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Comment by themoonbus | Hacker News Reader

I don't know what it is that often makes successful people seem to lack basic empathy. I assume once you've succeeded following a certain path, you think the options that were available to you are available to anyone – if only they were good / smart / strong enough to make the most of them.

Such smart people seem to lack a basic understanding that the world is a complex place, and social, cultural, and economic forces can have as much a role in shaping life trajectories as one's abilities and ambition.

Or perhaps to put it another way, not all hardships are created equal.

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They also seem to suddenly forget about survivorship bias. Because they've ended up on a good outcome they assume that all their choices along the way were the correct ones.

I think that the general lack of empathy in rich people is mainly related to the fact that to succeed, you generally do have to try hard, work diligently towards a goal, and generally be reasonably smart, however, these things are necessary but not sufficient.

So rich people work their asses off and tend to assume that anybody who works their asses off will have the same result as they do, not realizing that you have to work you ass off, be in the right place in the right time, know the right people, grow up or have experience in the right environment and in general have all sorts of things fall into place in order to achieve a truly meteoric success.

Having basic empathy (i.e. not being a psycopath) might be an obstacle in getting rich quick. A wider range of options is available if you don't have to care what your actions cause to others.

That's an interesting hypothesis. Can you give some examples, that an individual in poverty, could use to get rich quick-- but only if they lacked empathy?

I'm assuming these are things that would not land them in jail (because otherwise you'd need to argue that they won't get caught, which I think is a harder argument.)

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm curious if there is opportunity to become rich quickly, without ending up in jail, that I can't think of simply because I have empathy.

Examples of how a psychopath can profit where an empath would languor, with neither side doing anything illegal:

- Alter a contract to improve your situation at the expense of the other party

- Always take advantage of discount offers that are clearly loss-leaders, such as gift cards on sale at a grocery store, without buying anything else but the cards

- Eat at the soup kitchen instead of buying your own food

- Tip low

- Exclusively buy property at foreclosure sales

- Either claim credit or ensure that people are more willing to assign credit, especially when promotions are on the line

- Look for connected people to make friends with, even though they are slimy weasels and you don't like them

In my own life I have encountered two instances where I could have quite easily become rich by putting ethics to one side. One would have involved taking advantage of a single person. One was working for people who had a business model of taking advantage of a class of people.

I have not regretted turning down those chances in the slightest.

The best part about one of them was returning stuff the day after I quit gave me a real life experience of turning up at an office to find the entire area empty. Just like in the movies.

There are all sorts of lucrative pursuits that may not land you in jail, but that most of us would consider unethical. As one example, spamming. Another one, black hat SEO. If you're careful doing these things, you can avoid breaking the law in many countries. Often, even in those countries where these pursuits are against the law, you'd never be prosecuted.

So faced with these opportunities, there are many "psychopaths", "sociopaths", or -- to avoid pseudo-psychological terms -- unethical/immoral people who would not feel the hesitation you and I would feel faced with such possibilities.

There are all sorts of borderline/"grey" opportunities like this available to immoral people. They are unlikely to land them in jail, but they don't hesitate so they make bank.

It's mostly a hypothesis, I'm quite sure I don't suffer from pathological lack of empathy, which would mean I'm unable to truly think like a psycopath.

However, there are several things you could do that are legal that average people would consider wrong (e.g. nasty contract tricks that take advantage of the other party not understanding the contract), or that are not legal but probably can't be associated to you specifically (which is how criminal organizations work, it's very difficult to prove that anything is illegal at the top of the pyramid).

Not sure if any of that stuff is useful if your current state is personal poverty, as you still need the opportunity to take advantage of. Poverty IMO is not only lacking the money, but also lacking the opportunity.

I'll take a stab at this.

A person living in poverty and lack empathy may turn to a life of crime to get rich quickly. Selling drugs, burglary, or prostitution are all path to riches, however illegal or unethical it may be.

Those that go through prostitution may further advance their career by collect their clients information and sell it for money.

So yes, lacking empathy can definitely unlock more paths.

Whether you end up in jail depends on something else entirely. Let's say that our individual in question needs to lack empathy and be more able than an average cop in that location.

Starting an online gambling website, for one.

What do online gambling websites have to do with empathy, or lack of it?

I mean, I guess in some jurisdictions it is illegal, so it would be a risky move, but what does that have to do with empathy? Lack of empathy for your future, potentially jailed, self I guess?

I don't think that would be much easier than most startups. The same mechanics still apply. In fact, it's potentially harder due to being heavily regulated or illegal in lots of places. It also has lots of fraud risk.

Many such people have had irrational beliefs. It's like a guy that has "system" for winning the lottery, and then does.

That's true, but at least in the USA-- where I've worked with two people who were in poverty when we met-- you can turn your life around. In my experience, with hard work on their part and a little bit of guidance it took them about 2-3 years to get into well paying (e.g.: well above minimum wage) jobs.

The biggest thing inhibiting them before we worked together was growing up in a situation that seemed hopeless to the point where they couldn't see the path or the opportunity that was there for them.

I suspect that both of them where working age, sane, healthy, without major addictions, reasonably intelligent, and had an acceptably clean background. Remove some or all of the above and even low levels of success become far less likely.

That said, a friend of mine got a middle class job despite health issues, addiction, and with a somewhat shady past it's just much harder. However, he also had a fairly strong network to fall back on when things where tough which helps.

One person lacked two of those factors, the other lacked one.

In both cases they perceived those, and other factors as making the possibility of success unlikely.

I managed to convince them otherwise, because in part, I have a similar background, and because they saw results.

Congratulations. That's a tough place to be. There is a huge gap between being broke and being poor. And working yourself out of poverty takes a little luck and a lot of effort.

Information is also a very valuable resource. Having you as a connection may have been the difference between continuing a life of poverty and getting out of poverty. I have the same natural advantages today that I had when I was 20, but at 20 I knew far less. If I knew then what I know now, with the same skills and effort, I would've gone 10 times further.

I suspect that's what Jack Ma is trying to do here. I think he's trying to help people see a path.

Well in that case, they were lucky to have you as a resource. Please don't think I'm saying hard work isn't important, but it definitely is not the only factor in succeeding.

I agree. I was trying to say that what was obvious to me were things they didn't think of.

That part of the problem is that people get conditioned to see their horizon as narrow.

It cost me nothing to help these people (Really, I did give them loans and stuff like that over time, but the real help was not money.)

Unfortunately, our society is focused on the welfare system, but the welfare system never illuminated the path for these people.

Of course, this is based on my experience so it's anecdote.

The opinion that rich people lack empathy feels like a very attractive answer for this question, be wary.

Note: It is generally bad practice to assume negative attributes about someone just so they are easier to disagree with. It is practically attempting to disqualify an argument without actually having to addressing it.

With that said I do not think it held much water in the first place, but I find it better off just saying that instead of trying to find some fault with the person who wrote it.

>'I assume once you've succeeded following a certain path, you think the options that were available to you are available to anyone – if only they were good / smart / strong enough to make the most of them.'

I think this is actually worse than that.

Strength, smarts and expertise are positives that are generally implied as possible to build or at least quantify.

This is more an absolute negative judgement, shaming even "You have chosen to fail." as if success is as simple as flipping an intangible switch inside.

I think it's hard in general to see the world through another's lens.

I expect the very successful are particulary prone to this as they have both a strong, but narrow 'proof' of their own authority on the matter and an endless supply of people seeking their approval - not the sort to give criticism.

I think the issue is that even if we have some kind of magical wand to wave away all unmeritous structural conditions in society, wave away all life accidents and lotteries, we would still be left in a world of skewed wealth and opportunity due to natural biological variation and its accumulative effect in an economy with memory.

Any empathy based primarily on an understanding of structural constraints and injustice will fall short in soothing the natural and irrevocable cruelty of meritocracy. We have left a difficult question unanswered: do stronger or more productive humans warrant a bigger piece of the world pie?

It's a combination of being intellectually lazy+familial influence+narcissism+lack of perspective. Not really that complicated once you realize that all of this is reinforced and forms a feedback loop throughout these individuals' lives because they tend to congregate and be friends (thus, more likely to show their true feathers) with others who are just like them.

"I don't know what it is that often makes successful people seem to lack basic empathy"

Or lack a basic understanding of economics.

What economics is he lacking? Are you arguing that the economy is zero sum?

Regardless of whether the economy is zero sum or not, it is trivial to see that not everybody can be rich. So even if everybody did the "right" thing, not everybody would be rich, or even wealthy.

See: the world GDP divided by world population.

That's not exactly true.

The world GDP divided by world population is a snapshot of the current state of the world today. It's not a snapshot of everybody doing the "right" thing. It's also not a snapshot of everybody doing the "right" thing in 1000 years from now. You are excluding possibilities.

But this conversation isn't about being rich. It is about not being poor. There is a world of difference between the two.

You haven't established that Jack Ma is smart, or at least any smarter than average. Why do people always assume that rich people are smart? From what I've read, he worked very hard and took a few chances.

How did you infer Jack Ma, a former school teacher, lacks basic empathy?

And why so much hatred towards him in this thread? According to him, one of the reasons people lose is:

    Lacking understanding

I'm not sure people in this thread are understanding enough. It's a little presumptuous to interpret that advice only as "not knowing things" but not as "not being understanding with people".

Or are you saying Jack Ma didn't go through hardship?

Lacking understanding the world is a complex place tends to be found in less smart people than the other way around. So what's your point?

Or are you saying someone who tells the truth, and the truth turns out to be uncomfortable, is interpreted as lacking empathy?

The biggest thing I learned from all this downvoting is you can't guide people too fast. You have to tease them with questions. You have to first let them fall into their own traps. They learn better that way.

Too high a dosage of anything can be harmful.

i wouldn't take it too seriously. It sounds more like a pep talk to me.

it's the beginning of a motivational book in the making.

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