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Thread: Neccessary versus sufficient

  1. #1

    Default Neccessary versus sufficient

    A comment by Lewk in one of the "unionz R teh 3vil!!1!" threads got me to thinking.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lewkowski View Post
    That being said a person's work ethic and ambition (two things they CAN control) are more responsible for success then anything else.
    This comment is actually not true. FAR more "responsible" for success are luck and brains (indirectly luck, because that's mostly determined genetically).

    But the "bootstrapping" Horatio Alger myth is very popular in America. Why? I suspect it is the confusion of "necessary" with "sufficient." Scientists love these terms, because they make a critical distinction. For example, activity of gene X is necessary for cancerous transformation. You don't get cancer forming if this gene's activity is missing. But is it sufficient to drive cancerous transformation? These are functionally very distinct ideas, but they are often conflated by sloppy thinkers.

    For example, work ethic is very nearly necessary for economic success. Very few people achieve much in the absence of hard work. But here is the key: hard work guarantees you virtually nothing but an actual job (and in some economies, ahem, even that won't suffice because nobody wants the hard work with your particular skills in your locale). You need a large amount of luck for that hard work to be applied such that you can be very successful. First, there is what you are born with. If you have a below average IQ, it will be very difficult for you to be professionally exceptional in any way (the exception being the "entertainment" industry, which is an economic freak anyway). Second, where do you live? Third, what skills could you acquire as a child? What role models did you have? What opportunities did you have?

    If all of those things break fairly well for you, then you are in a position to maybe be able to work your ass off to be very successful. But there will still be a lot of luck involved. For a very successful person to say "I am here purely because of hard work" is the height of arrogance. The hard work was necessary, but it certainly was not sufficient. Even people who came from hardscrabble roots had strings of lucky breaks to become successful. Look at Ray Charles: blind and dirt poor. But if you look at his career, he had a lot of lucky breaks. In other words, there were a lot of potential Ray Charles out there who worked just as hard but weren't in the right place at the right time. Is there skill in positioning yourself optimally? Absolutely! But there's even more luck.

    The best thing that can happen to you is to be lucky. You hear this in science and sports all the time: "I'd rather be lucky than smart/good." This is certainly the case with most Nobel laureates. When you look at their careers, there are almost always many exceptional scientists who were just as god but never got any lucky finds. There are, of course, genius exceptions like Barbara McClintock. But really the most important thing is lucky, and truly the best road to wealth is tpo be born with it.

    Look at Bill Gates. Smart, exceptionally hard working. BUT, he was born into some wealth, went to an elite private school, and by pure luck had truly unusual access to embryonic computer technology: in the right place, the right time, the right inclinations and native skills, and with exceptional resources. THEN is when the hard work kicks in. This doesn't belittle Bill Gates. Lack of hard work would have sunk him. But his hard work was not sufficient to get him where he is. The same kid with the same work ethic in the same city at the same time, but born to a different family would not have become Bill Gates. COULD not have become Bill Gates. Luck was also necessary. Luck at several levels.

    The reason I hate this Horatio Alger myth that hard work is sufficient is that it is deeply insulting to everybody who works like a dog and isn't successful. It almost goes so far as to say that there is something lacking in somebody who isn't successful. And that is deeply offensive to many of the working poor. I so often read about people who work 2 or 3 jobs to feed their families. Since they came from nothing, they make a pittance. But their are neither slothful nor stupid. In fact, I talk to the custodians in my building at work, and I find that many of them are immigrants who work like dogs. One mother of two is from Costa Rica and works 8 hours/day as a custodian (4 pm - 1 am + 1 hour for "lunch") then cooks/waitresses lunch shift at a local tacqueria every day and weekends. She's not successful.

    I think a large part of why the Horatio Alger myth is so popular in the US is because history is written by the victors. Or, in this case, by the wealthy. If you have the money and soapbox to get your interpretation out there, that is the interpretation that will endure. Everybody interviews oligarch X to ask him how he became successful. nobody interviews the mother of 2 from Costa Rica who works 70 hours/week. And frankly, nobody cares to hear her story.

  2. #2
    I agree with your general sentiment, but I think you miss a few things. Firstly, hard work doesn't refer to working hard at a specific point in time. It refers to working hard one's entire life. If some high school drop out with a drug conviction can't get a good job despite working very hard today, you can't blame his lack of success on luck. Similarly, a girl who was knocked up at 16 is far less likely to succeed than one that did not, regardless of the amount of hard work she puts in, but that again is not a function of luck. Secondly, being in the right place at the right time isn't fully a result of luck. The most successful people generally see patterns before others, and can be at the right place and time out of choice, before others catch on. Lastly, in a developed country like America, a vast majority of the population has the opportunity to succeed (i.e. the necessary condition is already present), as long as we don't define success too narrowly (i.e. a vast majority of the population can get a college degree and a $40k/year job). Your point makes sense more in the context of a Zimbabwe or a North Korea, where regardless of how smart and hard-working you are, you have virtually no chance of succeeding.
    Last edited by Loki; 06-13-2010 at 04:58 PM.
    Hope is the denial of reality

  3. #3
    Successful != fabulously wealthy.

    Also, your counter examples lack the ambition component mentioned. If one doesn't look for ways to do better in their life, one isn't going to do better.

    Just as you find the idea that one can be successful through hard work and ambition insulting, I find the idea that people are only successful due to luck insulting. It's offensive to everyone who got where they are through hard work and sacrifice, by implying that they didn't earn their success, they just got lucky.

    I don't really disagree with all your assertions; hard work, ambition, intelligence, and luck all contribute to how successful you will be. You don't really need all of them, and luck can make up for shortfalls in any other areas, but the more of any the better you'll do.

    edit: As loki implies, one should also be careful not to confuse prior planning with luck.

  4. #4
    Also depends on how you define "successful". It's not always about making as much money as possible. Maybe that Costa Rican woman feels "successful" as a parent and role model. Maybe she's even proud of her hard work and family, and is *gasp* Happy.

  5. #5
    I'm going to mostly agree with you, with a caveat and a couple of tonal corrections. First, I agree with Loki and Wraith that you seem to be defining success a bit too narrowly. A comfortable retirement is a success, making millions or billions of dollars isn't necessary. Second, you acknowledge at the beginning, several times, that hard work is a necessary condition *even in the entertainment industry* but your decision to emphasize the luck portion minimizes just how important it is to work like a dog if you want to be successful. Yes the victors write the history books and the people who made themselves fabulously wealthy are going to want to put it down to their own efforts but at the same time they're not just being self-congratulatory, they know better than anyone just how hard they worked, how much that hard work they did was necessary to their success.
    Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"

  6. #6
    You need a large amount of luck for that hard work to be applied such that you can be very successful.
    Not everyone gets to be a billionaire or even a millionaire. Is this the narrow definition of success?

    And that is deeply offensive to many of the working poor. I so often read about people who work 2 or 3 jobs to feed their families.
    Work ethic is one of the biggest parts of the equation, however drive and ambition is another. The guy who busts his but with a goal in mind is going to be far better off then a guy that just works hard but never seeks promotion or better job opportunities. Keep in mind perhaps that person is OK with his life style? Maybe he doesn't want the additional stress of going into the rat race. That's their choice and its perfectly fine. But don't say its only because they didn't have "luck" that they aren't successful.

    One mother of two is from Costa Rica and works 8 hours/day as a custodian (4 pm - 1 am + 1 hour for "lunch") then cooks/waitresses lunch shift at a local tacqueria every day and weekends. She's not successful.
    What has she done to move into better paying positions? Just doing simple labor does not and should equal getting everything you want.

    I am happy at least that you recognize that hard work is a necessity. Most liberals poo pah it and whine about how everyone "deserves" to have things just by being born.

  7. #7
    Well-written and balanced responses to the OP, very nice

    You can do a lot to improve the "luck" of the hard-working poor, both in terms of prevention and intervention after-the-fact. Excellent education; help with identifying both opportunities as well as obstacles; help with eradicating cognitive biases and fatalism/defeatism/pessimism; help with being born a woman in the wrong group. Stuff like that.

    We can't forget that hard work is necessary, but it's just as important to remember the other things that factor into any kind of success. Many of those factors make for an unfair world, and some of that unfairness can and should be addressed even while we encourage personal responsibility and hard work.

    I finally finished Outliers, Tear, and I think that "it's mostly down to luck" is the wrong message to take away from that book. Gladwell puts much effort into showing that there are many ways to improve our society in ways that increase everyone's chances of becoming successful. We just need to fill in the picture a little more
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  8. #8
    Tear knows all about random luck. Both good and bad. If he'd been a poor black woman with PKD, does anyone here doubt that he'd not have had a kidney transplant, with excellent insurance coverage for all the treatments and meds, and all sorts of supportive groups to help him? No, he'd be stuck on dialysis, chronically ill, and hoping for the best.

    I attended nursing school with a black woman who was raised in a disadvantaged (poor) family. She worked hard k-12, had excellent grades, won academic scholarships to university, all that. Partly why she chose Nursing was due to her experience as a patient, because she suffered from sickle cell anemia....quite severely and in crisis often. Although she was extremely bright, articulate and "successful" in school, she lost tremendous ground academically and (eventually) professionally.

    So which is the "outlier"? People born into already advantaged homes, to parents with good genes? Or people born into 'bad luck' scenarios, having to 'work' their way out?

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Lewkowski View Post
    Not everyone gets to be a billionaire or even a millionaire. Is this the narrow definition of success?
    What if our measure of success is something as simple as not being bankrupted, put into financially dire straights, or put into a situation in which they have to rely on government hand-outs (which you want done away with) at the simplest instance of bad luck, or forces outside their control? Lets say these people do work, they are not "lazy", just either lack the ability to move onto better paying jobs (for whatever reason, personal, or outside their control), or are happy with the job they have.

    I find it insulting that you consistently say they deserve to be thrown in the gutter simply for having a certain job whose existence is just as wanted or necessary in our society as whatever job you hold.
    . . .

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