Random computer simulation produces wealth distribution similar to reality | Hacker News Reader

Random computer simulation produces wealth distribution similar to reality

technologyreview.com

45 pointssprucely33 comments

The reason I go by luckydude is my acknowledgement that me getting somewhat wealthy is in part pure chance.

I used to think I made my own luck, it was the groundwork I did that lead to Larry and Sergey wanting to hire me, it was the work I did in creating my own company, etc. I thought it was all me.

And I still believe that I had to do all the things to get some wealth but I've watched much more talented people do all the right things and get nowhere (and I've watch far less talented people get quite wealthy).

There is an element of luck, you have to do your part but you can do your part and never be at the right place at the right time. I think that's the part that is luck, you can't control what the rest of the world is doing and unless you can predict the future, it's luck.

Signed,

luckydude, retired at 54.

The Louis Pasteur quote that summarizes your observation is "chance favors the prepared mind."

Of course chance plays a role in almost anything, but if you don't do the work, you won't be prepared to take advantage of good fortune when it happens.

I've never heard that quote before but it perfectly sums it up. Thanks.

The study does not demonstrate what the headline claims.

The study shows that a simulation where randomness plays a major role can produce similar wealth distribution to what's observed in the world. But that doesn't rule out a more deterministic mechanism.

True. But by virtue of Occam's Razor, we should prefer the random explanation, which doesn't require any deterministic rules.

If I walk into my kitchen and see a broken egg on the floor, it could have been left by a wayward chicken. But the simpler explanation is that my spouse broke an egg from the refrigerator. If I prove that my spouse was home and up before me this morning, I don't really need to disprove the chicken theory to reasonably believe the simpler explanation.

OK, we've changed the title above to use your phrasing.

What it does show is that even if there is a "more deterministic mechanism" then it doesn't perform better than random luck.

I thought it was established that it wasn't chance, that it was basically family wealth? I.e., your family is rich, therefore you can afford to take risks and fail, therefore you're more likely to make it big.

I consider family wealth to be chance as well. You don't choose which family you're born into, after all.

i.e. the ovarian lottery

You don't choose which family you're born into, after all.

You couldn't have been born into any other family—a child born into a different family would be a different person entirely. Is it still chance when there is only one possible outcome?

Where and when you're born is chance and certainly has an impact on prospects.

But being born into wealth doesn't mean you'll keep it either, especially into the 3rd generation[1]. Those kids are too far removed from the work that got there. Ever hear the saying, "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations"?

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/25/luxury/family-wealth/index.h...

I though that ‘chance’ in topic is something happening in lifetime, not at its start. Can being talented also be called a chance of genes or cultural environment then?

It depends on how one define's 'rich', but if you go by the metric of having $1MM+ in the bank, it strikes me there are plenty of opportunities to get there that aren't pure chance.

The most obvious is to join a high-growth startup, particularly after the initial period of high risk. An example of this would be to join Google in the early 2000's, Facebook from 2007 to 2012, Stripe from 2012 to 2014, Uber from 2012 to 2014, etc etc. Today those companies would probably be the ones on this Breakout List, plus a few others like Coinbase and Robinhood: https://breakoutlist.com/

Join one of those companies as a software engineer and there's a very good chance you'll make decent money. You don't have to be that lucky or clairvoyant to identify these opportunities. This current cultural phenomenon of explaining all success as either the result of luck or immoral behavior is seriously troubling...

edit: would appreciate a discussion here rather than just being down-voted.

The most obvious and reliable way to get $1MM in the bank is to work, live frugally, and invest savings for about 40 years.

Yep, that works too. And has little to do with chance.

You forgot "...and never have anything go wrong".

But high-risk means it might be startup #7 or #12 that makes it big. How many stripes and facebooks did not become THE stripe and THE facebook?

You can’t win if you don’t play the game. The more you play, the better your odds.

Sure, you can play often and hard and still lose. It’s even possible to play once, not do much, and win.

The probability of those outcome are vastly different.

Don’t play = 0% chance of winning.

Play once and don’t try hard = .000001% chance of winning.

Play hard and often = 15% chance of winning, with a 80% chance of coming in the top 10%.

*figures are made up, but logically realistic.

I feel gamblers say similar things.

Sure, but taking appropriate risks in one's career isn't a negative-EV bet, whereas virtually every bet in Vegas is negative-EV

There is an opportunity cost in playing though. There might be a 10% chance of $1 million but what if it required giving up $100,000 in opportunity costs?

So true. I wouldn’t argue against your point, especially when you’re talking about straight dollars.

I was trying to be more general though. Forget money, think effort.

For almost $0 dollars there is a ton of opportunity out there. Let’s just take something we know, tech.

For effectively $0 you can learn everything there is to know about coding.

You could go to the library, get one book about html, and try being a web developer in two weeks. That’s probably not going to go well, but not because you’re unlucky.

Or, you could spend every waking moment consuming fundamentals of programming, read everything, forums, blog post, write tons of sample apps, contribute to open source and become a bad ass programmer. Chance of success is very high.

That is not about luck.

Luck does play a role in life, but clearly it is not the entire story.

The simulation in the article does NOT explain why five of the most valuable public companies on earth, Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook, are all cofounded by people with IQ and possibly work ethics 3-4+ SDs above population means. (Check out the biographies including the academic records of the cofounders if you have doubts about this statement.)

Many mechanisms can exhibit the same broad effect. Showing that a simulation reproduces one phenomenon of the real world falls far short of showing that it resembles the real mechanism in any substantive way.

All those five company cofounders depended for their success on algorithms orginated by the likes of Donald Knuth, who is as hardworking and probably smarter than them, but they are exponentially richer

Knuth never wanted to run a business (to my knowledge). Ambition and desire are necessary though not sufficient factors for business success.

Knuth did achieve immortality through his magnum opus, which is another kind of major success.

I'm just arguing that wealth distribution is not random in the real world, not justifying whether it should be one way or another.

while wealth distribution follows a power law,

the distribution of human skills generally follows a normal distribution that is symmetric about an average value. For example, intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, follows this pattern. Average IQ is 100,

but nobody has an IQ of 1,000 or 10,000.

So this obscenely simplistic model produces a certain result and it's interpreted as "confirming" that wealth comes from pure chance? Silliness.

Many holes we could poke in this one. First, there shouldn't just be one talent parameter. There should be many different types of talent, each of which contribute in their own unique way to a probability of wealth accumulation over a lifetime.

Most wealthy and successful people I've met are intelligent, confident and likeable people.

> Most wealthy and successful people I've met are intelligent, confident and likeable people.

This is the wrong metric. Are most intelligent, confident and likeable people wealthy?

To be at the far right of the distribution for any measure of achievement, you generally have to (a) start on "third base", (b) devote your life to learning and practicing from an early age, (c) have far more innate talent than most, (d) have the right personality, with irrational faith in yourself and drive, and (d) have far more luck than most people.

I think it's pointless to argue about whether people deserve great success, because whatever attributes you consider "deserved" vs "not deserved", the most successful must have all of them - otherwise someone else would take their place.

No they are not. But that's not what the article is talking about. It's saying that the distribution of wealth is essentially random with respect to abilities and I'm saying that is not that case.

> Most wealthy and successful people I've met are intelligent, confident and likeable people.

That is not a large sample. So not even close to being evidence for anything. As a counter argument: I have met more than one wealthy person who is a sociopath. So there.

I'm sure many successful people are sociopaths. Your counter example does not counter what I said. Sociopaths are often intelligent, confident and likeable when they want to be.

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