
And Now Let Us Praise, and Consider the Absurd Luck of, Famous Men - hudibras
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/and-now-let-us-praise-and-consider-the-absurd-luck-of-famous-men/272917/
======
jacques_chester
Luck matters. It has always mattered.

<http://chester.id.au/2012/03/02/does-leadership-matter/>

Of course, you can't control it. At best you can optimise based on the cards
you're dealt in life.

Before this discussion gets too far down the usual track, it's useful to
remember the distinction between _necessary_ and _sufficient_ causes.

Is luck _necessary_ for success? At the super-high level, yes. In fact at the
low level, yes. Being born in the USA or the anglosphere or in a wealthy
country is a _massive_ stroke of luck.

Is luck _sufficient_ for success? No. Ask any lottery winner.

Now to all the other things people list -- intelligence, personality and the
like.

Is an anxious drive to achieve _necessary_? At that level, it would seem so.

Is it _sufficient_? No. It's not; no matter how ambitious you are it's going
to be difficult to transcend some starting conditions.

~~~
jonnathanson
Exactly. Luck is necessary, but not sufficient, for massive success.

But on a deeper level, the big problem with the "luck vs. talent" debate is
that we have done a pretty decent job quantizing talent -- but we haven't done
so with luck. We treat "luck" as this singular, mystical force. In truth, luck
is reducible to further components, just as talent is reducible to
constituents like intelligence, practice, ambition, curiosity, etc.

There are different types of luck. There's luck on a macroscopic scale, such
as being born into a stable family with access to necessary resources. There's
luck on a microscopic scale, such as the circumstances surrounding each
encounter over the course of one's day (e.g., who happens to be in line with
you at Starbucks, or who's sitting next to you on a plane). And then there's
the crucial component of how you expose and act on the luck. (You may never
realize that your seatmate is the CEO of a hot startup unless you manage to
strike up an amiable conversation; in this case, you need to expose and
"uncover" the luck around you in order to take advantage of it).

Truly dumb luck -- like discovering you're the long lost heir to a
megafortune, or winning the lottery, or being discovered at a restaurant by a
talent agent -- is fairly rare, and at any rate, one can't count on it.

Given all of the above, what makes for an ideal luck strategy? Go through life
assuming you're lucky, but that your luck is hidden from plain sight. It needs
to be uncovered.

~~~
npisenti
_Go through life assuming you're lucky, but that your luck is hidden from
plain sight. It needs to be uncovered._

And, of course, try to maximize the number of encounters with potentially
lucky circumstances.

~~~
jacques_chester
That can be a costly strategy.

Waitressing in LA pays terribly.

------
thewarrior
Whenever these kinds of discussions come up on HN , I notice two cognitive
biases which always end up derailing the discussion .

One is where people think that they're infact quite talented and deserving of
success its just that their luck wasn't favorable .

The other group is people who've worked their way out of pretty difficult
circumstances and find explaining away everything as luck unacceptable at some
level . This makes people want to believe in a certain position and triggers
long arguments . Its a similar thing to the nature nurture debates that happen
frequently on HN .

Let me give you guys an example . One day a friend told me that theres a
really cool site called Hacker News which I should check out . I initially
didnt understand most of the stuff people here were talking about but suffice
to say that its changing my outlook on things . So maybe just maybe if I ever
make it big wouldnt this count as luck ?

Another thing being that I have an interest in music . But when I was young I
just never got around to learning the fundamentals . I'm teaching myself now
but if someone musically knowledgeable was around me when I was young I'm
quite sure I would be quite deeply into music by now .

Let me go deeper . Why this interest in music ? I had a small keyboard I
always used to play with . What if it wasnt there ? Then later on more
recently I saw someone play live which rekindled my interest and started me
learning . If I hadnt seen that maybe I wouldnt be so interested . So yeah
luck pretty much nudges us down different streams . But your swimming ability
matters too ...

Life being an infinite graph search over an almost infinite search space of
possibilities a randomised algorithm seems to be what nature prefers . Thats
how evolution works by using luck to its advantage . The ultimate lucky stroke
could be , that evolution gave rise to our species in the first place but then
you could say that the rabbit hole goes far deeper ....

------
jwillgoesfast
I'm currently reading Warren Buffet's biography, Snowball.

A lot of it has taken me by surprised. My long standing idea of Buffett was
that he was careful and prudent, but I'm surprised to learn how highly
intellegent he was. the book references how easy school/college was and that
he was the only one to get an A+ in Ben Graham's class. It was also very
interesting at how OBSESSED he was with earning money, from a very young age,
all his efforts revolved around how he could earn more and more money.

All that to say, there were a lot of serendipitous aspects to buffet's
success, but I think more so he was just an extremely unique individual able
to combine 1. very smart 2. very ambitious 3. very concerned with increasing
his capitol.

~~~
confluence
_> "I've had all this good fortune," Buffett says. "It starts with being born
in this country, though. It starts with being born male in 1930."_

Source: <http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2104309,00.html>

I'm sure there were plenty of intelligent women out there who are just as
intelligent, just as smart and just as hard working as Buffett but who never
got their own shot. Buffett may be good. But so are many other people.

------
klochner
Given that most people working tech in the valley haven't hit a lot of
significant roadblocks, this is a great parable for HN to find compassion - we
too often write off the less fortunate as merely less talented or hard
working.

~~~
frogpelt
The danger comes when, by emphasizing the fortune in the equation, we cause
the "less fortunate" to stop trying.

Time and chance happen to all people. But people also reap what they sow.

~~~
confluence
_> Time and chance happen to all people. But people also reap what they sow._

The above statement is logically inconsistent.

~~~
stan_rogers
No, it isn't, unless you are assuming _only_ circumstance or _only_ "karma"
can affect one's path in life. Nothing of the sort was either stated or
implied.

------
breck
Every single successful person had many near death experiences, and there are
many alternate universes where they aren't well known, and in fact the famous
names in those universes are ones we don't know about in ours.

The folks we look up to as "successful" in our observable universe are
generally folks who:

    
    
      1. Won the Ovarian Lottery.
      2. Used their time well.
      3. Didn't quit.
      4. Didn't get killed for a long enough period of time to achieve accomplishments greater than most people.
    

Success is not accidental. Sure, you need #1 + #4, but you also need #2 + #3.

~~~
goldfeld
That seems to suggest successful people run greater risks of dying than the
average. I don't think that would hold to a statistical analysis, perhaps it
would even show the opposite trend (poor people die more often). If it were
true, we'd see a lot more famous people being murdered or dying from stress or
disease or something similar, as opposed to just now and then managing to kill
themselves with drugs and other things of their own undoing.

------
confluence
A similar article was discussed yesterday on HN here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5174334> (some good comments there for
people who missed it ):

My opinion is that success is always accidental. You are the product of your
DNA and your environment. There are no great men. Only great situations (see
multiple origin of inventions/scientific progress/businesses).

Life's a crapshoot. It's all luck.

~~~
jacques_chester
One important stroke of luck is to believe that it's _not_ luck.

I've been gestating an essay about "useful lies" for a while now. Some things
that we know aren't _truly_ true are embraced _as if_ they are true because of
the utility of doing so.

So for example, believing that success is not related to luck. It's untrue, in
my estimation. But if you truly accept it you wind up with silly notions like
Insha'Allah and nothing much gets achieved.

Or take realism/legalism in law. Sure, judges are biased, judges affect policy
yadda yadda. But actually _embracing_ that reality makes the legal system work
_less well_. Meanwhile, "strict and complete legalism" is a bit of a nonsense,
but judges who embrace it have higher utility because their judgements are
more likely to be respected and accepted.

The reason I haven't written it is because I've kinda written it already[1]
and I can't think of a better way to explain what I'm trying to convey.

I'm also deeply uncomfortable with being caught between the essential
unknowability of complex systems and wanting all events and system
configurations to be explicable. Reading Hayek after Dekker has been a very
unhappy experience for me.

[1] <http://chester.id.au/2012/04/09/review-drift-into-failure/>

~~~
confluence
Not really. I'm talking to you because I'm a middle-class male, who studies
technology/science in the year 2013.

That's pretty lucky.

Does that make want to give up - throw my hands up in the air and say - What
will be will be? Hell no.

I merely appreciate the gifts I've been given. I try not to attribute any
success to my own hard work and study, and I try to do the best with what I
have got. Knowing that my existence is particularly random/arbitrary doesn't
really change what I do. It merely changes how I see the world around me.

Same way I view the universe really. Its existence is fairly random. There
really isn't really any point to it. It'll eventually die, and so will
everyone else I know. Does that make me say - What's the point - nothing
matters? Not really.

It makes me cherish everything I've been given (life/liberty/health), it
emboldens me to enjoy the little life that I have been given.

Life is pretty amazing. It's also pretty random. I revel in the arbitrariness
of it all while I can.

~~~
jacques_chester
Like I say: it's a useful untruth. The reaction varies from person to person.

And some of it is I think evolved. Optimism is the grease that oils
capitalism, probably because optimistic ancestors took risks that in _some
cases_ paid off. Sure, most optimists failed horribly. But the payoffs for the
lucky ones were sufficiently high to offset the cost. Thus optimism can become
a dominant strategy. (I'm spitballing; the problem with evopsych is that it's
all smart-sounding just-so stories that can't be tested).

I mean I'm in the same boat. I'm working on a product which is specifically
connected to questions of luck, risk, variance, human bias and so forth. If I
am honest with myself the base rate / reference class forecast is that I will
probably fail horribly. The rational thing to do would be to present my
credentials at a big company.

And yet ...

------
talkingquickly
I'd strongly recommend the book Fooled by Randomness
([http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Chance-
Mark...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Chance-
Markets/dp/0141031484)) for a very entertaining look at the role of chance
both in "success" in the financial markets and life in general.

One of the few books I can honestly say had a significant impact on how I
approach a lot of every day situations.

------
aik
This reminds me of Peter Thiel's lecture on the question of luck.[1]

A focus and care for topics like what this article discusses often falls into
the optimistic indeterminism quadrant that he outlines -- ie. we're optimistic
about a future that we find largely out of our control, ie. is approaching
fairly randomly but we feel good about it. The worry he outlines is that we
may be at risk of falling into "pessimistic indeterminism", where Japan has
existed for some time and much of Europe, ie. we don't feel good about a
future we can't control.

I agree that yes many things are indeterminate, and perhaps I can use this
knowledge and attempt to take actions to mitigate the bad-unknowns, and not
get too angry if things don't always work out, however beyond this what are
the lessons to be learned here? I always fear that confirmation bias will take
root and a common reaction to articles like this become, "oh, they were just
lucky, so my current course [probably of inaction] could also lead to similar
success given random chance..."

No, that's not what it's saying. Perhaps I'm a deterministic pessimist?

[1] [http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels-
cs183-...](http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels-
cs183-startup-class-13-notes-essay)

------
jacoblyles
Life's course can be explained by agency and environment. We all know
environment, including luck, is important. But what motivates people to write
agency out of the picture? Agency is what makes us distinctly human.

Perhaps by belittling agency, people feel better about their own
disappointments?

~~~
confluence
Here's why environment is important.

Random man from environment picks up gun and shoots you point blank without
warning. Agency your way out of that little pickle.

Or how about - you're a black woman in the year 1900. I'm sorry did you have a
future?

The amount of things I can list here are endless. You might even be 1 in a
million. Too bad there are 1000s of other just like you.

You are the least important factor in your success.

~~~
jacoblyles
I see people from similar backgrounds achieving very different outcomes in
life. Myself, I come from a poor rural area that many people of my peer group
did not escape. I'm proud of my life today, though it is not perfect. I can
say it was damned hard to get here and I am happy to be here.

What role did agency play in separating my more successful peers from the ones
at home in their parents' trailers with no meaningful occupation, often
accompanied by unplanned children and drug problems? I think it is greater
than 0%.

I honestly believe that you have to be born into privilege to believe
something like "You are the least important factor in your success". I cannot
believe it after seeing what I have seen.

Moreover, when privileged people tell the world that success is all luck, I
fear that it has a poisonous cultural effect. You are telling all the would-be
strivers in the world "Give up. You lost the lottery at birth. What will
happen will happen". I tell them "Fight harder! You'll make it! Keep trying!".
Yes, the reality is that some of them will never make it. But if they fail,
they'll fail with dignity and self-respect. That's worth something.

~~~
confluence
Are you male, white and born in America? Sounds pretty lucky to me.

But then again - you probably can't see past your own ego (fundamental
attribution error FTW). Let's see you fight your way out of being an AIDS
infected baby born somewhere in Sudan.

 _> I see people from similar backgrounds achieving very different outcomes in
life_

Similar backgrounds. Different outcomes. Take the delta - you get luck.

 _> I fear that it has a poisonous cultural effect_

Ah yes - attributing success to oneself is soooo much healthier.

 _> You are telling all the would-be strivers in the world "Give up. You lost
the lottery at birth. What will happen will happen"._

Straw man. Never said that. Only indicated that your success is dictated to
you by both your environment and your DNA.

 _> Yes, the reality is that some of them will never make it_

s/some/most/g

 _> privileged people tell the world that success is all luck_

 _You are privileged_ \- but you obviously can't see that (how many people
have access to safe water again?). It's to your own benefit that you attribute
success to yourself.

~~~
jacoblyles
>"Let's see you fight your way out of being an AIDS infected baby born
somewhere in Sudan."

Oh I certainly agree with you that there are people born in terrible
circumstances, much worse than anything I will ever experience! But I fear you
are setting up something of a straw man by picking out the worst case
scenario. The truth is that people are born into a range of circumstances some
of which are easier to work with than others. But being dedicated to doing the
best with what you have is important if you want to get anywhere in life.

I know that good choices and the willingness to tolerate a lot of pain can
send you out of the rural south to a tech job in California given enough time.
And I know that bad choices and shortsightedness mean you are living off
government benefits in a skeezy trailer park, a parent before the age of 20,
and never leaving your home state.

I do count my blessings. And I know there are some circumstances which I would
not be able to overcome. But I can't believe that a person has no agency in
his life.

You seem convinced of your position. I wonder what evidence convinced you of
it?

(And I often find racial stereotypes to be numerically ignorant. The complete
distribution is not described by the mean or the outliers.)

~~~
confluence
Funny. I think we might agree on our life philosophy in some ways.

See my comment here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5180718>

I just want to make it clear - one should not attribute one's success to one's
own hard work. Nor should one blame one's failures solely on oneself. Both
make the fundamental attribution error.

 _> And I know that bad choices and shortsightedness mean you are living off
government benefits in a skeezy trailer park, a parent before the age of 20,
and never leaving your home state._

Being born in that area is a strong predictor of ending up in that skeezy
trailer park. I don't particularly blame them from ending up there. No
different to poor Africans really.

~~~
theraccoundude
Your other comment said that you try to make sure you don't attribute _any_ of
your success to your own hard work and study. Um, what does that even mean?
You think the actions and mindset of the individual have absolutely _zero_
effect on the outcome? As an experiment, why don't you try completely
eliminating that variable and just stop trying, to see if it has no effect on
where you go. Not only that, but how do you account for two people who are
born in roughly symmetrical situations who go on to have completely different
outcomes? While I like the part of your philosophy that acknowledges grace and
appreciation for what you've been given, I think it's a bit absurd to remove
yourSELF from the equation of where you're going, unless you have some massive
guilt-complex that follows you around biting you in your own ass and this
somehow alleviates it.

~~~
confluence
_> Um, what does that even mean? _

I couldn't do that hard work and study without immense privilege afforded to
me by my environment. That's the point.

 _> You think the actions and mindset of the individual have absolutely zero
effect on the outcome_

Your environment is the major determinant on your possible actions and
mindset.

~~~
theraccoundude
Okay, so you appreciate that your environment has played a role in where you
are and where your going. That's valuable to acknowledge and - as an egoic and
often delusional species -sometimes we lose track of that. But all your
comments seem to reflect that you think the agent plays _zero_ role in it's
own outcome. Or, if you have refined it to a more plausible second point, what
evidence can you provide me that the environment plays more of a role than the
agent. If you want to start talking philosophy and determinism, then I'm happy
to, but I really urge you to start making some really bad decisions to see how
much effect your actions make. Seriously, stop wearing a seat belt, start
yelling at every person you meet and being hostile to them, stop wearing
clothes in public, stop working or taking any risks whatsoever, stop applying
yourself to anything you love, go drink a handle of whiskey every night,
completely stop exercising, play WOW for 18 hours a day, don't study
philosophy, be close minded, tell yourself you hate yourself everyday. Just
stop evaluating the effects of any decisions you make whatsoever. Seriously,
lose all ownership, after all, the environment is the _major_ determinant of
what happens to you, so it literally doesn't matter if you decide to do these
things. What've you got to lose?

~~~
confluence
_> stop wearing a seat belt, start yelling at every person you meet and being
hostile to them, stop wearing clothes in public, stop working or taking any
risks whatsoever, stop applying yourself to anything you love, go drink a
handle of whiskey every night, completely stop exercising, play WOW for 18
hours a day, don't study philosophy, be close minded, tell yourself you hate
yourself everyday_

My environment has disincentivized me from such behaviour - either by law or
upbringing. Hence I don't partake in it. I'm sure if my environment was
different - I would act differently. If I was brought up by a drug addict,
there is a high likelihood I would also become one. If I was brought up poor -
I'd likely stay poor (due to structural factors).

The point is the environment predetermined my values and actions.

------
n3rdy
I disagree that luck has anything to do with success. People get lucky all the
time and do nothing with it.

How many people win the lottery only to go broke? When that happens nobody
bats an eyelash, but if someone uses those lottery winnings to start a
successful company, it was 1,000,000% the lotteries fault for this persons
success, not their initiative.

No doubt some people are lucky and have an easier time than others, but
opportunity is such a small part of the equation. People in the U.S will
literally get dozens of opportunities a year to become successful, but they're
not paying attention and never even notice them, and they will continue
griping about how unfair their life is.

It is the tenacity someone has to build something from nothing, and their
ability to do that over again if everything falls apart, that sets one apart
from the unsuccessful.

While everyone else is obsessively pursuing escapism through television,
gossip, or substance, a successful person is obsessively pursuing the steps
they need to take to alter their own reality to something better.

The luck argument in my opinion is ignorant because the type of person who
strives to be successful doesn't want anything handed to them, they understand
that dependence is born out of things coming too easily, so they reject it.

The type of person who waits for luck to strike, is doomed to either
disappointment or dependence. They will never feel that same confidence and
security a success minded person feels, because even with wealth, their focus
will be on _not losing_ that wealth. Someone who built their own success is
confident in their ability to start over.

~~~
brazzy
Well, you're wrong.

Luck is a _big_ factor in exceptional successes. As the article says: it's not
sufficient. It's not necessary to be _moderately_ successful. But no matter
how tenacious and "success minded" you are, without a stroke of luck your
success will be pretty limited.

When someone uses lottery winnings to start a successful company, do you
really think they would have gotten "dozens of opportunities each year" to
invest a large amount of money however they want?

It's of course a very attractive delusion to claim that luck has no part in
success. To the successful person it increases their personal sense of
achievement, and to the one hoping to be successful it makes big successes
appear more achievable. Especially if you add the idea that it's not about
talent/intelligence either but only about mindset.

But it's still a delusion.

~~~
n3rdy
I disagree.

Success is all about trial and error. If you want to call it luck when you run
out of things that can go wrong, then call it luck. I consider luck to be an
exception, not an inevitability.

The only role luck has in achieved success is avoiding the errors by doing
things correctly the first time around, but that still isn't exactly luck,
because not knowing what can go wrong leaves you vulnerable to future
problems.

> When someone uses lottery winnings to start a successful company, do you
> really think they would have gotten "dozens of opportunities each year" to
> invest a large amount of money however they want?

My point was you don't often hear about lottery winners investing their money
and turning it into a business system. You do hear about lottery winners
blowing their windfall with nothing to show for it in the end though.

If good luck is the only reason that people born poor can become wealthy, then
is bad luck the only reason that people born wealthy go broke?

------
breckenedge
Good article, reminds me of The Myth of the Garage essay by the Heath bros
[1]. And the unforgettable high-school slogan "luck (or success) is where
preparation meets opportunity." You don't always control the opportunities.

[1] <http://www.heathbrothers.com/the-myth-of-the-garage/>

edit: misquoted the unforgettable

~~~
orangethirty
_You don't always control the opportunities._ But you can sure show up where
they serve them.

~~~
md224
That's true, but (and I may be misreading it here) I feel like the piece
speaks to an even deeper element of chance: the chance that you even find your
true passion to begin with. If you're in love with a discipline and know you
want to excel in it, then you're lucky to have solidified a purpose in your
life. Some people take years, decades, maybe their entire lives to discover
what it is that truly makes them tick. I'm sure some never do.

~~~
orangethirty
Do know that a lot of people are just too afraid to even try. Society has put
them down so much that they cannot fathom standing up for themselves. Its
really sad. Many talented people waste away due to how _we_ decide to run
things. Still, survival of the fittest applies here too. If you cannot make
your own luck then bad luck. Someone else will.

~~~
randomdata
Being someone who has always just jumped in and tried whatever I found
interesting, it really is amazing see how immobile people often feel. I've had
discussions with several people who believe that they cannot try anything
without the backing of an educational institution, of which they often do not
have time/money available to explore that option, leaving them doing nothing
at all.

------
31reasons
Luck matters for people who are obsessed with Success. If you are working on
things that you absolutely love, would you care about luck that much ?

If you already have favorable circumstances like having a healthy brain and
living in a developed society you can count on hardwork to make you a
millionaire. But No one owes you Billion Dollars no matter what you do in your
life. Nature is not designed to optimize your work/luck balance.

Out of trillions of cells in a human body few cells gets lucky once in a while
to massively grow and cause tumors. Its not a normal course for a cell to
cause cancer and thats why its called an anomaly. Same goes for people in the
society.

------
norswap
Success might be accidental. But I agree with the sentiment that if you keep
trying (and are dedicated, smart, etc), you'll reach success. In that sense,
it isn't accidental. But what is I think linked to luck is the magnitude of
your success.

------
alaskamiller
That first mil seems to be all work. Then all the millions thereafter seems to
be all luck.

Or is it the other way around...

~~~
orangethirty
For me it was the first thousand. For some reason I was blocking myself from
making more than that. But now, well, I am not blocked anymore. :)

------
DanielBMarkham
I agree with most all of this. The author only gets in trouble towards the end
(when he's making his point, unfortunately)

"...In my perfect world, this reflection would lead these people to use their
power to make similar levels of luck more likely for a wider variety of
people. Given the chance, I bet their skills can take them from there..."

The story he left out was the one that needs to be told more: the guy who kept
failing and failing until one day he was a huge success. To hear Madigral tell
it, the onus is on the successful to make similar levels of luck more likely
for folks.

The problem is manyfold. One, aspects of success is rarely predetermined. You
don't know where it's going to happen. So where would you assist? Two, because
there are way more failures than successes, the goal here is to create people
who will "happily fail" -- trying as hard as they can, learning some good
lessons, then moving on. This ability is an _internal_ attribute. You can't
make somebody have it. Finally, he has the model all wrong. Very rarely in
these stories does some outsider come in and decide to make life better for
somebody just because of his good graces. Much more likely, hard-working and
resilient founders run into people who are more than happy to use them for
their own purposes -- which also helps the founders along.

Yes, absolutely, it's luck. But its a special kind of luck. It's not _chance_.
This isn't winning the lottery. It's 99% what's going on inside the head of
the person combined with playing a game with 1-in-20 odds. The minute you
start externalizing all of that -- saying that an external agent can directly
and purposefully "make" somebody lucky? The train has left the rails. Your
model is all wrong.

The reason the multiple failure story needs to be told more is that no matter
how you jigger the external setup, you're never sure you're headed in the
right direction. So _keeping trying_ , _pivoting_ , and so forth are much more
indicative of success than some kind of environmental issue. Successful people
do it from anywhere. Might take them 40 years, but they don't stop. They just
keep playing the game. That's as big of a success factor as luck. If the odds
are 1-in-20, and it takes 2 years to fail? Looks like you've got 40 years of
work. Most all of us can't handle that, but that doesn't mean that it's
impossible, either. You can manage your luck.

We can't change the "variety of people" that are successful by external
factors. You can't engineer market efficiency by fiat. If you could, you could
just skip all that messy hard work and chance stuff and just hand out some
nebulous thing called "opportunity" to folks. Doesn't work that way. Can't do
outcome-based entrepreneurial configuration, as much as many really smart and
really rich people would like to try.

~~~
elemenohpee
I think this misses the point of the article and these types of discussions in
general. To me, the value of this perspective is that it takes the ego out of
this self-directed narrative, and places it in the proper context as a local
manifestation of a long running evolutionary process. To see people not as
god-like conjurers but as products of whimsical evolutionary circumstance is,
I think, the proper seed for developing a deep and universal compassion, the
type of compassion that renders the answer to your question of "where to
assist" quite obvious, and exposes the goal of creating people with this
"willing to fail" attribute as hopelessly naive.

The ability to "fail happily" is less an intrinsic trait as it is having
support structures in place that allow for an individual to take bold action
without jeopardizing their ability to eat or provide for their family. In this
way it is much easier for a kid from a rich family to take the kind of risks
that in rare cases lead to great success than it is for a kid from a poor
family to do the same. No one can deny that the successes lead to the creation
of great social wealth, and so it is in our species' interest to remove the
various pressures that keep people locked into safe but stagnant pathways, and
allow everyone to take the kinds of chances that produce new mutations for
evolution to select from.

Note that I don't think the state should be providing this safety net, this is
more of an abstract observation. I have my own ideas on how I think it should
be implemented, but I don't think it's particularly relevant to the point
here. I'm not particularly convinced by arguments about incentives, although I
realize that may be the main objection people have and I think that does have
a place in the debate.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I'm really interested in how you can take agency out of evolution, since
agency evolved as a survival trait. I don't think you have to focus on ego,
but neither can you toss it out. That's what makes it such an interesting
conversation. It's not _all_ ego, and it's not _all_ environment. It's the
mix.

I understand the _desire_ to reduce this to a simpler model where you can
control all the levers. But quite frankly I can't see such a model being
created. You have to ask yourself whether you want to analyze and manipulate
the world you live in, or create another world where problems are solved in a
much more direct and simple manner.

Sorry, not trying to troll or start a fight. I just found you comment
diametrically opposite of mine and that was fascinating to me.

~~~
elemenohpee
No, no, I'm all about the discussion. Shit, this is more to test my ideas than
to assert any sort of truth.

Maybe another question will get us closer to the root of the issue:

Whose agency are we talking about, the individual's, or the genes'?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Yeah but that's the point. Nobody knows what the genes contribute to start
with.

If you want to argue determinism, that we are all products of genes and
external factors, and that by manipulating genes and external factors we can
directly control the evolution of society, that we can remove ego from the
equation, you have to be able to explain the causality of how all this
determinism works. Correlation is not causality!

So sure, _if_ we somehow had a God's Eye view of the world of man, his genes,
social interactions, inbred habits and those attributes and everything else
which evolves into a successful startup, _then_ we could begin a discussion
around which of those we could change that might reach our goal (A knowledge
of the interaction of these elements would also be needed)

In this scenario we're all just Sims playing in somebody's game. BTW, this is
a completely rational view, and one day we may arrive there (Or we may already
be there for some greater being than us!)

But for all intents and purposes, especially for the goals of our discussion,
we are not there yet.

Determinism has a seductive siren call. It's just not a very pragmatic stance,
at least not where we are today.

~~~
elemenohpee
It's quite simple to explain the causality. When you break everything down it
eventually comes down to physics (ok so it's not that simple to explain, but
it's conceptually simple).

However I vehemently deny that we can manipulate genes to control the
evolution of society. At least in any positive direction, manipulating genes
would certainly have some effect on our evolution, but I would argue that our
limited knowledge would make this far more likely to be detrimental. This
returns to my original point, _removing ego from the equation_. Evolution has
proceeded over the last 4 billion years to create remarkable beings, all
without our guidance. This blind progression is in fact the strength of the
process, since shifting selective pressures are inherently unknowable, and any
attempt to consciously control genes in any direction would lead to a
reduction in biodiversity and overall fitness.

This then extends to memetic evolution. When mutations are made more rare (by
channeling people into stagnant status quo sustaining pathways), and selected
against too strongly (by punishing heterodox positions with starvation),
memetic diversity is reduced and the risk of succumbing to new selection
pressures rises. Any attempt to preferentially allocate resources is in this
way self-sustaining (read incestual), and commits the same egotistical error
as trying to manipulate genetics. Absent the knowledge (and the hope of ever
attaining the knowledge) of what genes and memes will be long-term beneficial,
the only reasonable course of action to my mind is the sort of universal
support and equality of economic "opportunity" that I mention.

------
LatvjuAvs
Disconnected you are. Labeling you do not know and pretending you know. Still,
belief is lagging behind and dismissed, baffled where you are.

