[DecayingOrganic]

"The largely dominant meritocratic paradigm of highly competitive Western cultures is rooted on the belief that success is due mainly, if not exclusively, to personal qualities such as talent, intelligence, skills, smartness, efforts, willfulness, hard work or risk taking. Sometimes, we are willing to admit that a certain degree of luck could also play a role in achieving significant material success.

But, as a matter of fact, it is rather common to underestimate the importance of external forces in individual successful stories. It is very well known that intelligence (or, more in general, talent and personal qualities) exhibits a Gaussian distribution among the population, whereas the distribution of wealth - often considered a proxy of success - follows typically a power law (Pareto law), with a large majority of poor people and a very small number of billionaires. Such a discrepancy between a Normal distribution of inputs, with a typical scale (the average talent or intelligence), and the scale invariant distribution of outputs, suggests that some hidden ingredient is at work behind the scenes."

I would highly recommend people here to take a look at: https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068

[Const-me]

> Such a discrepancy between a Normal distribution of inputs, with a typical scale (the average talent or intelligence), and the scale invariant distribution of outputs, suggests

Read this: http://www.physics.umd.edu/~yakovenk/papers/EPJB-17-723-2000...

The authors started with even distribution of money, and random transactions with uniform probability, yet they arrived to very uneven distribution of outcomes.

[dbingham]

This makes perfect sense given the multiplier affects built into the Capitalist system. The more money you have, the more easily you can grow that money. The moment an imbalance forms it would naturally continue to grow.

The fact that Capitalism will amplify and exacerbate any imbalance that forms, does not preclude the possibility that there are structural factors that help form those initial imbalances in Capitalism. Factors like differences in family wealth, access to education, access to connections with loan or startup capital, access to political connections, and so forth.

[Const-me]

Have you read the article? It's written by physicists not capitalist. It discusses how 100% fair random transactions result in very uneven outcomes. Not unlike Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, which is also very uneven: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%E2%80%93Boltzmann_dist...

[nathan_long]

I get a 403 on that link. Have a copy?

[Const-me]

https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0001432

[data_spy]

I understand what you are saying to a degree, however I've had more success than many colleagues due to me spending time every day to improve myself (usually technically). What you are saying is like saying some people are thin due to genetics, which can be true, but also many people are thin because they workout.

[jleask]

Just as anecdotally, I know many people who have put that work and it has made no difference, or they've been made redundant etc. Equally I know drifters who happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Hard work buys you more tickets in the game of life, but luck is always there to some degree. How much is luck, who knows :)

[yayana]

I've seen more of the paradox effect than hardwork paying off.

For example, when a large company collapses, being the very worst can be an asset to get out and into new companies earlier and through less critical processes (that then end up overly critical of the people trusted to shut off the lights).

[haihaibye]

>> I've had more success than many colleagues due to me spending time every day to improve myself

Conscientiousness is ~44% heritable.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8776880

[a008t]

Are you saying that each individual person cannot decide to and then become more conscientious?

[barrow-rider]

56% -- the majority of conscientiousness, it seems -- is not heritable. They can decide to, and be, but it sounds like a decent chunk of that is due to genetic predisposition.

Genetically I'm not much of a runner compared to my brother, but I work hard at it 3-4 times a week. But if he got around to hitting a treadmill as much as I do I'm sure he'd outperform me.

[mikeash]

The importance of luck and circumstance to success is difficult to discuss because successful people who worked hard often get offended at the idea that there might be more to it than that.

You can do things to skew the distribution, but hard work is far from a guarantee of success, and likewise laziness is no guarantee of failure.

[Rainymood]

>I understand what you are saying to a degree, however I've had more success than many colleagues due to me spending time every day to improve myself (usually technically). What you are saying is like saying some people are thin due to genetics, which can be true, but also many people are thin because they workout.

Then there always is the argument that you have access to a gym and markets with healthy food. You can always under/over exaggerate personal responsibilities.

Just like Brett Kavanaugh worked his ass off to get in Yale, which he probably did, is this negated by his family's connections? Difficult.

[maxerickson]

The outliers are 10000x more successful than quite successful people...

[113]

What you're saying is anecdotal.

[coldtea]

Yes, so? We're not automatons that only speak with citations and meta-studies, nor it is prudent to do so.

Empirical personal observation will always be very important.

[113]

It is prudent to make decisions based on evidence though. Not just something you think might have happened to you.

[coldtea]

Well, when you're not supposed to be doing a universal study, what happened to you is your first line of evidence.

If all scientific evidence says oranges are harmless, and you eat one and have to puke, then you'll avoid it, and rightly so, based on your empirical observation of 1.

[113]

You would avoid that orange, but you wouldn't say to someone "don't eat oranges, I had one once and it was bad", which is what you are doing.

You can't always do a large study, but when you're presented with one it doesn't help do give anecdotes in response.

[uratool]

1. how do you know you are not a screaming asshole that other people tolerate, with your inflated sense of self worth about your technical ability being your motivator for demanding more - so you call it success.

Have you overcome any longstanding relationship issues with anyone in your life? have you supported someone through a mental breakdown?

The very fact that you measure your success "over" your colleagues to me highlights that at no point have you been working towards making a better world.. I mean its cool that you are an aspie and all but ts actually of not much use to the humanity.

[dang]

We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the site guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(Also, it's not ok to have a trollish username on HN, since that basically trolls every thread the account posts to.)

[golergka]

If anyone is coming off as an asshole in this thread, it's not him. Some people don't like competition and would like to make a better world for everyone. Some people like are more competitive and like to win over others. It's OK to be either.

[uratool]

I don't think that the second one is okay.. I think it is not only harmful to the whole of humanity its also a vacuous existence where your self worth is based on a others without ever actually respecting them.

I know my comment is shitty, but i get depressed that i work in an industry that has its head so far up its own arse that the people who work in it forget that it only has value in helping people do things.

If you are not helping people do things (e.g. you are not making a tool you are trying to sell some pish or something) then you are not a benefit to humanity. and if it was not for the other peopl ebeing off doing things themselves anyway then everything you do would be of no use.

All technical skill is inherently an order of magnitude less valuable as it is a second order skill - this is something that most people in IT really dont want to accept and they cause a lot of hate and pain in the mean time trying to convince everyone else they are right - normally through bully, intimidation and the general lack of empathy that goes hand in hand with all of this.

[golemotron]

> Such a discrepancy between a Normal distribution of inputs, with a typical scale (the average talent or intelligence), and the scale invariant distribution of outputs, suggests that some hidden ingredient is at work behind the scenes."

There's no mystery here. It's the accumulation of value by the top end outliers and recognition of the value they provide by others. Preferential attachment produces a power law.

[throwaway5250]

This demonstrates that the outcome isn't entirely a linear function of the inputs. But it doesn't show that the inputs mentioned aren't monotonic and a complete explanation of the outputs.

It may very well be that "luck" matters a lot. (And I'd argue that at a metaphysical level all of those traits are due to luck.) But that argument simply doesn't prove the result.