Hello and welcome to Pie Ponders, in which Pie – that is me for those who took a rather undersized bus to school– raises questions on various topics of great importance. While in some post I present my views on one thing or another, others are sort of thinking out loud. This post is part of the latter. Today I want to cover a common argument that appears in political debates and which I often find dubious – the let us call it Luck of Birth argument.
The way it usually goes: well it is easy for you to talk, you were lucky, you were born healthy/ in a good country/ in a good family / cisheterowhitemale / tall dark and handsome / whatever. You won the birth lottery, so shut up and pay, shitlord. I find this ehm… problematic, excuse the word, and I will expand upon it.
First what is a human? Well, dear children, in most cases when and evil cishet patriarch oppresses a poor innocent woman through unspeakable acts of reproduction, a human may or may not appear. For the purposes of this argument, we will ignore the spiritual part and say we have a bag of meat, bone and various fluids of questionable purity. In the end, we are a species with sexual reproduction, so in most cases a human is the product of DNA of two other humans. This lump of organic matter is then shaped by the environment it develops in, and by a messy combination of nature and nurture you end up with Pie or one of you lot.
The what I like to call “socio-religious” version is much more clear, simple and straight forward. You have these pre-born humans you see, who, by pure chance, are assigned to one female or other. If you are assigned to a certain female, you are lucky, ya bastard. And since you are lucky, you are no longer entitled to an opinion for the rest of your life.
I find the luck argument does not stand up to scrutiny. I am not really lucky because I was born in Romania. I could not have been born in the Congo (worse luck) or Switzerland (better luck), because I, whatever that may be, am the result of combined Romanian genes raised in a Romanian environment. I would not be me had I been born anywhere else. Furthermore if you are born in a good country or family it is, in part, because generations worked to build a better world, specifically for their offspring.
I am not lucky to have been born to a responsible family which provided for me, I was the product of a deliberate process of two people to create me, and they had to try for a while, I did not come easy. My parents would have behaved quite differently had I not been born.
The cisheteromale thing I have no defense on. While I am slightly above average tall and dark haired, I am not particularly handsome. So no luck there. Then again, one of my university professors used to say it is bad to be short, ugly and stupid. If you are not one of those, it is still ok.
While yes, there is a let’s say valid view that it is lucky not to be born with a severe illness or disability, or in a war zone, or a soulless ginger, or any of the bad things that may happen, in the end your genes are part of the very base of human biology and I struggle to call it a “genetic lottery” because it is what it is. Height, health, beauty, intelligence. A well-shaped nose, well-proportioned ears, nice eyes, good hair, all these things are just characteristics, and while you can indeed say it is “lucky” to get some of the good ones, it is over all meaningless. Because it is what it is and it cannot be changed. Is it better to be taller or have a prettier face? Healthier or smarter? Who knows? This is to integral to what a human is to just call it luck.
Now let’s assume that all this is, in fact, luck, depending on how you define luck. It still has no bearing on the validity of your words. Just because you get lucky, it does not mean you are wrong. I often heard in debate “maybe you would think differently if you were born poor”. There is an old saying: if my grandma had wheels, she’d be a car… What relevance does that have? It would not have made my views better or more correct. It is a rehash of the whole bourgeois logic argument commies throw around – the left is nothing if not unoriginal when you get down to the basics. When I argue politics, I try to use reason and fact, not personal anecdotes, precisely because personal anecdotes are just that, subjective views. My whole attempt at political philosophy is to derive something as objective as possible, keeping in mind the constraints of human though. The left, off course, tries to push the whole “everything is subjective” precisely to shut down debate. Why find counterarguments when you can say well you were born in a family that took care of you, you were lucky? It is just another ad hominem, in the end.
The ”birth logic” argument is, in fact, quite objectively wrong. There are poor and rich people on the right, the left, the center or the libertarian sides, sick and healthy, young and old, tall and short, Romanian and American. It is clear that being poor does not guarantee having the same views, I mean just look at all those poor people who internalized wrong think and do things against their interest. There are plenty of poor libertarians, so had I been poor there is no guarantee I would have been a left winger. If birth logic is the logic “they should have”, it is still wrong, as what an idealist thinks people should believe is pointless.
In the end, the birth lottery is no guarantee of anything. I will finish the post with a personal anecdote, because it seems fashionable these days to do so and it was one of the things that made me reexamine the luck argument. So let us get anecdoting.
I was lucky to be born in Bucharest to a family that provided for me – not any kind of luxury, but sufficiently that I did not fear about whether the next meal will come. The second person in my anecdote had the same luck, his family being somewhat wealthier than mine. I graduated from the Bucharest Polytechnic with a degree in Electronic engineering focused on information technology. I did not choose this university out of some passion for the subject matter, but because in general employers in Romania have good opinions of its graduates. This is not because it is a particularly good university – none in Romania are – but because it ensures a level of selection and filtering of people. It is a fairly difficult university and not necessarily in a good way. But the first level of selection is that, in general, people who want to go there and pass the exams are usually in the top performers in high school. The second level is you have to learn a lot of stupid shit and you have to understand some not so stupid shit. Finishing it is sort of a sign you are fairly intelligent and capable of learning and willing to put in the work – often pointless and/or unpleasant work – which is sometimes necessary in the modern work place.
I finished this rather difficult university while holding down a job – this is very common in Romania, university is for getting a degree, a job is for learning things and getting hands on experience. The university being in Bucharest – the best job market in the country, luckily for me – and the high demand for tech work ensures polytechnic students can find jobs. The job are also needed because when you graduate with no actual work experience, you will be competing for jobs with mostly people who also graduated and have work experience. It is difficult though, most days I left home at 7 30 AM and got back at 7 pm and often worked some in the weekend. My holiday from work was mostly during exam period, so I could study.
On the other hand, the University of Economic Studies is not particularly difficult. If you study some bullshit like International Economic Relations as he did, it is even easier. You can graduate without a sweat and with plenty of time to get a job should you choose. It is, in fact, significantly easier to find time for a job, as school attendance is much more voluntary. The fellow I speak of did not get a job as he wanted to have a bit of fun and enjoy university life, and his parents were giving him enough money. Even so, he did not graduate with a particularly good grade average, as studying was not his thing.
You can imagine, his first job did not pay much and he was rather unhappy about it. So when we met and talked about jobs he told me, without a hint of irony, you are so lucky, you have a good job. I was a little dumbstruck. There was zero association made between working versus partying in university and the subsequent income. And I understood the appeal of luck.
Not all cases are this clear cut off course, and there is some luck – if you define it at that – in everything. But people are too quick to appeal to “the luck of the draw” as a universal explanation. And in the end, you play the hand you are dealt.
Comments
216 responses to “Pie ponders: Life, Luck and Libertarianism”
I have a .44 magnum exactly like inspector Callahan. I always think of it when I hear “do you feel lucky?”
Well, do ya, punk?
I gots to know!
It’ll blow your head clean off.
I’ve got an .88 magnum.
It shoots thru schools.
When I hear “I have a model 29″ my response is always ” Yeah? Wanna sell it?”
NO SIR. I will never sell it. It’s a 6.5″ nickle 29-2 with factory stocks. It’s so nicely shot in and so easy to hit with, everyone I let try it offers me to buy it. I have never had a firearm feel so right before..
Too philosophical. I’ll ponder the kind of pie that comes out of the oven rather than the kind that floats among the clouds.
pondering is good for the soul
Like me, UCS has both tremendous wit and vocabulary, but the soul part is unconfirmed.
I dare not take any of those I own out of their jars lest they escape.
jars: what a great idea; thanks !
No alt-text? For shame!
I had alt text but it was lost in the great squirrel revolution. When a bunch of posts disappeared. I think my post was scheduled for publishing then it became pending again.
The first said “Romanian lottery tickets recently changed but am to lazy to change the picture”
The second said “Some white men really blow their lottery winnings”
Third said “Not only it is seven deuce but the cards themselves are shitty”
SO yeah it was not good alt text so not much is missing. But it was there.
Also I have good alt text on some posts but does anyone compliment it? nooo
Oh, stop whining. No one ever mentions the Alt Text on my articles either.
I’m a great fan of alt-text, but it has becomes so rare that I admit I often forget to look for it.
I have made it a point to provide some when I provide the images for my articles. Usually it’s jokes. Unless you’re swiss.
I thought it was odd there wasn’t any.
Those damn squirrels…
“And in the end, you play the hand you are dealt.”
Damn right. I’ve always made my own luck.
I’ve made my own as well, but I’m not a great builder, so mine is always shitty.
I’ve always been partial to the saying “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” Which is along the same lines.
“So when we met and talked about jobs he told me, without a hint of irony, you are so lucky, you have a good job.”
When I got my first full-time college job, I sent out an e-mail to the people in the company I had been temping at for about 5 years. One of them sent me congratulation and went on to note, “you’ve got a full-time teaching job, the dream. You’re very lucky.” I responded with a courteous thanks, but inside I was thinking “yeah, lucky. I took a chance at this career relatively later in life, worked my ass off, deprived myself of a lot of things people my age had…”
That said, I do think that growing up in some circumstances, you have to work a lot harder to get ahead and/or overcome bad ideas.
“You’re so lucky you married your wife and had children.”
“You’re so lucky you showed up to work on time for years and you’re now an indispensable asset.”
“You’re so lucky you did your homework and bought a home in that neighborhood.”
“You’re so lucky you kept your debt down and focused on making sound investments.”
“You’re so lucky you stayed on good terms with your parents/siblings/coworkers, despite your differences.”
“You’re so lucky you cultivated habits like temperance, patience, diligence, and fidelity. They made you such a lucky person.”
Temperance? GTFO
I agree. But the reason I do a lot of those things is because my parents taught/forced me to. What if that direction hadn’t been offered? My point is not that it’s foreordained to fail, but that some people do have more obstacles to overcome. And, I think those obstacles can be higher in some countries than in others.
There’s one inconsistency that has never been adequetly explained to me; and that’s probably because I’m assuming good faith:
If my family gave me such great advantages, shouldn’t government policy be aimed at replicating it rather than the opposite?
Examples matter. I wasn’t forced, but my parents were great role models.
And I give great thanks to all the negative barometers from my childhood whose bouts with drugs, debt, and other illicit behavior were most demonstrative . . . and, back to my parents for not cutting those folks any slack and calling things as they are.
The 2nd to last one is very important.
I’m known as the guy who can work with anyone. ANYONE.
I work with people that I absolutely fucking hate, and they think we’re friends. One guy asked me to be in his wedding party.
It’s part of being professional. You go to war with the soldiers you have. And it pays off to be able to hold your tongue.
Do you also act friendly towards online strangers who you actually fucking hate?
Asking for a friend, AKA Pope Jimbo.
I’m here of my own free will.
My buddy George: born humbly in Nigeria, speaks English as a third language, learned the arts of repair and improvising the hard way, emigrated to the US, worked fairly menial jobs (tent erection), saved his nickels, finally rented a shop, then has repaired cars for three decades so far. His daughter is on full scholarship at a prestigious private liberal arts college, and he generally warns her away from Americans, especially the lazy sort.
Hard work doesn’t always pay off, but I know plenty who made it work for them.
Hard work almost always pays off unless you end up getting hit by a bus 3 weeks before retirement.
Who’s young enough to both retire AND get pregnant?
Some “20 and done” government functionary?
Hard work is not enough. You could spend a few decades building the world’s most elaborate sand castle. That’s hard work. Not enough.
The problem is that the people pushing this argument would say that George won the genetic/environmental lottery. He grew up such that he was willing to struggle and scrimp. They argue its inherently unfair that he should unduly benefit from the genetics and moral influence that made him turn out that way when other people are lazy and unwilling to defer gratification because they didn’t have the same genetic and environmental influences.
It’s a vile and stupid argument that reduces his achievements to nothing more than those of a mindless automaton. And the people pushing it would recoil in horror at the logical implication of their argument – that George deserves better because he’s genetically and environmentally superior.
He’s not much of a philosopher and doesn’t debate further than to note “it doesn’t work that way” to all the contrived theories and excuses others offer. His observations are a lot like Suthen’s simple “they lie” when no more notice than that should be paid.
I do think that growing up in some circumstances, you have to work a lot harder to get ahead and/or overcome bad ideas. – I agree. But this person was not in that category.
Oops, I was making a more general point, not specifically in response to your example.
OT – Larry Correia has a great rant about the stupidity of the current crop of gun-grabbing Democrats.
maybe but does he get invited to the cool parties at comic cons*? no. so there
* it may be that the small parties libertatarians and conservatives do at cons are better then the fashionable ones
He’s already been blackballed from all the “important” cons etc. He sells enough books and has a large enough following to have a pile of fuck you money.
What’s the blackballing about? Not woke enough? I’ve heard of him but I’m not familiar with his stuff.
Read the article and it will become clear.
Did you just tell him to click on a link? The nerve.
No, I did, I was just aware of him first and foremost as like Public Enemy #1 because of his political beliefs, but as near as I can tell he’s just very openly not a fan of Progressivism. Is that it? Did he like deadname some tranny science fiction writer or something?
He called bullshit on the Hugos being overrun by proggie twats who demanded that all science fiction conform to their moral standards in in order to qualify.
If I’m understanding the workings of a lot of these organizations lately, yes, that’s all it takes.
He’s an unrepentant gun guy and hugely successful sci fi writer. A few years ago he got pissed at the political nature of the Hugo Awards and pissed off all the proggies when he exposed them for the frauds that they are.
At this point he could invite some like-minded buddies (Tom Kratman, John Ringo, and their types), and have his own convention.
It is called LibertyCon. And he isn’t blackballed from the biggest con there is; DragonCon, cause when the SJW types tried to deplatform him there, the D*C staff told them to fuck right off.
There will be no secure delivery of ammo, food, and fuel, because the guys who build that, grow that, and ship that, well, you just dropped a Hellfire on his cousin Bill because he wouldn’t turn over his SKS. Fuck you. Starve. And that’s assuming they don’t still make the delivery but the gas is tainted and food is poisoned.
This guy isn’t pulling punches.
It’s good stuff.
A friend of mine who is a political activist said something interesting the other day, and that was for most people on the left political violence is a knob, and they can turn the heat up and down, with things like protests, and riots, all the way up to destruction of property, and sometimes murder… But for the vast majority of folks on the right, it’s an off and on switch. And the settings are Vote or Shoot Fucking Everybody. And believe me, you really don’t want that switch to get flipped, because Civil War 2.0 would make Bosnia look like a trip to Disneyworld.
Dayum, son.
That is a very good point, and one that encapsulates why I hate the left so much. They are pushing for a level of politically inspired violence because they think it benefits them and that they can control it, and they are wrong. If the Rubicon is ever crossed into actual bloodshed (which I still don’t believe would ever happen, but let’s pretend), they have
No.
Fucking.
Clue.
What they will be responsible for unleashing. It will be unremittingly horrible far beyond most people’s comprehension, and they are likely to be on the short end of that stick.
and they are likely to be on the short end of that stick
I will certainly do everything I can to make sure their end of the stick is as short as possible.
Yep. They have no idea what kind of explosives they are playing with.
An American civil war would be terrible and bloody beyond imagination. As commentors in the article point out, modern cities are a delicate thing. Starvation would kill far more than bullets or bombs.
And – when the American economy and currency crashes, the rest of the world will go down too. We are talking global chaos and a dark age.
I’ve never read this guy’s books. I’m going to have to remedy that. Where should I start?
The Monster Hunter series is fun. I also liked the Grimnoir Chronicles.
I like the Monster Hunter series. Start with the first (which I really liked) and know that they get better and better.
I will play book dealer:
Monster Hunter International for Free.
You are welcome.
Yeah, I disagree with his belief that most or many cops wouldn’t be door-kickers for gun confiscation, even today. By the time we get there, gun ownership will have been thoroughly marginalized and pathologized, anyway, and I think you would be able to count on one hand the cops who would quit rather than raid gun owners’ homes .
His scenario is almost a best-case scenario for today in terms of resistance to all-put gun confiscation. The cops he mentioned are pretty typical people in terms of talking big when there’s nothing at stake. Tell that sheriff, or those deputies, or those contractors, to go along with the raids or lose their jobs, and most will find a way to keep their jobs.
Until their houses are burned down and people are taking shots at them with hunting rifles. That’s when they’ll get get second thoughts.
That’s when they’ll get second thoughts.
I think that’s what will “radicalize” the cops even more, and ramp up their aggression in pursuing “insurgent” gun owners even more.
A scenario where raids start, are met with violence, and then stop just isn’t in the cards. Once the raids start, the only thing that stops them is either (a) the virtual eradication of private gun ownership or (b) the current government loses a violent revolution.
The local cops aren’t going to fight those battles. Look how they freak when 1 cop is killed. Imagine a raid gets ambushed from outside a home a half the local department is dead and their weapons gone. No way do the rest continue raids.
Yeah, I agree with your disagreement. I think it’s a cultural thing. Sure, you’ve got like Oathkeepers and the guys from Black Rifle Coffee Company and so forth who might balk, but for every one of those people there’s someone who believes the rule of law is more important than liberty, or who believes that it’s cops vs. everybody else, shit like that. I mean, do you honestly believe that a typical Chicago city cop would react the same was as a deputy sheriff from rural Oklahoma?
Cops with morals, lol.
Great article. I often enough hear this sort of idiocy leveled at me. Fundamentally, it’s not an attempt to advance a point in a discussion, but to shut down the very notion of discussion itself. It’s a thinly disguised ad hominem attack in which “luck” is the sign of moral failing. If my argument is right, it’s no less right because I am fortunate.
Moreover, I find the people making it only make the argument by blatantly ignoring all of the things in life I had to get through to get where I am. I never saw the people making this argument lending me a hand when I was in college and working two jobs and studying when there were big campus parties. I didn’t see the people making this argument offering me much in the way of help when I was working till 12AM or 1 AM. The people making this argument were strangely absent when I was going to grad school after working and then heading back to the office to get more work done. For some reason, I never heard from these folks when I was squeezing in time with my late wife in the hospital in between studying and working.
No, the people making the “you should shut up because you’re lucky” argument not only want to ignore those things. They expect me to. They want me to pretend that my success is just a matter of random chance that had nothing to do with the choices I made. Hell, I’ve even had one of these people respond that my willingness to endure those things is part of my “privilege”.
“The cisheteromale thing I have no defense on”
Why would you have to defend such a thing?
The shame of privilege burns.
I have to admit, I chose my parents well.
Thats the point. You did not choose them. They created you. Unless you are adopted. But then the choice was again not yours
Great article, Pie!
Luck is part of the success equation, I suppose, but being in the right place at the right time has more to do with process than providence.
Luck is part and parcel of life, period. If you’re unfortunate enough to be born during the middle of the Black Plague, well… it sucks to be you.
There are things we can and cannot control. Humans labor under the illusion that they can control more than they able to and in attempting to fulfill their desires for control, create more misery than would otherwise occur.
I do not completely discount luck. But you can’t make everything about it and then use this to justify any and all government violence. Also there are a million things to be lucky about.
Yep. What frustrates me is how often it isn’t luck, though, that generates the results that the fuckers want to take away.
An opportunity coming your way can be called luck. Being prepared to take advantage of it, working hard, not screwing it up… makes it more than just luck.
I was a mediocre, at best, HS soccer player. But it is amazing how many time I scored off loose balls in the box. I was just lucky that the ball kept bouncing off a goalie or the post right to my foot. Trashy 2 footers count exactly the same as a beautiful dipping 30 yard free kick.
For a similar reason, I was a decent indoor soccer player. Outdoor I sucked at creating my own shots.
Trashy 2 footer
*beams with pride*
“Furthermore if you are born in a good country or family it is, in part, because generations worked to build a better world, specifically for their offspring.”
But why white man have more cargo?
How bad is your day going?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12166687
You had one job
What vehicle was that second photo taken from? Looks weird.
The steering wheel is on the wrong side?
3 strawberries for $7?!?!! is the NZ dollar like $0.50 US?
I was wondering that myself. Looking at some NZ grocers online, I’m guessing that’s a per pint (well, 250 g) price. That, or the place pictured is a real rip-off.
Also, 1 NZD = .68 USD, so that’d be about $4.75 for 3 pints for you and me. Only Raven would have to pay 7 Kiwi bucks.
Here.
Damn, it’s funny. Looking at UK, AUS, NZ or CAN websites, it’s like bizarro America. Sharing so much culturally, yet still different countries with their own stuff.
Is this what it means to “live on the road”?
In all things there is luck, but that alone does not create an outcome.
Out of the 50 or so resumes I have sent to Hvac companies, I have received 0 responses.
Age? Too white?
Or too lucky?
Their V stands for something else.
Vivisection?
Maybe leave the “Caucasian” part off your resume.
You mean that’s not the C in HVAC?
C stands for Chinese underhanded cheap product no warranty hack
I think when they see the years co they freak out “run! Old man alert”
Even 55 seems too old nowadays
That’s not even two Evans old!
32 years, it’s probably liability over skill, fuck it build terrain
Yeah I worry about that too but I just look at it from their perspective. Would I rather hire someone fresh out of college with no experience? Of course not. Maybe Google goes for that type but most companies don’t.
Except for all the shops I sent resumes too? And they All seem to be Woke, yippee
Add a rainbow to your resume.
Make HVAC fabulous again.
Having experience is really helpful when troubleshooting issues. Once you’ve seen the same problem multiple times, you know where to look for the solution. It also helps to have an understanding of how the business side will put in requests without understand the repercussions of their decisions at times to steer them away from terrible ideas.
I think the problem is the HVAC service model: it’s fee for service that boils down to recipe diagnosis and low penalty for misdiagnosis. In that climate (pardon the pun), there is little motivation to pay more for experienced techs: it’s just churn and burn.
For home service, I find myself fairly limited to dealing with regional firms and the recent grads they send out. I notice that their solutions tend to be formulaic, their actual knowledge of systems is limited, and they think that their legitimate knowledge in a small range (ie: residential heating and cooling) broadly and easily applies to other sectors in the industry (like mobile or refrigeration). They bill an hour, install a Chinese capacity, and are on their way after a brief chat in which they think I’m the one who doesn’t get it.
Maybe go to a skills format instead of the job/timeline resume ?
More info I don’t know of tbis
I think it just means emphasizing your skills/expertise over the companies/positions and dates. I’m about to start some “transition” training that my previous employer is paying for and that’s one of the topics….
Also don’t bother listing any jobs older than 10 years old. They don’t really help you at all and when you have job history going back to the 80’s you are implicitly showing your age.
I came here to say this. What he ^ said ^, Yusef.
I’ll look into that, thanks guys, for now it’s off to the Dr.
Have you moved already? How hard to get the AZ stationary license and just hang your own shingle?
I’ve got an interview next week with about the only global mobile HVAC firm I haven’t already worked for; I don’t think I want to do it again, but there is nothing more fun than taking a job that pays well that you don’t really care about: so super low stress (not that I sweat employers anyway).
I need to stop anyway, after 3 months my tan is pretty much gone, and you can really see the cancer on my arms, quite interesting
You owned your own business, right?
Have you looked into contracting with the weatherization programs?
https://housing.az.gov/general-public/weatherization-assistance-program
Another specialty that’s a bit hard to break into is school bus HVAC. AZ is an interesting market with intriguing regulations, but it’s solid business. The major is Canyon States.
Similar, the shuttle business needs help. Try Creative over there.
Once I worked on a really cool skid system for a school bus Sheriff Joe customized.
Buses and trucks are more like stationary and offer a shorter learning curve than car systems: at least they only start up a couple of times a day.
The answer, of course, is to not have children. Then you have no skin in the game and can impassively watch the world burn to the ground, comfortable that it all ends with you.
Are you on my newsletter mailing list?
That’s the spirit!
Nah. You’d also have to convince your siblings to not have children. I like my niece and nephews.
The Penis is evil! The Penis shoots Seeds, and makes new Life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was. HAIL ZARDOZ!
Then again, one of my university professors used to say it is bad to be short, ugly and stupid. If you are not one of those, it is still ok.
Thank god, that avoiding one out of three will get you an engineering job.
My brother always said “We were lucky enough to be born poor”. After that you’re on your own.
I’ve been knocked down pretty hard, more times than I can count, and I always come back, usually better than before. Learn from your mistakes and move on,
Fuck Luck.
I hear ya brother. I’ve been beaten to a pulp before and you gotta keep getting up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U67MJQ2gRIg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eM2C-aL_s0
The thing the leftists always miss out due to their collectivist thinking is that the same set of circumstances that constitute luck for one person are an absolute disaster for another.
For example, let us imagine identical twins in every way but separated at birth by adoption.
Twin 1 was adopted by a wealthy family. They grew up with all their needs catered to. They lived in a mansion with household staff to take care of their needs and as a result never had to do any chores as a child. They also had the best tutors and went to the best schools. Vacations always involved traveling the world to new and interesting places. Building their resume for College started when they were 10 and the only question was which Ivory they would decide to attend
Twin 2 was adopted by a family of modest means. Sure they never missed any meals but mom and dad had to work every day of their lives to put that food on the table and afford the rent in the upper middle class school district they lived in. As a result Twin 2 was a latchkey kid from age 8 on and the house was always a mess until they turned 12 and started doing all the cooking and cleaning because the parents did not have time after both spent 60+ hours a week working. At 16 Twin 2 got a job at the local burger place so he could take some of the financial strain off the parents, on the plus side one of the reasons the adoptive parents of Twin 2 worked so much was so they could put some money away for college and they should be able to go to the State University and graduate with only minimal Student Loan debt.
So looking at this we can conclude that Twin 1 is the lucky Twin right? They after all had every advantage right?
So what happens going forward.
Twin One having never had to consider their future before or struggle for anything goes to college on a generic liberal arts program. Their never having faced any adversity at all makes them ill prepared for life and they quickly fall in with the local SJW crowd blaming everything wrong in their lives on their evil parents who are white cis hetero patriarchial oppressors and starts doing a lot of drugs before ultimately dropping out and ending up in rehab
Twin Two having dealt with diversity and seen the importance of hard work and the need to earn a living studies chemical engineering and graduates on the honor roll landing a job paying $100k a year right out of College.
Now which one was the lucky one?
The entire point of this thought experiment is that every human being is a unique individual. The circumstances that would constitute “lucky” for one of us would lead to the destruction of another. Some people are destroyed by an easy life, others find it clears obstacles from their path. Some people need to experience hardship to hone them for their future endeavors, others are crushed by the difficulty. There is no life path that would be beneficial to every individual because no matter how beneficial it seems from the outside there are those whose individual traits are incompatible with the set of choices and difficulties provided by that path.
The only real luck that comes from the accidents of our births is that we end up in a set of circumstances that gives us both the positive and negative experiences we need to grow as individuals and that could come either from a wealthy perfect family in a western nation or being born dirt poor in a 3rd world country or anywhere in between.
I saw a poster in the high school library a bit more than 2 score years ago — A lucky day is planned that way. It had an influence on how I run my life.
I can’t imagine the woke shit that must be on the walls in a modern high school.
Life Owes You!
“Ignorance Is Strength”?
I’m lucky – and thank goodness for a hard working father who kept us fed, paid for our college, and always in a nice middle-class neighborhood.
He grew up poor – as in no indoor plumbing poor – with 7 other siblings. He did ice cream sales at age 11, worked as a shoe salesman, and managed one year of college before dropping out (getting my mom pregnant). And somehow, even with him limited degree, became a store manager at age 25, and then a hardlines specialist, and then one of the directors of the company. I’m not sure such responsibility would be handed out these days; the 1950s/60s/70s seem like a different era when credentialism is ramapnt for deciding who to hire. What business now would look at this twenty-something and give him the kind of responsibility he had?
So yeah – I was lucky. Also having a rather “free range” childhood taught me a lot about responsibility for my own actions. And how to take care of things within your own peer group instead of running off to some authority figure. And speaking of authority, I really have a strong distrust of it because of those childhood days. I wonder how much of our upbringing determines our future political outlook? Because I wonder how so many people manage to find their way driving.
Get Lucky.
Get Lucky
Get Lucky
I’ve never heard of those guys, cool.
People who win the state lotteries are remarkably lucky, yet a large percentage of them end up right back where they started. Luck is nice, but it’s no guarantee of a good long term outcome.
You won the birth lottery
This argument is so stupid, and so mendacious, that it is hard to come up with a single, concise line of attack on it.
If you just want to troll, count on whoever said it also supporting abortion rights, and reply “Yeah, I’m lucky I was born, rather than aborted”.
If you want something a little more substantive, this might be a start “Usually, when we say someone was lucky, we mean they don’t deserve what they got by luck. Calling me lucky to be born where and when, and to, I was implies that I didn’t deserve it. But if I wasn’t born where and when, and to who, I was, then I wouldn’t exist. Are you saying I don’t deserve to exist?”
If they reply “Of course you deserve to exist!”, ask them what they mean by “winning the birth lottery”. Sooner or later it will boil down to “You’ve got more than others, and should should surrender some of what you have.” The usual “not giving is taking” crap.
Or you could just save some wasted time and energy and write off whoever says stupid shit like “winning the birth lottery” as not worth engaging with.
I have 4 siblings. The five of us are all fairly bright in one way or another; share the same parents; grew up in pretty much the same circumstances; and yet we all turned out dramatically different with very different life outcomes.
I guess we have to blame birth order for determining the differences. Or maybe astrology.
the one who banged the most chicks wins
I don’t think my sister has banged any chicks.
So I think I am in next to last place.
i would guess at least 3 for her
FAIL
Simple fact, I was lucky to be born in the United States at this time. I don’t deny that.
What does that mean though? I don’t owe anyone anything because of it.
I personally feel there is a moral obligation to make the most of your life and to not squander it, but it is not for me to tell others how they must live theirs.
AT the same time you were unlucky not to be born in France
Simple fact, I was lucky to be born in the United States at this time. I don’t deny that.
Saying “you” were lucky to born when and where you were completely elides the fact that anyone not born when and where you were, wouldn’t be you.
What you are getting at, I think, is that there has been no better time and place to be born. Which is different, in my mind, than saying you were lucky, etc. Luck is when chance breaks your way. The US, as it currently exists, isn’t “luck”. Being born isn’t “luck”. Being born in the US isn’t “luck”.
I’ll take it over being born in sub-Saharan Africa.
There are some ‘genetic lottery’ thoughts that I think are a little true*, but that doesn’t change the reality of how things work.
*The genes one gets from your parents are all random depending on what genetic materiel is in the sperm and egg. So this mostly applies to differences between siblings, not disparate people. For one sibling out of several to have the bad luck getting shitty genes that make them susceptible to disease or balding or so forth.
shitty genes that make them susceptible to . . . balding
wha? citation?
“Yeah, I’m lucky I was born, rather than aborted”.
Yeah but like no because abortion lets moms plan for their families rather than like being hit by a bus or whatever, so like you’d be lucky to be aborted before your mom was ready to have you but also lucky that she aborted your siblings before you were born.
Who gets the tiny American flags in your scenario?
O.T. – I just Ctrl+F’ed the hell out of the past few days’ posts and couldn’t find any mention of this, so here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/24/opinion/sunday/vaginoplasty-transgender-medicine.html
No matter how badly your life may be going, there’s a strong chance that some unfortunate soul out there that had to pass the cranberry sauce to this person at Thanksgiving dinner.
They’re wrong, the worst thing that ever happened to that person was mental illness.
Being trans is the second-worst thing that ever happened to me. (The worst was being born a boy.)
Wow. Something that half the people who ever existed can “complain” of is the worst thing that ever happened to him. By my math, that means he has nothing to complain about.
Yeah, but he gets to be called a hero by a bunch of people who not only do not know what he’s going through, but could care less.
The father was obviously less crazy than him if he would screw around with a child’s normal development in the hopes of curing their mental state, which by his own admission, it most likely will not.
No kidding. Not only that, but the condition he complains of, by his own definition (“the distress some transgender people feel at the incongruence between the gender they express and the gender they’ve been socially assigned”) is a mental condition, not a physical condition. Puberty blockers treat a physical condition (“normal development”), not a mental condition.
The whole thing is a cluster of category errors.
Jesus, it gets worse
Shorter version: I’m fucked in the head, but don’t you dare tell me I’m fucked in the head.
Holy crap. What on earth is the NYT thinking publishing such looney tunes? Do they honestly expect a normal person to “celebrate” any of that?
The social justice schoolmarm glasses and hairdon’t are really the cherry on top of this shit sundae.
“I want the tears; I want the pain.”
OMFG
Dammit, now you made me click through. Xe’s not wrong, though, when xe disagrees with xis girlfriend who says xe is beautiful.
Actually, xe is, on second thought. If she thinks xe’s beautiful, then xe is, to the only person whose opinion xe should care about.
Well, if you don’t want to get a bad social credit score, then you’d better.
“social credit score”
Consider this idea stolen.
The Chinese already began implementation.
Too late, the Chinese already stole it.
See, the left sees a Dystopian story and says, “That sounds like a great idea!”
This needs to be rubbed in the face of every idiot who claimed that “tech would set them free” or some such nonsense.
I bet they will be surprised to see which side of the social credit letter that being a sexual deviant lands them on.
s/letter/ledger
I bet they will be surprised to see which side of the social credit letter that being a sexual deviant lands them on.
Well, in China its a demerit. But in the Woke US, under the enlightened and beneficent oversight of Our Betters, intersectionality will be a plus!
Can you imagine the bureaucratic bloodbaths if they actually had to rank and quantify intersectionality?
They may as well just print their paper on sandwich boards to hand out to blathering vagrants at this point.
That’s exactly the point of these kinds of articles.
They pick a very controversial example and try to shame you into picking a side.
The ones who chose to celebrate this get to prove that they’re true believers.
It’s also giving the Overton window a small nudge
It’s also giving the Overton window a small nudge
I’d call it a swift kick to the balls
Good points. “Ah, OK, so this is what the smart-set is thinking today.” ?
I’d call it a swift kick to the balls
Transphobic!!! What about the windows that have vaginae?
I’d say, “They don’t tell, they won’t yell, they don’t swell, they rarely smell, and they’re grateful as hell.”
Oh wait… you said windows.
So, “she” has a girlfriend. Is this a real life case of a lesbian (who was) trapped in a man’s body?
And fuck the doctor who is agreeing to perform the surgery. This person is admittedly suffering from a pretty severe mental problem, but he was able to find a medical team to mutilate his body.
I can’t get past “I don’t expect it to make me happier”. WTF?
He obviously wants to wallow in it. That’s just called depression.
Body acceptance is only for fatties.
I was looking for that article to post as I saw it over the weekend via Powerline.
Yikes.
Some people are simply lost. I don’t pretend that any force outside direct intervention from G-d could prevent all suicides; some people are determined to go through with it and, what do I know? maybe they really are better off.
This is one of those individuals. Permanently, intractably miserable with no hope of redemption. I would bet a year’s salary that this person will be dead by his own hand within 5 years.
I don’t know what normal people do when they’re bored.
I just worked up a spreadsheet so I could calculate the effective arbitrage for a fictional characters ficticious cargo as he moved from port to port.
I drink usually
Fap.
That’s on the list of things that will get me fired from a state job if done at work.
“Was that wrong? Was I not supposed to do that?”
Just tell them it’s for prostate health. You’re just doing your part to not burden the health care system.
STEVE SMITH HAVE HEALTHIEST PROS-TATE OF THEM ALL
Based on indirect observations of one of my coworkers at a California company, it appears to be a protected activity, at least in that state.
What? You don’t have a bathroom at work? Nobodies suggesting you whack off at your desk.
“I used the blanket, didn’t I?”
Sit on hold with the health insurance company, looking outside at the dreary rain?
Not what you did.
I can classify it as self-training with spreadsheet formulae.
Oooh, very nice. It’s like you are a government employee or something.
Of the people in my group, one is on berevement leave, and the other is out of hours. So I have to be in the office.
Thankfully, the most exciting thing to happen was a request to kick off an ad hoc batch job to finish with loose ends from recent changes.
You know, using the (RAND) function, you can actually create some games in Excel by creating random numbers that link to some specific function. You could create random numbers that generate and then have formulas to link them to specific cells color coded that look like a path, for a simple example. Or you could have random numbers that represent the earnings of companies, tied to another semi-random stock price, with the pretense that you’re investing in different stocks and see if your portfolio grows or falls
Not that I would know personally, of course.
Which Rand?
Great, now you’ve set him on the path to creating a Singularity. Well, the world was fun while it lasted.
Look, bound to happen eventually. At least this way you know to prepare.
Watch shitty TV, look at naked girls online doing things their parents wouldn’t be proud of, dread going to work, search for real estate, read a book, listen to a lot of music.
And drink: wine, beer, and gin. And sometimes whiskey.
Yeah… About that… We have to ask that you not do that in your work cube anymore.
but I’m working from home!
obligatory
I waste a lot more time on Real Estate porn than I do on regular porn.
Whenever I hear this luck of birth bullshit, I think of two girls I went to high school with. Both lived in similar neighborhoods as me, both had loving families, both had the same “blue ribbon” education I did.
The first was probably a little too pretty for her own good. She ended up making friends with a bunch of idiot meatheads, and she started doing stereotypically preppy things. She wasn’t the smartest kid in school, but she wasn’t dumb, and she was somewhat underachieving in school because she was distracted by the social part of high school as well as by boys. Anyway, summer after sophomore year, she ended up biting it along with one of the star football players when their idiot meathead friend lost control of his car doing 110 in a 55 and nobody had seat belts on. Now there’s a decaying roadside memorial showing how much her lucky birth got her.
The other girl I didn’t know really well, but we had a few classes together. She went from the shy nerdy type to some version of goth/punk/whatever during high school and barely made it to graduation. Her friends partied hard and when I say hard, Im also talking about the drugs. A few years after we graduated, and after she spent those years floating in and out of rehab, doing nothing with her life except scoring the next hit, cops found her floating face down in one of the downtown canals. The tox screen during the autopsy showed an exceedingly unhealthy amount of meth in her system.
All this to say that its lonely at the top. Climbing the cliff is much harder than falling off. I’m a firm believer in the mantra that the most valuable thing you can receive from your upbringing is a worldview that values work ethic and avoids the myriad pitfalls that pock life.
I have had many opportunities to fuck up my life. I chose to pass on them, but that’s choice, not good luck. I have also had opportunities for my life to turn out “better” (depending on how you define it) than it has, and passed on them, but that’s choice, not bad luck.
What is superficially “good luck” (being good looking, having a wealthy family, and so forth) can often turn out to be a bad thing if you use it as a crutch or an entitlement.
As I say above, though, the hardcore pushers of the “luck” paradigm argue that the genetic and environmental make-up that made you make more right choices than wrong choices aren’t fairly distributed. The argument is that even if they were your choices, you were privileged with the vision and foresight to make better choices than the less fortunate.
even if they were your choices, you were privileged with the vision and foresight to make better choices
If they are saying other people should be so lucky as to be like me, then I think we have finally found common ground.
then I think we have finally found common ground.
That would be the rational conclusion. Unfortunately, no. They conclude that you’ve won the genetic and environmental lottery just as much as if you’d been born a Rockefeller. Therefore, any success you attain from these unfair advantages should rightly be redistributed. It’s always about redistribution with this gang.
you’ve won the genetic and environmental lottery
Slow down, hoss. I thought everybody was born a blank slate, and that you should never, ever believe that genetics has an effect on intelligence, etc.
The global Jewish conspiracy keeps Jews on top of the global order.
And Asians are so bland and impersonal, which gives them an outsized advantage over other minority applicants.
And from the lowliest meth head to the tippy-toppest corporate CEO, whites enjoy white privilege by dint of their superior cultural attachments.
But don’t you dare talk about IQ and genetics, that’s racist.
Yeah. Luck is bullshit. I think the problem for many leftists is that they think in terms of groups. So, because inner city blacks as a group have poorer outcomes than suburban whites, well, the difference is obviously skin color. Never mind that when you compare suburban blacks to suburban whites, things change. And that regardless of how poor your starting circumstances, short of being born mentally defective, your opportunity in this country is virtually unlimited. Growing up where and when I did, I certainly had fewer opportunities than say, an upper middle class Hispanic kid from the NE. But I had more than sufficient opportunity to make a pretty fine life for myself. And where I’ve ended up is a result of those cumulative choices. I could have made some decisions that would have made me wealthier, or resulted in having a family. But all in all I am please d with where I am and how I turned out. And bitching about someone with more opportunity than I because they were born into an “elite” family isn’t going to get me anything of real value. The effort doing that is better expended improving my circumstances going forward than worrying over the past.
I think it all tracks back to a confusion between correlation and causation. Yes, you can correlate lots of things, but that doesn’t mean that you’ve identified a cause of either of the things.