By “success” I meant successfully doing useful research/getting money to charity/spreading rationality. Which I think is closer to “value creation” or “positive externalities” than what you seem to be calling “success,” namely personal welfare.
Actually, I didn’t mean only personal welfare. What I wrote certainly applies to career success that brings money and power, but also to all other kinds of accomplishments that are commonly seen as worthy and admirable.
In fact, often it’s even more difficult to judge the latter accurately. People are used to arguing whether someone who profits from success has deserved it, and they’re normally willing to listen to someone who argues either way in some particular case. However, when it comes to accomplishments that are seen as selfless idealism, it’s much more difficult to criticize those without being perceived as weird or malicious. This despite the fact that these can be about signaling games, rent-seeking, and unaccounted externalities just as much as any for-profit endeavor, no matter how admirable and high-status they are commonly perceived.
Actually, I didn’t mean only personal welfare. What I wrote certainly applies to career success that brings money and power, but also to all other kinds of accomplishments that are commonly seen as worthy and admirable.
In fact, often it’s even more difficult to judge the latter accurately. People are used to arguing whether someone who profits from success has deserved it, and they’re normally willing to listen to someone who argues either way in some particular case. However, when it comes to accomplishments that are seen as selfless idealism, it’s much more difficult to criticize those without being perceived as weird or malicious. This despite the fact that these can be about signaling games, rent-seeking, and unaccounted externalities just as much as any for-profit endeavor, no matter how admirable and high-status they are commonly perceived.