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CellBioGuy comments on Open thread for December 17-23, 2013 - Less Wrong
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That, and income being massively externally controlled for the majority of people. The world, contrary to reports, is not a meritocracy.
Huh?
If you mean that people don't necessarily get the income they want, well, duh...
No, it isn't, but I don't see the relevance to the previous point.
I think the point was government handout programs. This is a massive external control on many people's incomes, and it is part of how the world is not a meritocracy.
(Please note, I ADBOC with CellBioGuy, so don't take my description as anything more than a summary of what I think he is trying to say.)
You what with CellBioGuy..?
Should be "ADBOC" -- "agree denotationally, but object connotatively". (ygert is probably thinking of "disagree" instead of "object".)
Ah, thanks. I usually think of such things as "technically correct but misleading" -- that's more or less the same thing, right?
Yes.
Yes, my mistake. I was in a rush, and didn't have time to double check what the acronym was. Edited now.
I think I could make an argument that "object" has a semantic advantage over "disagree" but one advantage is that "adboc" can be pronounced as a two-syllable word.
He might also be saying that most people don't have an obvious path for marginal increases to their income.
This is closer to what I was getting at. Above someone mentioned government assistance programs, which is also true to a point but not really what I meant (another 'disagree connotatively').
I was mostly going for the fact that circumstances of birth (family and status not genetics), location, and locked-in life history have far more to do with income than a lot of other factors. And those who make it REALLY big are almost without exception extremely lucky rather than extremely good.
Yes, this is true. You cannot meaningfully compare incomes between people that, say, live in developed vs. developing countries.