Excellent point about the compounding, which is often multiplicative, not additive. Incidentally, multiplicative advantages result in a power law distribution of income/net worth, whereas additive advantages/disadvantages result in a normal distribution. But that is a separate topic, well explored in the literature.
Absolutely. For a quick model of why you get multiplicative results:
Intelligence—raw intellectual horsepower—might be considered a force-multiplier, whereby you produce more intellectual work per hour spent working.
Motivation (combined with say, health) determines how much time you spend working. We could quantify it as hours per week.
Taste determines the quality of the project you choose to work on. We might quantify it as “the expected value, per unit of intellectual work, of the project”.
Then you literally multiply those three quantities together and it’s the expected value per week of your intellectual work. My mentor says that these are the three most important traits that determine the best scientists.
Excellent point about the compounding, which is often multiplicative, not additive. Incidentally, multiplicative advantages result in a power law distribution of income/net worth, whereas additive advantages/disadvantages result in a normal distribution. But that is a separate topic, well explored in the literature.
Absolutely. For a quick model of why you get multiplicative results:
Intelligence—raw intellectual horsepower—might be considered a force-multiplier, whereby you produce more intellectual work per hour spent working.
Motivation (combined with say, health) determines how much time you spend working. We could quantify it as hours per week.
Taste determines the quality of the project you choose to work on. We might quantify it as “the expected value, per unit of intellectual work, of the project”.
Then you literally multiply those three quantities together and it’s the expected value per week of your intellectual work. My mentor says that these are the three most important traits that determine the best scientists.
That makes sense! Maybe you feel like writing a post on the topic? Potentially including a numerical or analytical model.