everything I see from other minority groups in
America, especially blacks, is that they have the main mindset of blaming
others instead of themselves for their misfortunes. This kind of mindset won't
really get you anywhere in life.

I'm from Brazil if that matters.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
What evidence do you have that "mindset" is the cause of the difference and
not simple selection bias?

Black Americans are mostly native born. Asian Americans are mostly immigrants
or just one or two generations removed from immigrants.

Immigrants from Asia can pretty much only get a visa through some kind of work
visa. That means they are pre-selected for having a highly-demanded skill set
before they can even enter the country. It also takes decades for them to
qualify for permanent residence, so they need to be employed in that field for
the entire time. It is almost guaranteed that these people will be financially
successful because someone who is employed for decades in a field that can
qualify for one of these visas will be financially successful. Anyone who
isn't will not legally be allowed in the country.

US law pretty much guarantees that Asians on average will be more financially
successful than average because they are much more likely to be here on a visa
that requires financial success.

~~~
adnzzzzZ
Doesn't immigration law in America apply equally to immigrants from
everywhere? Why would Asians require one set of rules while Hispanics require
another? And if they do play by the same rules then that still doesn't explain
the success of Asians over other immigration heavy groups like Hispanics.

I think you can't discount the fact that Asians simply have a better mindset
that focuses on hard work more than other groups, which explains at least part
of their success. And it's really not a surprise to think that if you value
hard work and you act on that value by working hard, you will be rewarded.
There's no need to make up excuses by blaming systemic racism or any other
sort of external influence that doesn't play as much of a role in your life as
your own effort will.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Immigrants are a very large portion of Asian Americans. Immigrants are a very
small portion of black Americans.

Black immigrants in the US have roughly the same level of financial success as
Asian immigrants, they are just a much smaller portion of black Americans than
Asian immigrants are of Asian Americans. The real difference is between
immigrants and non-immigrants, not between black and Asian people.

Also, it's untrue that immigration law applies equally to all races. There are
many aspects of immigration law that are different based on national origin.
People from India and China are excluded from many ways of immigrating except
for work visas.

~~~
adnzzzzZ
I'll grant you this point given that evidently I don't know much about
immigration in America, however this is somewhat removed from my initial claim
and we sort of went on an unrelated discussion.

Do you agree that it's best to promote a message of "don't blame others for
your failures" over a message of "your life is mostly dictated by luck"? I
don't see how you could argue that the latter is better than the former.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
I agree that is a better mindset for individuals, but it is worse for society
as a whole. That idea is frequently used as an excuse to do nothing about the
factors that keep people trapped in cycles of poverty.

~~~
adnzzzzZ
I think this is where we disagree. In my view, individuals becoming more
responsible and productive will always be better for society as a whole,
because society is made up of individuals. The main idea that keeps people
trapped in cycles of poverty is the idea that their problems are a result of
society and not of their own actions.

And I really won't change my mind on this notion, given that my parents
started up poor in Brazil and worked their way up to provide me with a
reasonably good life, way better than the ones they had. And the main thing
that enabled them to do that was their own mindset about life and just a lot
of hard work.

The same applies to many other people I know, and the opposite also applies to
many other people I know. There are people who simply don't work as hard, or
don't pay enough attention to spot opportunities, or aren't financially
responsible, or are alcoholics, or any other number of problems that are self-
made. Those people keep themselves trapped in a cycle of poverty through their
own actions, not anyone else's.

------
whack
Theoretically, the wide availably of user-reviews on sites like Amazon and
GoodReads, should allow unknown writers to gain visibility and reach the full
market of readers who would enjoy that book. The fact that JK Rowling has
failed in her anonymous writings, points towards the great opportunity that
still exists for platforms/apps that can surface great books from unknown
authors.

On a tangential note, it would be amazing if the guild/union of authors
collectively agreed that all books will be published anonymously for the first
year, with the author's name only revealed after the first year anniversary.
This would allow newer authors to step out from the shadow of the established
ones. I doubt this will ever happen of course, but I think we would see so
much more dynamism in the industry if it ever did.

~~~
underwater
Solving the visibility problem is only a problem for uneatablished authors,
not readers. I would guess that most people are happy to read something from
an author hey know rather than taking a chance on another author who is
“better”.

~~~
whack
The visibility problem affects the readers as well. Consider the ~million
readers who enjoyed reading the Bachman/King books after the author's identity
was revealed. There are probably a 100 other "Bachmans" out there whose books
they would have enjoyed reading as well, possibly even more than their
favorite King books. Except that because of the author's lack of visibility,
they never discovered these works.

Yes, the readers aren't "losing" anything. But nevertheless, they have still
missed out on something they would have enjoyed.

~~~
underwater
I'm sure that there is a bit of "wine tasting" effect. Knowing that a brand-
name author wrote a book probably makes it more seem better to many readers.
But even outside of that, the reader isn't really missing out by not
experiencing the best author. Many light reading experiences are fungible,
even if there are some quality differences.

I read the "Robert Galbraith" books. I would have never read it if I hadn't
known that J. K. Rowling wrote the book. But I wouldn't have felt like I was
missing out, I would have just read some other detective novel instead and
been equally as satisfied.

------
ChuckMcM
The story about name recognition is perhaps more important. A publisher was
giving advice to would be authors and their advice was until you had at least
one and possibly two best sellers it was always more valuable to give away
your books than sell them. This was because the barrier to reading a new book
is so much higher for an author the reader doesn't yet "know" than one that is
a known quantity.

~~~
Buttons840
So don't sell any books until I have a best seller?

~~~
ChuckMcM
That wasn't what I took away from that publisher's statement. I heard it to
mean that in the beginning getting your name out was very important. And while
the Oatmeal famously lampooned "exposure" as something that might be valuable,
building one's "brand" is a thing.

------
montrose
Instead of his vague recommendation to "accept luck as a primary determinant
in your life," I recommend reminding yourself that although luck may be a
necessary condition for success, it is not a sufficient one.

~~~
mattbierner
For a literal take on the role of luck in life, read “The Dice Man”.

------
dkural
The article is mathematically unsound and provides no proof or model
whatsoever of what they claim.

~~~
gwern
I am a little surprised that it just provides a simulated model; Yahoo ran a
famous experiment which does _exactly_ what demonstrates his point about
randomness and media success being only weakly correlated with success:
"Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial
Cultural Market"
[http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full.p...](http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full.pdf),
Salganik et al 2006; Salganik & Watts 2009,
[http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_watts09.pdf](http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_watts09.pdf)
"Web-Based Experiments for the Study of Collective Social Dynamics in Cultural
Markets"; [http://cultural-
science.org/FeastPapers2008/AlexBentley1Bp.p...](http://cultural-
science.org/FeastPapers2008/AlexBentley1Bp.pdf) ; "Leading the Herd Astray: An
Experimental Study of Self-fulfilling Prophecies in an Artificial Cultural
Market"
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3785310/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3785310/)
, Salganik & Watts 2008.

~~~
dkural
Great links! I agree with the general truth of the phenomenon described & your
references do a much better job demonstrating this.

------
sammorrowdrums
There's too much noise out there. I don't think it's purely market advantage.
People are buying from authors they already like because they can't read all
the books, so they look for books that are from an author they already like or
ones that manage to breach their noise filter. Same with music, there's
probably thousands of bands you would love and songs you would list among your
favourites, if only you would give them an equal chance of listening, but
that's not how we usually behave.

Yes the market recognises this behaviour and tries to push past success
because they get a great return, but familiarity and noise floor are powerful.

~~~
pjc50
Yes, this seems more like a demonstration of how strong branding is in crowded
fields.

------
jeffdavis
Cumulative advantage has always seemed obvious to me and not terribly
intereeting. I'm more interested in why it doesn't dominate in a completely
out-of-control way.

For instance, we know small companies often win against much larger ones.

~~~
ItsMe000001
> we know small companies often win against much larger ones

We do? They do?

It seems to me that this statement requires context in order to say much of
anything. I don't know what to do with it as a standalone general statement.

Do they win when the far larger business actually cares, in head-to-head
competition? I doubt that happens very often. When counting the successes
there also is significant danger of survivorship and selection bias because
the David vs. Goliath story resonates so deeply with human listeners.

Or do they win when the larger business doesn't even know it is in the race,
like an ant screaming at an elephant oblivious to its existence "this pebble
is _mine_ "? I'm sure the chances of success here are pretty good.

~~~
jeffdavis
Why does the large company not understand the race when it has such great
cumulative advantage?

How did the giants of today get to be giant in a 20-year span when they
started out tiny? And why didn't the giants of 20 years ago use their
cumulative advantage to get even larger?

~~~
ItsMe000001
I don't see what your reply has to do with anything I wrote.

------
lucky_dawg
I wholeheartedly agree with the article that success ultimately boils down to
luck and not much else. Not even kidding, the harder I work, the luckier I
get!

~~~
ItsMe000001
So if not everyone, then at least the majority of all people worldwide who
work very hard will be successful. I think reality shows this not to be true,
hundreds of millions of very hard workers who even exhaust their bodies
towards an early and broken death would probably disagree. You _are_ already
lucky by birth. Even apart from one's own family, we are placed into
environments consisting of culture, institutions and tools developed over
millennia. How much the place of one's family within one's own society plays a
part depends, some countries are better at letting people from all kinds of
families develop, in many others there is a large inheritance factor within
families, where family income has a high correlation with one's own lifetime
income.

------
eanzenberg
Is this surprising? My first criteria for choosing a restaurant is, are there
people already there? Unless I’m passionate anout the domain and am willing to
give up substaintial personal time, I’m not interested in discovering new
talent or being a guini pig.

~~~
lostlogin
It’s interesting to watch how seating is arranged by staff, particularly early
in the night. Early customers or ones that they want to be seen are seated
near the front or by the window.

~~~
mkagenius
> or ones that they want to be seen are seated near the front or by the window

This will piss me off now whenever they offer a table in the corner.

~~~
lostlogin
It’s funny when you get a window first time, but turn up with a kid the next
time and get the overflow room upstairs.

------
victor106
This explains a similar phenomenon with paper clips

[https://youtu.be/F-I-BVqMiNI](https://youtu.be/F-I-BVqMiNI)

------
pimmen
This is also a very good reminder of why discrimination takes a long time to
defeat. The moment we legislate that we shouldn't discriminate by race, gender
or religion the capital gained from all the advantages is skewed towards to
the oppressors and the playing field is not leveled yet.

------
pps43
I think that instead of adding one marble at each step, it's better to add a
fixed percentage of existing marbles, e.g,, 0.25%. This will better
approximate the processes that are being modeled. But then the effect shown in
the article will disappear.

------
wxyyxc1992
天之道，损有余以补不足；人之道，损不足以奉有余。

It is the way of heaven to diminish superabundance, and to supplement
deficiency. it is not so with the way of man. he takes away from those who
have not enough to add to his own superabundance.

------
amelius
Reminds me of this post:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16618385](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16618385)

------
paul7986
Is one of things they lack a solid moral fiber and will do whatever to
win(lie, cheat, steal, exaggerate, fake things.. fake a reality that doesn’t
exist, etc)?

~~~
deviationblue
It may not be something covered by the article, but this is not false. And
those who don't do it, are not virtuous paragons or whatever- they either
haven't done it, didn't think of it, or got caught.

