Study says being rich is determined by chance rather than intelligence or talent

[Indra32]

yes, i agree because poverty is not the hindrance to succes,  But sometimes we accept  failure in our goals in life , I  wonder  why my peers seem to be prospering my way more than my talent, it might not be because they're better at their jobs it's probably just down to random chance, according to a new computer model of wealth simulation and high technology. Charting a working lifespan more than 40 years.

I think that intelligence and hard work must be on one person to succeed but the reality is not so and this proves that everything I observed is true. Getting every opportunity that comes to our lives is an opportunity that we should not ignore.
In a country whose sovereignty is questioned and adheres to Western standards of thought, it goes against what our environment teaches us from the day we are born.

[creepyjas]

Hey there, intelligence and talent are the tools to become rich but being rich is determined by one's chance on how they will execute their strategy in life. There's always a chance for everyone and we just need to come up with the best strategy to use our intelligence and/or talent to gain wealth.

[mimienamphine]

Well everyone has their own way to success but I believe that being rich you have to do things in a certain way.There is a science of being rich.Anyone who follow the scientific principles of being rich either consciously or unconsciously will inevitably be rich.There is a thinking substance through which wealth is created.

[selezneve]

To be rich in short time, you just need to invest your money wisely. Some beginners make the mistake of investing money only to realize a few years later that those funds are needed somewhere else. Consider the time frame of each and every investment you make. Few advisors will recommend touching money in the stock market before five years is up, but a money market account or certificates of deposit can turn around quicker than that.

I do not think this requires any luck, it comes with experience.

[Warren Buffert]

But don't you have to seize the chance and opportunity? Some people will never step up to the plate so probably have 0 chance.

[masterchief001]

Opportunity is very important in all things. Good opportunity to help you succeed at work. Know the opportunity to think about how you know how to make money. In addition to the weak and need good, talent is the opportunity in business is important.

[justspare]

Many people will depends on their chance which will rely on their luck just like playing lottery. As far as I know most of people winning on lottery are those people who are just ordinary people, not as talented nor intelligent which means only luck can tell everything. On the other hand, those talented and intelligent people use their skills in order to earn much more money by their hard work and effort which they can be proud.

Well I have a different opinion in this case. For me, there must be these three things for a successful ending. No one can go alone with luck having no talent and chance. Same, three wouldn’t be anybody who can claim to be successful and rich just with the chance only and having no intelligence. Everyone who have succeeded, had a combo of these three somewhere.

[Hell-raiser]

Many people will depends on their chance which will rely on their luck just like playing lottery. As far as I know most of people winning on lottery are those people who are just ordinary people, not as talented nor intelligent which means only luck can tell everything. On the other hand, those talented and intelligent people use their skills in order to earn much more money by their hard work and effort which they can be proud.

Well I have a different opinion in this case. For me, there must be these three things for a successful ending. No one can go alone with luck having no talent and chance. Same, three wouldn’t be anybody who can claim to be successful and rich just with the chance only and having no intelligence. Everyone who have succeeded, had a combo of these three somewhere.

Well, in real life it doesn't work like you say that no one can do with luck alone having no talent and chance. I don't know what you mean by chance here (to me, it is luck itself), by the common wisdom says you don't need brains if you have luck at your side. Actually, you need to have some brains so as not to lose your head when you, say, win a few million dollars in lottery, but nothing out of the ordinary. There are enough common people winning a huge amount of money now and then, and some of them are able to remain quite sane at that and use their winnings wisely.

[sharnel18]

Being rich is according to fate and predestination

Hmmmm..

https://anothertouchnow.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/your-choice.jpg

They say that chance only knock ones you have to grab it but also you have to do something you have to work on it wisely.

Exactly and on point.

I have always felt people who achieved success where mainly in the right place right time

and with right decision.

Yes I do believe in this kind of quote,a person having the ability to work for their chances with the combination pof their mindset and eager to change the cylcle of their live,those are the people that having The opportunity to be successdul p.Q

[selezneve]

Yes, I believe it can be. But being rich and successful is not only a matter of chance, but more of personal qualities! What about this qualities build the prerequisites for the smile of fortune?

I agree. I do not think that being rich is determined by chance, it happens if you develop certain traits.  Most of the money making tools require patience, whether it is a business or an investment. You'll  need to remember that most investments do much, much better if they are left alone. Trading in and out of the market or changing your mind frequently can come with higher fees or other monetary setbacks. Time are investments best friend.

[kolbalish]

In my opinion, there are chances of getting rich in both sides.Intelligent or talented means not all educated people.It's the real thing to be rich with intelligence.But in all cases, it's not possible to get all with intelligence,luck or chance also needs.So to be rich,there is not just one more or less.

[Jessy Mediola]

If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance

The most successful people are not the most talented, just the luckiest, a new computer model of wealth creation confirms. Taking that into account can maximize return on many kinds of investment.

The distribution of wealth follows a well-known pattern sometimes called an 80:20 rule: 80 percent of the wealth is owned by 20 percent of the people. Indeed, a report last year concluded that just eight men had a total wealth equivalent to that of the world’s poorest 3.8 billion people.

This seems to occur in all societies at all scales. It is a well-studied pattern called a power law that crops up in a wide range of social phenomena. But the distribution of wealth is among the most controversial because of the issues it raises about fairness and merit. Why should so few people have so much wealth?

The conventional answer is that we live in a meritocracy in which people are rewarded for their talent, intelligence, effort, and so on. Over time, many people think, this translates into the wealth distribution that we observe, although a healthy dose of luck can play a role.

But there is a problem with this idea: while wealth distribution follows a power law, the distribution of human skills generally follows a normal distribution that is symmetric about an average value. For example, intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, follows this pattern. Average IQ is 100, but nobody has an IQ of 1,000 or 10,000.

The same is true of effort, as measured by hours worked. Some people work more hours than average and some work less, but nobody works a billion times more hours than anybody else.

And yet when it comes to the rewards for this work, some people do have billions of times more wealth than other people. What’s more, numerous studies have shown that the wealthiest people are generally not the most talented by other measures.

What factors, then, determine how individuals become wealthy? Could it be that chance plays a bigger role than anybody expected? And how can these factors, whatever they are, be exploited to make the world a better and fairer place?

Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Alessandro Pluchino at the University of Catania in Italy and a couple of colleagues. These guys have created a computer model of human talent and the way people use it to exploit opportunities in life. The model allows the team to study the role of chance in this process.

The results are something of an eye-opener. Their simulations accurately reproduce the wealth distribution in the real world. But the wealthiest individuals are not the most talented (although they must have a certain level of talent). They are the luckiest. And this has significant implications for the way societies can optimize the returns they get for investments in everything from business to science.

Pluchino and co’s model is straightforward. It consists of N people, each with a certain level of talent (skill, intelligence, ability, and so on). This talent is distributed normally around some average level, with some standard deviation. So some people are more talented than average and some are less so, but nobody is orders of magnitude more talented than anybody else.

This is the same kind of distribution seen for various human skills, or even characteristics like height or weight. Some people are taller or smaller than average, but nobody is the size of an ant or a skyscraper. Indeed, we are all quite similar.

The computer model charts each individual through a working life of 40 years. During this time, the individuals experience lucky events that they can exploit to increase their wealth if they are talented enough.

However, they also experience unlucky events that reduce their wealth. These events occur at random.

At the end of the 40 years, Pluchino and co rank the individuals by wealth and study the characteristics of the most successful. They also calculate the wealth distribution. They then repeat the simulation many times to check the robustness of the outcome.

When the team rank individuals by wealth, the distribution is exactly like that seen in real-world societies. “The ‘80-20’ rule is respected, since 80 percent of the population owns only 20 percent of the total capital, while the remaining 20 percent owns 80 percent of the same capital,” report Pluchino and co.

That may not be surprising or unfair if the wealthiest 20 percent turn out to be the most talented. But that isn’t what happens. The wealthiest individuals are typically not the most talented or anywhere near it. “The maximum success never coincides with the maximum talent, and vice-versa,” say the researchers.

So if not talent, what other factor causes this skewed wealth distribution? “Our simulation clearly shows that such a factor is just pure luck,” say Pluchino and co.

The team shows this by ranking individuals according to the number of lucky and unlucky events they experience throughout their 40-year careers. “It is evident that the most successful individuals are also the luckiest ones,” they say. “And the less successful individuals are also the unluckiest ones.”

That has significant implications for society. What is the most effective strategy for exploiting the role luck plays in success?

Pluchino and co study this from the point of view of science research funding, an issue clearly close to their hearts. Funding agencies the world over are interested in maximizing their return on investment in the scientific world. Indeed, the European Research Council recently invested $1.7 million in a program to study serendipity—the role of luck in scientific discovery—and how it can be exploited to improve funding outcomes.

It turns out that Pluchino and co are well set to answer this question. They use their model to explore different kinds of funding models to see which produce the best returns when luck is taken into account.

The team studied three models, in which research funding is distributed equally to all scientists; distributed randomly to a subset of scientists; or given preferentially to those who have been most successful in the past. Which of these is the best strategy?

The strategy that delivers the best returns, it turns out, is to divide the funding equally among all researchers. And the second- and third-best strategies involve distributing it at random to 10 or 20 percent of scientists.

In these cases, the researchers are best able to take advantage of the serendipitous discoveries they make from time to time. In hindsight, it is obvious that the fact a scientist has made an important chance discovery in the past does not mean he or she is more likely to make one in the future.

A similar approach could also be applied to investment in other kinds of enterprises, such as small or large businesses, tech startups, education that increases talent, or even the creation of random lucky events.

Clearly, more work is needed here. What are we waiting for?

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068 : Talent vs. Luck: The Role of Randomness in Success and Failure

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/

A very interesting spin on anything that has ever been said about money, success or wealth!

I don't know what to think about this. The scaling argument which says 1% of the human population shouldn't own 40% of the world's wealth due to them not having IQ's of 200,000 or talent proportional to the highly disproportionate stake of wealth they control is something that will take time for me to digest and think about. Its certainly a novel concept.

Its also very interesting that they attempted to model along lines of standard deviation and wound up with a historical 20/80 wealth distribution. I think this is something which could use more exposure and media coverage. Its not often relatively original or new perspectives like this come along and the paradigm shift which can accompany them can often take decades to be fully appreciated within a pop culture vein.

I think it depends, if this is the time for you to shine, to become successful or to become rich then no one will change that. But I think sone rich are determined by chances rather than skills and intelligence. Some people didn't use their skills and their brain to achieve their dreams, they stick on whatthey are now and contented on what they have.
Opportunities are not for all so if you have it then grab it.

[richmcrich]

Being rich not determine by chance rather than intelligence or talent. A good example Mr Bill Gates the person who become rich using his talent. The example of the person who become rich because of the chance are those person with skill with the help of other person in giving his chance to explore his talent.

If we study the lives of the ones who are now billionaires and that the ones whose lives have been significantly changed, then we’ll notice that all of them have done lot of hard work and that they have done so many efforts in their lives, only then they have managed to make this much name and that they have earned this much money. You need to put in your best and that you can’t rely on your luck entirely.

[Semaj123]

In my opinion, there are chances of getting rich in both sides.Intelligent or talented means not all educated people.It's the real thing to be rich with intelligence.But in all cases, it's not possible to get all with intelligence,luck or chance also needs.So to be rich,there is not just one more or less.

Definitely right, we really never know what could be our future looks like. Lucky for those who already born rich and for those who were born poor then they need to work hard just to have the chance to be rich. There are a lot of cases that some were rich due to they were lucky that they win millions by joining some games. But intelligent and talent can also make us rich if we will used it properly and this will also be take sometime to achieve our goals.

[hermae]

Being rich is according to fate and predestination

Hmmmm..

https://anothertouchnow.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/your-choice.jpg

They say that chance only knock ones you have to grab it but also you have to do something you have to work on it wisely.

Exactly and on point.

I have always felt people who achieved success where mainly in the right place right time

and with right decision.

Yes I do believe in this kind of quote,a person having the ability to work for their chances with the combination pof their mindset and eager to change the cylcle of their live,those are the people that having The opportunity to be successdul p.Q

It is true that a lot of rich people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths. They are born rich. But there are also many people who came from a poor family who strived hard to be millionaires, or billionaires. They had worked hard to achieve the status they have now, and it is not just in a snap of a finger. They have been through a lot of hard work and ssacrifices and pains before they become one of the wealthiest. So I believe that success comes from the eagerness and hardwork of a person. We should not just wait for luck or fate to come to us, we should also work ourselves out to achieve our dreams. Chances or luck or opportunity may come or knock just once, so when it does, grab it and never let  it go. Do your best shot and work hard for it.

[toolucky98]

Being rich is according to fate and predestination

Hmmmm..

They say that chance only knock ones you have to grab it but also you have to do something you have to work on it wisely.

Exactly and on point.

I have always felt people who achieved success where mainly in the right place right time

and with right decision.

Yes I do believe in this kind of quote,a person having the ability to work for their chances with the combination pof their mindset and eager to change the cylcle of their live,those are the people that having The opportunity to be successdul p.Q

It is true that a lot of rich people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths. They are born rich. But there are also many people who came from a poor family who strived hard to be millionaires, or billionaires. They had worked hard to achieve the status they have now, and it is not just in a snap of a finger. They have been through a lot of hard work and ssacrifices and pains before they become one of the wealthiest. So I believe that success comes from the eagerness and hardwork of a person. We should not just wait for luck or fate to come to us, we should also work ourselves out to achieve our dreams. Chances or luck or opportunity may come or knock just once, so when it does, grab it and never let  it go. Do your best shot and work hard for it.

Indeed, i always believe that there will always be a reason to success, not a pure luck.
The thing that i just realized and forgot to write it on my previous post is there is a thing called creativity, and creativity cant be calculated nor predicted.

[Cotton Candy]

If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance

The most successful people are not the most talented, just the luckiest, a new computer model of wealth creation confirms. Taking that into account can maximize return on many kinds of investment.

The distribution of wealth follows a well-known pattern sometimes called an 80:20 rule: 80 percent of the wealth is owned by 20 percent of the people. Indeed, a report last year concluded that just eight men had a total wealth equivalent to that of the world’s poorest 3.8 billion people.

This seems to occur in all societies at all scales. It is a well-studied pattern called a power law that crops up in a wide range of social phenomena. But the distribution of wealth is among the most controversial because of the issues it raises about fairness and merit. Why should so few people have so much wealth?

The conventional answer is that we live in a meritocracy in which people are rewarded for their talent, intelligence, effort, and so on. Over time, many people think, this translates into the wealth distribution that we observe, although a healthy dose of luck can play a role.

But there is a problem with this idea: while wealth distribution follows a power law, the distribution of human skills generally follows a normal distribution that is symmetric about an average value. For example, intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, follows this pattern. Average IQ is 100, but nobody has an IQ of 1,000 or 10,000.

The same is true of effort, as measured by hours worked. Some people work more hours than average and some work less, but nobody works a billion times more hours than anybody else.

And yet when it comes to the rewards for this work, some people do have billions of times more wealth than other people. What’s more, numerous studies have shown that the wealthiest people are generally not the most talented by other measures.

What factors, then, determine how individuals become wealthy? Could it be that chance plays a bigger role than anybody expected? And how can these factors, whatever they are, be exploited to make the world a better and fairer place?

Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Alessandro Pluchino at the University of Catania in Italy and a couple of colleagues. These guys have created a computer model of human talent and the way people use it to exploit opportunities in life. The model allows the team to study the role of chance in this process.

The results are something of an eye-opener. Their simulations accurately reproduce the wealth distribution in the real world. But the wealthiest individuals are not the most talented (although they must have a certain level of talent). They are the luckiest. And this has significant implications for the way societies can optimize the returns they get for investments in everything from business to science.

Pluchino and co’s model is straightforward. It consists of N people, each with a certain level of talent (skill, intelligence, ability, and so on). This talent is distributed normally around some average level, with some standard deviation. So some people are more talented than average and some are less so, but nobody is orders of magnitude more talented than anybody else.

This is the same kind of distribution seen for various human skills, or even characteristics like height or weight. Some people are taller or smaller than average, but nobody is the size of an ant or a skyscraper. Indeed, we are all quite similar.

The computer model charts each individual through a working life of 40 years. During this time, the individuals experience lucky events that they can exploit to increase their wealth if they are talented enough.

However, they also experience unlucky events that reduce their wealth. These events occur at random.

At the end of the 40 years, Pluchino and co rank the individuals by wealth and study the characteristics of the most successful. They also calculate the wealth distribution. They then repeat the simulation many times to check the robustness of the outcome.

When the team rank individuals by wealth, the distribution is exactly like that seen in real-world societies. “The ‘80-20’ rule is respected, since 80 percent of the population owns only 20 percent of the total capital, while the remaining 20 percent owns 80 percent of the same capital,” report Pluchino and co.

That may not be surprising or unfair if the wealthiest 20 percent turn out to be the most talented. But that isn’t what happens. The wealthiest individuals are typically not the most talented or anywhere near it. “The maximum success never coincides with the maximum talent, and vice-versa,” say the researchers.

So if not talent, what other factor causes this skewed wealth distribution? “Our simulation clearly shows that such a factor is just pure luck,” say Pluchino and co.

The team shows this by ranking individuals according to the number of lucky and unlucky events they experience throughout their 40-year careers. “It is evident that the most successful individuals are also the luckiest ones,” they say. “And the less successful individuals are also the unluckiest ones.”

That has significant implications for society. What is the most effective strategy for exploiting the role luck plays in success?

Pluchino and co study this from the point of view of science research funding, an issue clearly close to their hearts. Funding agencies the world over are interested in maximizing their return on investment in the scientific world. Indeed, the European Research Council recently invested $1.7 million in a program to study serendipity—the role of luck in scientific discovery—and how it can be exploited to improve funding outcomes.

It turns out that Pluchino and co are well set to answer this question. They use their model to explore different kinds of funding models to see which produce the best returns when luck is taken into account.

The team studied three models, in which research funding is distributed equally to all scientists; distributed randomly to a subset of scientists; or given preferentially to those who have been most successful in the past. Which of these is the best strategy?

The strategy that delivers the best returns, it turns out, is to divide the funding equally among all researchers. And the second- and third-best strategies involve distributing it at random to 10 or 20 percent of scientists.

In these cases, the researchers are best able to take advantage of the serendipitous discoveries they make from time to time. In hindsight, it is obvious that the fact a scientist has made an important chance discovery in the past does not mean he or she is more likely to make one in the future.

A similar approach could also be applied to investment in other kinds of enterprises, such as small or large businesses, tech startups, education that increases talent, or even the creation of random lucky events.

Clearly, more work is needed here. What are we waiting for?

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068 : Talent vs. Luck: The Role of Randomness in Success and Failure

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/

A very interesting spin on anything that has ever been said about money, success or wealth!

I don't know what to think about this. The scaling argument which says 1% of the human population shouldn't own 40% of the world's wealth due to them not having IQ's of 200,000 or talent proportional to the highly disproportionate stake of wealth they control is something that will take time for me to digest and think about. Its certainly a novel concept.

Its also very interesting that they attempted to model along lines of standard deviation and wound up with a historical 20/80 wealth distribution. I think this is something which could use more exposure and media coverage. Its not often relatively original or new perspectives like this come along and the paradigm shift which can accompany them can often take decades to be fully appreciated within a pop culture vein.

I can really agree with that because not all intelligent people get rich because if them being that thing and even those skillful people but that is a requirement though but the thing that makes them rich is those opportunity they seek those opportunity they grab because not all people have givern that and grab that but once you know it was it then grab it because not all people have given that chance. Better be great at finding amd not wasting one

[Gandam23]

I am not entirely surprised by this at all actually, anecdotally I have always felt people who achieved success where mainly in the right place right time. Whether that be born to a certain family or class, or to a certain country, or area of a country, these things all effect where we will end up. Good to know us average folk can still make it in this rigged world

Actually, yes being rich is not because you are smart person or skillful person sometimes it is by chance, by faith or by opportunities that comes to us.  What is the essence of being top student in your class, or have lots of rewards and certificate of appreciation if you don't have any opportunities to grab? That's useless.

[i_iz_vins]

I know about your point, chances are not always come in our life, and the chances are  now born which the key to everybody become rich, it is the cryptocurrencies business, which is the sharp tools use to all people become rich. We know already that there is a lot of people becomes a rich because of bitcoin business by starting in a small capital invested. But it is not quick and easy to become rich by way crypto business, we must also adopt the total nature and the flow of crypto businesses.

I know chance does not come to all people but when there is chance, do your best to grab it. In order to become rich, it is better if you have that talent and intelligence.Not all who are intelligent gets rich because they do not have the opportunity. Some people I know that got rich through bounty campaigns are because of luck, they do not study that much in crypto, but they work hard for it.

[ChConcept]

Personally my take on that is yes, it is not determined by intelligence or talent, a bit of chance I can say but  mostly it is about your attitude and determination that would make a big difference. It is not just your way to be rich but to be successful in life, I believe that the definition of success would mean different things to different people, so I believe it is all in our hands, what you did and how you did things would determine where you will be at by being motivated of the why you did it.