> People who’ve succeeded at achieving ambitious goals are able to look at success from both vantage points: from having yet to succeed and succeeding. You’ll hardly ever, if ever, hear them say it’s solely the consequence of having the right networks and being lucky.
Yes, people tend to adopt a personal narrative that maximizes their own moral status, so successful people artificially minimizes the effect of circumstance on average and unsuccessful people artificially minimize the effect of choice.
But we don't have to rely on competing personal narratives weighted by who has the resources to reach a larger audience; these are concrete fact questions, and there is plenty of evidence that (1) circumstance beyond personal traits has a very large role, (2) personal traits contribute in ways different than the popular narrative of the successful, and (3) the personal traits that contribute are themselves largely products of (mostly inherited and early childhood) circumstance, not active choice.
> Yes, people tend to adopt a personal narrative that maximizes their own moral status
Exactly, that's what I'm saying about rationalizing. The only thing those who've yet to succeed lack is the vantage point of the successful. So I'd argue the successful are operating with an information advantage.
> The only thing those who've yet to succeed lack is the vantage point of the successful.
No, that's a pre-Enlightment (or maybe postmodernist, it can be hard to tell the difference at times) attitude.
What both most who have succeeded and most who have not succeeded lack who don’t actively seek it out is the perspective of structured, broad information gathering, analysis, and hypothesis testing beyond self-justifying rationalization of personal experience.
But no one needs to lack that, because plenty of that has been done, so there is no need to rely on duelling self-justifying constructed narratives to understand the world.
Yes, people tend to adopt a personal narrative that maximizes their own moral status, so successful people artificially minimizes the effect of circumstance on average and unsuccessful people artificially minimize the effect of choice.
But we don't have to rely on competing personal narratives weighted by who has the resources to reach a larger audience; these are concrete fact questions, and there is plenty of evidence that (1) circumstance beyond personal traits has a very large role, (2) personal traits contribute in ways different than the popular narrative of the successful, and (3) the personal traits that contribute are themselves largely products of (mostly inherited and early childhood) circumstance, not active choice.