https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion_(psychology)
There's a good reason for this: If you gamble on something that can hurt your livelihood, then if you win you only get marginally richer, but if you lose you might not be able to feed yourself or your family.
Or to put it in a cruder way, reproductive success has strongly decreasing return to scale as a function of economic success. Bill Gates has only 3 children, even though his income is around ~300,000x that of the average American.
Ibn Saud, founder of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabian, had 45 sons alone. Such large families continue in the House of Saud.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Saud
There's the oft-cited case of Ghengis Khan, who by DNA estimates may have as many as 16 million surviving progeny. Estimates of the numbers of his actual children are quite hard to come by, and range from low (he had only one official wife) to many thousands.
Gates, in particular, is aware of several modern challenges, including overpopulation. His "reproductive success" may well be a calculated strategy for long-term advantage. Or simply altrusitic motive.
By contrast current estimates are that about 0.5% of the world has a y-chromosome descended from a relatively close ancestor of Genghis Khan. (When his horde burst out, both he and his male relatives took advantage of "mating opportunities".)
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan#DNA_... for more.
A side note. His y-chromosome would have benefited more than his other chromosomes since many of his sons, grandsons and other direct male descendants also had good breeding opportunities. Those men had his y-chromosome, but not all of his other chromosomes.
It's a fact of life that you have to play to win. The richest in history took extraordinary risks to get there, and for every winning risktaker there were 10 losing risktakers.
This also goes hand in hand with why hard work and perseverance are virtues.
Not exactly accurate. Bill Gates may have dropped out of college to pursue Microsoft, but that was hardly an extraordinary risk. His parents were extremely well off, and had that adventure been a failure, he simply would've gone back to school and completed his degree. Same thing with Zuckerberg.
You are ignoring that Bill Gates had to come from an extraordinarily privileged position to even be able to incur such a large opportunity cost. Most people don't have the opportunity to not to finish a Harvard degree, because most people don't have the opportunity to go to Harvard to begin with.
You are also ignoring that even if Microsoft had failed after a 10 years, the act of founding and running it would likely have afforded him experience that would rival in value a Harvard degree. This makes it doubtful that the opportunity cost was actually very large.
Furthermore, when you talk about how large the risk was, you play fast and loose with relative and absolute sizes. It may be true that Bill Gates took a large risk in absolute terms, but because of his background, the risk was actually not that big in relative terms. Not any larger than the risk of someone else choosing one education instead of another, or one career over another.
We're not talking about whether he'd "get by," that's irrelevant. We're talking about relative risks assuming that Microsoft didn't succeed.
I think Bill Gates is a great businessman and he has worked for his wealth, but let us not be delusional. The son of a well-respected Seattle lawyer from a long-standing Seattle family that could afford to send their kid to the most prestigious school in Seattle was never going to have issues having a comfortable career by going with "Plan B".
The only delusion in this thread is the idea that Bill Gates took no risk when he decided to drop out of Harvard and start a company with the goal of ushering in the age of personal computing. I'm not comparing him to a starving African child, I'm just pointing out that he took a risk just like every entrepreneur on the planet.
So yes, technically you're right, but your argument is missing the vital essence of what people mean when they say, eg, "Bill Gates wasnt taking a risk".
But because of my skills I had no problem getting back into a normal development job afterward.
That means that my risk was a lot less than someone who would lose everything if their plan didn't work out; the same goes for him. His risk was negligible.
As for "bleeding money out of his trust fund" - you do realize, short of developing a 6-figure coke habit, he could've lived off the interest for the rest of his life QUITE comfortably, right?
His relative risk was nearly 0. He was going to live, at worst, an upper middle class lifestyle regardless of the success or failure of Microsoft.
Except this is not a black and white matter, nothing is stopping him from going back to college except time and money of which he already had enough. I'm pretty sure his parents had a contingency plan in case his company failed.
By contrast, not getting a Harvard degree and maybe having to spend an extra year or two for a degree from a lesser university, that's absolutely not a huge risk. It's like the ultimate non-huge risk.
First of all, in real terms, no they didn't. In monetary terms maybe, but poor people take bigger risks all the time.
It is true, though, that the richest of the rich take bigger risks than their peers, and bigger risks than are arguably sensible. This is the difference between the "nouveau riche" and old money.
In terms of securing the level of consumption they're used to, and usually in terms of happiness, rich people are better off playing it safe, and most do. But some rich people may just have borderline pathological need to prove themselves, and buy metaphorical "lottery tickets". It makes sense that the richest individuals of the rich come from the group of those who take "dumb" risks that happen to pay off (I'm thinking Steve Jobs, Elon Musk etc.)
This is a recent coincidence. Bill Gates could easily have 300,000 times the reproductive success he's expected to have. It's not a priority for him.
it is also the reason I think this one is appropriate --> Science advances one funeral at a time. (I think this is Max Planck)
It works so well, which makes one wonder how gullible human beings are, in a general sense. The thought is depressing.
Considering how much things changed in the 20th century, I doubt the quote.
How many scientific revolutions did Einstein live through? Two?
The real quote is, Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, daß ihre Gegner überzeugt werden und sich als belehrt erklären, sondern vielmehr dadurch, daß ihre Gegner allmählich aussterben und daß die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut gemacht ist. which is better translated as A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. This was cited in Kuhn's famous book, _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ which explains why it is so.
"...one funeral at a time" is a pithy condensation of what Max Planck actually did say.
Einstein, who you mentioned, is the quintessential example that science progresses one funeral at a time. He was a brilliant scientist who not only single handedly ushered in one of the two pillars of modern physics but sparked a revolution in the other. His own research into the photoelectric effect was one of the earliest hard data that showed that quantum phenomena were not deterministic and yet he fought against the very concept of nondeterminism for decades. He went so far as to popularize the quote "God does not play dice with the universe" and despite a wealth of experiments or effective theories to explain them, he continually rejected the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Even though he still contributed a lot to physics and remained friendly with the rest of the theoretical physics community during that time, he was essentially a social pariah when it came to his thoughts on quantum mechanics. However, he was already a very public and popular figure (think Neil Degrasse Tyson minus the ubiquitous television) so this very very wrong belief led to an untold number of rejected grants and misguided careers.
I already pointed you to the actual quote. And a book to look into. I can give you no shortage of examples. For example for famous examples of scientists in the 20th century that rejected new scientific theories, I can offer Fred Hoyle's refusal to accept the Big Bang, Einstein's refusal to accept QM, and Ernst Mach's refusal to accept the existence of atoms.
I would suggest that you at least keep an open mind on the topic.
Today we can ignore history's detractors, but that doesn't mean people at the the time shared our view of things.
For instance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect
I think it's fair to say he was dissatisfied with it (which drove his work on unification).
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr%E2%80%93Einstein_debates for a brief history.
Similarly, when Scalia died Ginsburg said she would miss his rebuttals to her opinions because they always made her final product better.
"The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents and the ocean was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge. Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes & fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments and contradictory witnesses."
- Boorstin
The Discoverers
Introduction of technology tends to induce dynamics which resist its influence over the longer term.
See http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2010/05/le-chateliers-principle... for more on my opinions on that principle. :-)
Interesting how other principles of chemistry seem to be generally systemic. Ilya Prigogine would be another instance.
And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them.