(no subject)

[sathor]

"A few years ago, my students and I studied exactly this question by setting up an experiment in which roughly 15,000 participants were asked to listen to, rate, and download songs by unknown bands off a website we created. Some of the participants had to make their decisions independently, while others had information about which of the songs other people liked. We found two results. First, in the “social influence” condition, popular songs were more popular (and unpopular songs less popular) than in the independent case. But second, it became harder to predict which particular songs would be the most popular.

What these results suggest is that in the real world, where social influence is much stronger than in our artificial experiment, enormous differences in success may indeed be due to small, random fluctuations early on in an artist’s career, which then get amplified by a process of cumulative advantage—a “rich-get-richer” phenomenon that is thought to arise in many social systems."

Replace songs, with books. Or entertainers. Or comedians. Or employees. Or even just simply, people. The same thing would happen.

What does this tell me about the world?

It tells me that randomness, luck, chance has a bigger role than any successful person ever wants to admit. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about big successes or small ones, either - whether we're talking about million-dollar recording contracts, or whether a man or woman lands the love of his or her life. In the case of financial wealth, though, the researcher admits that the snowball effect is quite real, much to my own discontent. As well, it is probably accurate to say that in the realm of the social world, popularity falls under the sway of the snowball effect, too.

Life isn't fair; there is no meritocracy; there is no rhyme or reason to any of this. There is no path to success, no path to love, no path to wealth. There might be a path to happiness, but most people aren't comfortable with the prospect of eradicating their egos and lowering their standards to the bare minimums of human survival - which is exactly what happiness would have to be for the billion people starving on the planet, suffering in abject poverty.

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"What these results suggest is that in the real world, where social influence is much stronger than in our artificial experiment, enormous differences in success may indeed be due to small, random fluctuations early on in an artist’s career, which then get amplified by a process of cumulative advantage—a “rich-get-richer” phenomenon that is thought to arise in many social systems."

That's not actually 'randomness' per se, and 'may be' is not the same thing as 'is'. Sure, random fluctuations may be random: this person happens to know someone who runs a radio station; that person gets the flu and has to cancel a performance at which (had he but known it) he might have met his future agent; this other person does a random act of kindness for a stranger who turns out to be a mega-producer. Chance is always a major factor in every aspect of life; it's just the luck of the draw whether you find a pearl or a bug in your chowder.

However, the major part of that 'process of cumulative advantage' depends on will, not on chance - on a conscious process of pushing with the flow, and holding fast through the ebb. In the case of musicians, authors, artists, this means it's not enough to just 'do what you do' as well as you possibly can - you also have to do the marketing, which means learning the strategies to get your name out there to as many people as possible.

Money is a big advantage, of course, but with or without money, perseverance is a super-power. On the other hand, every super-power has its Dark Side, and that of perseverance is the tendency to stick to a losing strategy. Sometimes a strategy is poorly-conceived and/or poorly-executed; sometimes it's a beautiful strategy for getting what one doesn't actually want... or what one once wanted, but doesn't really want now.

There's no certain path to success, or love, or wealth, but it's not like anybody was laying out 'paths' to begin with. One sets forth into the Wild and finds one's own way through. There ARE some certain paths to failure, loneliness and poverty: one of them is refusing to venture forth until one is provided with an authoritative map to what one wants.

As for happiness: it's a very Buddhist view to think that no one can truly be happy "until even the grass is enlightened". The 'eradication of the ego' stuff is not Buddhist, however; it comes out of the 'New Age' tradition of 20th-century ersatz-ancient.

It's a tragic and terrible thing that human overpopulation has progressed to the point that there are seven billion people on this planet. (I remember back when it was only 3 billion.) None of our world leaders have the cojones to talk about it, but one of the crucial tasks of the coming millenium will be drastically reducing our numbers while preserving our genetic diversity as much as possible. That's not going to be possible if we leave the task to the traditional Four Horsemen of Logical Consequences.

However, that doesn't have much to do with happiness. I am sincerely sorry that conditions suck so much for people in the disadvantaged areas in the world, and I do what I can to work for a fair deal for everybody. But also, I am happy to see the sunrise, or the Moon, or the wild geese; I am happy for the seasons turning, and the people I love; for the taste of food, the blessing of sleep, the wonder of my own body/mind. I sincerely hope that the people even in the most-disadvantaged areas are happy for these things too.

Did you ever read One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyen? That's a book I go back to again and again over the years: there's some true lowering of standards to the bare minimums of human survival, but without either eradicating the ego or giving up on human dignity.

It's no service to the wretched of this world to be wretched in the midst of plenty on their behalf. That's like limping before the lame. Be mighty; be joyful; life and agency are yours for only a little while, so grab them, young Jedi, and find something worthwhile to do with them.

*hugs hugs* I hope your birthday was a good one!

[sathor.livejournal.com]

I believe that the key to recognizing the randomness of reality and the questionable degree of free will lies in retrospection - because only in retrospect is a choice or path "good" or "bad", "positive" or "negative". When we set out on a choice or decision, we've no way of knowing the outcome. There are those that will argue indefinitely that given certain information they can always make the right decision, but I don't believe that. We will, however, applaud and seek advice from the perceived successful and look down upon or ridicule the unsuccessful, even though for all we know, there was very little difference between the two in essence.

On a deeper level with regards to choice and free will, there is the problem of whether or not free will is a thing at all. Whether or not choices that we make are actual "free" choices, or whether they are the result of sub-processes of consciousness, "tapes" that we run, and our genetics. The standard view, I suppose, would be to say, "okay, since we know there are things out of our control - our subconscious, our personality, our experiences - but we presume the existence of free will and choice, then we the best we can figure is that choice is a combination of uncontrollable and controllable factors." The problem with that figuring is that we can't actually prove the existence of free will (we can't prove that our actions and choices are actually freely chosen), but we can definitely prove many of our influences, our birthright, our country of origin, etc. etc. were totally out of our control. Chaos is a more real and discernible than order, but it is probably uncomfortable because it's not very empowering or feel-good to believe that we might not actually control much of anything at all.

When studies are performed on the successful - and there's been many - the researchers are always looking for the common factors so that they can write a nice headline - "Seven Traits of Successful People" for instance. The problem is that, and I think I touched on this in a former post, is that this is almost certainly an instance of cherry picking. How many other factors were differing between these people, in all the infinite complexity of the human individual? How many average, everyday people who aren't successful embody the same exact factors? We can't have a real control group, because it's rather hard to find average, everyday people who become successes overnight - for all we know, success itself has an effect on how a person answers a survey, or appears in a case-study.

I suppose all of this writing I'm doing here is a bit pointless, so I guess I'll move on...but I'm really not much of a believer in free will, to put it plainly. Schopenhauer held a similar view, Nietzsche, Heidegger to some degree, and puportedly many others throughout the annals of philosophy. Maybe it's a hallmark of the philosophically minded people that their experience of reality seemed very "off" as a general rule - as an example, Sartre found himself incredibly ugly and some of his misanthropy is probably the result of the world's treatment of him, although that's just my postulation. If you feel like no matter what you do, the world still gravitates towards mistreating you, you might just start to believe that...well, there's nothing you CAN do to change that. You can try some different things, but if none of them work...then what? Hang up the hat? I'm not quite there myself, but I know there's people in the world who are and have been...and that definitely makes me question the whole underlying premise of free will, and maybe more importantly, the very nature of humanity.

[sathor.livejournal.com]

Having gotten that out of the way...

My birthday was O-K. The day itself was totally uneventful, and my friends decided to try and plan something for me this most recent weekend. They gave me three choices - a strip club, a casino, or a bar. I chose the strip club, because I figured it would be the least draining. I wouldn't be expected to be overly sociable except with my friends, it's a darker atmosphere and it's not overly stimulating, and drinking is optional. I honestly don't have any interest in strip clubs, but w/e - some people need to make money, and that's how they do it. At any rate, I was dreading the whole thing, but when the day came, Rob had to back out because his girlfriend wouldn't let him go, and he didn't want to deal with the argument. So, Rick invited me down to hang out. Of course, this was no longer a birthday thing for me - this was about Rick and Carly now.

They invited another couple over, making me the third, uncomfortable wheel. The single girl that could've been there, didn't show up. The other couple included a rather chauvinist guy (perfect for the girl who was a doormat for her last boyfriend as well) and I really wasn't too interested in the conversations after they got there. The only reason...I'm even describing this, is because of something that happened. They started talking about a young transgender girl living in town (oh yes, good ol' Tidioute - town of 800ish people.) I probably don't need to tell you what their consensus on her was. Suffice to say I was really pissed off at that point, but I hadn't been there long and I decided to just hold my tongue, nod and smile. I'd be disagreeing with everyone else if I voiced my opinion. I guess that just sorta set me off for the rest of the weekend and this week.

I'm really sick and tired of judgmental, bigoted people.

Sorry, I've been way too lengthy with all of this.

At any rate, I did not know that ego-death was something that didn't arise out of Buddhism and/or Hinduism. I guess I'll have to do some deeper reading of source materials, but I was fairly sure I came across those themes more than once. The whole Maya prophecy (for instance) always suggested to me that Desire (Fire, Ego) would destroy the universe.

I am probably doing the whole refusing to move forward without an authoritative map. I guess I've made some steps forward in my life over the years now, but I still don't feel I've gone far or done much - even if, by some metrics, I have. I'm insanely hard on myself though, I guess? That's something I can't really measure well.

Given the rate of consumption of Earth's natural resources...without serious technological advances in short order, or a massive die off of humans, we're screwed. That's my honest opinion. The Zeitgeist Movement (I think) echoes that, and so do a lot of climate change alarmists. These things might be necessary even within my short lifetime.

I find that the natural world is very pleasing to me. Sunrises, sunsets, the moon, the stars especially, the wind, the trees, the plants and animals (this year, I've been particularly in love with the songs of birds. We've a ton of catbirds nesting near the house - their voices are heart melting for me.) I guess what's hard for me is finding humans pleasing. I find you pleasing, for instance - I think I'd probably get along with you fairly well in person, maybe. But I don't meet people like that often. Many of them are incredibly draining because I can't be myself around them (great example, the whole family debacle you read about - I couldn't believe that my quietness would ever be ridiculed by my own blood relatives.) Even the people I call my friends, are often very bigoted and hold very...shitty views on things. It's draining to deal with that. Work was draining for very similar reasons, and also the toxic and cutthroat atmosphere. I could go on and on.

Anyway...I hope your birthday was great, too, as well as your festivals - and I hope your injuries have healed. -hugs-

I've considered putting a warning on some of these posts in title so you know what to expect - I'd rather not subject you especially to some of the negative stuff I vent from time to time, because I'm not sure it's all that enjoyable to read. At any rate...thank you, Jess.

[sathor.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I haven't read that book, but I'll note it for future reading soon. I'm on the last chapter of Quiet (finally.) I would have read it more quickly, but it's not exactly been an "easy" read. Not as hard as Plato, but it wasn't driving me like science fiction might. I still have sensory defensiveness book you suggested to read as well, next on my list I think.