whilst he makes some good points i can’t help thinking that he’s a bit of a d bag.
the whole ‘we’re more productive in the morning’ thing strikes as someone who has become successful doing something 1 way and assuming that that is the only way it can be done.
He probably sits at home grumbling about how the facebook ruined the world.
Yep, agree to both of these. Although very early in my career, I have done well so far and ahead of many (most?) people my age. I was lucky to be born into a relatively well off family and had parents who financed all of my education and gave me access to anything I needed. They gave me a great place to start my life and career and I capitalised on that through hard work and a few strokes of lucky timing and opportunities.
I agree with everything you said except for the last part. Being flexible and able to roll with the punches that life inevitably doles out does not mean you have to give up your integrity. Indeed it was my integrity that got me through the toughest times of my life, Id rather be broke or dead then give it up.
Honestly I would say my success is 30% attributable to hard work 10% attributable to the help other people gave me and 60% attributable to pure dumb luck.
I work alot harder then most people, but there was so much chance involved in simply me having the opportunity and ability to work much less all the other opportunities I have been afforded. I think I would have to be completely clueless to claim that I am 100% accountable for my own success.
Thats a delusional fallacy. Over half of the worlds population, simply due to the geography of their birth, grind out every fuckin day and still live an uncomfortable, short and often brutal lives.
Put simply we live in an unjust world.
success = luck 35% + opportunity40% + hard work 25%
Good point. The undermining of integrity in contemporary economies is a separate process and I probably shouldn’t have conflated those two points so lazily.
I just suspect that kids are picking up on the fact that it’s harder and harder to get ahead or even stay afloat without doing things that compromise integrity. The hollowing out of the middle class in the US (the dynamic may be different in europe and emerging markets).
The other issue is that the timing of luck matters a lot. In games (both real and simulated) where future success is determined or influenced by past successes, bad luck early in the game compounds over time. You see this in things like long-term earnings of people who graduate during recessions versus booms, which music becomes a hit versus a failure, etc…
This is a great post. It’s rare that people can actually admit this about themselves. I am in the same camp. I work harder than most people I know but I also had a huge amount of luck.
Good or bad luck can influence events in the short run, but over time the shape of the curve is determined by ability and effort. However, if you don’t even get on the curve due to a really bad start or unfortunate circumstances, you won’t even have a chance to to work hard and show ability.
^Respect
But talent and effort are also ultimately based on luck. If you are intelligent, that’s because you were lucky enough to be born with genes that make you smart. If you are hardworking, that’s because you are the beneficiary of parental influence, other environmental factors, or maybe even favorable genetic traits. Why do Asian kids work harder at school? There is nothing necessarily wrong with exploiting your ability for personal gain, and indeed, most people do this. However, even the view that “talent and effort are required to take advantage of luck” breaks down with further decomposition.
Behaviorism
“The primary tenet of behaviorism, as expressed in the writings of John B. Watson, B. F. Skinner, and others, is that psychology should concern itself with the observable behavior of people and animals, not with unobservable events that take place in their minds.[2] The behaviorist school of thought maintains that behaviors as such can be described scientifically without recourse either to internal physiological events or to hypothetical constructs such as thoughts and beliefs.[3]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism
So, if you break things down that way, then there is no such thing as real choice. Everything a person does is the product of their starting state and environment. Do we live in the Matrix? In this type of view, it kind of doesn’t matter. Also, in this type of view nothing is really anyone’s fault. Things just happen.
I really enjoyed the article, thanks for sharing!
I agree with almost everything but i also have to defend the 20 year-olds, because i find similar criticism can be said for young people 20 years ago, every generation likes to exaggerate how naive and irresponsible they are but eventually they grow up to be okay.
I think sometimes people do not realize the world is changing a lot more rapidly than 30 years ago - the period of our parents when they were growing up. Back then, if you acquire an education or a skill in something, you can make a career and you can work for decades without acquiring new skills. but these days, there are so many new technology and new gadgets and new processes to keep up with. A normal office worker is probably doing a job that covers 5 workers back 20 years ago.
We are at an age where speed is everything, if you read a book, you miss out on headlines, and you miss out on absorbing other information on the other side of the world. so it’s always a struggle to stay “on top of things” i feel.