Open Thread, January 4-10, 2016

polymathwannabe

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

It's not a social class thing. It's a human motivation thing.

Same difference. So there is an optimal amount of wealth to inherit to maximize human motivation, and it happens to be exactly the same amount that Gateses are going to give their children. (The optimal amount depends on the state of global economy or technology, so it was a different amount for Genghis Khan than it is now.)

I'd like to see the data supporting this hypothesis. Especially the kind of data that allows you to estimate the optimal amount as a specific number (not merely that the optimal amount is less than infinity).

They want their children to go out into the world and make their own mark on the world.

Which cannot be done if you have too much money. But will be much easier to do if you have less money. And you know precisely that e.g. 10^7 USD is okay, but 10^8 USD is too much.

Imagine that your goal would be to have your children "make their own mark on the world", and that you really care about that goal (as opposed to just having it as a convenient rationalization for some other goals). As a rational person, would you simply reduce their inheritance to sane levels and more or less stop there? If you would spend five minutes thinking about the problem, couldn't you find a better solution?

So there is an optimal amount of wealth to inherit to maximize human motivation, and it happens to be exactly the same amount that Gateses are going to give their children.

Who are you arguing against? I saw no one express the position that you're attacking.

would you simply reduce their inheritance to sane levels and more or less stop there?

Huh? Who stopped there? Do you have any reason to believe that the Gates handed their kids a "small" check and told them to get lost?

2gjm10y

You say this as if it's a silly thing that no one could have good reason to believe. I've no idea whether it's actually true but it's not silly. Here, let me put it differently. "It just happens that the amount some outstandingly smart people with a known interest in world-optimization and effectively unlimited resources have decided to leave their children is the optimal amount." I mean, sure, they may well have got it wrong. But they have obvious incentives to get it right, and should be at least as capable of doing so as anyone else. [...] I doubt they would claim to know precisely. But they have to choose some amount, no? You can't leave your children a probability distribution over inheritances. (You could leave them a randomly chosen inheritance, but that's not the same.) It seems like whatever the Gateses were allegedly planning, you could say "And you know precisely that doing X is okay, but doing similar-other-thing-Y is not" and that would have just the same rhetorical force. [...] I don't know. Could you? Have you? If so, why not argue "If the Gateses really had the goals they say, they would do X instead" rather than "If the Gateses really had the goals they say, they would do something else instead; I'm not saying what, but I bet it would be better than what they are doing."? Again, I'm not claiming that what the Gateses are allegedly planning is anything like optimal; for that matter, I have no good evidence that they are actually planning what they're allegedly planning. But the objections you're raising seem really (and uncharacteristically) weak. But I'm not sure I've grasped what your actual position is. Would you care to make it more explicit?

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