The counterexample is the many people who have succeeded through luck
That’s not an example, it’s a claim with no evidence to support it. Give me an example of a person who has succeeded with only luck. There are about seven billion candidates so it shouldn’t be hard to select one.
Everybody gets lucky sometimes, but they might not get lucky on the really important things
What is really important is subjective.
If you’re born to a poor family in Africa, the law of large numbers is not going to make up for this setback.
Time will tell. African people often have different values than non-African people. Their value of success probably isn’t the same as your’s.
Given what I know if Ayn Rand
It seems like what you know about Ayn Rand comes from textbook propaganda. Nothing you’ve said has convinced me you’ve read thousands of pages of what she wrote.
I’m inclined to think that the quote is suggesting that successful people deserve to be successful, so you shouldn’t take their money and give it to unsuccessful people.
This isn’t an unreasonable assumption. But it’s incorrect. Money is just one factor in success. Ayn Rand realized that, which is why her books are still read today and why most authors of her day (all of whom are now dead) don’t have books which sell in large numbers.
That’s not an example, it’s a claim with no evidence to support it. Give me an example of a person who has succeeded with only luck. There are about seven billion candidates so it shouldn’t be hard to select one.
James Harrison is the first example that leaps to my mind. His blood plasma contains a unique antibody which can be used to treat Rhesus disease, which seems like a near-perfect example of pure luck: neither he nor his parents nor anyone earned those antibodies in any useful sense of the word. He just coincidentally discovered that he had them. His lifetime blood donations are estimated to have treated two million children.
Now, James Harrison surely gets some credit for his. He has, after all, donated blood a thousand times, which is far better than most of us. And he made a pledge to start donating blood before he learned about his antibodies!
But a thousand blood donations, if you don’t happen to have unique biology, will be multiple orders of magnitude less effective at helping people than James Harrison was, for the same effort. To find people as successful in their goal of helping others as James Harrison, you have to look far beyond “people who donate blood regularly”. Perhaps Bill Gates, having become one of the richest men alive and then dedicating his life to charity, can claim to have accomplished more?
When blind luck can put some random guy in the same league as the world’s top altruist, it seems unreasonable to claim that literally nobody succeeds primarily through luck or by accident.
What is really important is subjective.
So?
Whatever you subjectively consider really important, you can get unlucky on those things. Also, some things like “not starving to death” or “not constantly being in pain” are subjectively important to basically everyone, and some get unlucky on these too.
I hadn’t heard of James Harrison before. I would consider him successful, of course that doesn’t mean that he considers himself successful or that you consider him successful.
I wouldn’t view donating blood as inherently good either. There have been times when people were given money to donate blood, but then AIDS came about...
When blind luck can put some random guy in the same league as the world’s top altruist
Ahh… you think the world’s top altruist is successful… That’s what we disagree about. I think the world’s top altruist is the person who desires the image of success the most.
FWIW the definition of Altruism I am using is NOT the same as the EA people… they’ve culturally appropriated that term and made it mean something very different from what Ayn Rand meant when she used it.
I think the world’s top altruist is the person who desires the image of success the most.
Who cares? You just spent half this thread claiming that success is subjective. Bill Gates and James Harrison are going by their own ideas of altruistic success, not yours.
(For what it’s worth, I personally do consider James Harrison successful at helping people. It explicitly was his goal, he made a pledge and everything.)
You just spent half this thread claiming that success is subjective
Really? I’m pretty sure I didn’t. Success is hard to define, but that doesn’t mean it’s subjective.
Bill Gates and James Harrison are going by their own ideas of altruistic success, not yours.
Oh really? Can you read their minds? I’ve read about Bill Gates motivations and I didn’t see the word altruism once. It’s all good and well to claim Bill Gates is part of your movement but for all you know he’s never heard of it.
Why don’t you call Jesus an altruist? Or some other religious figure?
Please tell us more about your inside information on the psychology of Bill and Melinda Gates
I have none. Just an opinion that given my posts downvote counts suggests that I shouldn’t share.
Ayn Rand did not invent the term “altruism”?
Neither did the Effective Altruism people. But Ayn Rand’s books have sold a lot and are read by influential people, so I’ll use her definition until I have a reason not to.
Give me an example of a person who has succeeded with only luck.
The annual US GDP per capita is $55,036. For Somalia, it’s $145. I cannot give you a specific example of someone who succeeded by luck, but I can assure you that successful people are not born in the US by chance.
African people often have different values than non-African people.
As of 2005, there were 2.6 billion people who lived on the equivalent of under $2 per day [source]. What possible values could they have where that could be considered success?
The annual US GDP per capita is $55,036. For Somalia, it’s $145
This is availability bias. There are clearly other factors differentiating Somalia and the US. If there weren’t, there would be massive starvation in Somalia because you can’t get by on $145 a year in the US.
I can assure you that successful people are not born in the US by chance.
Really? Do you think successful people don’t have children? And that they don’t try to make these children US citizens by ‘immigrating’ (often illegally) to the USA? I can assure you this happens frequently.
As of 2005, there were 2.6 billion people who lived on the equivalent of under $2 per day
Yes, but most of those people live in areas where $2 goes a long way.
What possible values could they have where that could be considered success?
That’s up for them to define, not for you to define. Why should they care about your standards? Let them say they are successful if they believe they are successful. You lose nothing but your ego by acknowledging somebody else’s success.
Yes, but most of those people live in areas where $2 goes a long way.
The GDP statistics I cited were nominal. The $2 a day thing was not. They don’t make $2 a day. The make enough to go as far as $2 would in the US.
Really? Do you think successful people don’t have children? And that they don’t try to make these children US citizens by ‘immigrating’ (often illegally) to the USA? I can assure you this happens frequently.
Only 13% of the US population is immigrants. 20% of the world’s immigrant population is in the US, so it works out to about two million immigrants. Less than a thirtieth of a percent of the world population. I does not explain the discrepancy of income.
That’s up for them to define, not for you to define.
It’s not up for you to define either. It seems highly unlikely that living on a fifteenth of what the US would call poor is successful. There are certainly people who value living on next to nothing, but I don’t think there are billions of them. It would take powerful evidence to show that they consider themselves more successful than a US citizen. How much evidence do you have of this?
The GDP statistics I cited were nominal. The $2 a day thing was not. They don’t make $2 a day. The make enough to go as far as $2 would in the US.
Well, there is a caveat there. The PPP estimates that drive statistics like that are based on the prices corresponding to a basket of consumer goods, but don’t (in fact can’t) preserve the ratio of prices within that basket. That’s not a big deal if you can make some assumptions about distribution, or if everyone you’re dealing with has roughly the same lifestyle, but in areas like Somalia I’d expect local distribution costs to make things like, say, razor blades a lot more expensive relative to locally produced goods like, say, sorghum flour. And that does have subsistence implications.
This argument has gone far away from the original quote. I’m not going to argue about the details. If you want to try to disprove your ability to become successful by using your intelligence, go ahead.
It’s very difficult to make economic comparisons between countries while simultaneously acknowledging all of the cultural differences between countries. You can do it, but the results aren’t necessarily meaningful.
There are clearly other factors differentiating Somalia and the US. If there weren’t, there would be massive starvation in Somalia because you can’t get by on $145 a year in the US.
There’s a couple of things going on there. One is that Somalia is in fact a very malnourished country. Another is that the GDP figures DanielLC cites are nominal, not based on purchasing power parity, and therefore can be skewed by exchange rates. The currencies of poor third-world nations tend to be very weak, so going by nominal GDP will end up making them look even poorer than they actually are.
PPP estimates for Somalia seem uncommon for some reason, but the CIA estimated a per-capita annual value of around $600 USD in 2010.
This is availability bias. There are clearly other factors differentiating Somalia and the US. If there weren’t, there would be massive starvation in Somalia because you can’t get by on $145 a year in the US.
There is, in fact, massive starvation in Somalia, price differences notwithstanding. The first sentence of the first link from a Google search for “malnutrition statistics somalia” says that “Somalia has some of the highest malnutrition rates in the world”.
Malnutrition and Starvation are different things. It’s much better to be malnourished than to starve. And it’s much harder to feed people the optimal food than to just feed them some food...
But you’re missing the point. There are successful people in Somalia, if you manage to not be malnourished in Somalia then you are successful (unless you value eating bad food for religious reasons...).
That’s not an example, it’s a claim with no evidence to support it. Give me an example of a person who has succeeded with only luck. There are about seven billion candidates so it shouldn’t be hard to select one.
What is really important is subjective.
Time will tell. African people often have different values than non-African people. Their value of success probably isn’t the same as your’s.
It seems like what you know about Ayn Rand comes from textbook propaganda. Nothing you’ve said has convinced me you’ve read thousands of pages of what she wrote.
This isn’t an unreasonable assumption. But it’s incorrect. Money is just one factor in success. Ayn Rand realized that, which is why her books are still read today and why most authors of her day (all of whom are now dead) don’t have books which sell in large numbers.
James Harrison is the first example that leaps to my mind. His blood plasma contains a unique antibody which can be used to treat Rhesus disease, which seems like a near-perfect example of pure luck: neither he nor his parents nor anyone earned those antibodies in any useful sense of the word. He just coincidentally discovered that he had them. His lifetime blood donations are estimated to have treated two million children.
Now, James Harrison surely gets some credit for his. He has, after all, donated blood a thousand times, which is far better than most of us. And he made a pledge to start donating blood before he learned about his antibodies!
But a thousand blood donations, if you don’t happen to have unique biology, will be multiple orders of magnitude less effective at helping people than James Harrison was, for the same effort. To find people as successful in their goal of helping others as James Harrison, you have to look far beyond “people who donate blood regularly”. Perhaps Bill Gates, having become one of the richest men alive and then dedicating his life to charity, can claim to have accomplished more?
When blind luck can put some random guy in the same league as the world’s top altruist, it seems unreasonable to claim that literally nobody succeeds primarily through luck or by accident.
So? Whatever you subjectively consider really important, you can get unlucky on those things. Also, some things like “not starving to death” or “not constantly being in pain” are subjectively important to basically everyone, and some get unlucky on these too.
I hadn’t heard of James Harrison before. I would consider him successful, of course that doesn’t mean that he considers himself successful or that you consider him successful.
I wouldn’t view donating blood as inherently good either. There have been times when people were given money to donate blood, but then AIDS came about...
Ahh… you think the world’s top altruist is successful… That’s what we disagree about. I think the world’s top altruist is the person who desires the image of success the most.
FWIW the definition of Altruism I am using is NOT the same as the EA people… they’ve culturally appropriated that term and made it mean something very different from what Ayn Rand meant when she used it.
Who cares? You just spent half this thread claiming that success is subjective. Bill Gates and James Harrison are going by their own ideas of altruistic success, not yours.
(For what it’s worth, I personally do consider James Harrison successful at helping people. It explicitly was his goal, he made a pledge and everything.)
Really? I’m pretty sure I didn’t. Success is hard to define, but that doesn’t mean it’s subjective.
Oh really? Can you read their minds? I’ve read about Bill Gates motivations and I didn’t see the word altruism once. It’s all good and well to claim Bill Gates is part of your movement but for all you know he’s never heard of it.
Why don’t you call Jesus an altruist? Or some other religious figure?
Please tell us more about your inside information on the psychology of Bill and Melinda Gates.
You do understand, don’t you, that Ayn Rand did not invent the term “altruism”?
I have none. Just an opinion that given my posts downvote counts suggests that I shouldn’t share.
Neither did the Effective Altruism people. But Ayn Rand’s books have sold a lot and are read by influential people, so I’ll use her definition until I have a reason not to.
The annual US GDP per capita is $55,036. For Somalia, it’s $145. I cannot give you a specific example of someone who succeeded by luck, but I can assure you that successful people are not born in the US by chance.
As of 2005, there were 2.6 billion people who lived on the equivalent of under $2 per day [source]. What possible values could they have where that could be considered success?
This is availability bias. There are clearly other factors differentiating Somalia and the US. If there weren’t, there would be massive starvation in Somalia because you can’t get by on $145 a year in the US.
Really? Do you think successful people don’t have children? And that they don’t try to make these children US citizens by ‘immigrating’ (often illegally) to the USA? I can assure you this happens frequently.
Yes, but most of those people live in areas where $2 goes a long way.
That’s up for them to define, not for you to define. Why should they care about your standards? Let them say they are successful if they believe they are successful. You lose nothing but your ego by acknowledging somebody else’s success.
The GDP statistics I cited were nominal. The $2 a day thing was not. They don’t make $2 a day. The make enough to go as far as $2 would in the US.
Only 13% of the US population is immigrants. 20% of the world’s immigrant population is in the US, so it works out to about two million immigrants. Less than a thirtieth of a percent of the world population. I does not explain the discrepancy of income.
It’s not up for you to define either. It seems highly unlikely that living on a fifteenth of what the US would call poor is successful. There are certainly people who value living on next to nothing, but I don’t think there are billions of them. It would take powerful evidence to show that they consider themselves more successful than a US citizen. How much evidence do you have of this?
Well, there is a caveat there. The PPP estimates that drive statistics like that are based on the prices corresponding to a basket of consumer goods, but don’t (in fact can’t) preserve the ratio of prices within that basket. That’s not a big deal if you can make some assumptions about distribution, or if everyone you’re dealing with has roughly the same lifestyle, but in areas like Somalia I’d expect local distribution costs to make things like, say, razor blades a lot more expensive relative to locally produced goods like, say, sorghum flour. And that does have subsistence implications.
Somalia’s still a really poor country, though.
This argument has gone far away from the original quote. I’m not going to argue about the details. If you want to try to disprove your ability to become successful by using your intelligence, go ahead.
It’s very difficult to make economic comparisons between countries while simultaneously acknowledging all of the cultural differences between countries. You can do it, but the results aren’t necessarily meaningful.
There’s a couple of things going on there. One is that Somalia is in fact a very malnourished country. Another is that the GDP figures DanielLC cites are nominal, not based on purchasing power parity, and therefore can be skewed by exchange rates. The currencies of poor third-world nations tend to be very weak, so going by nominal GDP will end up making them look even poorer than they actually are.
PPP estimates for Somalia seem uncommon for some reason, but the CIA estimated a per-capita annual value of around $600 USD in 2010.
Thanks for the information. My point is that money is a poor predictor of happiness and success.
There is, in fact, massive starvation in Somalia, price differences notwithstanding. The first sentence of the first link from a Google search for “malnutrition statistics somalia” says that “Somalia has some of the highest malnutrition rates in the world”.
Malnutrition and Starvation are different things. It’s much better to be malnourished than to starve. And it’s much harder to feed people the optimal food than to just feed them some food...
But you’re missing the point. There are successful people in Somalia, if you manage to not be malnourished in Somalia then you are successful (unless you value eating bad food for religious reasons...).
Asking broad rhetorical questions is risky :-) There are, of course, many valid answers to yours. Consider e.g. religious asceticism.
Some people would value that, but I don’t think billions would.