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Reminder that billionaires are just regular idiots who won the birth lottery (media.mas.to)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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source https://www.karlbooklover.com/liftoff-highlights/

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I mean, that's a hilariously depressing anecdote, but your title is demonstrably inaccurate. Just to take one prominent example, let's look at Jeff Bezos: he was born to teenage parents who struggled financially. His mom worked while she put herself through night school. Also, (and this is kinda beside my point but still,) Jeff graduated summa cum laude from Princeton.

And even if we take someone who came from money like Bill Gates, whose family was probably worth $4-5 million, it still doesn't make sense to say that he's a billionaire "because he won the birth lottery". (Again, he's also far from an idiot, but that's not the main point here.) How many other thousands of people are born into families worth a few million dollars, and how many of them become billionaires?

Also, what's your cutoff for "winning the birth lottery"? Hell, I'm a regular idiot who also won the birth lottery compared to 95% of the world, yet I'm still not a billionaire.

Yes, Musk is a moron, but statements like "billionaires are just regular idiots who won the birth lottery" are, in a large percentage of cases, factually untrue.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Except that Bezos got a big investment in his business from his parents when he was starting Amazon, and exploited connections he made in Priceton to get it bootstrapped. Vast majority of families would not be able to put in a 250k investment into their son's business or send their son to Princeton to mingle. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/02/how-jeff-bezos-got-his-parents-to-invest-in-amazon--turning-them-into.html

Meanwhile, here's the actual story of Bill Gates https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMPOJgqfNAk

The statement is very much factually true, and you're just woefully misinformed I'm afraid. In fact, actual studies demonstrate this

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You've still failed to show that:

a) all billionaires are "regular idiots"

and

b) that all billionaires have necessarily "won the birth lottery" (in addition to not having defined the term in a way that would exclude the vast majority of the developed world, in which case the claim is near-vacuous)

All you've managed to show is that zip codes are correlated with financial success in general (nothing about billionaires here), and that luck plays a huge factor in success as well, which may explain why an idiot like Musk can become a billionaire, but doesn't prove that all billionaires are "regular idiots who won the birth lottery".

If you truly believe that, then what are your thoughts on, for example, Oprah, J.K. Rowling, Do Won Chang, Leonardo del Vecchio, Kenny Troutt, Francois Pinault, etc.?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe read the links I gave you?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I did. I even watched the non sequitur Youtube video.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The fact that you're calling a video showing that Gates built an empire using nepotism to get effectively unlimited resources from IBM non sequitur shows that you're intellectually dishonest and there's no point continuing this discussion. Bye.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yet again, Bill Gates is almost completely irrelevant to this conversation. He's just one billionaire among hundreds, and was one of the examples I happened to jump to first. In hindsight, I likely should have avoided an individual that would trigger you so much.

You've claimed that billionaires are just regular idiots who won the birth lottery. I've demonstrated that you haven't show that this is the case. Not even close.

To do so would require showing that each billionaire a) is an idiot, and b) has won the genetic lottery. You've ignored all of the other billionaires I've brought into the discussion, likely intentionally because they don't conform to your requirements.

That already makes me skeptical of your intellectual honesty, but I'll reserve judgment until I see your reply (or lack thereof) to this comment.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seems to me that you're the one triggered here. You gave couple of examples that I demonstrated to be false. I linked you a study showing that luck is the major factor as opposed to personal qualities, and another showing that in fact birth place is a good predictor of success. Literally everything you've claimed is demonstrably false. Based on your comments it's evident that you don't understand how statistics work. The fact that you just keep replying with smug and vapid comments is just a cherry on top.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

To prove your claim that "billionaires are just regular idiots who won the birth lottery", you would have to go billionaire by billionaire and show that all of them conform to these assertions. I've given a decent number of examples for whom this would be quite difficult.

You have failed to do so, and instead have not only misconstrued two examples out of hundreds as representative samples, but have the audacity to claim that I'm the one who doesn't understand statistics.

I've pointed this out to you multiple times, and you've dodged the point so many times that at this point it's clear that you have no intention of participating in this conversation in good faith.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for once again confirming that you don't understand the concept of statistics.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Okay how about this? Elon Musk is an idiot who won the birth lottery.