undermind comments on Power and difficulty - Less Wrong

21 Post author: undermind 22 October 2014 05:22AM

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Comment author: undermind 22 October 2014 08:53:39PM 2 points [-]

I guess I was trying to say that the hard work montage is one common narrative, but it is far from the only one.

And yes, there are inevitably constraints that get in the way of investing effort in any particular place, and correspondingly to gaining power by one particular means. But even when the path with the highest payoff is blocked, some of the remaining options will be more beneficial than others. For example, if someone has a low IQ but is strong, they could become a lumberjack, or they could become a henchman to their local supervillain.

Comment author: common_law 26 October 2014 02:59:53AM 0 points [-]

I don't see how your argument gains from attributing the hard-work bias to stories. (For one thing, you still have to explain why stories express this bias—unless you think it's culturally adventitious.)

The bias seems to me to be a particular case of the fair-world bias and perhaps also the "more is better" heuristic. It seems like you are positing a new bias unnecessarily. (That doesn't detract from the value of describing this particular variant.)