[FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent

[Robert Wall]

>
> It is a double standard and a failure of imagination to think that
> ​ ...​
>

Hillary Clinton?  RT?  Though the initial response you gave seemed to be on
topic or near it, regretfully, you seemed to have gotten side-tracked by
other things in my prose about it.  And so, to me at least, you seem to be
cherry-picking things of no consequence here to the topic. I guess that's
okay, but I don't think I want to go there with you at the risk of being
side-tracked myself. Perhaps these could be the subject of another thread?
I can join you there for a more detailed response.

To be sure, this particular thread is about whether or not massive wealth
or disproportionate global prosperity is earned or achieved mostly by
luck.  It is about neoliberalism as an excuse by those who benefit for the
continuance of the current trends in the ever-widening wealth gap, not only
in this country but in others as well. How do Trade Agreements fit into
this? Could this be a prequel to a dangerous tipping point towards the
instability of a society?  At least that is what I intended to convey.


On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 9:28 PM, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
wrote:

> "Strong critics of Hillary Clinton imply that she, like her husband,
> would surely have strengthened the negative feedback effect of
> neoliberalism toward their own self-interest and toward worsening social
> stability, IMHO."
>
>
> It is a double standard and a failure of imagination to think that one
> cannot optimize multiple objectives at once, e.g. their own good and the
> common good.  It is not even hypocritical.   The fact is that it takes
> money and power to change things, so they went out and got some.   No, she
> should have been a nun, but the Donald can swoop down with his kleptocrat
> friends and do god knows what..
>
>
> Marcus
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Robert Wall <
> wallrobert7 at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Thursday, January 19, 2017 4:57:14 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
>
> This is just an exploratory thought piece to try in this forum ... please
> skip if it seems, right off the bat, as being too thought-full ...  [image:
> 😴][image: 😊]
>
> Does *Pareto's Principle
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle> *(with the attending,
> so-called Power Law <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law>) provide
> good *moral* justification for an amped-up progressive tax strategy or a
> reverse-discriminating set of rebalancing policies [e.g., changing the
> probabilities for the "everyman"]?  And, is the argument one of
> *morality *or one of *necessity*?  That's what this thread and the
> subject *Nautilus *article intend to explore, especially with the events
> that will begin the next four years tomorrow.
>
> *Nautilus*:  Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
> <http://nautil.us/issue/44/luck/investing-is-more-luck-than-talent?utm_source=Nautilus&utm_campaign=f5f998a451-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_01_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_dc96ec7a9d-f5f998a451-56531089> (January
> 19, 2017).
>
> *The surprising message of the statistics of wealth distribution.*
>
>
> *I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor
> the battle to the strong, *
> *neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding,
> nor yet favor to men of skill, *
> *but time and chance happeneth to them all.*  (Ecclesiastes 9:11)
>
>
> [*an introductory aside*: As computational statisticians, we love our
> simulations ... and our coin tosses.  [image: 😎] We are always mindful
> of *bias *... as, say, apparent with the ever-widening wealth gap. Money,
> Money, Money <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETxmCCsMoD0> ...] [image:
> 😊]
>
> [image: Inline image 1]
>
>
> So, as described in the subject *Nautilus *article, Pareto's Principle,
> descriptively seen so often in nature, seems to imply that the current
> widening wealth gap is, well, "natural?"  Judging by its prevalence in most
> all rich societies, it does seem so. However, remembering that this sorting
> process works even with *fair *coin tosses in investments and gambling,
> this process phenomenon with its biased outcomes seems to occur in many
> places and on many levels ...
>
> For example, we find this aspect of *luck in nature* elsewhere in
> biological processes; from *Wikipedia *... *Chance and Necessity: Essay
> on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology* is a 1970 book by Nobel
> Prize winner Jacques Monod, interpreting the processes of evolution to show
> that life is only the result of natural processes by "pure chance." The
> basic tenet of this book is that systems in nature with molecular biology,
> such as enzymatic biofeedback loops [*metabolisms*] can be explained
> without having to invoke final causality [e.g., Intelligent Design].
>
> Usually, relatively very few winners and many, many losers. Phenotypical
> luck or luck in tectonic location?
>
> According to the introduction the book's title was inspired by a line
> attributed to Democritus <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democritus>,
> "Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity."
>
>
> But, is there a *necessity *to Pareto's Principle? To answer this I must
> defer to my theoretical mathematician friends who so often look to Plato
> for such answers. [image: 🤔][image: 😊]  My thought is that the
> necessity comes from a need to, perhaps teleologically, react to it ... as
> the planet's only available potential intelligent designers ... the purpose
> being, on some scale, Darwinian-level survival.
>
> And, this aspect of *fate by chance* is also reasoned in the
> Pulitzer-winning* Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is
> a 1997*, a transdisciplinary non-fiction book by Jared Diamond, professor
> of geography and physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles
> (UCLA).
>
>
> The book attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations (including North
> Africa) have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea
> that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral,
> or inherent genetic superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and
> technology between human societies originate primarily in environmental
> differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. When
> cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example,
> written language or the development among Eurasians of resistance to
> endemic diseases), he asserts that these advantages occurred because of the
> influence of geography on societies and cultures (for example, by
> facilitating commerce and trade between different cultures) and were not
> inherent in the Eurasian genomes. [Wikipedia]
>
>
> The luck of geography.  So then, should the more fortunate nations be more
> progressively taxed?  Maybe we should ask Greece? Or see what Germany has
> to say?  Followers of egalitarianism would argue yes. Followers of Ayn
> Rand's capitalism or her Objectivism [like Speaker Paul Ryan] would argue
> no. I think most of the rest of us fall somewhere in between; that is, not
> sure. So, let's go on ...
>
> *Is the (economic) game rigged* then, as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth
> Warren have insisted? Personally, I would say absolutely yes, and
> *neoliberalism *is the underlying philosophy of the rigging process
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9wUGxgEFsw> [hear just the 1st 12
> minutes, if you watch].  But, maybe this political ideology is just one
> that is eventually spawned by a conspicuous need for moralistic or even
> Randian justification, by the winners, for its resulting
> destructiveness--as we so often hear, "wealth accumulation is based on hard
> work and talent."  So, intelligent design?
>
> The rigging is, IMHO, of not doing anything about the unabated and
> disproportionate flow of wealth to the top and, hence, giving rise to the
> resulting, ever-skewing, descriptive Pareto distribution of wealth versus
> population.  It certainly does seem like an increasing biasing of the
> metaphorical *fair *coin [e.g., the busted "trickle down" metaphor of
> President Ronald Reagan].
>
> Going forward, maybe we need to think about this neoliberal meme as the
> next four years, with a* President Donald Trump*, begin tomorrow  ...
> while also remembering that *morality *is a human concept or "invention."
> Or is it?  Or, does that even matter?!  Perhaps, morality is just a
> necessity ... but what are its goals ... dare I say its "purpose?"  When
> did it emerge? With consciousness?  How did it emerge?  By chance, as Monad
> and Democritus would insist?
>
> *Conjecture*: *It would seem that morality's human purpose is to check,
> slow, or rebalance the effects of the Pareto phenomenon in social and
> economic processes.*  Wealth has always been disproportionately
> distributed. Surely, just like the "selfish gene," morality arose out of
> self-interest; so it arose with prerequisite consciousness and *not *necessarily
> just with human consciousness [e.g., we see evidence of "morality" in other
> primate social systems]. As a system model, neoliberalism is connected with
> a positive feedback loop to morality and with a negative feedback loop to
> social stability. I think that there is a tipping-point distribution of
> wealth versus population
> <https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-02-04/is-inequality-approaching-a-tipping-point->
> .
>
> *Conclusion*: The above conjecture is borne up by chance and necessity.
> The necessity is manifested by the need to rebalance the outcomes of the
> game [e.g., wealth or opportunity] every now and then, in order to ensure
> social stability. This just seems like a brain-dead conclusion that even
> Warren Buffet and Bill Gates get. But will Trump?  Strong critics of
> Hillary Clinton imply that she, like her husband, would surely have
> strengthened the negative feedback effect of neoliberalism toward their own
> self-interest and toward worsening social stability, IMHO.  The results of
> the November election are a kind of testament to this conclusion. In an
> unexpected way, we may have a *chance *with Trump to bring even more
> *necessary *awareness to the aforementioned system model that has often
> played out in human history and as recounted in Jared Diamond's book-length
> essays.  Bernie-style revolution? Perhaps.
>
> So, that is the idea of how *chance *and *necessity *fits here in "the
> game.". Now, let's dig into this idea of *morality *a bit more and how it
> fits in with the need for a different kind of evolution, not biological,
> but *conscious evolution*:
>
> This comment from a *Quora *article on this subject titled Is morality
> merely a social construct or something more?
> <https://www.quora.com/Is-morality-merely-a-social-construct-or-something-more> is
> notable:
>
> Mindaugas Kuprionis <https://www.quora.com/profile/Mindaugas-Kuprionis>,
> works at CERN
>
> Written 17 Sep 2010
> <https://www.quora.com/Is-morality-merely-a-social-construct-or-something-more/answer/Mindaugas-Kuprionis>
>
>
> Just recently Edge.org <https://www.edge.org/>held a conference titled "The
> New Science of Morality
> <https://www.edge.org/event/the-new-science-of-morality>". Consensus
> statement signed by several scholars (list below) was such:
>
>
> 1) Morality is a natural phenomenon and a cultural phenomenon
>
> 2) Many of the psychological building blocks of morality are innate
>
> 3) Moral judgments are often made intuitively, with little deliberation or
> conscious weighing of evidence and alternatives
>
> 4) Conscious moral reasoning plays multiple roles in our moral lives
>
> 5) Moral judgments and values are often at odds with actual behavior
>
> 6) Many areas of the brain are recruited for moral cognition, yet there is
> no "moral center" in the brain
>
> 7) Morality varies across individuals and cultures
>
> 8) Moral systems support human flourishing, to varying degrees  [aside--
> so morality may be akin to metabolic systems at the level of society
> --regulating feedback loops of sorts]
>
> [*aside*--  Fyodor Dostoyevsky's *Crime and Punishment *comes to mind.
> Under this eight-point new science, how would we judge the "higher-purpose"
> actions of Rodion Raskolnikov?]
>
>
> So if it is true that there is no distributional *purpose *to l*uck *other
> than a mechanistic, long-run, teleonomic
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleonomy> sorting mechanism of outcomes
> in accordance with a Power Law, then should there be a *necessary*,
> periodic re-sorting of the initial conditions now skewed by *chance *...
>  like with a deck of cards before the next deal ...?  [image: 🤔]  All
> poker players would insist on no less.  Don't we all insist on a *fair *game?
> It's an interesting question, IMHO.
> Yes, I know; lots to unpack here.  Sorry.  Nonetheless, I thought the
> *Nautilus *article was quite thought-provoking as they always seem to be.
> Cheers,
>
> -Robert
>
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