Hacker News Reader

Comment by s1artibartfast | Hacker News Reader

How do you find that this relates to the article? Do you really think that hard work as a concept is a delusion?

Buy your own metaphor, a different seed planted and nurtured the same has a chance of success or failure. The fact that chances at all implies that the seed matters and not just the environment, otherwise any seed would be expected to have an identical outcome.

To speak plainly, children from the same parents with the same opportunities can and do have drastically different lives.

The crookedness the article speaks of is unpredictable and unique to every tree. Seeds planted in an orchard of the same soil do not produce identical trees

View on HN

>To speak plainly, children from the same parents with the same opportunities can and do have drastically different lives.

But children do not have the same parents. Not unless they are twins. Parents treat each child differently. This is common knowledge, expected even. This is why outcomes are so drastically different, not because of the "seed" but because everything else has changed alongside the seed.

Ask the oldest child of a family how they view each of their parents. Ask the youngest. They often see such different people. This is exaggerated in families where addiction was overcome for example, where the first child grew up without a loving home, and the last grew up experiencing parents that finally figured out how to love.

You can see how even the tiniest of changes affects this, and why "same parents same opportunities" doesn't apply to most, again excluding twins.

Yes there are different environmental factors in families. But that doesn't negate the fact that there's differences in individuals as well. Some people literally come out of the womb mentally handicapped or gifted or anywhere between. To talk things up 100% to environment for capability is a silly as saying height is 100% environment. It's unscientific and putting one's head in the sand. It is one factor but not the only Factor.

Twins have different parents too, being a twin doesn't mean you're treated the same in every instance, there are actually difference between twins even if we do look similar.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com