Personal success (Split thread)

[Bird on a Fire]

On average they do.

I see it differently; 1000 coinflips won't skew differently because of the result of 1000 coinflips the day before. Groups of people actually do, because they learn and have a collective memory.

Please be careful not to muddle “giving up” with “don’t stop believing”

I do that because I think they're causally connected. Both in terms of the direct behavioural influence the beliefs can have, and through the effects of policies that might stem from those beliefs.

I think the issue at stake comes down to the relative importance of true decisions versus random coin flips, though the dichotomy is probably not so clear in the real world. We all agree that both types of process are important in determining outcomes.

How can we look at this quantitatively?

[sheldrake]

On average they do.

I see it differently; 1000 coinflips won't skew differently because of the result of 1000 coinflips the day before. Groups of people actually do, because they learn and have a collective memory.

Please be careful not to muddle “giving up” with “don’t stop believing”

I do that because I think they're causally connected. Both in terms of the direct behavioural influence the beliefs can have, and through the effects of policies that might stem from those beliefs.

I think the issue at stake comes down to the relative importance of true decisions versus random coin flips, though the dichotomy is probably not so clear in the real world. We all agree that both types of process are important in determining outcomes.

How can we look at this quantitatively?

The studies on contribution of the psychometric traits vs factors like 'parental socioeconomic class' would be a good start.

But I'd caution that even when 'luck' is the majority of the effect, over time in a society I would expect that the part you can control with cultural ethos has a very powerful effect in the same way that compound interest does. The 'favourable parental socioeconomic circumstances' were created by somebody's decisions too. If you go back far enough you always get to hide-clad cro-magnons digging for worms with a stick.

Well aware that sometimes the distant parental decision was 'come across the channel with William and threaten villagers with a sword until they agreed to pay taxes"

[Woodchopper]

It seems to me that people are arguing the ingredients for success are an interaction between several variables rather than a matter of one variable being more important than another.

For example, a high IQ won’t be very useful without an education, and people need a certain level of intelligence to make use of educational opportunities (eg even if someone has access to a free degree course at university they still have to pass the exams).

A similar point applies to the point about luck and the ability to recognize and exploit good fortune. A common way that someone can be lucky is to find themselves in the right place at the right time. But it often takes skill and education to recognize that.

I think that an interaction between variables is correct. Though to go back a few pages it makes a statement that intelligence on its own only explains X% of success pretty meaningless.

I suggest that in most people the following six variables interact: IQ, personality, home environment, education, neighborhood or community environment, national environment and luck.

Those six variables will all serve to make success more or less easy or difficult. So someone with high IQ but born in Afghanistan and brought up without an education will find it more difficult than someone with a similar IQ who was born in Sweden.

Someone with a high IQ, beneficial personality traits, a loving and stable home, lived in a largely crime free neighborhood, a good education in a prosperous country, and who has been lucky, is very likely to be successful.

[secret squirrel]

A somewhat paradoxical aspect of mega-success is that it often if not usually comes from sub-optimal choices. Essentially, if you make good decisions throughout your life you will, provided you're not unlucky, get a good outcome relative to your peers, but you'll probably lose out to one of the many people who did something stupidly risky and got lucky (who will likely then think of themselves as incredibly smart).

In pseudo-mathematical terminology, an optimal strategy maximizes your expected returns, but if there are enough people following strategies with lower expected but higher maximum returns, one of them will probably get lucky and beat you.

For a toy example, suppose we play a dice game where we roll a single 6-sided dice, and we can bet whether it will show odd, or show 6. Suppose betting odd returns $2 (if correct), and betting 6 returns $5 (if correct). The expected return from betting odd is $1, and the expected return of betting 6 is $5/6, but with enough people in the game the winner will probably be someone making the 'wrong' choice.

[P.J. Denyer]

Apparently - according to the person sitting opposite to me on the train yesterday, even Jeffry Archer had the self-awareness to state that a lot of his bouncing back from bankruptcy was due to his social capital.

I'm a great believer that one of the big dividers in our society (which has got worse in recent years) is the 'freedom to fail' that comes from having resources behind you. We rightly laud entrepreneurs for taking risks, but the consequences of risk taking are different for someone from a background where they have savings to fall back on and connections so that if things fall through they have a fall back than they are for someone who is meeting the rent paycheck to paycheck and has nowhere to live if they don't meet that commitment.

[jimbob]

Definitely.

And also the fact that they have more resources to gamble in the first place reduces the chance of failure due to (say) poor cash flow at the start.

But as you say, if "losing it all" is just some money and you have social capital and friends (maybe even your spouse's houses) the downside is less.

[P.J. Denyer]

Definitely.

And also the fact that they have more resources to gamble in the first place reduces the chance of failure due to (say) poor cash flow at the start.

And are more likely to get second chances if things fail.

[Woodchopper]

Certainly.

Though that also means that it would also be relatively easier for someone living in absolute poverty to take risks, because they have nothing to lose anyway. The most obvious example being people who leave their home country and emigrate to another in order to find better opportunities.

[P.J. Denyer]

Certainly.

Though that also means that it would also be relatively easier for someone living in absolute poverty to take risks, because they have nothing to lose anyway. The most obvious example being people who leave their home country and emigrate to another in order to find better opportunities.

Nobody has absolutely nothing to lose, you need a certain amount of money to emigrate legally, if you try and emigrate illegally you risk anything from having your money taken and being abandoned, to indentured servitude or sex slavery to dying in refrigerated lorry or a sinking boat. And for what? While the immigrant escaping abject poverty who who makes it big is a great feel good story, how many manage that as opposed to, say, ending up cleaning toilets for a pittance in a foreign country?

[Gfamily]

Certainly.

Though that also means that it would also be relatively easier for someone living in absolute poverty to take risks, because they have nothing to lose anyway. The most obvious example being people who leave their home country and emigrate to another in order to find better opportunities.

Many of the ones who reach the borders of Europe/Britain will have paid thousands of dollars to traffickers.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-50185788

Up to £30,000 in the case of some of the trafficked Vietnamese who died in the lorry container last year.

[sheldrake]

I feel like we're drifting a little. We can definitely see many examples of broke but determined immigrants making a success of themselves in the UK and America. We've definitely seen long-term unemployed people who at least on a material level seem to be quite safe (housed, fed) but who are trapped in a cycle of low self-esteem and depression. We definitely see people from gilded, fortunate backgrounds who just give up and party their lives away into oblivion.

Financial success in the UK depends on lots of things which include accumulated success from previous generations, your personal effort, genetic (mis)fortune etc..

My position is that it's possible to damage the ethos of striving for success and thus make society poorer as a whole by trying to create 'equality of opportunity' in the wrong way, but taken to an extreme that's silly; I wouldn't take away free 4-18 education for example.

What are the specific things people want to do to create more equality of opportunity ?

[Woodchopper]

Certainly.

Though that also means that it would also be relatively easier for someone living in absolute poverty to take risks, because they have nothing to lose anyway. The most obvious example being people who leave their home country and emigrate to another in order to find better opportunities.

Many of the ones who reach the borders of Europe/Britain will have paid thousands of dollars to traffickers.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-50185788

Up to £30,000 in the case of some of the trafficked Vietnamese who died in the lorry container last year.

Fair enough, they need enough money to get to the US or UK etc.

Still, there's lots of tales of people who where penniless when they arrived, and went on to be successful.

[Woodchopper]

What are the specific things people want to do to create more equality of opportunity ?

End private education. Its not allowed in lots of countries which get along fine.

Of course that wouldn't end inequality. But it would help. Also the end of private schools could be phased, so as to avoid disruption in the state sector.

In addition, all those parents would now need to care about improving the state system.

[sheldrake]

What are the specific things people want to do to create more equality of opportunity ?

End private education. Its not allowed in lots of countries which get along fine.

Which countries are you thinking of?

Would you also ban private tuition?

Of course that wouldn't end inequality. But it would help. Also the end of private schools could be phased, so as to avoid disruption in the state sector.

In addition, all those parents would now need to care about improving the state system.

Or send their children overseas. Or emigrate. Without a voucher system to apply market pressure to schools or any private alternatives, how would parents apply pressure to schools to improve ?

[bolo]

End private education. Its not allowed in lots of countries which get along fine.

The World Bank has data here on private secondary school enrollment as a percentage of total secondary school enrollment. The only countries shown as zero are Algeria, Belarus, Ireland, Montenegro, and Uzbekistan.

[bolo]

Without a voucher system to apply market pressure to schools or any private alternatives, how would parents apply pressure to schools to improve ?

By voting?

[P.J. Denyer]

What are the specific things people want to do to create more equality of opportunity ?

Ending unpaid internships would be one example.

[dyqik]

Without a voucher system to apply market pressure to schools or any private alternatives, how would parents apply pressure to schools to improve ?

By voting?

Wider options include: with elected schools boards, voting for local politicians, voting for school governors.

Same way as they apply pressure to government to fund education and run schools properly.

[Woodchopper]

End private education. Its not allowed in lots of countries which get along fine.

The World Bank has data here on private secondary school enrollment as a percentage of total secondary school enrollment. The only countries shown as zero are Algeria, Belarus, Ireland, Montenegro, and Uzbekistan.

Interesting, as far as I can tell from some of the individual data points that list includes privately run schools which are though state funded and don’t have selective entrance.

I shall be more precise and suggest ending primary and secondary schools funded by fees paid directly by parents and which have selective entrance (let oversubscribed schools award places via a lottery).

The aim being so that it’s harder for parents to buy their children a better education.

[Woodchopper]

What are the specific things people want to do to create more equality of opportunity ?

End private education. Its not allowed in lots of countries which get along fine.

Which countries are you thinking of?

Would you also ban private tuition?

Of course that wouldn't end inequality. But it would help. Also the end of private schools could be phased, so as to avoid disruption in the state sector.

In addition, all those parents would now need to care about improving the state system.

Or send their children overseas. Or emigrate. Without a voucher system to apply market pressure to schools or any private alternatives, how would parents apply pressure to schools to improve ?

Schools in Finland produce some of the best results in the world, and:

Charging tuition in basic education is prohibited by the Finnish constitution.

https://minedu.fi/en/frequently-asked-questions

Of course it would be impossible to prevent all forms of educational inequality. I don’t see the point of trying to ban private tuition or sending children to school abroad. But ending fee paying selective schools would remove the most important form of inequality.

I’m not opposed to a voucher system as long as all the fees for sending a child are paid by the state.

As mentioned by someone else, parents who want to improve their local school can get involved directly with the school or via local government.

[Allo V Psycho]

What are the specific things people want to do to create more equality of opportunity ?

End private education. Its not allowed in lots of countries which get along fine.

Of course that wouldn't end inequality. But it would help. Also the end of private schools could be phased, so as to avoid disruption in the state sector.

In addition, all those parents would now need to care about improving the state system.

I'd be uncomfortable about 'ending' or 'not allowing', on the basis that absolute bans (alcohol, drugs, gambling, prostitution) on things that people are going to do anyway are harmful. Also, it seems a little, well, illiberal. What works better is 'permitting but regulating'. I think a good start would be 'not encouraging': for instance, tax breaks and charity status for private educational institutions. Since I'm particularly involved with Higher Education, I favour correctives for ill luck, such as access programmes to University (and particularly, medicine, since that is my special area of interest).

The whole point of private education is that parents wish to give their children an unfair advantage. This is entirely natural and understandable. The more that unfair advantage is reduced, the less the incentive to spend money on it.

[sheldrake]

Without a voucher system to apply market pressure to schools or any private alternatives, how would parents apply pressure to schools to improve ?

By voting?

By voting for whom? The only party that would want to do this would be Labour. The Tory manifestos would almost certainly have 'make private education legal again' in them. Labour do not have a good track record in recent years. I have no doubt that a Labour party controlled by momentum would massively increase spending on schools to little beneficial effect.

[sheldrake]

End private education. Its not allowed in lots of countries which get along fine.

The World Bank has data here on private secondary school enrollment as a percentage of total secondary school enrollment. The only countries shown as zero are Algeria, Belarus, Ireland, Montenegro, and Uzbekistan.

Interesting, as far as I can tell from some of the individual data points that list includes privately run schools which are though state funded and don’t have selective entrance.

I shall be more precise and suggest ending primary and secondary schools funded by fees paid directly by parents and which have selective entrance (let oversubscribed schools award places via a lottery).

The aim being so that it’s harder for parents to buy their children a better education.

I think you'd have two unintended effects here

1) You reduce one of the most powerful incentives that parents have to work and be financially succesful

2) You don't actually have a suggestion to improve free education here, you're levelling down rather than levelling up. Equality that's achieved by just knocking the rich down is not healthy or useful equality.

I'm open suggestions to improve state education that may cost extra money. What do you have?

Disclosure: My daughter attends a private school. There is no tradition of this in my family and I would've been perfectly happy for her to go to the same kind of state school I went to.

5 years ago we moved to a new town and the state school she was admitted to locally wasn't good enough. It was relatively safe and friendly but she described most of the classes were spent with the kids just shouting across the room and chatting with each other whilst the teachers frantically attempted to get people to stop sitting on the desks and quieten down. The french teacher was a supply teacher who didn't speak french and just put on videos about 'life in other countries' for them to watch. I took her out after a couple of months. Just banning private school would not in any way automatically improve that school. You need proposals to level up, not level down.

Let's say you put my taxes up £500 per month. If you fix state education then you've actually saved me money because even relatively obscure private day school costs more than three times that. Tell me what you're going to spend the money on. I'm listening.

[sheldrake]

I found this on Finnish education

https://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/1 ... -debunked/

8) There are no private schools in Finland.
A Little of Both. Finland has common legislation for both private (state subsidized) and public (city or state owned) schools. Last year there were 85 private schools in Finland serving approximately 3% of the whole student population.

There is a lot more here that talks about the equitable and very unbureaucratic sounding nature of Finnish education, including better conditions for teachers that make it a more attractive profession for people who could earn more elsewhere. I'm open to ideas here.

[Woodchopper]

I found this on Finnish education

https://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/1 ... -debunked/

8) There are no private schools in Finland.
A Little of Both. Finland has common legislation for both private (state subsidized) and public (city or state owned) schools. Last year there were 85 private schools in Finland serving approximately 3% of the whole student population.

There is a lot more here that talks about the equitable and very unbureaucratic sounding nature of Finnish education, including better conditions for teachers that make it a more attractive profession for people who could earn more elsewhere. I'm open to ideas here.

Yes, as mentioned above, there are some privately run but wholly state funded schools in Finland. You can find out more here.

Privately run schools that also charge fees are not accredited.