"Bill and I talk about this with our kids at the dinner table. Bill worked incredibly hard and took risks and made sacrifices for success. But there is another essential ingredient of success, and that ingredient is luck – absolute and total luck.
When were you born? Who were your parents? Where did you grow up? None of us earned these things. They were given to us."
Totally true, and very important to remember, especially for the HN crowd.
> Melinda: Let your heart break. It will change what you do with your optimism. On a trip to South Asia, I met a desperately poor mother who brought me her two small children and implored me: "Please take them home with you." When I begged her forgiveness and said I could not, she said: "Then please take one." . . . When I talk with the mothers I meet during my travels, I see that there is no difference at all in what we want for our children. The only difference is our ability to give it to them.
This is such a tremendously important message that I don't think you can even hope to accurately perceive the world without really internalizing it.
The other day, someone told me a story. He was working maintenance in an apartment building, and went into a unit one day. Inside the unit, he saw a couple passed out on the couch, and a baby screaming in his crib. He went over to the baby, and saw a cockroach crawl out of his diaper. The diaper was stuck to the baby's skin. He called 9/11 immediately, the police came, and the building fired his maintenance company for not going to the building management first. This wasn't South Asia, it was here in the U.S.
I heard that story, and then thought about how our daycare e-mails me daily an itemized list of the time of every diaper change and whether it was wet and/or BM. I thought about how unfair it is that she started life with a leg-up, from the hospital where she took her first breath, and yet how I'm totally driven to give her every unfair benefit I can ("you know honey, we could afford private school from pre-K if we budget carefully"). Intellectually, we want life to be fair for everyone, but being a parent means having this overwhelming urge to clear the path ahead for your offspring, burning down the forest if you have to.
I'm certainly not going to send my daughter to an inner-city public school to make a point. What gets to me is our inability as a society to acknowledge the cognitive dissonance, and speak about this issue honestly outside of graduation speeches. To talk about traits like intelligence and patience in terms of what they are: winnings in the genetic lottery, rather than as the result of moral virtue. To acknowledge that "equality of opportunity" is a vicious fiction and understand that not as a call to any particular political ideology, but as a fact of the universe that we must reconcile with any political ideology.
"I'm certainly not going to send my daughter to an inner-city public school to make a point."
My own actions in that area are pretty hypocritical - not being from a wealthy background I was always fairly against private education. Then it came to the point where we could send our son to private school (this was at age 3) and we could afford it and the place was utterly gorgeous with fantastic staff and facilities - I never considered not sending him, not for a moment.
Now 12 years later it's clear to me that his education was worth every penny. But I know it's unfair - he's there because his mother and I can pay for it and a part of me wishes that all kids got the same opportunities.
I'm genuinely curios. My perspective on parenting might be a bit different but hearing yours might help round mine out.
I don't want to send my kids to an inner-city school for the sake of making a point but I do want to for a couple reasons. First, if no one with privilege goes there then how can privilege ever come to exist there? Second, I don't think I want my kids to grow up surrounded by affluence and privilege.
When you say it's clear that your son's education was worth every penny do you consider other pros and cons of being in a private school?
I say all of this knowing my kids are currently 4 and 2. And that my wife is much more like you than I. We'll compromise but I'm curious if there's something new I could learn here.
It's worth noting that I am in Edinburgh in the UK, which has an unusually high level of kids attending private education - roughly 25%. I don't know about where you are, but because there are so many private schools here they effectively each target a different "market" - a lot of this is due to the level of fees which can vary from £10K to £30K a year. Certainly at the school our son attends (which is one of least expensive) most of the parents are either professionals or business people - although there are kids who have extremely wealthy parents they tend to be people who have made money in business rather than inheriting it.
The pros are pretty much what you would expect - first rate teachers, lack of "problem" kids (I went to one of the worst high schools in the UK, so I know what this can be like), first rate facilities, huge amount of support for activities outside class (sport, drama, cadets, music....). The focus on kids being physically healthy is noticeable as well - although whether you regard this as a good or bad thing depends on what your kid wants.
Cons - it is expensive, and the fees are only the start, I would say it is easily 25% to 50% on top of the fees for all of the "extras". To be honest, we haven't seen that many cons but I've known people who have had problems with kids at the same school if they didn't find their niche to excel at - the culture seems to be that if you excel at something either academically and/or sporting (they are not viewed as mutually exclusive, which is a good thing) then you get respect from peers and teachers - the question is making sure you have something you excel at.
I'm not sure how they do it, but private schools, at least here in the UK, do seem to instill a huge amount of self confidence in kids, which is probably the most valuable character trait you can have.
Thanks for the response. Something I hadn't given much thought for is self confidence. It's important to both my wife and I to instill that in both of our kids.
I just didn't think about the role a school might have in that.
P.S. I'm in California. I visited Edinburgh last winter; beautiful city.
I can offer you my perspective. My parents could have sent my and my brother to a better middle school but they decided to send us to the closest one. Turned out it was a school where a lot of uneducated parents sent their kids. And of course there was violence , bullying and less than stellar education (on both fronts: intellectual and relational). Our parents had asked a friend of them if it was a good idea. His answer "they seem smart, they'll be fine everywhere".
Huge mistake. We both paid for it in high school. We went to a very good high school so the transition to college and university was easier but we still pay the price for it to this day.
Very important point: I live in western europe, in a country with few private school. Most of our education is public.
Thanks. Super insightful to hear about your experience in hindsight. I would have said something similar - "if we provide a healthy home life, they'll be fine everywhere".
Get everyone who cares about educating their children and send them all to the one school. Then post-hoc rationalise that it was the schools amazing teachers/facilities/whatever that caused the child's success. Nothing at all to do with being part of a family that cares about education.
I agree with you on the moral conundrum faced by many of us who were handed some privilege, or are handing privilege to our children, while observing the staggering disadvantages faced by other less fortunate children. I (like you perhaps) am raising a family in a major city where the extremes of opportunity and disadvantage are juxtaposed daily for us to see.
However, attributing the differences in opportunity solely to "winnings in the genetic lottery" is a bit narrow, IMO. There are plenty of factors in addition to genetics that can either increase or decrease opportunity, and there is a lot that can be done in communities to improve opportunity, regardless of individuals' genetic potential.
A basic improvement would be making gains in public safety in communities plagued by high rates of violence and neglect. Children can't take advantage of the learning opportunities presented to them or maximize their genetic potential if they have to live in a climate of fear. This is true whether it's in Afghanistan or in the inner cities of the US.
It's also possible to lift oneself out of low circumstances, but man-oh-man is it hard.
My father ran away from his home in the late 40s/early 50s as a teenager to escape crushing poverty in the midwest (where shoes were literally an item to be shared amongst his siblings and starting a full-time job at 13 was normal). He joined the army, fought in Korea, came home and became the first person ever on my father's side to earn a college degree with copious help from the G.I. Bill.
It meant he could move up to low-paid white collar jobs instead of blue collar labor jobs, but still he didn't become a "success." He taught school for a while, until the rampant crime of the poor parts of Chicago scared him away, and after that he bounced around in various jobs: owning a gas station, sales, traveling sales, etc. He finally settled in the business I grew up in. But it was not wildly profitable.
My mother grew up in a family of non-college educated sales people and housewives. She attended 1 semester of community college before dropping out, married my father not long after and only ever really worked in the family business. To my knowledge, only 2 people on her side ever graduated from college: 2 of her brothers, both became reasonably successful.
My parents paid the employees first before they got paid, so we often went months without money. I think during the best year ever, a year with near monthly lucky breaks, my parents combined income may have broken $90k. During our worst year, we spent 4 months homeless, living in a roadside motel full of drug addicts and other questionable types. When we had a home
College and school was not a priority for me, I never took the SATs, and I guess it was assumed I would just inherit the family business. There's a long(er) story in between, but I'm the first person in my family to earn a Masters Degree and feel like I'm reasonably successful, upper-middle middle-class. I didn't do it all on my own, I was given some great opportunities and help along the way and seized those moments like my life depended on it and worked my tail off.
A great many of my peers fell into two camps, those born into wealth pretty much all turned out great, great educations, great careers. I'd say I'm about middle of the pack with these folks. A few slid down a bit, usually various substance abuse issues were involved. But even then, many of those folks had the family resources at hand to turn their lives around when they had solved the substance problems.
Those born into similar economic situations that I grew up in tended to stay in those situations. If they grew up in a single parent family and their mother worked part-time at the local Circle-K, there's a big chance that that's where they ended up as well or fell down even further. Thinking back, I can only think of 1 or 2 other kids I grew up with who worked their way out of the socio-economic conditions we grew up in. By and large, most of them didn't find a way out.
What's disturbed me are the people who were also given great opportunities but squandered them. The ones who somehow were sponsored to attend college for free, but failed out because of too much World of Warcraft, or couldn't figure out how to operate a condom and ended up with 3 kids they couldn't care for. Pondering these folks, I suspect that the "Marshmallow Effect" is a real problem for them. Most of the life choices where they lost an opportunity to get ahead involved them taking a strategic and difficult, long, view of their life...with the option of doing something that felt good at the moment instead. They usually took the feel good option instead.
Case-in-point, my best friend of more than 20 years has had opportunity upon opportunity come his way and blow them and has been more or less perpetually bankrupt since we got out of High School. He recently ran into yet another serious money and family problem prompting us to have a serious grownup conversation about his life-choices to date. He wasn't even aware that he had had these opportunities I spoke of and our parting words were that he was going to make a concerted effort to get a better job and work on solving his money situation instead of leeching off of everybody around him.
It's 3 months later, he hasn't finished his resume, has "applied" for 3 jobs in that time, and moved to a more expensive apartment he can't possibly pay for given his current situation. Why did he move? "My lease was up and I wanted a better location, near a better school district for my son." His son who won't start school for 3 more years. With so much left to do, you'd expect that he be spending his nights and weekends working a second job, or some other meaningful activity. No, Steam shows he spends most of his time after work screwing around.
This is all anecdotes of course, but I suspect that it's applicable in a great many places as well. Help and opportunities are out there if you're poor. But you have to work 2 or 3 times as hard as the other person who grew up rich and wealthy. While my school-mates were being given a generous monthly allowance, their parents credit cards, new computers and condos closer to school with a brand new SUV to drive the quarter mile there and back, I was working a full-time job, taking night school, driving an hour and a half to school and back in a car I was praying wouldn't die on me, sleeping 4 hours a night, and literally eating instant noodles 3 times a day for months on end. But I'm thankful every single day that I had: a car to drive, a job to drive to, school grants to cover my education, teachers who understood my situation and let me turn things in a day late, a boss who understood as well and let me take time off for exams and studying and more. I treated each of those opportunities as precious and tried to make 130% of them. And as time went on, doing so turned each of those initial opportunities into more opportunities, a snowball effect.
I guess the idea is - money is not the only resource. Your dad's genetics and nurture combined to make him an ambitious person. Your best friend's genetics and environment led to his decisions.
That's not to say that your dad isn't more valuable to humanity, etc., than your friend - he is. Nor is it to say that your friend shouldn't change - he should. But if you had the exact same genetics, and exact same life, isn't it literally impossible that you would have made different decisions?
I don't know to be honest, and I agree I don't want to assume value of people on the whole of humanity based on their socio-economic conditions.
For example, my Grandfather was absolutely dirt poor. But he had my father. My father, when he was in Korea, volunteered time at the orphanages. My father-in-law and his brother were orphaned during the war and fondly remember U.S. soldiers coming to their orphanage with candies and clothes and things. It might even be possible that my father helped my father-in-law at one of those institutions. Regardless, he was helped enough so that he didn't die of starvation or exposure and instead became an architect and helped house thousands of people in post-war South Korea, and had 5 children who've all gone on to be educated, successful, very productive members of society.
In some way, my Grandfather, who was socio-economically at the bottom of the pile, by having my father, may have helped contribute to my wife's family in helping thousands of people put a roof over their heads and for my wife's generation to go on to do other good things. We're all connected in a way and it really is a small world.
But if socio-economic condition is one axis to measure "success", being able to house and feed yourself and your family based on the money you earn from your efforts should be a minimal barrier to being considered "successful". And I wholly understand that there are simply people who don't have opportunities to seize at all, who never get the decent paying job or the cheap reliable car or the grant to go to school. Who make a bad decision once and it impacts them for the rest of their lives no matter how many right decisions they make afterwards.
I think it's a pity that not everybody has opportunities to be upwardly mobile, but I also think it's a problem when opportunities are presented and continuously squandered, and years later, they sit there bankrupt and miserable and wonder why they can't get a leg up in life. As a person who is now (occasionally) in a position of creating opportunities, I'm cautious about who I help because I am afraid that the effort I might go through to create one, for people like my friend, will simply be wasted.
My father grew up poor, but well educated. He literally gained significant weight in basic training because he could eat as much as he wanted, at the same time his mother graduated from Harvard. It's hard being a single mother with kids and no savings.
In the end it was not hard for him to become moderately successful. But, his view on success and money was vary far from what "successful" people think. Heath, Stable job, good clean house, kids, and enough food is success. Just not the kind your going to read about.
IMO, as much as people look down on the middle class lifestyle there is little point to more because money is quickly just a number and unless you think you have enough it's never going to be enough. Which IMO raises an interesting question was my grandmother successful? Sure, she was living on the edge but she was self sufficient and her kids made it.
Let me rephrase your question: Is there a free will?
To me, determinism [1] is more plausible than free will. Events are always caused by prior events and in the end we have no control over our genetics and the conditions we were born into.
Of course I could be wrong and there is a realistic chance we will never find out.
It depends on how you define free will. If you define it as being 100% the cause of an action, that's impossible. There are two possible causes for an action: either you caused it, or something external caused it. If taking action X at time T is entirely the result of your choice, why did you choose it? Because of whatever influences made you the person you are at time T.
If these influences were external, by the definition in question your action wasn't entirely free will, as its root cause could be traced back to external influences. This means the person you were at time T-1 would have to be 100% responsible for the person you are at time T in order for you to be 100% responsible for taking action X at time T. The same also implies that the person you were at time T-2 would have to have been the cause of who you were at T-1, and so on recursively.
Trace that far backwards enough, and you get to the point where in order for you to be entirely the cause of your actions at time T, the person you were at time Tb would have to have been the cause of who you were at time Tb+1, where Tb is the time you were still a baby and incapable of conscious thought. This is not possible, as a baby doesn't 'make decisions' in the conscious sense, it acts purely from the impulses condition by its genes and whatnot.
Thus if you chase the causal chain far back enough in time, you see there's always an external root cause for an action.
This was the conclusion I came to when I first considered the question. I later decided it was a moot point. The question "is there free will" generally assumes or implies to most people, I think, that if there is not free will there is no matter in day to day choices. But that's silly because as far as I can see determinism applies to systems and from within the system our will is indistinguishable from free will. (Not sure how to word the leap here.) And believing in not free will, if it causes paralysis, results in less desirable deterministic outcomes anyway. So it's best for most people to assume free will.
I think often free will is a fuzzy concept people use to represent some kind of feeling/function/mode/whatever that exists in the psyche. As in, there's some kind of positive feeling associated with being in control, and when people speak of free will they don't necessarily have a clearly defined concept in mind, rather are speaking in reference to that feeling.
I'm not sure I expressed myself so clearly there. What I mean is that, the concept of free will disbelief in which is associated with paralysis is distinct from the philosophical/logical concept, but these two are often conflated. The logical understanding of free will not existing can actually be emotionally liberating; it acts as a balm against hatred and whatnot for instance, as it's difficult to hate someone when you see their actions as merely following a mechanistic, predetermined path. This kind of thing was an important concept in Spinoza's Ethics (Spinoza famously denied free will), and I believe also played a role in Buddha's teachings.
Of course there are external causes. Events are caused by your decisions and external causes. Very often external causes have more influence and they can also influence your future behaviour.
When I said there is no free will, I meant that you can't influence your own decisions. In fact, according to this theory, "you" is just a product of your mind. Your brain just follows the law of physics and chemistry. Decisions are made by your synapses and are the result of your past experiences, genetics, hormones, logic, emotions and surroundings. So if there would be an all-knowing being that knows the exact state of the universe and how things interact, it could calculate the future.
I don't define free will as being 100% the cause of an action. I would define it as the "freedom to do otherwise in the same circumstances".
Bear in mind that this is just a theory. But even if it's wrong, the influence we have over our life might be smaller than we tend to think.
"Thus if you chase the causal chain far back enough in time, you see there's always an external root cause for an action."
I'm not sure I agree 100%, but I agree at least 99%.
I believe humans have the possibility of free will. But it in practice it's very rare and most of the time is exactly what you state.
See G.I. Gurdjieff for more on this. Probable crank, conman, and (I believe) probably correct on at least this point.
He states (rather his pupil Ouspensky states from his teachings), that we have the potential to develop free will, but it is not a native attribute, and most of the time we simply respond to stimuli and conditioning. I tend to agree.
Interesting. His theory reminds me of something called the Theory of Positive Disintegration[1], a theory of personality in which only through active reflection and self-confrontation can people develop a conscious personality that's not just the result of biological and social pressures.
1) Genes do play a role but it's still an ongoing research on the real impact they have. The current upper estimate for general intelligence is around 7-10%[1] which leaves the median of the population unaffected(meaning, 1 in 10k people born in poverty may be able to escape a slam and be successful(with all the grey area this word entails) because if this random boost - but the median is what we should focus on when designing our social/educational system .. sooo
2) We're all different* in a way but its primarily our environment that stimulates our intellect. From early age - music, lego/toys boosting creativity, conversations promoting curiosity about the world around .. educated parents(with enough free time and financial/social security[2]) and good schools - mozart would not write a single note had he been born in a poor lumberjacks family(he might have been a pina always playing tunes with some wood laying around - but even this is probably not true since he wouldn't have been exposed to music during his early life(~3-5y) meaning his brain wouldn't wire itself sufficiently to enjoy music as much as to become suff. motivated to go through the hassle/it would be difficult to "grow" a reward cycle for this particular activity; and even if - even if he had understanding parents etc - if they couldn't afford to get him a music instrument/send him to music school he'd probably end up as a lumberjack anyway)
It's time to get our heads out of our as*s, throw away the sociopathic narcissism/individualism that is so blatantly being promoted these days and look at the reality: You can't really boost your egos looking from above on all the people living in poverty/homeless/lower class or those who just "didn't make it" - because you haven't had the same starting position( >1) ). It would be OK to feel "superior" - looking at your car-park/property list - and despise people below(well not really but lets forget about the implications for now) - if everyone would have the same opportunities as you had(pre-school - should filter out bad parenting as well - /school/uni/entry capital/enough social and financial security to be able to take the same risks ..). In such a world - with a working education system and social safety net - there would still be "losers", a lazy good-for-nothing percentage/large leisure-crowd but if one of them decided that - after 10y of doing nothing, with friends all making contributions to medicine/science/writing novels/doing art he'd want to do something with his life too(which is the default for most people - till our current education system won't beat this out of your head) - he should have an opportunity to start school/business/project without taking 2 jobs and putting his family on an emergency budget ..
BTW The Original Position by John Rawls is a good thought experiment for this discussion[3]
This is why I have some trouble with the term "winning the birth lottery". On one hand I did nothing to earn my good circumstances, but on the other hand, my immigrant parents worked extremely hard to afford me the huge advantages I have today. To me, labeling this as just "luck" seems disrespectful to my parents.
So while I do not necessarily buy in completely to the idea of the birth lottery, I do believe that I do have a elevated level of responsibility to do good with the advantages and resources at my disposal.
I think immigrants should appreciate more than anyone the sheer luck involved. My dad grew up in a village in Bangladesh, and with 150 million people in that country, the overwhelming odds were in favor of me growing up in a village in Bangladesh. That I didn't is purely luck on my part.
Somebody worked hard. It wasn't you, but they did it for your benefit. If you take that advantage and build on it, you can make it even better for your son/daughter. I cannot even frame this into the concept of an addressable "unfairness" unless you literally do not think that people should try to make a better life for their kids specifically.
Someone else in Bangladesh didn't do shit for their kids, and their kids are still there. Was that bad luck for the kid? Yeah, but for the dad, he could have done something about it. Pure cosmic chance that you were born to dad A instead of dad B didn't negate the fact that somebody's hard work paid off and someone was there to reap the benefit that happened to be you.
Sure there is still a level of unfairness in this, it's not purely hard work. But how much unfairness do you want to really address? Dad C is a Yanomamo indian in the Amazon basin. He worked his ass off twice as hard, but his son is never going to end up in America working a high tech job. Does anybody care about addressing this inequality? Hundreds of generations of Yanomamo, and they still wear leaves and live in the jungle. Hard work alone won't get you out of that. They never built a system that lets you build on the work of others. Bangladesh did, America did, and here you are. People worked hard to get you here. It wasn't luck, _except_ for you.
Didn't you win the lottery in the sense that you were lucky enough to be born to hard-working parents? When people talk about the birth lottery, they mean that the baby was lucky to be born to those people (or in those circumstances). I don't think anyone means that the parents were lucky necessarily.
I don't think that's the normal interpretation of the "birth lottery" term. My parents, and especially grandparents, lived through extreme hardship, worse than you'd see in many lives in modern third world countries, but it would generally be considered that I've come from a "privileged" lineage.
Also, I personally believe extremely strongly that Western culture's ability to "get along" with their neighbors, and the willingness to personally sacrifice for the sake of the greater good of their local community, has a lot to do with our success as a society, or so called "luck".
Since a lot of people are commenting on what you said saying that being born to such parents is a form of luck, let me give a similar but very different situation.
My father was a brilliant alcoholic who died when I was 17. I moved to his homeland when I was 16. So when he died, we were dirt poor. I was stuck in another third world country, with stifling cultural customs that I didn't understand, believe in. I wanted out because I could see myself withering away as a human being there. Sheer fucking desperation got me into a school in America with a full scholarship. Sheer fucking desperation because I worked my ass off in a research lab where I used to be up till 4 AM working on shit. Not being smart. Just the thought of getting out.
So the part where there was one massive piece of luck? I don't really see that. Funnily enough though, I think the one thing that made me desperate and want to get out was my dad finally dying. Because I realized that was the last straw. So was I lucky to face such adversity? I am not quite sure I would call it luck. But has it made me keenly aware of what poverty and desperation means? Yes, Sir it has. It will mean that I have a very very high achievement drive. But this is simply only one of the cards that I hold. Some of them are bad. Some of them are good. I can only play with the cards that I have. While I have sympathy for the hardship of others, flippantly stating that everything is pre-determined and hard work and persistence don't matter sincerely offends the fuck out of me. Because the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Nobody is saying "everything is pre-determined and hard work and persistence don't matter." People are saying that many important characteristics are predetermined. Consider your own background: is it your fault that your father was an alcoholic? No, that's luck, specifically bad luck. Correspondingly, is it to your credit that your father was brilliant? No. That's also luck.
Working hard is making sure you don't toss your winning ticket away. More people, working to keep their families out of poverty, changes the odds of the lottery.
But that doesn't change that it is a profound fortune to be born into such a family.
I agree with your points, I have seen people use similar justifications for why they have not improved their lives. Which is unfortunate but I think it's the wrong battle.
Many more times I have seen people from middle class or better backgrounds talk about how they got where they were because of hard work or drive or whatever. And then use that as justification for why some social program should be cut, like food stamps. The way I look at it, the "might as well not try" argument harms a few people who have the least influence in society. The "I worked hard and made it so we don't need social programs" argument is made by some of the most influential people and the programs they cut effect millions.
As they should be. They were lucky to be born into a family of 'hard work and intelligent decisions.' They _themselves_ had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Well, except by genetics and upbringing they share all those hard-won advantages. Its selection of a sort, like it or not. Unless we're talking some spooky-lukey soul lottery or something, then we're all our parents' children.
Labeling it luck also seems somewhat disingenuous as it assumes there is some distinction between people and the nature+nurture that makes them who they are. As someone commented elsewhere, the claim that people are exclusively a result of a combination of their environment and genetics is simply a statement of determinism. If that is the case, there is no luck involved. There is nothing one could be other than the person that he is.
It's not a level playing field that's true, but too much of this thinking enables us to fall into a very convenient trap when we fail, and general outlook about the real reasons for our circumstances. That it's all nature and nurture and we have no free will and no real control over our destinies.
This idea should be met with violent resistance. Free will doesn't only exist, it's the only thing that matters. If I have no control over my life then I have no life.
I see this as part of the current public debate about haves and have-nots, growing inequality, etc.. which is an important debate. It's nice that the richest persons in the world have some humility about their success and speak so publicly, but we must not fall into the trap that luck and things outside our control are really what matters.
People born with nothing make it huge, rich kids with everything become total failures. This is absolute proof that free will exists and is what matters most.
My friends and I realize both this, but we draw different conclusions from it. Some of my friends have an attitude of, "we are so lucky to be born with the advantages we have, we should live simply, strive not for material success but just personal fulfillment."
At first I thought that was a great philosophy, to just be content with what you have (look at how little others have!). However, the more I think about it, the the more I realize that this attitude is a waste of an opportunity. We are given such a prime position to make a difference. My attitude is: work hard, strive for success, and use your success to give back and help others in need. I could do the minimum and support just myself and be content, but I could also push myself and make lots of money, and use it to help many people. I guess Gates is the best example of this.
We can go further, though. Intelligence and tenacity are also things that were given to us. You don't choose to be smart, nor do you choose to be hardworking.
Let's say you somehow "chose" to be hardworking. Since not everyone is hardworking, it seems that not everyone makes the right choice. Did you "choose" to choose to be hardworking? It's turtles all the way down.
Whether you're born rich, smart, hardworking, or adaptable is all luck. In the end, your brain is a mesh of deterministic neurons -- "choices" are impossible.
If you're interested in exploring the consequences of this line of thought, check out the philosopher John Rawls. If you'd like, I can try to summarize what are quite nuanced arguments and conclusions, though you're best of reading his works directly. Michael Sandel (of Harvard fame) is the best living champion of his ideas, and his book "Justice" is thorough and approachable. Sandel also has an EdX course with the same name, and he covers John Rawls towards the end.
Rawls is my favorite philosopher on the topic of social justice, and I can't recommend him highly enough.
I'm fine with attributing a small part of success to luck. I'm not fine when lots of people just assume that the only reason you are ever successful is due to luck.
No, it's like luck is the final requirement. It's mostly a given that you've got to grind and try hard and get yourself out there. But after you've done all that, it's a LOT of luck.
People that take it the wrong way are the ones that don't try or just hang around, "because it's all luck". Just like folks that read a paragraph about physics, then decide everything will happen how it happens, so there's no need for them to do anything.
We don't have to stop parents completely from passing on their advantages to their children -- which is good, because that would be impossible.
What we could and should do, however, is equalize public education spending per child across the entire US. The system we've always had, of funding education out of local property taxes, is grossly unfair.
>We don't have to stop parents completely from passing on their advantages to their children
We have to. Parents don't just pass on their advantages, they pass on their values which probably are more important than economic advantages. No amount of school reform will fix instances where kids have to go back to house with a missing father and a overworked mother.
Doing anything else and saying shit like 'lets remember we are lucky' is purest of pure hypocrisy.
Reminder: you aren't Bill or Melinda Gates, but you are still rich from software. Maybe you could spend some of your funny money on someone else's healthcare?
I just sponsored a hysterectomy for $180 (1 year of Netflix) in 3 clicks on Watsi. That's crazy.
We made a donation to watsi today too, as part of our in-house flossing contest. A dry-erase marker and a bathroom mirror keeps the tally, and about once a month, someone wins. When the tally gets reset, the total number of flosses is donated, in dollar form, to a charity.
You win, because $1/floss is worth it in aggregate to prevent future dental bills. Someone else wins, because they get the treatment they need to live a better life.
I don't give to healthcare ATM, but I do give to the "current me" feels strongly about -- organizations such as EFF, Mozilla foundation, etc. I also support my nuclear-fusion-researcher friend's dance group, since he could be easily making $200k+ on Wall Street yet has chosen to make ~$30k as a PhD student for a worthy cause.
I'm hoping that as I mature, I'll be expanding the range of causes to which I will be giving to.
$180 isn't really "1 year of Netflix" -- you already bought 1 year of Netflix, and you have more money... you'd need to buy so much to run out of money... is it all improving your life at the margin, buying Netflix and Hulu and cable and HBO and ....?
I've long guessed, and this OP reinforces that, that
much of what Bill and Melinda are doing now was
driven by Melinda 'selling' Bill on some
values that Melinda deeply held and got from
her nuns and the Catholic church. But, yes, the
story of Bill's visit to Soweto showed that
some of Bill's own experiences made him fertile
ground for Melinda's values and goals.
I may be underestimating Bill's initial drive
for their work now, but generally I have to
guess that Melinda is the main hero here.
Oh, not to forget, one little thing Melinda did:
She talked both Bill and Warren into handing over,
what, ballpark $100 billion? Then for her second
day, the set up a value that all wealthy people
should give about 50% of their wealth to
philanthropy and got, apparently, quite a list
of wealthy people to do just that.
Another good thing to respect about them clearly
seems to be their marriage; it looks like
on of their beet examples. Perhaps not just
coincidentally, their love and relationship,
if more widely followed, would have helped
those woman and children abandoned in South Asia.
My view is that their example of a good marriage
is huge not just for themselves but for
their goals of curing poverty, that is, it is
easy to see that letting marriage break is one
of the biggest wastes in civilization, in particular,
leading to poverty and the problems they are now
trying to solve.
Why so many people are so eager
to bust up their marriages, or just not be very
devoted to each other at all, seems to be a
grand determination to extract miserable defeat from
the voracious jaws of magnificent victory and just
inexplicable.
This is so, so good. An upvote alone is not enough to get across how much I appreciate this. These are the principles I've built the plans for my entire life around, these principles are at the core of who I am as a person. Seeing such an eloquently put and important message like this appreciated by so many people is absolutely incredible. Huge, huge respect for bill and melinda gates for the work that they have done and the good message they are spreading.
I know it's cliche to have the founder of Microsoft be your idol person when going into software development, but Bill Gates is certainly worthy of that position. We at HN (an overwhelming portion, anyway) are so comfortable in our lives. Even little sacrifices could change the world for some of those less fortunate. Imagine what big sacrifices could do - they could change entire villages, countries, even continents. Think big. Even if you aim to help millions and only affect a few, your work was not in vain.
This was truly phenomenal. I grew up in some of the poorest places, went through a lot of shit before things got better. It is really really hard to go through all that and come out with optimism and hope for the world, or even think you can make a difference as one human. Good on the Gates for believing that and having the resources to push this forward.
> "If we have optimism, but we don't have empathy – then it doesn't matter how much we master the secrets of science, we're not really solving problems; we're just working on puzzles." Brilliant and moving!
What's sort of peculiar is - as far as I've seen/read - he's never been penitent about his past unethical behavior. No: "Yeah, I used to be a dick. I regret leading my company that way" or anything like that.
This leopard-changing-its-spots analogy is the wrong way to look at things. It assumes that ethics and morality are permanently writ onto our cores, and that to change those values, one would have to become another person entirely. This is a false belief.
As I mentioned in a comment below, numerous studies have shown that a person's ethics are heavily influenced by their present circumstances and environment, not some unchangeable inner nature.
> a person's ethics are primarily dictated by their present circumstances and environment
Citation needed. I can accept "influenced by" or even "heavily influenced by" without too much argument, but "primarily dictated by" is an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary proof.
It is rather normal for people to change their political stance over the years as they go from young people who think they live forever to people with kids and responsibilities.
Its probably not as obvious here in the US with a two party system but other places like Denmark and Sweden you see this change more clearly.
Your rhetorical fails instantly. People aren't leopards, they don't have fixed 'spots.' So yes, most adults can change their value systems any time they choose to. In my personal experience they frequently do. In fact, I've never known a single person that didn't change quite a lot every five years or so.
I don't necessarily disagree, but I'd prefer that this call be made by the judicial system whenever possible. When someone does something bad and escapes punishment for it, it can be harder to forgive. Is that such a stretch?
Very interesting moderation in this thread. HN is not doing itself proud at the moment.
It may be important to think about what they might do and say if they were no longer rich, and forced to earn their fortune again. Would they do what they did again? Would they behave in the same way?
I don't see why or how this could be important. It's possible to craft circumstances in which anyone would do almost anything. Numerous studies have shown that human morality and ethics are highly situational rather than permanently ingrained into the cores of our beings.
Uh, it was code that would have prevented Windows from running on computers that ran competing software (which never appeared in the release). Is it common practice today, everywhere, to allow your software to run on "competing" systems? Can I install OSX anywhere I want, without a work around?
Stupid, yes. But calling it a "sin" is why I have a hard time taking religious views seriously.
Why would Microsoft go to such lengths as they did to hide the AARD code if they thought it, or perhaps more accurately, thought that others would consider it, ethical?
I wonder why these scumbags choose my country ( India ) for painting poor life conditions always ? Agreed, there are cases of extreme poverty, but so in US, Africa, Brazil ( yeah, hosting world cup !) , Eastern Europe etc.
Why pick India for prostitution ? As if in US there is no prostitution.
Why not pick on own country. Just look at backpage.com thousands and thousands of girls doing open prostitution. How is that good thing ? or not a poor thing ?
I wonder if there was political agenda for picking India ( since we are good friends with Russia ).
Bill Gates is not a hero. Did you read stories from Paul Allen ( another co-founder those who don't know )?
Why Stanford , a prestigious university, would invite such scumbags ?
If Gates favors so much of charity why not donate everything except $1 Billion ? Are $1 billion not sufficient to live for rest of the life ?
Is his charity ( which comes to around 30 %) a simply proxy for tax saving ??
Whatever may be reason , please stop painting India a bad country.
I am from India , lived in America for 10 yrs before returning , travelled all over US and I can tell you there are classes, hungry people, children / women related crimes all over the place. So first look at your own country, how they are killing people in other countries and then lecture others.
Worst commencement speech in history of Stanford I would say.
They're just internet points. Sometimes one submission will go somewhere while yours won't. It happens and those who seem to gripe about it will often get down voted.
To me, the speech was fairly embarrassing. Its as though some rich people saw some poor people on a poor person safari. Now they come back to tell of what they saw, as if everyone in their audience would be just as amazed at such things as they were.
Perhaps for a stanford graduate audience that is true?
Theres suffering in the world!? :O
Thats what I was left with. No-one rational could disagree with their points, the validity of the foundations purpose, etc etc and all of that.
I think you're just the type of person this speech was written for. Your post is nothing more than a middlebrow dismissal, made worse by the fact that you're disparaging something that's important.
Early in the speech, Bill talks about donating computers to poor people in South Africa. When he gets to there, he realizes that computers aren't what they need. Time after time, they tell heartbreaking stories that led them to actually change the world. That's the message - look at the suffering around us and do something about it. Use what you have to make the world a better place.
I almost didn't reply because I'm sure this is a troll. If it's not, try reading the whole speech.
No, my point was plainly that I was embarrassed to watch people who until they took on these valuable roles were so unaware of what most of the world is like.
If it was news to me too Id be as amazed by these observations as they seemed to be.
This place can be painfully self righteous, no-one is seriously suggesting the work they do isn't important etc etc.
Stanford is nestled in the very heart of Silicon Valley, a place of understated yet immense wealth and considerable gentrification. You can spend months here and not have "a poor person" register in your consciousness. It's like the whole place is geared towards making you forget that bad things exist in this world.
So unfortunately, a "hey guys, there's suffering in this world" kind of speech may just be appropriate for Stanford and the kind of people who will tune into its commencement.
Sometimes you need speeches like that to remind you that it is out there.
Unless you personally have watched these things, you can only know about them vicariously, and emotive speeches motivate others to become involved. Cold hard facts rarely move people the same way.
Actually I think that's the point of the speech. A lot of folks (not just college grads) aren't aware of how lucky they are and are perhaps even more unaware that they have the ability to do anything.
It isn't true just for a Stanford graduate audience. Extreme poverty and discrimination will shock just about anybody who hasn't seen it. I live in India in a nice city and interact with poor people everyday. Even that didn't prepare me for the suffering that I saw when I traveled to different parts of the country.
Came hear to find out if Bill and Melinda were saying the same old things they usually say over and over. Yep.
There is one social model that has been truly successful in human history and has truly brought unlimited masses out of the darkness and into the light, and it is not based on altruism. It is based on (a) rule of law, not of men and (b) individual rights, especially property rights.
The Gates would do well to start preaching this model instead of the one that has failed over and over and over all throughout history, which is: you have a duty to be your brother's keeper (altruism).
I'd bet a 100 bucks there's an objectivist / Randian here; we all read the book as kids, but we recognized that the Randian model couldn't particularly deal with children, or family for example. Wealth creation is a laudable goal, but not the only one.
You have some common misconceptions, allow me to teach you something new.
- I know a great many PhDs who are Objectivists (hopefully myself soon, too). It's really not a philosophy for teenagers and that is just something people spread to put it down without using a real argument.
- Objectivism can deal with children and family just fine. Lots of Objectivists have children and families, including Ayn Rand's closest philosophical associate, Leonard Peikoff.
- Objectivism does not say that wealth creation is the only goal. It says (summarizing) that self-preservation is the root of all values, and experiencing your values (in myriad ways) produces enjoyment. Wealth creation is just one way to experience your values, not the only way. Another way is, for example, through family. There are lots of Objectivists who choose non-lucrative career paths.
I can formally prove that it's not, so I'm just saying this to get you to think about what that would entail and reflect on how supportable your claim is.
Bill Gates has good intentions and in some cases is doing well.
If only he wasn't so swayed by the likes of Geoffrey Sachs and Bono.
There is a great book written by Nina Munk about Sachs, if only Gates could try and change his mind and look at it a little differently.
When were you born? Who were your parents? Where did you grow up? None of us earned these things. They were given to us."
Totally true, and very important to remember, especially for the HN crowd.