They do not cite it, but searching that sentence on Google brings up a few articles mentioning a “20-year study by The Williams Group involving 3200 families, show that 70% of families lose their wealth in the second generation and 90% lose it in the third.”
But I can’t find an article in a quick check on er website.
There are some mentions on their website about how splitting the family fortune dilutes it and causes families to lose money.
There are families in Europe that pass the bulk of the family fortune to the oldest son. That son does what they can to help the rest of the family live comfortably, but the rest certainly aren’t rich. So, this statistic may only be applicable to American families or places where it’s common to successively divide the fortune up.
The original source was a study in the 1980s examining 200 family businesses in manufacturing in Illinois, and since then a collection of financial advisors and estate planners have cited it (often without attribution).
Edit: As an aside, I understand that different industries have different standards - but it seems insane to me that any professional piece, let alone a well known brand like Nasdaq, would drop a statistic like that without any kind of attribution.
This is the entire premise in The missing billionaires - A guide to better financial decisions, Victor Haghani and James White, 2023. But this is an investing book, not sociology. They consider billionaires in the introduction and they point to the Forbes list rather than a specific study. Which is not unfair. Billionaires are counted and listed. Not hard to take a glimpse.
Their observation is counter to the usual cliché narrative that the rich have only one way. Up, can't lose.
Indeed if you consider that, starting with, say, one billion, I would be able to invest not too conservative, not too aggressive and still draw out insane amounts of money to "live on". Meaning that in theory, starting with a billion, there is only one way, up. Meaning that a billion dollar wealth, invested, should own the world after a few generations.
But this is obviously not what's happening. The Forbes list is full of relatively new wealth. Ancient wealth (more than 3 generations) stands out in the list. It's not common. And the highest wealth is first generation! And that's even though magazines tend to list the wealth of an entire family on one line - never mind that it's dozens of people.
You can't answer "Have any famous tests replicated?" with "out of 100 studies from the year 2008, 36% replicated" unless one of those studies was actually famous.
Only if you're a frequentist. A Bayesian would see evidence that studies in general fail to replicate, and thus have a better prior for famous ones than 50:50.
As an aside, such lines of argument regarding credence are not in any way incompatible with frequentism. Few frequentists deny the correctness of Bayes’ theorem.
Pretty surprising to me; haven't you expressed some curiosity about your grandparents or had them talk about their lives. Ever seen your parents birth certificates or marriage certificates?
Adrenaline does make you stupid, but years of training makes you smart. The reason you train so intensively is that when the adrenaline is up you will fall back to muscle memory.
They're not being stupid by continuing the fight and trying to hide injuries. They are trying to get a w instead of an l, and sometimes that just means you need to keep the fight going another minute or two until the time is up. That can literally mean the difference between having a successful career and retiring with a mediocre record. It can be the difference between a shot at the world title, versus being on the free undercard fights. Fights. They are making a calculation, and probably the same one I would make in their same situation. It is very easy to look back on the reckless youth as being stupid. Fortunately, I have enough recording of myself from that era to see that I actually had thought it through pretty well, I just didn't realize how bad it could be in the future. But, if I had a world title under my belt, none of my current maladies would feel nearly as bad :-D
We train the fighters to go until the ref tells you to stop, for similar reasons to what you already illustrated. Which is why I blame the refs and the committee. They know exactly what goes through your head when you’re in a fight and it’s their job to keep your opponent relatively safe. And they aren’t, which is why I don’t watch.
But wanting to continue when even your coach knows it’s over is a kind of pressure sale situation. You’re in the moment and sort of trapped, and having a concussion and a brain full of adrenaline makes you have even worse judgement.
What is the deeper meaning of being a world champion fighter? I pursued a risky sport for many years myself until I was struck by the utter hollowness of it. How would my winning benefit anyone besides me? What was the purpose beyond self exaltation? How was this the best use of my short time on earth?
For me, I can hardly
think of a worse use of a life than fighting for sport. There is not a single fighter on earth I would trade places with. Not one.
When I consider how Naoya Inoue fought 11 rounds with a broken orbital socket I am profoundly inspired by the heart he demonstrated and his will to win - his focus and his skill to change strategy mid fight.
It's easy to handwave his ability to fight through pain thanks to adrenaline... until you try it for yourself.
It's inspiring to know just how much we can overcome ourselves if we want something enough.
You gotta be pretty far down the nihilism hole to wonder about the deeper meaning behind being a world class athlete.
My girlfriend was a martial arts trainer for a few years, and many of the girls she worked with cited Ronda specifically as their inspiration. They're not competing, this is a hobby, but they're doing it because they were inspired by people like Ronda.
Sometimes the process is an end in itself. A constant focus on "what's this good for?" can turn into a toxic, hollow mindset itself. Taken to an extreme, everything becomes just a stepping stone to a final action of death, which makes the practice of living rather pointless. Oliver Burkeman has some good thoughts on how to get out of that mindset.
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.
All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”?
It has been already in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be among those who come after.
They aren't stupid they're just trying to make a career of it. Even though I think more work needs to be done on this issue, I do understand how things got this way.
This is refuted by Chapter 3[0] ("Violence") of the book "Testosterone" by Rebecca M. Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis.
Scientific American agrees[1] that violence is not correlated with testosterone:
> "When aggression is more narrowly defined as simple physical violence, the connection between [testosterone and violence] all but disappears."
Another study finds higher testosterone promotes pro-social behavior[2].
Personally I've found that rather than androgens being a mediator of violence, estrogen seems to be a much powerful inhibitor of rage/violence-potential. Low estrogen causes particularly difficult-to-control emotions. Generally when someone is taking high amounts of steroids they are likely also taking anti-estrogens (blocking testosterone's conversion to estradiol).
This low estradiol, due to another drug, not steroids seems to be what most often causes violent emotional dysregulation. Generally not testosterone or other androgens without anti-estrogens.
Perhaps my TRT is making me extremely dumb though ;-)
Obviously PEDs are bad but IMO non-falsifiable accusations about athletes using them are uninteresting. You can always claim (and someone usually is) that an athlete is dirty and just hasn't been caught yet for some reason.
Slightly off-topic though; you're acknowledging that they might contribute which isn't unfair here.
Suppose that there are enhancement drugs. They work, and a lot of competitors are using them. Then it becomes far more believable that the current champion is enhanced and has managed to hide it, than that someone who is not enhanced has miraculously managed to beat the entire field of people who have such a big advantage.
My view lead to me being certain about Lance Armstrong years before he was caught.
Greg LeMond has evolved into my Fred Rogers of athletics. Every time either of them is in the news my first thought was, “please don’t be bad news”.
The fact that Greg was such a brittle rider - a god one day and barely finishing another - gave me hope that he was legit. The fact that he has focused in retirement on cheating cemented that for me.
Last I heard he was trying to watchdog riders sneaking small electric motors into their bikes. Even 50 watts is a lot of boost for a cyclist.
Jeez I can kind of overlook PEDs insofar as you're still kind of the one doing the training and the race but sticking a motor into your bike - like what even is the point anymore.
Why not bring a gun to an MMA fight while they're at it too
The point for (many/most) is to get the sweet victory, get rich and famous. It doesn't matter if you cheated or not, your ape brain will find reasons why you deserved to win anyway.
I agree, given "they work" and "a lot of competitors are using them", the rest follows logically. But those assumptions are simplistic, they do some very heavy lifting and are typically presented without evidence.
The most effective doping agents are often the easiest to detect, and modern anti-doping programs like the biological passport and whereabouts program are very effective. It's no reason to be complicit -- the science continues to evolve, athletes who go awry will continue to get caught, and athletes who follow the rules will continue to have to work hard to stay within the boundaries (it is not trivial to stay within WADA guidelines even as an amateur athlete; a lot of people who get medical treatment for a common issue would violate the rules a few times over without realizing it).
But to look at an entire sport and disregard them all as cheaters without evidence does nothing but encourage young athletes to feel like they need to risk their health in order to compete and belittle the accomplishments of clean athletes. We need to hold cheaters accountable, not throw in the towel.
Is there any reason to doubt that performance enhancing drugs enhance performance? The science on that has been clear for decades. It would make no sense for people to give a list of citations on such a well-known fact every time.
I agree that "a lot of competitors are using them" is an assumption. In the case of Lance Armstrong, so many other bikers had been caught before him that it was no longer an assumption. But that does vary by sport.
I entirely dismiss the argument that our tests catch cheaters. There have just been too many examples over the years of athletes getting away with cheating for years. At this point the burden of proof is on those who think we're catching them. In fact as articles like https://www.shu.ac.uk/news/all-articles/features-and-comment... show, anonymous surveys show that most athletes are getting away with it.
All that said, I agree on holding cheaters accountable. And think we should go farther. If someone who trains with you gets caught, you should also be punished. On the assumption that there is a chance you were just not caught, and if you weren't doping, you likely knew and didn't tell. That would create social pressure to not put your teammates at jeopardy. And I think THAT would finally end cheating.
> Is there any reason to doubt that performance enhancing drugs enhance performance?
Haha no, definitely not. For clarity, we're talking about banned substances, which isn't always the same thing as performance enhancing drugs. It is actually debated whether a lot of the WADA banned substances are performance enhancing drugs; but WADA would rather athletes don't take things that could be harmful to them because they might enhance performance so they tend to err on the side of adding things they worry about or have evidence of athletes abusing.
Moreso, I mean that it's simplistic to assume that the type and amount of illegal substances you can get away with while skirting an increasingly aggressive testing framework will be sufficient to be the world champion. There's a risk tradeoff here and a million variables in high performance training -- athletes put their entire career on the line when they take banned substances and get no guarantee of return. Take the recent case of Collin Chartier in triathlon: reached #14 in the world, started doping over the off season, caught within a few months of use, and career is now over.
> In the case of Lance Armstrong, so many other bikers had been caught before him that it was no longer an assumption.
Right, and once they're caught, they're banned. They are no longer a "competitor who is using them". Your logic makes an assumption that the population that is left just hasn't been caught yet, rather than that their negative tests actually indicate a lack of doping. And that is an assumption.
> anonymous surveys show that most athletes are getting away with it
These surveys come up with numbers showing anywhere between 1% and 70% of athletes have consumed a banned substance. Remember that weed is a WADA banned substance that 50% of the US population has tried. These studies are glorified guesses that vary depending on the wording they use.
I assume that all professional athletes are on PEDs of some sort (I read awhile back that essentially all tennis players are on some heart medication that is allowed and they probably don't all have a heard condition). I don't think they care about what is legal, just what is detectible. The incentives are just too big for them to abstain.
You're maybe thinking of Meldonium, which is banned. The drug was developed in the 1970s and is a very common OTC sale in eastern Europe. It was banned in 2016 when WADA decided it was possible it could be able to act as a performance enhancer. Maria Sharapova, a tennis champion, made the news later that year when she tested positive, and received a two year ban which was later shortened when the court determined she had originally started taking it years ago in good faith on a doctor's recommendation. About two hundred other athletes from eastern Europe across different sports received positive tests shortly after the ban as well, a lot of which were reversed when it turned out they were detecting use from 2015 (it takes months after use for it to stop showing on tests).
I think there’s a loophole with endurance athletes and asthma medication as well. But I would not immediately think, “mood or judgement altering” there.
We are still looking at whether over the counter pain killers are mood altering substances. I’ve seen circumstantial evidence of this in myself. (Though I don’t think I’d want me or a friend to fight on painkillers - reduced coagulation and bruises are no joke).
The guidelines are there to remind you where the site's incentives and culture don't. IME all upvote oriented sites turn into forums for "winning debate club" rather than enlightening discussion. The big difference between the sites is who the judges (upvoting user base) are. The guidelines and moderation here retard the trend but a trend it is nonetheless.
Being unkind actually means you're approaching a discussion with the intent of hurting another person, it's not a property of being factually correct or incorrect. Lots of assholes out there are "technically correct", and there are lots of people out there who are wrong, but still decent human beings.
However, you often can't retroactively determine someone's intent over the Internet. Therefore, you have to start somewhere. If you're a cynic, I guess you assume everyone is out to offend or hurt others. But as an optimist, I tend to assume good faith unless proven otherwise.
There are hundreds of ways to say something right, but you can phrase it meanly or kindly without changing how right you are. The definition of orthogonal is that one axis doesn’t influence the other.
I’d say it’s mostly orthogonal. It’s easier to be mean and right than kind, which is probably why there are so many more comments that are. A very rare some of the time, being right also requires a dose of meanness, which is a lot less fun for everyone involved.
> The definition of orthogonal is that one axis doesn’t influence the other.
Ok that’s interesting, a new definition on me. I see orthogonal as attributes at right angles, a measure of perpendicularity. I don’t see it as an indicator of attribute independence.
So if kind and right are orthogonal, this means you can (mostly) be one or the other but not (usually) both.
But a quick google shows your usage is common/normal. Hmm, lovely English. TIL something. Thanks for explaining.
Imagine X and Y axes, perpendicular as usual. If you become 3 units more X, that doesn't change how Y you are. Contrariwise, if we nudge our axes out of orthogonality, now moving along the X axes changes where I am on the Y. Obviously the use here is metaphorical, but that's the sense meant.
Edited to add: consider "independence" and orthogonality in vector spaces, if you want to get mathematically precise about it.
How much of this is due to richer kids having more access to mental health resources? While I wasn't poor growing up, my parents didn't have the means to let me see mental health professionals and as a result I went undiagnosed for 21 years.
There's also different reactions to various illnesses across groups. In some subcultures, you might get a special, nicer treatment for having an illness, whereas in others you may viewed as broken and less worthy of respect.
The former would probably have some people seeking out a diagnoses for the illness, whereas the latter would have some people intentionally avoiding a diagnosis for the illness.
"not honest" might not be the right phrasing. What I was trying to say is that when learning this stuff I felt like they hid a lot of information from me which later surprised me. But they hid it because they have no answers for it.
One simple example is what happens when you don't consider these as points but instead spheres. Also what happens when the spheres come close? The math starts breaking down, you start seeing infinities. I.e, in reality spheres come close and gravity doesn't go infinity.
You are complaining that you study the simple cases or simplified cases first before you study near unsolvable systems?
Besides, very often the simplified case gets you surprisingly far because the difference between idealized situations and reality is often negligible or at least easily describable - see perturbation theory. The simplified cases are well worth studying.
If I understand correctly, or at least if I map it to my own similar complaint: the problem is not that they have you study simple or simplified cases, it's that the ignored complexity is unacknowledged and sometimes even denied. Which makes a lot of sense in primary school, where even mentioning it might cause some kids to ignore everything because "it's not really how it works" or whatever. But by the time you've made it past the basics, sweeping complexity under the rug is harmful. You still want to be studying the simplified scenarios, but it would be much better if you had some sense of the range of things that meaningfully differ from realistic scenarios. Not so you can take them into account in your solutions, but so you have the appropriate level of humility about what your solutions mean and the limits of their applicability.
I guess I didn't do that much physics, because for me it comes up more in other fields. In statistics, for example, it is critically important to understand the limitations of your results. For example, you might assume that error is normally distributed. You don't want to forget about that assumption, because it is very commonly violated, and it can make a large difference in your conclusions. Yet in school, it was almost always handwaved aside with "Law of Large Numbers mumble mumble mumble". Even when the law didn't apply, or the definition of "Large" happened to be "way bigger than your pathetic number of data points".
It's also why there's often such a gulf between academia and industry. Academic results walk a tightrope of assumptions and preconditions, and trying to put them into practice always finds places where those don't hold. Sometimes they even start out holding, but then everybody takes advantage of it until competition drives everyone into optimizing the residuals. If there's a space where things make sense, competition will always drive you to the edge of that space. Or beyond; competitive pressure does not care about keeping your equations simple and pure. Back to the point, you might study a field for years and then land a job in exactly that field, only to discover that everybody is looking at it completely differently because they've exhausted the simplified space and are deep in the land of heuristics, guesswork, and approximation. The market for spherical steaks was saturated years before.
Well for physics, the three-body problem, you see it in the first year, the Roche limit - in second. (Specifically two spheres coming close does NOT result in infinities, pointlike objects do - but then you also learn around the same time that atoms aren't pointlike objects and at nanometer-short ranges you have to start to deal with other forces than gravitation too...)
(I have my own beef with the "sweeping under the rug" which happens with (electromagnetic) pseudovectors, but I do realize that requires a LOT of effort to fix.)
Sounds like an individual experience then. It's a bit of a stretch to blame "the physicists" for this. All of my teachers were very open about the short comings of our assumptions and solutions, and while it may be true that not every one and sometimes even none of "the physicists" is able to handle the complexity of realistic scenarios, I see no shame in working your way up until you get stuck. I can't remember a teacher that was too proud to say that something was too complicated.
