Rationally Speaking #165 - Robert Frank on "Success and Luck"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

New York City Skeptics

Society & Culture, Skepticism, Science, Philosophy

4.6 • 787 Ratings

🗓️ 7 August 2016

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If someone asks you, "What caused your success (in finance, your career, etc.)?" what probably comes to mind for you is a story about how you worked hard and made smart choices. Which is likely true -- but what you don't see are all the people who also worked hard and made smart choices, but didn't succeed because luck wasn't on their side. In this episode, Julia chats with professor of economics Robert Frank about his latest book, Success and Luck: The Myth of the Modern Meritocracy. They explore questions like: Why do we discount the role of luck in success? Has luck become more important in recent years? And would acknowledging luck's importance sap our motivation to try?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Rationally Speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.
0:22.6	For more information, please visit us at NYC Skeptics.org.
0:30.7	Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.
0:40.4	I'm your host, Julia Galef, and with me is today's guest, Professor Robert Frank.
0:45.1	Robert is a professor of management and economics at Cornell University.
0:49.5	He's the author of many books, and for more than a decade was a columnist for the New York Times. His most
0:55.2	recent book is called Success and Luck, Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy. And that's
1:00.5	primarily what we're going to be talking about today. Robert, welcome to rationally speaking.
1:04.6	My pleasure, Julia. So your thesis, as I understand it, is that, first of all, luck is more important than people give it credit
1:15.7	for in terms of explaining who becomes successful, and also that luck is more important than it
1:22.5	used to be in explaining who becomes successful. Is that about right? Both of those things are accurate. Yes, I think the problem is when we see an outcome, any kind of outcome,
1:35.0	we try to explain it using the best narrative we can put together on the fly.
1:41.6	And when we see somebody who's been very successful, we look for all
1:46.4	the factors that generally explain successful outcomes. And so the first thing that would spring
1:53.7	to mind in that attempt would be talent, hard work, diligence, personal qualities like that.
2:02.5	If somebody were constructing her own history, she's succeeded big time after 30 years of toil.
2:11.8	What's her memory bank going to serve up as ingredients for her narrative?
2:16.4	Well, she got up early every day and worked hard
2:18.8	and solved lots of difficult problems. She vanquished many formidable opponents along the way.
2:26.9	Of course, those are the things that are going to constitute the building blocks of her story.
2:32.9	You know, maybe she had a teacher in the 11th grade that steered her out of trouble.
2:38.0	Maybe there was a promotion she got early on in her career.
	...

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