The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood
joshuaballoch.github.io
joshuaballoch.github.io
>The simulations show that although talent has a Gaussian distribution among agents, the resulting distribution of success/capital after a working life of 40 years, follows a power law which respects the ”80-20” Pareto law for the distribution of wealth found in the real world.
As opposed to what? What kind of distribution might you expect? Based on the insanely simple model that was presented, what other possible outcome could have been drawn?
>In this paper, starting from very simple assumptions, we have presented an agent-based model which is able to quantify the role of talent and luck in the success of people’s careers.
No, you have not. You have presented an agent-based model which is able to quantify the role of talent and luck in a 2D roulette game with a completely contrived, non-empirical bias parameter you've named "talent". It bears literally no relationship to reality, where random massive doublings of wealth are the exception, not the rule.
It really bothers me that people write news articles about the impact of this "research".
One thing you can say is, "IF reality's parameters and mechanisms are like this model's, you would expect the outcome that we in fact observe in reality." This is evidence, if not particularly strong evidence. There are infinitely many models that lead to the similar outcomes that we observe in reality, and an even larger infinitely many models that don't.
- You need to be "lucky" in order to ever increase your wealth, which makes the "finding" that luck is more important than talent completely obvious from the way the model was designed
- Capital only changes by multiplication and division, so the fact that this model "recreated" the power distribution we see in wealth in the world is obvious from the setup. It was designed to be a power distribution and couldn't be anything else
- Talent has no effect on your life during unlucky or neutral periods in their model. This obviously fails to conform to the real world.
tldr; they designed a power-distributed model where luck was clearly more important than talent, and "discovered" that it showed a power distribution where luck is more important than talent.
> As opposed to what? What kind of distribution might you expect?
For one thing, they might have expected the result not to be dominated by luck.
> It bears literally no relationship to reality, where random massive doublings of wealth are the exception, not the rule.
I don't think this will help to control the luck as opposed to talent. I suspect the problem is in the "leverage". Having more wealth makes it easier to accrue more wealth in the future, however, the same is not true for talent. Having more talent doesn't help you get much more talent.
So eventually, regardless how big your talent can be, the accrued wealth will dominate the end of the distribution. The rate at which the wealth is accrued doesn't matter, it will only reduce social mobility.
Addendum: Interestingly, the model actually shows what we would expect for low to middle end of income distribution, that talent there is more important than wealth. Which is in line with my explanation.
I agree, and
> nobody has bothered to make a better one
So bother! I have made 4 comments here and all of them ask the same question. What would you improve and how do you think it would affect the outcome?
Sometimes the simple model is (almost) as good as any in answering a simple question. For example, some people do not accept climate models (and probably never will), ostensibly for reasons that they are not good. I see the opposite - the models have gotten much better and much more realistic in the past 60 years. Yet, the same basic outcome (Earth will warm roughly 3 degrees by doubling CO2) was foretold by very crude models that even don't have the circulation.
News articles about science, even good science are often terrible. The most common problems I see are oversimplifying, overgeneralizing and overstating conclusions. Many readers then further generalize and simplify what they read in the article.
I just saw this recently with an article about a study that concluded (and I'm oversimplifying here) that NSAIDs are a better first-line treatment for arthritis pain than opioids. By the time a layperson was referencing it in conversation, they had concluded that it's never a good idea to use opioids to treat any pain.
* - fixed rate of return (doubled or halved) make luck play an oversized role. One of talents greatest contributions is knowing how to let your winners run and cut your losses. The setup is close to a random walk by definition.
- risk reduction is hugely important. High earners especially when speaking of finance tend to know how to reduce risk. Only fools always bet half they capital in every decision.
* - talent would understand what events are more likely to succeed than just every event having the same probability.
- talent and preparation generate events. The more you prepare the more chances you'll have available. Most successful people have failed multiple times but keep trying.
- no learning. One of talents great benefits is learning from mistakes. And when combined with increased number of chances that talent provides, this is a critical feedback cycle the model misses.
- competition. Businesses aren't competing against the impersonal universe, but against other individuals. The trial events should have occurred in that context. If they really wanted to keep this silly 2D thing, it would have been better to have two agents roll against each other when meeting, taking talent into consideration.
Basically the model made everybody similar and then had an exponential random function. With such small tails in the talent pool, there is no other decision it could have reached. I'm shocked this is being upheld as valid research.
* Edit: The response by @edmccard below says that a couple of these might also be luck based (those related to evaluating events), and that is a really valid point. We know that stock pickers are mostly luck for example. It would seem plausible this also extends to evaluating what job to enter or what company to start.
Still not possible to easily type asterisks on HN without them getting interpreted as italics
>...talent would understand what events are more likely to succeed...
If we already know that these things are the result of talent and not luck, and if it's a foregone conclusion that the model gives an "oversized role" to luck, then I guess these kinds of investigation are doomed from the start.
These models are an important counterpoint to naive "Economism" [1] models (where income = marginal product, thus just and justified and necessary for efficiency), and thus relevant for an informed policy discussion.
[1] See James Kwak's book of that title.
1) A focus on inequality is irrational. 2) People focus on inequality for irrational reasons.
This means that if policy-makers and intellectuals fully give in to the people's wishes, we'll accept decreases in wealth in exchange for more equality indefinitely. If this sounds like a strawman, it's because we have "backstops" to inequality-decreasing wealth-destruction. But why should we tolerate any wealth destruction at all?
And if reducing inequality is possible without wealth destruction, why focus on inequality?
(This is besides the "Oxfam problem" -- there never is a coherent definition of "wealth" and Oxfam never seems to fully value people's homes and work animals and suchlike in poor countries.)
As freedom can never be total[2], the question is do we prefer to reduce the freedom of the powerful few (whose freedom is already large) in order to increase that of the many, or vice-versa?
So while absolute income is certainly very important, ignoring inequality is simply irrational for someone who values freedom.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political)
[2]: One person can be totally free; two cannot. X would either be free to infringe on Y's freedom or not -- in either case, freedom is no longer total.
A complicating factor is that, while power is relative, it certainly grows sub-linearly in the absolute baseline. For example, if I have nothing, someone with a few thousands of dollars can have great power over me. But if I have $0.5M, even someone with $1B wouldn't have as much power over me[1]. This is why absolute wealth is also very important, which is why the question of "would we rather have more absolute wealth or less inequality?" doesn't have a simple answer.
[1]: Although it is not true that my own "fuck you" money is enough to completely counteract the richer person's power. For example, their wealth is used to indirectly affect many people, say through political campaign ads, who then change the laws and thus influence me.
(Honest question)
You will find plenty of examples, but we usually call them "revolution", not "collapse".
To counteract the power of wealth, some other sort of power is needed. Doesn't this lead to power inequality again? Do we know anything about power inequality dynamics that lets us choose this or that structure of coercion?
Even if we did have a good model of power dynamics, controlling it would still be hard, as it's an intractable system. Instead, what we have is politics, where different groups fight for their power (and freedom). That's exactly what politics is. When power inequality grows too much, we have revolutions.
What scares me is that we may be seeing an increase in soft, non-authoritarian power (like the power in the hands of companies like Google and Facebook), that is almost as bad as authoritarian power but harder to fight against because it doesn't feel coercive.
Young men see rich men with beautiful women flying to anywhere they want on the planet. Only a few of them will get that when they're older, and it oftens boils down to intelligence, work ethic, cleverness, other abilities like athletics and looks, and a few lucky breaks that they take advantage of. Exceptions being inherited wealth. Law of averages, those who do make it are hard working and intelligent. Law of averages, those who do not are often less so. However, everyone still wants the hot girl and the jet. So what's the right thing to do? Take "power" from [Hard working and intelligent]U[Scott Disick, Donald JR] to normalize influence across everyone? Should the group, who by and large, has contributed more to the society not have proportionally more say? And then the issue becomes more nuanced when you take into account inheritance and things of that nature.
I'd settle for decent healthcare and enough stable income to raise a family.
Should the group, who by and large, has contributed more to the society not have proportionally more say?
1) They haven't and 2) no. You appear to be advocating plutocracy.
You're reading things into what I'm saying - if Elon Musk raises a campaign fundraiser for his favorite candidate, do I mind that? Do I mind him having more "power" in that people listen to his twitter account over joe schmo? Not at all. Is he colluding with other executives to fix automative prices and then pressuring his candidate to change regulations as a favor when they're elected? Yes. That makes me a "plutocracy supporter"?
A very large portion of those people have contributed more suffering to the world, and continue to do so through the continued exploitation of the worker class and lower classes.
I agree that walmart is a piece of crap, but you don't really know what suffering is. Please ask your grandparents what options their grandparents had in life.
If you have some notion that corporations that try to profit are a blight on society and that their abolition will lead to some dream world, then by all means. Please knock over all the establishments, nationalize all corporations and divy profits amongst the workers, redivide the wealth of every millionaire, publish a list of banned words like 'wealth', and so on, and then point me to the nearest democracy.
I agree, you refuse to address the arguments people bring up in favor of attacking straw men and relying on sarcastic hyperbole.
I am absolutely not against people wanting to run a business for profit. In that sense, I am a rather pragmatic socialist libertarian, if you will.
However, I am strongly against businesses that exploit their workers by underpaying and overworking them.
I hear that often but is it really true? Maybe they just have found a way to funnel money to themselves instead of it going to other businesses. For example has Walmart created anything or did they just take the money that would otherwise have gone to a lot of small businesses? For sure they were very smart but did they make the country better? I am not so sure.
I'm a bit confused by this statement. In the vast majority of cases where an individual purchases something, they do it because they want it (food is purchased because the body desires food, phones are purchased because the brain likes communication and connectedness, medical care is purchased because people realize it helps them, etc). Therefore, for someone to have accumulated a large amount of profit, enough people must have decided that whatever they are offering is beneficial.
Simply put, if a person has a large amount of money earned through a truly free market, then they must have provided a benefit to society.
Now, this can be confused by things like regulation. Regulatory capture, corruption, and many other things can all force people to purchase things they do not desire or do not provide as much benefit as a different product, but this is not an issue that can be solved by more regulation or taxation. Instead, it is an issue with interference in the market which causes the inequalities that I would agree, very much do exist.
2) Martin Shkreli is an interesting statement (assuming you are referring to his raising of drug prices, not what he was prosecuted for). I strongly believe that the only reason he was able to raise prices so exorbitantly is because of interference in the market place both on the grounds of copyright laws and the stringent drug testing that is required. If something like google were to suddenly start charging five thousand dollars to use the site, people would quickly move to a competitor (or, if there was no competitor, someone would create one). This is not possible in the drug industry due to government regulation, so although what he did was wrong, it is not something I think can be solved with more laws.
3) Sure, most people have inherited there money, but in a free market someone up the line most certainly earned it. Assuming you don't believe that there is something that makes one person more special than another, who is holding money is irrelevant to whether or not it is fairly earned.
if we affirm the existing power rather than redistribute it, we're exaggerating the impact of luck by affirming that those who are lucky are by definition those who are more deserving of luck and power. even though the major differentiating factor between them and legions of identical people was luck.
I couldn't care less that Mr.Rich have a jet, I care that Mr.Rich decide to mess with the political process in order to get more jets. I care that in the more advances societies of the world in the most rich period of history, there are people that struggle to get necessary health-care or a roof over their heads (probably because Mr.Rich is messing with the political process).
>>"Should the group, who by and large, has contributed more to the society not have proportionally more say?"
Of course they should. It's only that, probably, we have different views about who that group is.
Exhibit 1:
"intelligence is a powerful predictor of success but, on the whole, not an overwhelmingly better predictor than parental SES or grades."
https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2007-strenze.pdf
Exhibit 2:
You can also look at measures of class mobility, which suggest that the rich are staying rich, and the poor poor, more so than they have in recent history.
> Meta-analysis demonstrated that parental SES and academic performance are indeed positively related to career success but the predictive power of these variables is not stronger than that of intelligence (see Table 1). In fact, intelligence exhibited several correlations with the measures of success that were larger than the respective correlations for other predictors suggesting that intelligence is, after all, a better predictor of success.
Since intelligence is just one of many personality factors that might increase productivity (e.g. diligence or conscientiousness are important for a successful career) the fact that intelligence alone is a better predictor of SES than parental SES is actually kind of surprising in the other direction.
(This is especially striking since "high parental SES" means not only "being born into wealth," but also "having the genes of people with high SES." If SES is correlated with things that are heritable--it is--we should absolutely expect parental SES to have a large effect on outcomes no matter what.)
There is evidence that poverty causes a drop in intelligence (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/poverty-intelligen...) If this is the case then a correlation between intelligence and wealth is not necessarily indicating that intelligence causes wealth.
More relevantly, you can manipulate this model in various ways to create either a less exponential curve with no completely poor agents, or undifferentiated equalness. You can code in things like income tax and so on.
The single most effective way to make the curve (on completely meritless income, remember) cease to impoverish anyone without cause, is to apply an incredibly tiny WEALTH tax. Then it takes care of itself, and you can jack up your 'income' all you want, and hey if you spend it all then you don't pay wealth tax! It requires about three percent each cycle. Not 50%, not 95%: 3%.
This is in the total absence of effort, merit, or indeed quality of labor or thought. If you would like more income and you're a special snowflake, by all means work harder and smarter and have more income. If you spend it, you'll have a lot of fun, and if you hoard it, it will eventually dwindle, but you'll be in a society where you can easily make more.
No. Just give me a functioning society with a solid safety net and adequately funded social services in place, and a life of reasonable means that will allow me to grow old in peace and comfort, and which guarantees my children and grandchildren and their grandchildren's grandchildren the same benefits.
The correlation between money earned for work and the relative value of that work is rather low. There is no "group, who by and large, has contributed more to the society". There is only "society", nothing exists in a vacuum.
Do you think Steve Jobs could have achieved what he did had there not been any firefighters, primary school teachers, steelworkers, lumberjacks, bus drivers, janitors, soldiers, etc to indirectly or directly support his liberty to achieve his dreams? Do you think factory workers in China have had any impact on Jobs' success? All of them earn less than he did. Are they somehow lazy and deserving of their situation?
The reduction of income/power inequality isn't a bad thing that the poor, lazy masses want in order to get rich doing nothing. Quite the contrary. The point is to raise the standard of living of people doing jobs that, if some part of society had their say, would probably not even be paid. Reducing the wealth gap doesn't mean you can't be successful anymore.
I am making a specific counterargument to a post arguing that wealth correlates with power, power is the true measure of inequality, and that it should thus be normalized instead.
I am thoroughly questioning the reading comprehension skills of virtually everybody responding to me.
I don't know how you came up with this "law of averages" but I do know that you haven't seen the paper's results.
> Take "power" from [Hard working and intelligent]U[Scott Disick, Donald JR] to normalize influence across everyone?
Limiting the creation of powerful feudal lords that are close to matching in power a democratic society's government is not the same as normalizing influence across everyone. Our choices aren't limited to feudalism and communism.
> Should the group, who by and large, has contributed more to the society not have proportionally more say?
That is a question of values, and you may have different ones, but the values on which democracies are founded say no (whether or not those values are actually realized is a different question). Less democratic societies say yes. I am not saying that a democracy is absolutely superior to an oligarchy, but you must understand where your values lie. All things considered, I value democracy more.
Nevertheless, we could point out some obvious problems with different value systems from the Western democratic ones. For example, how is it even possible to distribute anything based on virtue and competence? We cannot distribute power based on actual competence and virtue, but only on perceived or measured competence and virtue, and that is very different. Measured competence and virtue are circumstantial, and in our real world (as opposed to some imagined utopia), reality is that power may strongly influence circumstance (and so our perception of competence and virtue). Say, if a powerful country exploits a less powerful one, steals its resources and enslaves its people, it creates a circumstance where those exploited people may have adversarial conditions to display their competence and virtue. So we would say that even if our values were such that we believed that power should be distributed based on competence and virtue, doing so would be impossible, and attempting to do so (based on measured competence and virtue) would actually result in something very different. This is why the term meritocracy is satirical (or, at least, it was coined as a satirical term), because it's obvious that true merit cannot really be measured, and any attempt at meritocracy would be no better than a system based on, say, hereditary value (nobility).
Having said that, to some acceptable degree, even in democratic societies we do want to reward virtue and competence. We put criminals in prison (taking most power from them), and reward competent virtuous people with success that imbues power. But we don't want the disparity to grow too large because we're aware that 1. our measurement of virtue and competence is flawed, and 2. too large a disparity causes great harm to freedom.
But, pardon my cynicism and condescension, but, try arguing that with a group of social scientists/mathematicians doing null hypothesis papers with p-values at 1 SD, as well as with people, who frankly, are jealous of others and want more.
Unfortunately, on the flip side, I think there is still a "how big can my neighbor's house get relative to mine before I consider organizing a mob to break into it and steal all the jewels" element to human nature and society.
That's always what it boils down to, isn't it? The one argument the hardcore libertarians and FYGM people always fall back to is "well, you're just jealous. If you just worked harder, you could afford it too", which has been shown again and again to be blatantly false and a clear example of a just world fallacy.
Luck plays an enormous part in how successful you are in life. There is obviously also a factor of being able to do something with those instances of luck, and again being born into the right family, having gone to the right school or having had the right encouragement is a huge factor. Once again, it boils down to luck, especially being born into the right family, with resources and support and an already-in-place social network to groom you and give you those opportunities.
Do you think the son of an alcoholic single mother has the same chances in life as the son of a bank director?
Social mobility is possible, but the deck is severely stacked in favor of those who already have the most.
I have some personal biases here.
There are very different shades of privilege here. The bank director may have been the son of an immigrant, had straight A's in school, got perfect math scores and found an interest in finance, gotten into a top school, and generally worked hard his entire life. Their child also has natural ability in school, his father tells him to shut up, don't complain about anything, teaches them to work hard and pursue their talents but pays for their school. The kid works 80 hours a week, perhaps develops a talent and launches a business around it, and becomes successful as well.
The alcoholic single mother may not had an ounce of ability in school, partied her way through life and mooched off of her boyfriends until around 30 when she has to get a job and then keeps one to survive. Then she has a daughter, her daughter is very beautiful, fails out of school, is used to getting things for free as well, is jealous of her friends who have more, and does not end up going to college or doing anything of great significance.
And then of course you have successful father, child drinks and parties their way through life, abuses others, then inherits everything and preaches to others about how they had to sacrifice everything, and, against all odds, made it. I would not complain if this unfortunately substantial portion of our population got dropped off in Siberia.
I think it is very rare, but perhaps the next Von Neumann is working two jobs and failing out of school to pay the rent for his younger sister and alcoholic mother somewhere. That is a human tragedy and I hope it is rectified and I believe we've steadily been changing in that regard for centuries. We certainly have a lot of issues regarding educational opportunity that needs to be rectified. I think the wealthy are highly under taxed in this nation and that needs to be fixed, but anybody who thinks success is purely luck does not deserve success.
Luck doesn't do much if you can't act on it. Conversely, lucky breaks happen more often to people who are able to expose themselves more to the possibility.
Here is a recipe to have more "luck" in your life and to eventually be able to "capitalize on luck":
Smoke less weed
Drink less
Don't have kids without stable finances
Get a second job or work more hours or find a better job
Save money
Go home and read books, study, learn a skill, or prepare to go book to school
Start a business that can deliver value to consumers and/or society or work on side projects
Network with people and build relationships or mentors
Here is how to lose your ability to "capitalize on luck":
Whine about your life circumstances online
Complain that life is unfair online
Smoke weed and drink multiple times a week
Sit indoors all day watching tv and playing video games
Settle down and have kids before you have a stable life and have achieved the life goals you want to
I'm not sure what you are specifically complaining about more unless it is just a vacuous whinefest about life not being fair. That seems to be the case.
I do not think it is fair that the children of billionaires and movie stars are connected to half the planet via their parents and can get into nearly any door they want to, if that is the specific scenario you are referring to. We have been gradually shifting away from this for centuries - quite nearly only the children of nobles had access to education ~400 years ago.
It's a classic case of just world fallacy.
>"they should not be required to hand everything away so that people like you, who play doom and complain on the internet, can buy a new iPad with the proceeds of the redistributed wealth"
Please point out exactly where I have even come close to advocating this idea, which seems to only exist in the heads of conservative tax dodgers.
>"Once social mobility, educational opportunity, access to similar healthcare, and basic human rights are preserved, rich people don't owe you crap despite what you think."
They don't owe me anything personally, but they do owe society as a whole a hell of a lot.
>"there is nothing stopping a hungry and intelligent kid in the US whose parents feed him and shelter him from becoming a multi-millionaire in this country or even president."
Really? How about cultural stigma, institutional racism, old boys networks, country club nepotism, access to prestigious higher education, and a whole host of other factors?
Firstly, there are a lot of kids whose parents can barely feed and shelter them (hungry and well fed, can you make up your mind?), either despite their best efforts, or because they spend everything on booze or drugs. Secondly, even if they are adequately fed and sheltered, there is still massive societal pressure to not "rise beyond your station", both from above and below.
US society seems tailor made to keep the rich rich and the poor poor, by constantly putting obstacles in the way of progress, all because rich white old men are terrified they'll lose even a small part of their mountains of money.
No one (apart from hardcore old-school concrete commies) are advocating for 100% equal distribution of wealth. I believe that if someone puts their neck on the line and makes it big, good for them. But they should also pay their goddamn taxes and contribute back to society, and not with some excuse along the lines of "I'm investing the money in my own pet causes, so I shouldn't have to pay taxes". That's what's happening currently, the super rich don't feel any connection or responsibility towards keeping society running. They need a good strong lesson in humility.
I'm sure everything seems possible from your ivory tower, but that's not reality.
That's the most important point. If people stop feeling that they have a part of growth in the economy they stop engaging and a country loses cohesion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Gatsby_curve
https://voicerepublic.com/talks/snowball-inequality-meritocr...
The richest live like kings. Actually they enjoy a level of luxury that even the richest kings of old couldn't possibly have imagined. They basically live like gods, with virtually unchecked power, influence and wealth.
For one of the more extreme examples, consider this private dwelling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilia_(building)
It is possibly the most lavish private home in the world, and it overlooks the absolutely crushing poverty of Mumbai's worst slums. The sheer level of cognitive dissonance is mindboggling.
That doesn't necessarily follow, I imagine that there is a level of inequality where total wealth, or at least total utility, even for the rich, starts to go down. For instance once you start having to go to private school, and live in a walled off community to keep the unwashed proletariat out so they don't steal from you / kill you.
You have to accept that people are irrational and deal with it, or modify them genetically.
I thought wealth follows power law which means eventually it concentrates so much that poor becomes poorer in absolute sense.
I agree though that eliminating severe poverty is a more worthy humanitarian goal than trying to produce equity.
Romans and USAmericans both owned slaves.
Modern democracy is build on a core belief that everyone is created equal and that we are each responsible for our own lives. Something which extremely similar to the core thesis of Lutherism which laid the foundation for the renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment that eventually led to modern liberal democracy.
It’s a lot more complicated than that of course, but this is the Internet not a PhD. :)
Yes, we need to get rid of poor shaming, but that doesn't mean we should also get rid of the culture of hard word, frugality, and discipline.
Every true mathematical proposition is a tautology. I don't find this point particularly convincing. As long as the model's predictions match reality in interesting ways, it can lend possible insights on why reality might have certain characteristics.
> Like getting an improbable series of heads when flipping a coin long enough, improbable clusters of events are bound to occur for at least some agents in a large enough set.
Yes, but what's alarming is how most agents' capital fell from bad luck alone, and how good luck only seemed to benefit a very small subset of the population, and talent was not any kind of guarantee. These characteristics of life are denied by many people, so to see it reflected in such a simple model is, I hope, instructive.
> Why should capital growth only occur on chance events, when most workers are paid wages in exchange for their work?
The way I see it, chance events that exponentially increase wealth drown out one's piddling wages. Wages don't seem particularly relevant to why Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have billions, and many people live paycheck to paycheck.
Exactly. This paper should be one among many models explored, but it's a good start.
In fact, I'm sure the paper's simulation can be run with a whole variety of parameters for luck's probability, talent, and bad/good luck's effect on capital. We can then see which set of parameters best matches some aspect of reality and possibly gain some new insight there too.
>Every true mathematical proposition is a tautology. I don't find this point particularly convincing. As long as the model's predictions match reality in interesting ways, it can lend possible insights on why reality might have certain characteristics.
I think the problem is that nothing about the model lines up with reality. For example:
- Each agent begins with an identical amount of capital. -- nothing like the real world.
- Every 6 months you have the possibility of doubling or halving your capital. -- nothing like the real world.
- Chance of doubling capital is proportional to talent. -- nothing like the real world.
As an argument for such a simple model they provide:
> The previous agents’ rules are intentionally simple and can be considered widely shareable, since they are based on the common sense evidence that success, in everyone life, has the property to both grow or decrease very rapidly.
Sure, success/failure _can_ increase or decrease rapidly, but is it the rule? Arguing the basis of your entire model on "common sense" seems weak. It would be better if they had provided at least some real world data where this pattern emerges. In my experience people seem to move a little bit up or down from their baseline, but I have never personally seen a swing from rags to riches or the other way around.
If they had begun by drawing parallels to the ways in which we see the real world and letting the model simulate it into the future it would be more compelling. As it stands, it seems like a set of arbitrary rules designed to reach their desired conclusion, albeit weakly through "it looks pretty similar".
Not relevant. Part of the main point was that even in the case of equal opportunity/equal starting points, bad luck readily overcomes talent, good luck rewards even the less talented, and so talent isn't any kind of guarantee, contra many people's claims.
> - Every 6 months you have the possibility of doubling or halving your capital. -- nothing like the real world.
I don't think this is relevant either. You can pick any progression you want and it won't affect the final results. The point is to simulate regular opportunities of dramatically increasing one's wealth. So again, even when faced with equal opportunity, dramatic wealth inequality just due to luck seems inevitable.
> - Chance of doubling capital is proportional to talent. -- nothing like the real world.
The claim that wealth is proportional to "talent" is widely believed. This paper puts it to the test and refutes it. That's one of the main points.
> In my experience people seem to move a little bit up or down from their baseline, but I have never personally seen a swing from rags to riches or the other way around.
I addressed this in the post you replied to: small swings up and down are probably wage-driven. This doesn't explain wealth disparity, because dramatic swings in wealth will largely not be wage-driven. These events thus aren't of interest.
> If they had begun by drawing parallels to the ways in which we see the real world and letting the model simulate it into the future it would be more compelling.
Not as easy as you think. We have no idea what factors are involved. That's why we study models, and see how closely the results match with reality. That then gives us insight into how some parts of reality might work.
Likewise the power distribution is built in. Power distributions are created by multiplicative laws and the only ways wealth changes in this model are multiplication and division. This means they also assume the power distribution they claim to discover.
It's definitely very hard to build models that match reality, but this one doesn't really seem to try and it's outcomes are so predictable they don't offer meaningful insight. Luck surely plays a huge role in success, but something like longitudinal studies where we measure the abilities of children and then follow their outcomes are likely far more insightful.
Which is clearly true. You can be as talented as you like, but talent without a corresponding opportunity to use that talent for monetary gain obviously yields no wealth. There's nothing objectionable here.
It's also widely believed that greater talent makes one more successful at exploiting opportunities, and the paper accepts this premise in order to test it.
Now you can quibble that perhaps the random variable governing opportunities is not independent of talent, in that, those with more talent are simply presented with more opportunities. Perhaps that's true.
But the paper actually shows that our world is also consistent with the hypothesis that opportunities are completely random.
> Power distributions are created by multiplicative laws and the only ways wealth changes in this model are multiplication and division. This means they also assume the power distribution they claim to discover.
I think you're looking at this wrong. The power distribution is not the discovery, the discovery is that what we see in real life is consistent with such a simple formulation based on a small number of factors where wealth disparity is largely dominated by luck.
Perhaps that's not actually the case in reality, but we now know that it's absolutely not impossible, which some previously believed.
> Luck surely plays a huge role in success, but something like longitudinal studies where we measure the abilities of children and then follow their outcomes are likely far more insightful.
These aren't mutually exclusive. Modelling and empirical studies both yield insights.
Maybe you disagree and can expand why do you think making things more realistic in some aspect will make it behave better for the talented (especially on the high end of income distribution).
I don’t really understand what you’re trying to say here, do you mind clarifying? Are you saying you don’t find the point convincing because it’s vacuous?
I'm saying the article's objection that the "results are built into the design" is indeed vacuous, because this will be true of every mathematical model.
The question is how well the model's results match reality, which can yield insight on reality.
That said, there is of course a "spectrum" of tautologies. Models with simpler input parameters should carry more weight, because they would yield clearer insights and would be easier to match against reality. Models with complex input parameters are not only less likely to match reality, they don't yield much insight into fundamental causes.
How far is it really from just writing console.out("my hunches are correct!");
Maybe in a future world of modelling where we feed real-world data into the model then maybe we can get somewhere?
So no, I wouldn't say the conclusion is foregone. It shows an example where something that can reasonably be called talent (the ability to capitalize) is not as important as luck (the chance encountering of an event where you can capitalize).
With the distribution of people and events over space and the distribution of talent the end result was a given because its more likely for an arbitrary person to trigger multiple good events than for very specific "talented" people to trigger multiple good events even if their factor means they don't need as many good events to be "even". Same way that if you had more events then people then the outcome would completely change because then "talent" would become a bigger factor than "finding an event".
Its just about what they decided to make scarce (events) in the model.
I see it as the same thing.
I see it similar to asking "what is more important for a fruit - the peel or the meat?" while you can't have one without another, both are there together making a fruit what it is :)
I see why you are saying the factors are somewhat confounded, but that does not implicitly mean that separable analysis is not possible or useful. I don't think your analogy holds and these are nearly as coupled concepts as parts of a fruit.
On the other hand, this might take the fun out of driving expensive cars, because in a society with such wealth-distribution, having an expensive car doesn't mean "I'm more successful than you", but rather something like "I have a pathetic need to show off".
I love driving cars. Not to show off or because of prestige, I just really like driving, for some reason. I don't care if it's a 300hp grand tourer or a 60hp supermini, it's the act of driving that's enjoyable to me personally.
Not everything is a matter of "keeping up with the Joneses".
Perhaps cars wouldn't be owned, but borrowed/rented whenever people would want to have an experience like you described.
Certainly for those of us living in larger cities, a subscription service would make sense, so you would have to worry a lot less about parking. Especially with self-driving cars that could deliver themselves when needed.
After a few times I stopped mentioning it. It is clear the world doesn't buy this idea.
1. What country you were born. 2. What teacher and friends you end up having. 3. Your parents. ($, gene, personality, parenting)
Of course, I would add just random luck as 4th factor.
None of these, you have any control over.
We're all here mostly through our good luck. Yes, some of us work very hard, but so do most people in impoverished countries.
Let's take a minute to count our blessings. :)
"Talent vs Luck: the role of randomness in success and failure" by A. Pluchino. A. E. Biondo, A. Rapisarda
https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068
Are the rich wealthy because they somehow earned it? Examination reveals that this is not true and that the most extreme cases of wealth accumulation (which show a surprisingly consistent pattern across cultures) are attributable more to luck than to skill. Mark Buchanan examines this in his excellent book "The Social Atom" (pp.172-174):
https://www.amazon.com/Social-Atom-Cheaters-Neighbor-Usually...
A reference from that book:
Jean-Philippe Bouchaud and Marc Mezard, "Wealth Condensation in a simple model of economy":
https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0002374
See also Christopher Jencks, Inequality (New York: Basic Books, 1972) which focuses more on the effect (or non-effect) of education on income:
https://www.amazon.com/Inequality-Reassessment-Effect-School...
If extreme wealth is largely due to luck then I see no reason why government should not lop the "lucky" portion off for its purposes. Of course there will always be argument as to precisely where the line is drawn between luck and skill.
Finally we must not forget bad luck, which makes fools of us all. Just as there are those who are super-wealthy due to luck, there are those whose livelihood has been destroyed by luck. I do feel an obligation to help them back onto their feet.
So it's two-fold, one is that you have the resources to expose yourself to more possibly lucky situations, the second is being able to actually do something about it.
You need a huge amount of luck before you can even start doing this.
to think we might alter our society to redistribute wealth to those who are most lacking, lifting people out of poverty and improving the world, when we DIDNT EVEN HAVE TO, turns out those losers were talentless and therefore deserve nothing. Horrifying.
> I care deeply about the issue of growing wealth inequality, and would love for research to be done that finds concrete evidence of how luck and privilege play a role in it.
We could argue as to what constitutes luck but I think the core of the paper suggests that talent's importance in success is overestimated, which is rather believable (MY ANECDOTAL OPINION).
Haven't read the paper, just assuming from the articles.
One of the articles was about finding people who attract more good luck and people who attract more bad luck while ruling all kinds of psychological, behavioural or environmental factors. The relevance the authors argued was that persons with bad luck could be screened for to not work for nuclear facilities. I really wanted to find that article again, but the library has been rebuilt and I don't come there often.
I heard of a study a few years ago where researchers divided a bunch of teenagers into a few groups (each of which was quite large), and each teen was allowed to go to a website and hear a collection of songs (same songs for everyone). Each person could then vote on which was their favorite and, importantly, they could see how many votes that song had already gotten just within their group. The researchers wanted to see if the same songs were picked as the favorite across different, isolated groups. The result was that each group had chosen completely different songs as their favorite. These groups were large enough that they were probably all statistically similar. Once people in a group saw that some song already had a lot of votes, they were more likely to pick it as their favorite as well. This suggests that in the world of pop music, success may have more to do with luck and social influence than with talent.
Ah, I found a link to a description of the study: https://www.npr.org/2014/02/27/282939233/good-art-is-popular...
I have thought about this question a lot recently without any satisfaction.
But Warren is an outlier among outliers. Bill Gates has said himself that he doesn't think he would have been able to become a billionaire with Microsoft had he not gone to a swanky private high school that had a computer back when no one had computers.
But counterfactuals seem to be part of our reasoning processes ("If i had turned left at the last light I would be closer to the restaurant.") and they do often capture the imagination (alternative histories, etc.):
However when you're looking at society in aggregate, you have to consider what will happen, so the conversation is still useful when planning for the future (since people will be at different points in their lives) of the group as a whole.
If success and well-being is fully determined by luck, then what should I do today?. If it's not, then I'll continue reaching for the stars. I don't think you will ever prove 100% dependence so anything less means you have to try.
You could say much the same about modern market economies.
Two discussions posted by the new account:
- fixed rate of return (doubled or halved) make luck play an oversized role. One of talents greatest contributions is knowing how to let your winners run and cut your losses. The setup is close to a random walk by definition.
- risk reduction is hugely important. High earners especially when speaking of finance tend to know how to reduce risk. Only fools always bet half they capital in every decision.
- talent would understand what events are more likely to succeed than just every event having the same probability.
- talent and preparation generate events. The more you prepare the more chances you'll have available. Most successful people have failed multiple times but keep trying.
- no learning. One of talents great benefits is learning from mistakes. And when combined with increased number of chances that talent provides, this is a critical feedback cycle the model misses.
Basically the model made everybody similar and then had an exponential random function. With such small tails in the talent pool, there is no other decision it could have reached.
I consider him to be the luckiest person I know. He has bad luck and good luck quite often, for no reason.
https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Bets-Making-Smarter-Decision...
Really insightful and highly recommended
There is no such thing as “luck”, it is only a name for what we call the intersection of preparation and opportunity. Both can be controlled. People tend to think opportunities are random and based on chance – they aren’t. They are the result of smaller intersections of preparations and opportunities that happened previously.
No one is born with a natural skill to do something unnatural. Genetic traits are not talents, they are traits. To be born with a talent would be to be able to do whatever it is you do from the moment you are born, if you had the physical capacity for it. Otherwise, any “talent” you display later is really just the result of effective learning and practice, but that is just what you would call a skill, there is no need to build it up with all the mythology of “talent”. Just another form of ladder kicking to discourage others from thinking they could achieve that same level of skill.
So if neither definition matters, then in essence this discussion is about nothing.
The book also noted that lucky people didn't win more than statistics suggested they should (they were no more likely to win the lottery), but they opened themselves to situations which allowed a win to happen, and so had more chances to win than someone who closed off their options.
In case you're interested, the book is "The Luck Factor", by Richard Wiseman.
There's a big component in American culture at least, that assumes that the success in life is due to talent. It provides an excuse for inequitable distributions of resources, for example, by justifying the distribution as a natural consequence of individual talent, skill, and hard work.
This study shows that this cultural assumption is not true, that talent or hard-work alone are not enough to achieve success, and much of success is down to random events.
I think talent and hard-work along with ambition better prepare an individual to take advantage of these random events but without fortuitous providence, they aren't enough to provide success.
> People choose to control what they can
Don't worry, everyone already does that. The difference is do you look down on other people (or even yourself) who are not doing as well?
At the very list there's the issue of having enough resources to fail 9 times and not end up homeless. Most people can afford to fail maybe once.
People don't choose which country they are born into. They don't choose the quality of their primary education, whether or not their parents vaccinate them before they catch one of those sorts of diseases. They don't choose any disease (cancer, genetic defects, etc) for that matter.
There is a whole range of things most people don't choose. To be a violence victim or in a car accident, for example. Most people can't choose whether or not they will be eligible for an inheritance that makes them better off financially - nor do they choose an inheritance filled with financial obligations.
Sure, some opportunities are the sort that one can do things to make them more likely and choose to take them, but a great number are quite random to the individual and completely outside of their control. Just because they have cause doesn't mean they aren't what most folks consider "luck".
Or was it just bad luck?