Do people succeed due to luck, right timing and cultural heritage?
by Michael Shermer
What is the difference between an unknown person named Joe, Joe the plumber who became famous in the US presidential election campaign and Joe Bidan? One is the Vice President of the United States; The other two do not. why? The answer depends on many, interdependent variables that must be included in the success equation: genes, parents, brothers and sisters, friends, mentors, experience, internal motivation, culture, timing, heritage and luck. The difficulty encountered by the scientist is in his attempt to determine the relative influence of each variable and the interactions between the variables, a task that requires sophisticated statistical models.
Journalists, freed from research practices, publish self-help books that focus on selected variables of particular interest to them. Few do it better than the "New Yorker" writer Malcolm Gladwell in his new book "The People Outside the Frame: A Success Story" (Little, Brown, 2008) claims that successful people are not people who "built themselves" but "always those who have gained hidden advantages, In extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allowed them to study, work hard and understand the logic of the world in ways that others are not capable of."
bill Gates For example, he may be a smart man, but Gladwell prefers to emphasize the fact that Gates is the son of affluent parents, who sent him to a private school, which operated a computer club with a remote terminal, which was connected by a direct line to a mainframe in Seattle. In 1968 this was a very unusual thing. Fortunately for him, Gates was born in the mid-50s, so he came of age just as the computer industry was ripe for someone with the experience he had to start a software company.
Similarly, says Gladwell, Mozart's father was a composer who led the young Wolfgang to greatness from the age of 6 until his early 20s, when the pieces he composed turned from pleasant melodies to masterpieces. The members of the Beetles were lucky in Hamburg, Germany, where they managed to perform more than 1,200 live performances and meet the well-known rule, according to which 10,000 hours of experience are needed to reach perfection in the profession. The leading players in ice hockey were notably born in the months of January, February and March (40% compared to the expected birth rate, which according to most studies is 25%) because the date of birth that determines the start of training at a young age is January 1st, so the players born at the beginning of the year had an advantage Because they were a little bigger, stronger and faster. The "prodigy children" of Asian origin are so successful in their studies because they are the product of "a tradition of rice farming in flooded fields" that requires work throughout the year and "puts a lot of emphasis on effort and hard work." That's why they study all summer while American students spend time at the mall.
Such elites and geniuses, says Gladwell, "are products of history and community, of opportunity and heritage. Their success is not unusual or mysterious. It is rooted in a network of advantages and inheritances, some of which are justified and some of which are not, some of which were acquired through hard work and some of which were pure luck - but all of them are necessary to make them what they are."
Well, that's true and it's not true, Frank Solvay, author of the comprehensive study of success "Born to Rebel" (Pantheon Press, 1996), told me. "Creative people don't just sit around and wait for opportunities to come their way. They create the opportunities themselves. Charles Darwin was already busy organizing a voyage of discovery in the Canary Islands, for example, when he was offered a position on the ship 'Beagle'. If the members of the 'Beetles' had not gone to Hamburg they would have earned their 10,000 hours elsewhere. What sets Gates apart is that he really has an interesting and creative mind, and such a mind would have existed even without the terminal in the private school, so he would probably have found other ways to obtain programming tools." And of course the son of Leopold Mozart was a child prodigy and a musical genius and not just a person who won a cultural heritage.
And even the 10,000 hour rule is not only related to skill. Dean Keith Simonton, author of the book "The Origins of Genius" (Oxford University Press, 1999), claims that success involves a Darwinian process of variety and selection. Creative geniuses generate a huge variety of ideas from which they select only those with the highest chance of surviving and multiplying. The best predictor of winning a Nobel Prize in science is the number of citations in scientific journals. As Simonton writes: "Empirical researchers have shown time and time again that the single best measure of importance in any creative field is the sheer number of influential products that a particular person has given the world."
Genius is what the genius does.
Michael Shermer is the publisher of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com) and the author of The Mind of the Market.
24 תגובות
Bigumbum:
It seems to me that the "impersonator" calls himself a little differently. He adds Geresh to his name and the result is "Bijumbom".
It reminds me of a joke:
It is said that Shakespeare's stories and plays were not written by him.
It was written by another person who is also named Shakespeare and lives in the same area 🙂
Point and Michael
According to response 19
Have you ever thought about the subconscious, it has a part in the conscious, and the fact of this is that you know about it.
post Scriptum
I've read several comments from a person whose nickname and mine "match" as far as it seems to be on purpose, in any case, I'm the real one, and if the impostor calls Zoot, I ask him to grow up and change his nickname, please, or I'll do Zoot.
I read your entire "argument".
Interesting Maoud
point:
There is not even a shred of logic in your words.
Please explain to me - from your point of view - what is the evolutionary advantage in the existence of the conscious?
By the way - awareness at different levels also exists in other animals and in fact we associate their level of intelligence with their awareness.
I don't understand your question about "something that performs two functions" at all.
What - a star does not move in its orbit and radiate at the same time? I just don't know what you're talking about.
And you still haven't answered me about the important statement, that it is impossible for something to perform two different functions and how does that work out for you with your perception of the soul.
Regarding the identification, the conscious is only aware that you feel and knows that the identification is not correct without the conscious being aware of why it is immediately aware of it, this is the proof that the conscious is not active at all in this business.
How things come to be conscious is the great unanswered question. But there is no difference if it is something learned or acquired, in terms of the mechanism of the conscious, it is conscious and that's it. The study is inherent in the network (the very existence of which is not even known to the conscious).
By the way - point:
The same practice that the conscious does to the subconscious is sometimes so common that it gets its own name.
In fact, the words "memorization" and "practice" are precisely intended to describe such processes.
point:
In the first point:
First of all, we both agree that to be a philosopher you have to be a scientist - which is actually what I wanted to say to Ra'an who dismissed Penrose for being a scientist.
The rest of the debate is not a real debate because there are clearly better and less good philosophers among scientists, but the very practice of science stems from the desire to understand the world through thought - this is the definition of philosophy.
As for the second point - explain to me how the spelling of words reaches your subconscious and allows you to immediately recognize a word that is spelled incorrectly?
In general - how does something learned to become - conscious?
In my opinion, there is no way that allows this other than using it consciously.
In general - all conscious knowledge must also be in the subconscious because otherwise there is no way to express it.
Again - the question arises as to how he gets there and there is no answer that does not involve the conscious.
Of course, in order to be a philosopher you must study natural sciences (for this reason the philosophers from the philosophy department are philosophers on a dime). But the other direction is not true.
Education does not come through the conscious mind. Things reach the conscious, and do not continue through it because there is nowhere to go. The conscious is a little result that is not a cause of anything.
Everything that passes through the brain affects the mind, but the opposite direction is not true (even though you will hear such claims, even from great researchers, these are unfounded and scientifically inaccurate claims).
The desire is an emotion that the conscious is aware of. The cause of the emotion is not in the conscious, in the same sense that the source of the headache is not in the conscious.
point:
I think you are exaggerating.
In the past as today - all the great philosophers were naturalists.
In any case - this is my opinion. If you have a different opinion, we can have a separate discussion on the matter, but it is really not relevant to us.
And as for our case - you simply ignore everything I said and therefore I am forced to repeat it here:
Do you disbelieve in the influence of education (which comes through the conscious)?
Do you disbelieve in the effect of violence prevention workshops?
Do you disbelieve in our ability to train ourselves in "instinctive" habits through a conscious will to train them?
I don't fall into any trap.
It is you who simply forgets the fact that a test of a scientific theory is an experiment.
Michael, I read the things. You make some unfounded claims there. For example, that mathematicians and physicists are good philosophers. So for your information, mathematicians, physicists and philosophers are usually bad philosophers.
As for Penrose, his honor is in its place, but he talks about an innovative idea that the mind is a quantum computer. And in any case the concept of free will is not defined in physics there, will is our feeling.
And besides, the question is, why exactly the desire, why of all the emotions, exactly the desire should be free, why is it not said that the headache is free (usually we don't know exactly its causes)?
The choice of desire reminds me of the religious people's choice to oppose the fact that man is part of evolution, but they are not really interested in the rest of the animals.
Furthermore, your perception of the conscious is wrong, you give consciousness roles that it has nothing to do with, if you think about it, I think you will agree that it is not possible that something in the world can have 2 different functions. Being aware of something, and influencing something are 2 different and opposite things. My feeling is that you fall into the trap of our unconsciousness and our subconscious.
point:
I really wonder about you.
Although my debate on the matter was with Ra'anan, it is hard for me to believe that you did not read the things.
I suggest that you go back and read the debate between me and Ra'anan because it contains a detailed answer to your claims
https://www.hayadan.org.il/other-life-not-likely-to-be-intelligent-0306091/#comment-223323
Michael,
In the sense you are talking about, it can also be said about chess software that has free choice.
The conscious is passive and its job is to be aware of things. The conscious does not affect anything. In general, it is not physically possible for the conscious to affect something, both because it is not made of matter and because it does not really exist and because we have never seen the conscious affect anything, so why make baseless claims.
Well... here is a thesis that is not accepted by most of you but exists in reality... it belongs more to the 21 grams that disappear from a person's body at the time of his death and in general to the separation of the body from the soul, since most of you perceive reality in retrospect, i.e. "what is proven is the truth, the rest is mysticism" Let me add to the discussion about success the Man's name and its influence on him, his astrological luck, learning his DNA from previous generations and more, it's funny to think of the theory of evolution, which is full of shortcomings and loaded with fragile theories, as a kind of absolute by which to measure human development, when the very presence of man in nature is an anomaly that would not have been made possible by nature but by Intervention from the outside and no matter what you call it, the human ability to think, imagine, feel, create is all an anomaly of nature In terms of nature} on the surface it seems that successes are indeed the product of a collection of circumstances and their connection at the right time while the exact same collection of circumstances can exist for other people and not be successful at all as Michael pointed out...and time will teach us a lot...:-)
Michael:
There are things in the peace and well-being of the world that no longer depend on idle talk alone, but on thorough investigation and thorough and benevolent action in order to get out of the dilemmas that many find there.
Even if we are all 'programmed', there are still unexpected summonses at every moment (expectation = evidence) that allow factual clarifications and correct/productive learning for the sake of the individual and the whole.
Sometimes you also have to give trust (this does not mean not to be vigilant, single-eyed, single-minded, and with a higher weighting).
70 years have passed since the great disaster, the holocaust and the overt and covert takeover of this side of the world. If you are an honest person and yes and are willing to be a truthful and aware person, call your friend C.M. Mutual, of course) This is a fourth party coming from Germany and I have to talk to him, I'm the one paying. Both of you are supposed to be silent witnesses = flawlessly neutral.
I won't reveal the details right now, for everyone's sake.
And by the way, I'm not a zombie and therefore I don't always tend to follow the rules 'required' of me when there is a conscious risk of disastrous results.
If my proposal (which stems from recognition, supreme justice and peace) is not right for you and is sublime from my understanding, object!!!
And by the way, I have no 'personal' interest in getting to know you, unless the matter is necessary for the sake of greater peace. If you are destined not to really share an interest, it is out of my hands.
In any case, it takes me - deep inner trust - and 'a kind of bet' to write these things for you on the 'net'.
Hugin:
If you say, then say.
When something is understood only apparently and in fact is not understood - it is better to resist the feeling of understanding because otherwise it is impossible to reach true understanding.
When something is really understood - and not only apparently - you will not find me opposing it.
Michael:
Without insulting God forbid, but if I say that you are pre-programmed to immediately 'resist' as a spontaneous impulse to everything that is seemingly understandable, and that has a lofty purpose both from you and me and everything else?
Obvious..
Point and refresh:
Maybe you but I don't.
I am definitely a sophisticated machine or "robot" but one that is not pre-programmed to do certain things.
There are various reasons for this, but the inherent randomness in nature is surely one of them.
Randomness of this type may not deserve to be called "free choice" but it certainly disqualifies the claim of "preprogramming".
Even if I don't know what the other reasons are for the existence of free choice, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
It is probably unconscious - as far as we can see - but as I mentioned before - even an unconscious choice deserves to be called a free choice - especially in light of the fact that the conscious can tame the unconscious.
I accept the first opinion expressed in the article - circumstances are of paramount importance and innate genius is not a sufficient condition.
As you can see the non-existence of an intelligent planner through the flaws of evolution, so you can see the "insufficiency" of genius in familiar cases of geniuses who did not receive the recognition that their genius allowed them.
The cases I will list are of course intermediate cases because those who have not been recognized at all cannot be included in this type of list which is intended to indicate people the reader should know, but they of course also indicate those who are not known at all.
Some example cases:
Srinivasa Ramanujan – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramanujan
He was born in India and his mathematical talent was probably one of the greatest ever discovered. The circumstances of his life did not allow him to leave almost any mark on mathematics.
Gregor Mendel – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel
The father of genetics - the importance of his gift was understood only after his death and only thanks to the fact that his writings were preserved. It didn't take much for him to forget completely.
Aristarchus of Samos – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchos_of_Samos
Described the heliocentric model long before Copernicus - in the third century BC (!!!).
As I recall, Galileo, born in the 16th century, was mainly credited with this discovery
These are just some of the intermediate cases
There are of course many life circumstances that prevent the full potential.
I assume that none of the readers have any doubt that some of the millions of people who perished in the Holocaust would have turned out to be geniuses if they had survived.
And what about the billion Indians that Ramanujan actually represents those among them whose fate has favored them? After all, it is clear that the number of Indians with an IQ exceeding 130 (just a number I guessed, but it is probably not far from reality) is greater than the number of all Americans, for example.
And what about the Chinese billions?
And in our tiny country - what about all those whose parents brainwash them and deny them any education?
The above are extreme examples of an environment that prevents the revelation of the potential inherent in a person almost completely, but it is clear, in my opinion, to anyone with common sense that even under fairly normal conditions, the circumstances of a person's life can prevent both the realization of his potential and its publication.
Even if some 'creature' is born for a certain programming, its success is not understood above it, since it needs ambition (desire-impulse-trigger-internal driving force) to implement the internal 'programming' for which it is created or born.
The circumstances into which 'he' is merged and his ability or 'ability' to integrate or evade the controlling 'flow' determines
The quality of his 'success'. Whether it is idiosyncratic or classical - eternal.
It is better that a natural or artificial 'programmed' mind 'knows its nature' and then it will succeed in its 'part' whether big or small: fulfillment = full exploitation of innate potential.
It is precisely sometimes the consciously productive ignorance that enables the right action: for example, Rowling said that if she had guessed what kind of success would come from a library before the matter received such large and welcome waves, she would have 'missed out'.
It also depends on what the 'peak peak' of each innate creature is: if the peak peaks are small and shared with others in an additional creative fusion, the wave of success receives additional feedback (like additional auxiliary wheels) that enable the success of that 'integrated creative coordination'.
Of course, there are many other reasons for this 'secret': read the 'secret'.. If there was no partnership between all the authors of the book, this book would not have been such a great success.
sparrow bird
Surely the human race is robots deprived of any free choice.
We are nothing more than organic robots.
What are you talking about? Almost 7 billion robots do
Point, according to your concept the human race is robots deprived of any free choice, which is impossible and impossible. No robot, the most sophisticated in the world, can simulate human behavior, as well as its surprising creativity.
The word succeeded is not suitable. He was pre-programmed to do what he did in the situation he was in.