I wonder: is there anything more predictive of success than being clever, brave, and persistent?
Yes: wealth. That’s just an empirical fact, even if it’s an uncomfortable one that doesn’t help with individual ambition. If you think it’s tough for a poor malnourished kid with a single parent and bad schools to become a successful entrepreneur in America, you should see how tough it is for a kid born into a poor malnourished nation.
I also don’t buy the skill-will distinction at all, especially since they eventually say matters of will can be “practiced more intentionally”. The bones are there, but the details are kinda arbitrarily determined by ideological bias IMO. I think the author would love modern psychology lit on “Executive Functioning”, has a lot to say about how often a typical human is able to choose to will something!
Good article otherwise. Provocatively written, and refreshingly concise - def made me think. Also, obviously, inspiring!
1. Luck. Plenty of lucky successful people out there. Not to say only luck gets you there, or that luck alone is always enough, but it makes a massive difference.
2. Lack of understanding of risk. Probably not an overall good thing, but a common thing among successful people (IME). Quite often the backstory involves some hideously crazy risks the person took at some point that paid off, but the cost of failure would have been unbearable.
Wealth is a huge enabler for risk taking. If you are on the verge of homelessness, you can’t gamble the rent on a 100:1 bet with 1000:1 payout, even though that is obviously a bet you should always take, every time, no matter how often you lose.
In reality, those bets are all around us. They are the very basis of life itself. Resource scarcity makes us behave as scavengers or hunter-gatherers, depending on the generosity of the environment instead of planting seeds and waiting for the harvest.
Perhaps I should have clarified that “success” is relative. Success for someone born into poverty is different than someone born into royalty.
I’m focused on the qualities we should focus on in our adulthood to maximize our personally determinable chances of success. I believe all adults should do that for our own lives.
With that view, the question is whether homeless people benefit from being clever, brave, and persistent more than any other mix of traits, for example towards the pursuit of getting off the streets. I would say yes!
I would agree that the paradigm of persistent application of strategic action is effective across the vast majority of problem spaces.
The issue is that as resource availability plots towards the corner of the graph, the potential actions become more and more constrained, and inherently, the benefits of being clever and brave are constrained with those limitations. Eventually you get down to the point of eating cockroaches because the option is death from starvation.
It’s certainly a matter of scale, but I think the point is that the scale isn’t linear, and that the benefits of strategic risk tolerance scale exponentially with resource abundance.
As with most things in life, the playing field isn’t level. I guess the real question here is should it be? To what extent does it benefit society at large to make it more level, and how much more level is optimal?
I definitely agree with the idea that we choose to will something! I tried to get that across in the essay, but maybe not as well as I could have.
What I meant between skill and will is that a skill is multivariate, whereas will is more unidimensional: you choose to do something or not.
That unidimensionality levels the playing field a lot. Let’s say someone is struggling to communicate well. They might need to learn and practice having an audible voice, avoiding verbal tickets, and having an understandable line of thought. If someone is struggling to be brave, they just need to practice going for what they believe to be right.
That’s not to say that there’s nothing which increases the probability that one may be brave, but I believe it does ultimately come down to that next decision. You may be more brave by having a better track record of bravery, but it can be washed away with a single cowardly decision. The playing field is much more level.
Regarding wealth, it’s a good point. Perhaps I should have clarified that “success” is relative. Success for someone born into poverty is different than someone born into royalty. I’m focused on the post-adulthood qualities we should focus on to maximize our personally determinable chances of success.
My favorite aphorism about luck is that you can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket.
After becoming adults, luck rarely falls into our laps. We have to make decisions that make us lucky.
Through that lens, bravery is the will to buy a ticket. Many people don’t. Cleverness is the quality of the ticket, since they have different probabilities of success. And persistence is the decision to keep playing the game, even after you’ve lost every other.
So I think the three qualities are aligned with the view that success is just another word for luck.
I think cleverness simplifies what are arguably two different but somewhat related factors here.
An interest in a market/subject that has the potential for growth, and the ability to execute on said interest.
The first one probably has at least a bit of a luck element to it. If your interest ties into a hyped up technology or field (like with crypto a few years ago or AI recently) then opportunities for wealth open up left and right, while if your interests relate to something society/capitalism doesn't value as much, then you're out of luck. At least unless you can force yourself to change interests/passions.
You also need good timing, though you could make a good argument for that aspect being luck, skill or both.
I also don’t buy the skill-will distinction at all, especially since they eventually say matters of will can be “practiced more intentionally”. The bones are there, but the details are kinda arbitrarily determined by ideological bias IMO. I think the author would love modern psychology lit on “Executive Functioning”, has a lot to say about how often a typical human is able to choose to will something!
Good article otherwise. Provocatively written, and refreshingly concise - def made me think. Also, obviously, inspiring!
I'd add two more:
1. Luck. Plenty of lucky successful people out there. Not to say only luck gets you there, or that luck alone is always enough, but it makes a massive difference.
2. Lack of understanding of risk. Probably not an overall good thing, but a common thing among successful people (IME). Quite often the backstory involves some hideously crazy risks the person took at some point that paid off, but the cost of failure would have been unbearable.
And to that last point, we don't hear about everyone who took the same risks and failed miserably.
Wealth is a huge enabler for risk taking. If you are on the verge of homelessness, you can’t gamble the rent on a 100:1 bet with 1000:1 payout, even though that is obviously a bet you should always take, every time, no matter how often you lose.
In reality, those bets are all around us. They are the very basis of life itself. Resource scarcity makes us behave as scavengers or hunter-gatherers, depending on the generosity of the environment instead of planting seeds and waiting for the harvest.
Perhaps I should have clarified that “success” is relative. Success for someone born into poverty is different than someone born into royalty.
I’m focused on the qualities we should focus on in our adulthood to maximize our personally determinable chances of success. I believe all adults should do that for our own lives.
With that view, the question is whether homeless people benefit from being clever, brave, and persistent more than any other mix of traits, for example towards the pursuit of getting off the streets. I would say yes!
What do you think?
I would agree that the paradigm of persistent application of strategic action is effective across the vast majority of problem spaces.
The issue is that as resource availability plots towards the corner of the graph, the potential actions become more and more constrained, and inherently, the benefits of being clever and brave are constrained with those limitations. Eventually you get down to the point of eating cockroaches because the option is death from starvation.
It’s certainly a matter of scale, but I think the point is that the scale isn’t linear, and that the benefits of strategic risk tolerance scale exponentially with resource abundance.
As with most things in life, the playing field isn’t level. I guess the real question here is should it be? To what extent does it benefit society at large to make it more level, and how much more level is optimal?
I definitely agree with the idea that we choose to will something! I tried to get that across in the essay, but maybe not as well as I could have.
What I meant between skill and will is that a skill is multivariate, whereas will is more unidimensional: you choose to do something or not.
That unidimensionality levels the playing field a lot. Let’s say someone is struggling to communicate well. They might need to learn and practice having an audible voice, avoiding verbal tickets, and having an understandable line of thought. If someone is struggling to be brave, they just need to practice going for what they believe to be right.
That’s not to say that there’s nothing which increases the probability that one may be brave, but I believe it does ultimately come down to that next decision. You may be more brave by having a better track record of bravery, but it can be washed away with a single cowardly decision. The playing field is much more level.
Regarding wealth, it’s a good point. Perhaps I should have clarified that “success” is relative. Success for someone born into poverty is different than someone born into royalty. I’m focused on the post-adulthood qualities we should focus on to maximize our personally determinable chances of success.
What do you think?
To be successful you don't really need to be clever and you don't need to be brave.
You need to get lucky, and if that doesn't work, then yes persistence is the next most important thing – keep trying until you do get lucky.
My favorite aphorism about luck is that you can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket.
After becoming adults, luck rarely falls into our laps. We have to make decisions that make us lucky.
Through that lens, bravery is the will to buy a ticket. Many people don’t. Cleverness is the quality of the ticket, since they have different probabilities of success. And persistence is the decision to keep playing the game, even after you’ve lost every other.
So I think the three qualities are aligned with the view that success is just another word for luck.
> you can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket
you can expect to win if you buy a ticket every week for the next 6 million years
That's funny but given the normal result of buying a lottery ticket, bravery == stupidity.
Exactly, foolishness is bravery without cleverness
Maybe. I've found the type of parents and upbringing you had to be more predictive of life outcomes than any personality or virtue assessment.
Doesn’t your upbringing essentially manifest itself into your personality and virtues?
I think cleverness simplifies what are arguably two different but somewhat related factors here.
An interest in a market/subject that has the potential for growth, and the ability to execute on said interest.
The first one probably has at least a bit of a luck element to it. If your interest ties into a hyped up technology or field (like with crypto a few years ago or AI recently) then opportunities for wealth open up left and right, while if your interests relate to something society/capitalism doesn't value as much, then you're out of luck. At least unless you can force yourself to change interests/passions.
You also need good timing, though you could make a good argument for that aspect being luck, skill or both.
Trigger/need-snipe warning: the intro line is pure bait.