Looking for Fairness in a Luck-Bound World

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to format this site. Where should I put these articles? While I try to work this out, I'll be posting two copies of this one: the one here, which will start off at the top and work its way down toward obscurity, and a copy on the Impractical in Practice page, with a few more bells, whistles and thrilling formatting options, which I can arrange by importance and topic instead of by date. But since you're here now, please enjoy this report on the meaning of meritocracy.

I came across a review article today that's either profoundly heartening or deeply depressing, depending. "The Role of Luck in Life Success Is Far Greater Than We Realized," the title announces, and the article itself goes on to discuss a number of studies that show just that. For those of us who think of success as an important component of happiness – and that's most of the people I know – this has important ramifications.

It appears that a vast and varied hodgepodge of researchers – including physicists, psychologists, risk analysts and investment strategists – have all been looking into talent and luck as they relate success. Smarter, more creative, more emotionally intelligent people are able to make better use of their opportunities, but simply having those traits isn't enough for a person to get ahead. Author and researcher Scott Barry Kaufman explains that "more talented people are going to be more likely to get the most 'bang for their buck' out of a given opportunity," but that it takes a good deal of luck to get the cycle moving in the first place. And often, Kaufman explains, less talented people are able to go farther just because they get a lucky break.

Success breeds success, as they say. Once someone has been recognized as successful, they are more likely to be rewarded for that success again – being given a better job offer, or another grant, or some other award that then becomes a stepping stone toward the next success.

A pair of physicists and an economist developed a simple simulation to measure the importance of talent against luck. Success, as it turns out, was not all that closely associated with talent. At the end of the simulation game, just 2% of the simulated people ended up with 44% of the accolades. All-in-all, Kaufman explains, "mediocre-but-lucky people were much more successful than more-talented-but-unlucky individuals."

These results are actually a good thing.