Political Compass #54: Some people are naturally unlucky.

Great Debates
1

Many political debates here have included references to The Political Compass, which uses a set of 61 questions to assess one’s political orientation in terms of economic left/right and social libertarianism/authoritarianism (rather like the “Libertarian diamond” popular in the US).

And so, every so often I will begin a thread in which the premise for debate is one of the 61 questions. I will give which answer I chose and provide my justification and reasoning. Others are, of course, invited to do the same including those who wish to “question the question”, as it were.

It would also be useful when posting in these threads to give your own “compass reading” in your first post, by convention giving the Economic value first. My own is
SentientMeat: Economic: -5.12, Social: -7.28, and so by the above convention my co-ordinates are (-5.12, -7.28). Please also indicate which option you ticked. I might suggest what I think is the “weighting” given to the various answers in terms of calculating the final orientation, but seeing for yourself what kind of answers are given by those with a certain score might be more useful than second-guessing the test’s scoring system.

Now, I appreciate that there is often dissent regarding whether the assessment the test provides is valid, notably by US conservative posters, either because it is “left-biased” (??) or because some propositions are clearly slanted, ambiguous or self-contradictory. The site itself provides answers to these and other Frequently Asked Questions, and there is also a separate thread: Does The Political Compass give an accurate reading? [size=2]Read these first and then, if you have an objection to the test in general, please post it there. If your objection is solely to the proposition in hand, post here. If your objection is to other propositions, please wait until I open a thread on them. (And for heaven’s sake, please don’t quote this entire Opening Post when replying like this sufferer of bandwidth diarrhea.)

The above will be pasted in every new thread in order to introduce it properly, and I’ll try to let each one exhaust itself of useful input before starting the next. Without wanting to “hog the idea”, I would be grateful if others could refrain from starting similar threads. Finally, I advise you to read the full proposition below, not just the thread title (which is necessarily abbreviated), and request that you debate my entire OP rather than simply respond, “IMHO”-like, to the proposition itself.

To date, the threads are:

Does The Political Compass give an accurate reading?
Political Compass #1: Globalisation, Humanity and OmniCorp.
#2: My country, right or wrong
#3: Pride in one’s country is foolish.
#4: Superior racial qualities.
#5: My enemy’s enemy is my friend.
#6: Justifying illegal military action.
#7: “Info-tainment” is a worrying trend.
#8: Class division vs. international division. (+ SentientMeat’s economic worldview)
#9: Inflation vs. unemployment.
#10: Corporate respect of the environment.
#11: From each according to his ability, to each according to need.
#12: Sad reflections in branded drinking water.
#13: Land should not be bought and sold.
#14: Many personal fortunes contribute nothing to society.
#15: Protectionism is sometimes necessary in trade.
#16: Shareholder profit is a company’s only responsibility.
#17: The rich are too highly taxed.
#18: Better healthcare for those who can pay for it.
#19: Penalising businesses which mislead the public.
#20: The freer the market, the freer the people.
#21: Abortion should be illegal.
#22: All authority must be questioned.
#23: An eye for an eye.
#24: Taxpayers should not prop up theatres or museums.
#25: Schools shouldn’t make attendance compulsory.
#26: Different kinds of people should keep to their own.
#27: Good parents sometimes have to spank their children.
#28: It’s natural for children to keep secrets.
#29: Marijuana should be legalised.
#30: School’s prime function is equipping kids to find jobs.
#31: Seriously disabled people should not reproduce.
#32: Learning discipline is the most important thing.
#33: ‘Savage peoples’ vs. ‘different culture’
#34: Society should not support those who refuse to work.
#35: Keep cheerfully busy when troubled.
#36: First generation immigrants can never be fully integrated.
#37: What’s good for corporations is always good for everyone.
#38: No broadcasting institution should receive public funding.
#39: Our civil rights are being excessively curbed re. terrorism.
#40: One party states avoid delays to progress.
#41: Only wrongdoers need worry about official surveillance.
#42: The death penalty should be an option for serious crimes.
#43: Society must have people above to be obeyed.
#44: Abstract art that doesn’t represent anything isn’t art at all.
#45: Punishment is more important than rehabilitation.
#46: It is a waste of time to try to rehabilitate some criminals.
#47: Businessmen are more important than writers and artists.
#48: A mother’s first duty is to be a homemaker.
#49: Companies exploit the Third World’s plant genetic resources.
#50: Mature people make peace with the establishment.
#51: Astrology accurately explains many things.
#52: You cannot be moral without being religious.
#53: Charity is better than social secuity.

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**Proposition #54: Some people are naturally unlucky.

SentientMeat** (-5.12, -7.28) ticks Strongly Agree.

What is this “luck”? Consider an unbiased die. You throw a six. I throw a two.You win. I am “unlucky”. Now place the die roll in a context; say, Monopoly. I throw a two. My top hat lands on your Mayfair hotel. I can’t afford to pay you. You win. I am “unlucky”.

Ah, but am I? Your skill and tactics engineered the possibility of that win by investing a lot into a single square, whereas spreading your properties more widely would have precluded such an instant coup de grace. Numerous games would show that I was not simply unlucky losing the game on that roll, but that you deserved the win.

Ah, but did you? Am I not “unlucky” in that I cannot assess risks and engineer possibilities nearly as well as you? That, whatever it is that makes one a good Monopoly player (including the concentration span required for dedicated practising), you were born with it (or into a situation fostering it) and I wasn’t? Do you “deserve” to win those games, or is it simply the case that you do?

The game we all play is the game of Life. The annual growth of the “pot” is only a small percentage of the overall size of the pot itself (aka. GDP or some similar measure, although it should be noted that over many years the pot may grow several times over). Like many games there is a random element, but a good player assesses and manipulates those elements skilfully. Like any game, there are necessarily great players, mediocre players and utterly inept players - we can’t all be veritable Kasparovs. Similarly, like any game, not everybody can be a winner (and, crucially, this would be true even if we were all Kasparovs). Indeed, game theory suggests that the natural outcome is one of a few Big Winners and lots of Big Losers, since a position of advantage facilitates consolidation of that advantage: wealth begets wealth, even if we all start off equal (which, clearly, we don’t). And what do we call it when that consolidation, that mathematically easier domination of the players in temporarily weaker positions, leads to total winner-takes-all victory like the end of a game of Risk? Why, MONOPOLY, of course!

Now, a literal,100% monopoly is difficult if not impossible to achieve, but advantage-facilitating-consolidation leads to such vastly disproportionate domination that the consequences are rather similar. Isolating a player by owning all the territory around them, such that they become dependent on you for survival, effectively makes that player your slave, like a medieval serf subsisting on the land the feudal lord calls “his property”. The only way to ameliorate the effects of advantage-facilitating-consolidation-of-advantage- towards-eventual-domination (AFCATED, for short) is by co-operation between the players. They agree to limit the extent to which power can be consolidated by a single skilful or lucky player in order to avoid the winner taking so much that those losing players must kow-tow to his every demand - they effectively change the rules. (In political terms, this is manifested in the effect of democracy upon capitalism, in order to limit economic coercion by the vastly wealthy.)

In the Game of Life, there clearly is “natural bad luck”. With so many interactions between these incredible biological computers called humans, bad things are bound to happen even to “good” people, and one who is born with both nature and nurture which scream Loser! might well find themselves on the raw end of many a deal. (Even the very universe can conspire against us: quantum uncertainty can result in the emission of a particle which interferes with a strand of DNA in just the wrong way, ultimately causing cancer.)

But, one might say, even they “deserve” what comes to them to some extent: they could have made decisions which avoided that ill fortune. A few people might even have learned how to assess and minimise the risks in life even though they were born without, or fostered in a situation inimical to, basic skills such as concentration, discipline or this elusive phantom called “intelligence”.

This is heartening but ultimately irrelevant, I feel, rather like ignoring cancer-survival statistics and focussing on the few who beat the odds. Just because a particular instance of bad luck might somehow have been avoided, the bigger picture will still look the same: if an unfortunate affliction or event is possible, it will happen to a lot of people.

People, including their ability to manage the risks inherent in the game of life, are a product of their genes and their environment. If we agree on this, we would hopefully agree that some people are “naturally unlucky”. If we agree on this, we might move forward to discuss how the rules might be modified so that AFCATED and winner-takes-all does not leave the losers with dangerously little, while still ensuring that the “pot” grows at a healthy rate.

2

(7.15, -1.15)

Well if you want to read it as all people are not created equal then I agree.

Wealth does not always beget wealth. Indeed, history has shown easy wealth is a near certain prescription for poverty in the long run. Witness the difference between Spain/Portugal reaction to the fortunes of the New World and the reaction of the Nederland/England. Or the old maxim that it takes three generations to create and waste a fortune. 1st to start it. 2nd to enlarge and expand. 3rd to waste and squander. And history tells us he who is master today will be slave tomorrow. And the best way to ensure monopoly situations do not occur is by open competition. Unlike a Lottery or Risk and Monopoly real life is not a zero-sum game. One mans riches is not (necessarily) build on another mans poverty. And making yourself poor will not make another man rich. Priority must be to create a society where the maximum number of people can become lucky not one wherein unluck is spread evenly at the expense of the size of the pot.

3

Bollocks (AKA strongly disagree). There is no such thing as luck. Meatie. are you losing it? Plenty of fung shui openings out here if you want to cash in on the hold irrational superstitions and magic exert over the gullible.

4

(-5.50,-4.05) Agree. Over the population as a whole, good fortune and bad fortune must even out. Given that each of us encounters many thousands of events that could go either way, it is expected that most of us will get the breaks about half the time, and some will get more than their share of good breaks and some more than their share of bad breaks. For every bell shaped distribution, there will be those outliers at the edge of the bell.

5

I think it’s important in this thread to look at the Big Picture, not at individual features. Of course wealth can be squandered, just as poor but (fortunately IMO) resourceful and conscientious people can move up the social ladder. But this, I suggest, ignores the overall statistics, which demonstrate quite clearly that the rich generally have little trouble staying rich evern over many generations, and the social mobility of the poor is generally highly static: the odd bubble may rise, but the drink stays largely unmixed.

Agreed, but I’d add that I believe the pot can grow just as healthily by apportioning some of it to ensuring that bad luck (including the decision-making ability they were dealt) does not have people dying of preventable conditions.

Perhaps I should have defined luck explicitly as an outcome over which one has limited or no control. People are clearly “unlucky” in that events which are either random or outwith their influence have negative consequences upon their lives. What would you call the outcome of a dice roll, exactly?

6

Last I checked, (+0.05, -6.00), strongly disagree.

Random. “Luck” carries a value judgment with it, giving a heavy implication of an improbable yet favourable event occurring. Therefore to state that some people are either lucky or unlucky means to me that some people must experience favourable or unfavourable events more frequently than their mere probability would indicate. Over the course of a lifetime, I think that’s pretty unsustainable. To further claim that these people are naturally lucky or unlucky is verging into the grounds of simple superstition.

What you seem to be addressing in the OP is situational advantage or disadvantage. The rich man gets richer, because his wealth enables him to do so. Sure, but defining this as “luck” seems to be pushing it; rather, his wealth means that the probability of his continued financial success is increased, so he needs to be less “lucky” to do so. The probability of me, a (relatively) poor person, making $1 million today is nearly zero. The probability of Bill Gates doing so is about 1. Am I unlucky not to do so? No; it is the overwhelmingly likely outcome. Is he lucky in his turn? No, it was pretty much a certainty that he’d make that million. If we magically switched positions, I’d be getting that million.

We could talk about the degree to which random events affect different people’s lives, I guess, but I don’t really see that it’s a promising avenue. The lottery winner’s entire life is transformed by his win, to the point where that single random event is probably going to be the dominating feature of his life. Is he naturally lucky? No, he’s just the inevitable result of probability. He’ll continue to experience good and bad outcomes in precisely the proportion dictated by probability, but it’s unlikely that any of them will be as significant as his lottery win.

The closest statement I can construct to that in the OP that I would agree with is this:

“Some people, as a result of past events, some or all of which were beyond their control, happen to be in a position such that their future probability of success is lower than some other people’s.”

Are they unlucky to be in this situation? Sure, but that gives no indication as to their future luck. Are they naturally unlucky? Absolutely not. That suggests that they consistently experience improbably adverse outcomes to random events, due to some innate characteristic. If they are disadvantaged in some way, be it financially, mentally, physically, then that disadvantage is borne out in the probability of future outcomes. They can no more expect to experience consistently bad “luck” for the rest of their life than the lottery winner can expect to sit down and roll nothing but sixes for a whole week.

7

Well I did take the big picture. Comparing whole civilisations over hundred of years. It doesn’t get much bigger than that. And it is not my impression at all that the rich stay rich and the poor poor. First we’re all pretty much better off than the richest of the rich a century and a half ago. Do you have statistics that back up your view of minimal social mobility? Doing my own bit of amateur statistics: Of Fortune’s 30 richest persons in the world 17 are listed as “self-made”. Another 5 are the Walton’s which inherited from Sam Walton whom is self-made. Another 2, the Cox’s, are daughters of a self made man. I don’t know how far down Steven Jobs or George Soros are, or the Google founders, or J.K. Rowling. But they are all self made too. Denmark’s richest man just died. He was self made too – from the lower class. I didn’t see any Rotchchilds on the list however. Or Rockerfellars. Or Morgans.

Bill Gates. Self made
Warren Buffet. Self made
Lakshmi Mittal. Inherited and growing
Carlos Slim Helu. Inherited and growing
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud. Self Made (?)
Ingvar Kamprad. Self made
Paul Allen. Self made
Karl Albrecht. Self made
Lawrence Ellison. Self made
S Robson Walton. Inherited. (from Sam Walton. Self made)
Jim Walton Inherited. (from Sam Walton. Self made)
John Walton Inherited. (from Sam Walton. Self made)
Alice Walton. Inherited. (from Sam Walton. Self made)
Helen Walton. Inherited. (from Sam Walton. Self made)
Kenneth Thomson & family. Inherited and growing
Liliane Bettencourt. Inherited (2nd generation)
Bernard Arnault. Self made
Michael Dell. Self made
Sheldon Adelson. Self made
Theo Albrecht. Self made
Roman Abramovich. Self made
Li Ka-shing. Self made
Amancio Ortega. Self made
Steven Ballmer. Self made
Silvio Berlusconi. Self made
Abigail Johnson. Inherited and growing
Barbara Cox Anthony. Inherited (2nd generation)
Anne Cox Chambers. Inherited (2nd generation)
Stefan Persson. Inherited
John Kluge. Self made

8

Strongly Disagree.

People make thier own “luck”. What most people call luck is usually only the result of the actions that they take.

Don’t do good in school, get bad grades, don’t get into college, get shitty low paying job. This isn’t luck, it’s the result of choices. But, most people who find themselves in such a situation would call themselves “unlucky”.

Someone I know always bemoans his bad luck. He never has money. Because he didn’t have the money to pay, he had his insurance cancelled. Now, because he can’t drive to work he loses a job. Because he doesn’t have a job he can’t save up the $1,000 for insurance, which he now must pay up front. He considers this all a run of terrible luck. Bullucks, I say. It’s all a result of the fact he doesn’t have money in the first place. This is a result of the poor decisions he has made in his life.

The same can be said of most people who consider themselves “unlucky” in relationships, friendships, etc.

9

It might be interesting to see how closely the liberal/conservative mapping matches the answer to this one!

Don’t recall my scores, but Strongly Disagree.

People cannot be “naturally unlucky”, because Lake Wobegon is an imaginary place - nowhere on earth can it be true that “all the children are above average”. What we call 'luck" is largely the statistical fluctuations that happen at random within larger patterns.

For some people to be “naturally unlucky”, they would have to encounter “bad luck” consistently, and this would have to be due to some other factor than randomness.

That is to say, if six people roll an honest die, and whoever rolls a six will be shot and whoever rolls a one gets a million dollars, then the one who rolls the one is not “naturally lucky” while the six-roller is not “naturally unlucky”. It is just random fluctuations within the larger pattern that, on average, six and one both come up one time in six. There isn’t one person who is going to be more likely than the others to roll one or the other.

In other words, the race may not be to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.

Good and bad luck happen to everyone roughly equally, on average. Those who are prepared for both do better in the long run, but that is different from luck.

Regards,
Shodan

10

Agree.

I don’t believe in Luck as a supernatural force, but it’s undeniable that some people come on the bad end of probability on the things that matter through no fault of their own.

Born to wealthy and caring parents? Lucky
Born a poor orphan in a corrupt and negligent orphanage? Unlucky
Pass through life in relative good health? Lucky
Your risky, but otherwise well-planned business venture pays off and you become a millionaire? Lucky.
Your risky, but otherwise well-planned business venture tanks, and you lose everything? Unlucky.
Hit by a drunk driver, develop a dependency to painkillers while in the hospital, and then get struck by lightning as you walk out after your final day of rehab? Unlucky

Probability’s a bitch. Random chances that are difficult if not impossible to totally account for can and does ruin or improve lives. I’m not saying that chance is as important as personal choices or that one can’t or shouldn’t plan for misfortune, or even that society has a special duty to Fate’s victims, but we still have to recognize that they exist.

11

Untrue. There are many events that are not zero sum games and that are not random. For every person who becomes fabulously rich, there does not HAVE to be a person who becomes depserately poor. For every person who meets his/her ideal soulmate, there does not HAVE to be someone who remains crushingly lonely. Etc…

+7/-3 Strongly disagree.

There are people who have are fortunate thru no actions of their own, but that does not make them “lucky”. It is not an attribute intrinsic to their being, as the statement implies. I put this one in with the astrology question as a an attempt to ferret out the superstitious people in the test group.

12

I wasn’t referring to zero sum games. Chance events happen to all of us. We both speed down the road- I do it when a cop is nearby and you don’t. Makes me unlucky. These happenings of chance should even out in most cases. However, a statistical minority is going to have more than their share of bad breaks. There are people who have been struck by lightning multiple times. I’d say they have bad luck.

13

Even your given example is not random. A more observant person won’t get caught as often as a less observant person. You can buy and use a radar detector. IOW, there are many things you can do proactively to mitigate that circumstance. Same with the lightning strike.

Maybe it’s semantics, but to say someone “has bad luck” or “is lucky” is commonly meant to designate something intrinsincally a part of that person.

14

They’ve experienced a series of improbable events, sure, but are they really naturally unlucky? The culmination of events leading me to where I am today is astoundingly improbable in combination. The probability of my conception, birth, daily choices and the chance occurrences throughout my life leading me precisely here is vanishingly small, but I’m not considered lucky; this is just what happened, because something had to. Throwing six sixes is no more improbable than throwing a 2, 4, 5, 1, 1 and a 3, yet no-one would blink at the latter; we just notice the former because we spot a pattern. I’m reminded of something Richard Feynman used to like throwing at students:

15

Strongly disagree. Probability just doesn’t work that way. Most of the examples used to describe people having ‘bad luck’ boil down to people making bad choices.

Well put.

-XT

16

4, -4.

Strongly disagree.

The notion that some people are naturally “lucky” or “unlucky” is superstitious idiocy.

Some people do get luckier than others. That’s just random chance, not a natural propensity towards good or bad luck. If I pick a quarter from my pocket and start flipping it and happen to flip four heads in a row, would anyone but a fool think that meant the quarter was “naturally lucky”?

Read the question. Are some people lucky? Yes. Are they NATURALLY lucky, e.g. is there some force or trait about them that makes them lucky? Of course not. What’s next, astrology?

17

I remember choosing “disagree” to this one. I did not read any real stess on “naturally” and think like BobLibDem on the matter, but consider the existence of such outliers to not justify the statement itself. (I think “some,” while technically correct, is too strong, given standard use of the word.)

I didn’t think of wealth in itself when I answered, I took the question very generally.

18

I think it’s interesting that so many here are reading something into the word “luck” as if it is a personal trait or supernatural force. I don’t believe that some people are detined to misfortune, but I also cannot deny that some people expeience, like the Baudelaire orphans, a series of unfortunate events that they neither caused nor could control. I have no problems describing those who have been so affected as “unlucky”.

I think this question, rather than identify the fatalists or superstitious, is supposed to segregate those who believe the poor are often the victims of circumstance from those who think the poor are at fault for their own lot in life. It’s a welfare question. If it is impossible to fail if you make the right choices, then what’s the need for a social safety net? Conversely, if a significant amount of the needy are there due to circumstances beyond their control, well then it’s only fair that they be helped to a second chance, and besides, we may need such support ourselves someday.

I said agree because I feel that a significant amount of people are the victims of random misfortune. Hit by a car, born disabled or into poverty, etc.

19

It’s because of the word “naturally” in the question. Even without it, I believe “luck” does carry heavy connotations of being some property that someone can possess, rather than the bald view of it being the occurrence of an unlikely yet positive event. YMMV, but it seems to me that the word “naturally” is pretty significant in this context. If it isn’t, why was it included?

This is quite possibly the case, but if so it is a spectacularly badly-written question, relying on a rather perverse reading of “natural luck” as “initial advantage”. If I play an opponent at tennis with a 2-point handicap in every game, am I naturally unlucky at tennis? Nope, I’ve just got to be better (or luckier) to win than my opponent.

20

Perhaps… but perhaps not.

But it’s ALSO true that people with authoritarian personalities are strongly inclined towards believing in things like luck, fate, and superstitious patterns. Belief in fate is indicative of an unwillingness to accept reality. The question is very clear, to my mind; it asks if people are naturally unlucky, e.g. possessing luck as an inherent attribute of their existence - not just if some people get randomly handed a raw deal, which is obviously true.

Believing that people are naturally inclined towards luck or lack thereof is fatalistic and is indicative of authoritarian traits. And remember, authoritarianism is one of the axes of the Political Compass.