I don't know! But I don't think that changes the argument very much. Unless one thinks that we can choose to be smart or a fast learner or have interests that happen to be lucrative, we should be very thoughtful about how we choose to reward people who are successful. This isn't a new or original idea, it's an old debate.
There is an implied collectivism in your statements. The idea that "we choose to reward people who are successful" implies there is a collective with the legitimate authority to make such determinations. I reject this idea. Instead I propose that legitimate authority only exists to create a liberal ecosystem, not to meddle in the outcomes that ecosystem produces. A person's fortune (or misfortune) to be born with particular traits, into a particular childhood environment, is entirely their own. I see no source of legitimacy to redistribute that fortune to other people without explicit consent.
This view makes no sense given any cursory view of history. What about European countries going to the Americas, taking people's land (with out consent) and gold (without consent) to enrich themselves? Or what about the relative success of any tribes in the Americas prior to Europeans showing up by defeating other tribes?
At what arbitrary point would you like to start counting as to where we should start respecting this "consent"? Do you want to undo any previous actions or should we just take whatever arbitrary power structures we've landed on and start? C'mon, this is ridiculous.
We live in a society which, by definition, requires multiple people participating. Your right to consent (or not) sometimes doesn't exist because society takes priority. There is no high philosophy here, it's just the reality of how things work. Get over it.
It depends wether you believe in determinism. If you do, then everything is just "luck". If you believe that your mind is something special that can come to conclusions truly independently (create information out of thin air) then the consequences of actions are skill or intelligence.
Or whatever. "Luck" is just a dumb concept we humans use to handwave away edge cases.
It does not require believing in determinism to believe a majority of one's outcome is based on context that they do not control. For myself, I didn't choose which country I was born in (I happen to be born in a wealthy country). I also was not born into abusive parents but rather parents who valued science and school. We happened to get a computer early because of my dad's job and I happen to have enjoyed it. That doesn't mean it's a deterministic outcome, but it is chaotic, in the sense that given all these inputs it's not possible to predict the outcome. And small perturbations can have significantly different outputs.
> "Luck" is just a dumb concept we humans use to handwave away edge cases.
Or maybe this view is just people who really want to believe there is something else. What is that something else?
Luck is a combination fortune and the ability to exploit it. We all have examples of the right ideas at the wrong time, as well as serendipity dropping the right circumstances at the right time.
I don't know! But I don't think that changes the argument very much. Unless one thinks that we can choose to be smart or a fast learner or have interests that happen to be lucrative, we should be very thoughtful about how we choose to reward people who are successful. This isn't a new or original idea, it's an old debate.
There is an implied collectivism in your statements. The idea that "we choose to reward people who are successful" implies there is a collective with the legitimate authority to make such determinations. I reject this idea. Instead I propose that legitimate authority only exists to create a liberal ecosystem, not to meddle in the outcomes that ecosystem produces. A person's fortune (or misfortune) to be born with particular traits, into a particular childhood environment, is entirely their own. I see no source of legitimacy to redistribute that fortune to other people without explicit consent.
This view makes no sense given any cursory view of history. What about European countries going to the Americas, taking people's land (with out consent) and gold (without consent) to enrich themselves? Or what about the relative success of any tribes in the Americas prior to Europeans showing up by defeating other tribes?
At what arbitrary point would you like to start counting as to where we should start respecting this "consent"? Do you want to undo any previous actions or should we just take whatever arbitrary power structures we've landed on and start? C'mon, this is ridiculous.
We live in a society which, by definition, requires multiple people participating. Your right to consent (or not) sometimes doesn't exist because society takes priority. There is no high philosophy here, it's just the reality of how things work. Get over it.
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It depends wether you believe in determinism. If you do, then everything is just "luck". If you believe that your mind is something special that can come to conclusions truly independently (create information out of thin air) then the consequences of actions are skill or intelligence.
Or whatever. "Luck" is just a dumb concept we humans use to handwave away edge cases.
It does not require believing in determinism to believe a majority of one's outcome is based on context that they do not control. For myself, I didn't choose which country I was born in (I happen to be born in a wealthy country). I also was not born into abusive parents but rather parents who valued science and school. We happened to get a computer early because of my dad's job and I happen to have enjoyed it. That doesn't mean it's a deterministic outcome, but it is chaotic, in the sense that given all these inputs it's not possible to predict the outcome. And small perturbations can have significantly different outputs.
> "Luck" is just a dumb concept we humans use to handwave away edge cases.
Or maybe this view is just people who really want to believe there is something else. What is that something else?
Luck is a combination fortune and the ability to exploit it. We all have examples of the right ideas at the wrong time, as well as serendipity dropping the right circumstances at the right time.
The antonym of "luck" is "misfortune".