Once you see the extent of the Matthew Effect [1], it's hard to unsee it.
In that friend's view - and I think mine too - that's the reason why 'how I succeeded' books by people like Warren Buffett or Bill Ackman almost always turn out to be total dross. Not because they don't want to share their secrets (after all, their secrets would require so much capital to apply as to be impracticable for most) – just that they have no idea.
They do know it, at least on some level. For many of them, they could do it again if they had to. They simply aren't consciously aware. (Like Auden once said: "I knew it all the time, but I never realised it before!")
On the other hand, if you can find the person that _isn't_ naturally good at the skill but was somehow able to get decent at it, even if they're not the best at it, they're more likely to have beneficial advice.
This reminded me of the advice to learn how to run a marathon, don't look at what most people in the race were doing to train, look at the person who's doing well despite looking like they shouldn't be there.
I.e., don't look at the 140 lbs guys at the front of the pack for advice, look to the 280 lb guy in the middle of the pack.
Not sure how sage that advice is, but it was an interestingly different way to frame the problem.
People I've known who are financially successful (some massively so) tend to fall into two categories though. Some will say that this and this and that happened just so, and they wouldn't begin to know how someone else could replicate it. Others will say it's just a matter of perseverance and not making stupid mistakes and anyone can do it if they just bothered to, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
May be they are both right, since surely there's both a repeatable process [0] and a non-repeatable process [1] to get rich?
[0] acquire skill that's highly paid (doctors?); acquire skill needed by rapidly-growing sectors (crypto? biotech?)
[1] right place at the right time
Even unattractive people can do a lot to improve their looks with clothing, diet, and a fitness regimen.
While studying older students would start talking, how they get a good grade/easy questions because they gave cookies/whatever or how some prof was super cool for them in some way.
Of course thing was they probably were in a group that prof liked, they had a good connection, maybe someone from the group had good jokes that made that prof laugh. Maybe they were showing up with whole group to his classes and no one made a fuss or other silly stuff at his lectures.
Then freshmen would pick up the story and would try to "trick their way" with the prof that would of course backfire as they totally missed the context of why for the older guys prof was happy with some cookies to ask them "easy" questions.
Just being in shape without any context - like how much in shape - might backfire when some girls think you are a buff so probably aggressive and get scared instead of interested. So just trying to talk up a girl on the street while buffed might scare her much more.
I would not focus on "natural skill" but I would focus on understanding that there is infinite amount of details to life and whole context is missing if someone gives high level advice.
To turn left, I turned the handlebars ever so slightly to the right. This caused the bike to lean to the left, then I turned the handlebars left.
After all, it nets you lots of extra money in book sales, with no real concern that anyone will genuinely read your book and then supplant you.
He was watching the news and they interviewed the richest man in Canada. The interviewer asked, "How did you make your fortune?"
"Well, when I came to Canada, I had nothing but five cents. I used those five cents to buy an apple. I sold the apple for ten cents, and then bought two apples to sell. I sold those apples for twenty cents, and then I got a telegram that my uncle had died and left me three billion dollars."
I know its overly simplistic but isn't the reason why the Matthew effect exists that we deny opportunities to poor people? If there are opportunities that make people not poor then shouldn't we allocate them to the poor first?
The ability to work hard is also always 100% luck.
Humans do not control their DNA or what environment shaped them to be able and have the desire to work hard.
Determinism isn't exactly useful as a personal guideline, or anything. So I don't know why some people keep digging that hole.
I'm sure there are ways to interpret this as: this arbitrary list of things is achievable, the rest is out of your reach. But then it's your job to find out what those things are, the determinism "insight" is useless.
I am familiar with a key difference here:
Some people find nihilism to be demotivating
Some people do not
For me, it helps me remember to try to recognize my privileges, support systems and luck. I respect people that play the cards they are dealt. Any child prodigy with a lot of resources could just as easily done nothing with them, so the nihilistic approach more so helps me not resent people that won a birth lottery and also appreciate what I do before I forget and start giving generic success advice.
"Justice, What's the right thing to do" is one of my favourite books. I'm sure you know it.
1) We still don't really understand the effects of DNA on human behavior.
2) Environment is influential, but it's an influence not something that shapes you in stone forever and ever. Plus, there are all sorts of characters from all sorts of environments.
I'm sure there are some exceptions, but I'd say it mostly comes down to a personal decision to nurture willpower.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/1/15/16863374/wi....
Still, it poses tons of questions.
As the article suggests at some point, it could very well be that people who have decided to work harder have found they enjoy the work. So it could really begin with a personal decision and not some lucky random factor as a previous comment suggested.
This doesn't mean that working hard shouldn't be rewarded, it creates value.
That's a pretty bold claim.
Cultural influences, biological influences, prenatal environment, etc.
I will agree that it's probable our conscious part of the brain is less in control that we tend to believe. Still, the rest of the brain is still part of an individual.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ#:~:text=Ear....
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://www.gwern...
So genetics plays a significant part in personality traits and iq. Having high conscientiousness is the trait that correlates with work ethic and drive.
It's definitely not 100% but genes play a big part. Twin studies are cool - even though there's usually something tragic involved with twins separated at birth, it gives you an excellent way of assessing genetic influences on a huge array of factors.
Doesn't work if you think humans are special and above biological definitions though :)
Those factors are not yours to control. Even if you are able to influence some of them, the ability to do so is dependent on factors you do not control.
That all said that still leaves us with our individuality, desire to act and responsibility. And it leaves us with as much control over our ability to act as any other control - you can accept that our actions are rather mechanical results of prior experiences but not reject the fact that they're still our actions.
> And it leaves us with as much control over our ability to act as any other control
No, there is no fundamental ability to control. We have some illusion of control. Don't mistake this for saying that humans can't change, we just have no control over how we change.
Judges that decide over parole won't attribute their decision on the last time they ate, even if it is the single most important factor to their decision.
It will be interesting to observe how society will react to this in the next 50 years when the science will become harder and harder to deny.
This finding doesn't replicate[0]. In the original study, there was a more mundane explanation: "Defendants without representation have their hearings scheduled at the end of sessions, before breaks."
You have much more confidence in the current research than I think is warranted. Genes are indeed a small portion of our DNA, but your statement that "the interesting stuff happens in the other 95%" is unbounded and poorly defined.
Personally, I think we have some control over things, and probably less control than most people perceive themselves as happening. But this research is in its infancy and having trouble with basic replication, so holding a strong opinion is a recipe for making poor decisions off it.
[0] https://www.annieduke.com/no-judges-dont-give-harsher-senten...
My understanding is that a portion of the remaining 95% are responsible for turning genes and whole chains of them on and off or something in between.
There is no place in the physical world where this control could come from.
The factors that influence are hugely complex and very hard to separate. Just because we do not understand how certain factors interact and influence our behavior doesn't mean we have control.
Put a little differently, regardless of what the absolute truth resolves to - it's in my best interest to take the illusion of control.
Poverty and Crime are not moral failings.
Presumably we would make the lives of such people far better if we attribute their missfortune to just bad luck.
Redistributing wealth from people that got lucky is also simpler than if we'd attribute their success to their goodness.
My comment was mostly about my own orientation towards the world. Maybe I do have control, maybe I don't - but I feel better (and hopefully have better outcomes) with the illusion of control/actual control, instead of letting go. OTOH, I also get a lot of stress relief from letting go and not trying to control things during meditation.
Living is hard.
Again - in a way this is something I entirely agree with but not in the important way. We are all automata in a society and society can attempt to fix broken components. Even if all your actions are just a result of past experiences - you yourself are no more meaningful and it's thus appropriate to assign you responsibility for your actions. If your experiences had shaped you differently then you'd probably make different ones - but you are who you are because of how you were shaped - and the you who is shaped in that manner is responsible for the actions you've taken. Hypothetical other yous that had slightly different experiences don't exist and are therefore irrelevant - but you're responsible for what you do.
I don't follow this.
We don't blame people for actions when we think that they don't have control over these actions.
If someone has their first epileptic episode while driving a car and they kill someone because of it, we understand that they had no control and don't hold them responsible for the accident. Why should it be different if the causes are more complex and harder to trace back?
Because if you go that far you deny the whole concept of individuality and humanity even, up on which all of our moral and legal system were built. What are we but cogs in a machine?
It's not that there isn't any logic in it, it's just not an useful thing to contemplate about while you obviously still cling on to your sense of self so far as to having an argument with others.
And, on the otherside, we are a funny animal that takes comfort in the fact that we control our own destinies so, even if we don't - we'd like to empower ourselves as if we were in some manner. At a basic level our misunderstanding might be the fact that the ability to choose equates responsibility - without any responsibility (good and bad) your choices have no power - choosing to not do the shitty thing lets you avoid a penalty and so you can be happy with yourself. This equation of choice and responsibility is why punishment is so necessary (both big-j Justice like cops jail and the like - and little-j justice like being shunned, not getting a raise and failing to find an equal partnership in a relationship) so responsibility exists to add meaning to our lives. In fact denying it to people permanently (i.e. the developmentally disabled) does come with a strong cost to their sense of self - a lot of folks who live in support systems can struggle to define themselves, but, at the same time, neurodiversity means that different folks can find contentness in different ways.
It's all terribly complicated I think.
Except maybe in how we think about justice perhaps. But that's not useful now.
This is a big one.
Income and wealth inequality is another one.
The only reason why someone should have more than someone else is to incentivize to increase the total cake. But you probably can redistribute far more without reducing the total cake too much.
I'm a dev/tech blogger, and I can say, following the right people is half of the success.
Not just because of the things they say, but because they can share your work.
Every time my work was shared by an influencer in the field, I got one or multiple job/project offers and over the years I made a good living out of it.
"being good at tech" only helps in the next step, when you need to proof that you can write better about a tech topic than the average marketeer/content creator.
If you're lucky enough, talent and work ethic matter less. If you're talented enough, maybe you don't need as much luck. Etc. But for the vast majority, there's going to be a combination.
I think that's what people don't truly get. You can work as hard as possible, but you do need a little luck to get that work noticed.
Take responsibility for things that happen to you. Taking responsibility means you can do something about it if it isn't what you want.
Assigning responsibility to others means there's nothing you can do about your situation.
The truth is that probably most successful people can't tell luck, serendipity and hard-work from wisdom. Times change, opportunities change etc. so how much is advice really worth?
The only good advice is an answer to a specific question with very clear boundaries: "How much is a good amount to spend on Facebook advertising?", "If you have a product aimed at the mass market and you can correlate success of click-throughs, spend as much as you want as long as it's less than what you make per-click".
Otherwise you get stuff like, "Facebook is great value for money" or "Facebook is a disaster" both useless pieces of advice.
I also suspect that those with the correct brain for business probably don't need very much advice because they will quickly work things out themselves.