[mlthoughts2018]

> but as I've gotten older I've notice that long term success is less correlated with raw intelligence and more with disposition: charisma, grit, and emotional intelligence.

Actually I think long term success is mostly about luck and starting privilege, especially when you use a globally relevant scale of success.

Charisma, grit, emotional intelligence, work ethic, perseverance, positive attitude, etc. ... these are mostly just feel-good concepts we emphasize so we can try to retrospectively claim that our success “is earned” and we “deserve” it and it’s due to our volition and agency.

But really, many lazy, ignorant, myopic, prejudiced and negative trolls are super successful. And many tough, persistent, high-character, talented people are poor & suffering. The difference is mostly luck.

[52-6F-62]

I think you're both right. I think your mention of luck and starting privilege plays a much larger role than we'd all like to believe or admit, though.

For (a crude) example, if we all drew the same conclusion that being wealthy and [say] a technologist living in a $10M condo in NYC with spending money and travel time was the ideal life style— many of use were born closer to that, even those born poor here, than say a peasant from the outskirts in Darfur.

That's one hell of a handicap.

Being intelligent, emotionally intelligent, charismatic, and tough will get you farther than if you weren't any of those traits personified. But on your way going about your business you're probably much more likely to be robbed of your acquired wealth and your life in some dangerous parts of those outskirts and so you just need that much more luck.

[xupybd]

Luck plays a huge role. But it’s something you can do nothing about. However you can work on your character. Competing against everyone else will oftern result in you finding someone else that’s done better. This is of no use. Compete against your self. Be better than you were. Then it doesn’t matter how lucky or privileged the next guy is.

[mlthoughts2018]

Sure, but the discussion seems to be more about how to attribute success outcomes to various factors that might have predicted it.

Another way to say it might be that if you want to do a regression of some success metric on a bunch of factors, such as positive attitude or charisma or whether your first name is “John” or what country you were born in, the R-squared of such a model is likely crap — most of the outcome is random even after controlling for volitional factors we think should matter (another way to say this: it’s mostly luck), and factors with large, significant effect sizes might have no volitional aspect (e.g. was born in America).

This is not normative. It says nothing about what you should do. Rather it’s descriptive. What factors correlate with success, and does their correlation result in a meaningful explanation of the variation of outcomes we see?

[xupybd]

Very true, sorry I was a bit caught up on the original articles focus on valuing certain attributes.

[lrajlich]

Of course luck and any inherited privilege matter a ton when considering all factors.

I'm thinking of trajectory, some people keep on advancing in their careers, others get stuck or spin their wheels. Over time this difference adds up, though, as you say, it is not completely fair to the those who never got a shot in the first place because of circumstances.

re: "tough, persistent, high-character, talented people are poor & suffering"

This is covered in the article about how the educational system is failing the poor and points it back to an overemphasis on cognitive ability / IQ smarts.

ex: "Even if we refuse to prevent poverty or provide superb early education, we might consider one other means of addressing the average person’s plight. Some of the money pouring into educational reform might be diverted to creating more top-notch vocational-education programs"

[sheepmullet]

> Actually I think long term success is mostly about luck and starting privilege

From the perspective of a culture/society? No way.

For example you have no choice that you grew up in a single parent household - but society and culture have a huge influence over how likely/often that happens.

Etc etc etc.

[mlthoughts2018]

Your comment seems to prove my point: a society or culture has a huge influence on e.g. whether you are disqualified from certain education opportunities because of your gender, or whether you experience debilitating anxiety or stress growing up because of the laws your country mandates regarding sexual orientation.

If you are lucky and grow up without those factors, you might realize more of your education potential, and then have a greater labor product output, and then gain more income from better-paying employers, all because of that early luck regarding what country you were born in.

So the characteristic of interest, which country you were born in, plays a dominant role in success metrics of your life outcome, and this characteristic is not something under the control of the individual (as you point out, you have no choice about where you grew up).

So it seems your example proves the point: characteristics we attribute to the volition of an individual (things like charisma, hard work, positive attitude, persistence, etc.) -- these are not nearly as important as factors with no volitional component (your gender, your country of origin, the wealth of your parents, your genetics in terms of height, athletic prowess, attractiveness, and so forth).

So in the end, success is determined by the random assignment of characteristics we don't control for ourselves -- a phenomenon known as "luck."