The meritocratic part is the best are significantly more likely to rise to the top, real world is best thought of as a stochastic place, full of imperfect information and surprises. Being the best at content creation is not the same as being the best at YouTube: size of one’s target demographic matters, the ability to self-promote matters, ability to network matters, ad-friendliness of content matters… Akin to evolution, the system does not select the *best* creators in the conventional sense of creating the best videos, being the best at writing and so on. In fact, one might argue for the opposite being the default. The selection criteria are messy, the variance in outcomes is significant, the variance in perceived selection criteria even more so. My takeaway is that one should be lucky and avoid being unlucky, while trying to stack the deck as much as one can in order to manipulate variance.
The meritocratic part is the best are significantly more likely to rise to the top, real world is best thought of as a stochastic place, full of imperfect information and surprises.
The meritocratic part is the best are significantly more likely to rise to the top, real world is best thought of as a stochastic place, full of imperfect information and surprises.
Being the best at content creation is not the same as being the best at YouTube: size of one’s target demographic matters, the ability to self-promote matters, ability to network matters, ad-friendliness of content matters… Akin to evolution, the system does not select the *best* creators in the conventional sense of creating the best videos, being the best at writing and so on. In fact, one might argue for the opposite being the default.
The selection criteria are messy, the variance in outcomes is significant, the variance in perceived selection criteria even more so.
My takeaway is that one should be lucky and avoid being unlucky, while trying to stack the deck as much as one can in order to manipulate variance.
That makes sense, I agree.