My name is Keevin and I’m a recovering libertarian who used to love Ayn Rand after reading The Fountain Head. Previously, unexamined “Freedom” was the most important value to me. However, as I progressed through medicine and learned more about (while simultaneously becoming even more confused by) human tendencies, it quickly became obvious how early life circumstances greatly influence a person’s life trajectory. The apparent paradox, at least to me, lies in the fact that for a person be able to capitalize on their luck at all requires a disproportionate belief in their own causal powers.
Veritasium, a great learning channel on Youtube, did a great synopsis on this concept in this video. Similar concepts were brought up in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, ie Most professional hockey players are born in January – March due to age cut offs in the little leagues of Candian hockey. This isn’t to say that people who achieve success don’t have the skills to perform their jobs, just that to a large degree any one person is replaceable by someone else equally skilled (but less lucky).
Humans seem to be prone to useful delusions, beliefs that serve survival or functional purposes, but might not have much correlation with reality. For example, the illusion of free will; those who believe they have it are more likely to learn from their decisions and ultimately navigate the world more successfully. Or, the evolutionary usefulness of religion as a social binding mechanism. I struggle with having the meta-knowledge that certain functional beliefs might be delusions and wanting to adhere to a world view that is as internally consistent as possible while being able to hold that worldview consciously.
The human organism has innate needs, such as hunger and the need for social connectedness. We can represent those needs flexibly; eg, the desire for a banana and the importance of church on Sunday. I would like to believe, however, that we can generate narratives that feed the innate underlying needs in a healthy way while simultaneously consciously adhering to the laws of physics. As Veritasium notes (@ t= 9:24), studies have shown that people who acknowledge their luck are more likely to give charitably, be grateful, and be happier. Maybe, for short periods of time, we can hold the belief that we have control and outcomes depend on our hardwork, as long as we can step back, reset and acknowledge the luck that gave us the tools to do so. What if we had a school-like institution that raised the floor of luck for more children so that they might be hardworking and successful, and simultaneously believed it was their doing while acknowledging their luck?