GPSTS conference 11/10/07 at Harvard Law School: My Thesis

[0524432]

Poker is chastised constanty because of the well known luck factor involved in the game. As I spoke with Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson about on Saturday, our goal through the GPSTS should be to help people realize how much luck is involved in every single day of their lives, through work, relationships, family, etc. Think about how many crucial factors along your lifeline have been completely out of your control.

Once they understand the similarities, we can help the understand how luck (deviations from expectation) has only an affect on the short term. Like in poker, it is not the presence of luck in the short term, but the level of SKILL over the long term which will affect the outcome and SUCCESS we achieve in our lifetime.

Thoughts/Discussion?

[budblown]

Don't know if this is the proper forum but I'll give it a shot

Luck: Finding a 10 at the bar with big breasts and a nice ass
Skill: Having her make breakfast in the morning

[0524432]

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Don't know if this is the proper forum but I'll give it a shot

Luck: Finding a 10 at the bar with big breasts and a nice ass
Skill: Having her make breakfast in the morning

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interesting response to the thesis but I did lol in my mouth a little.

[budblown]

how about luck turning into skill over the long run.

Luck - finding a bar that charges $2 for any drink you want
Skill - going to the same bar again.

What is GPSTS?

[MiltonFriedman]

Skill: Having her for breakfast in the morning

[xsizzurpx]

Luck definitely plays a huge role in everyone's life but I think individuals have some control over how much, i guess in poker terms variance, there is in there life. Lets take the bar example. If you go out to a bar 10 nights and every time you are there you try to pick up the 10 lets say that you are successful 1 night. Your twin who is like you in every way goes to the same bar 10 nights but instead of trying to hook up with the 10 goes for a 7 and bags one 4 of the nights. Who is luckier? How much did each person's actions affect this luck who had the better outcome. I think these are all things that need to be thought about if we are trying to measure luck.

[budblown]

[ QUOTE ]
Luck definitely plays a huge role in everyone's life but I think individuals have some control over how much, i guess in poker terms variance, there is in there life. Lets take the bar example. If you go out to a bar 10 nights and every time you are there you try to pick up the 10 lets say that you are successful 1 night. Your twin who is like you in every way goes to the same bar 10 nights but instead of trying to hook up with the 10 goes for a 7 and bags one 4 of the nights. Who is luckier? How much did each person's actions affect this luck who had the better outcome. I think these are all things that need to be thought about if we are trying to measure luck.

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How drunk was I the night I got the 10? On the other nights did I bag a 7 or a 3? Or did I go home alone?

Here's an interesting scenario. Me and my identical twin walk into a bar - everything about us is identical from looks to personality to likes and dislikes - I approach the 10 and talk to her, she digs me. Then my twin walks over and talks to her and she digs him, but she doesn't know we are twins. I then walk up and she has to choose between us. She has to take one of us home, but who? Whoever she picks is luckier at that moment right?

These random bar scenarios are making me thirsty.

[Todd Terry]

You can easily convince a group of successful people that skill predominates over luck in any occupation in the long run, since they all believe it is skill that got them to where they are. I'm fairly sure life is governed predominantly by luck, from beginning to end.

Since there is no way to measure skill in poker independently of results, the role of skill vs. luck is an intractable problem. Maybe you could take identical twins, aged 21 with no poker knowledge, give them the same 9 months of intensive training, and let them play for 3 years and if their results were close to the same you could make something of it.

[0524432]

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You can easily convince a group of successful people that skill predominates over luck in any occupation in the long run, since they all believe it is skill that got them to where they are. I'm fairly sure life is governed predominantly by luck, from beginning to end.


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Interesting response. Would you not agree though, that it is not the sole factor or luck that creates the successful outcome. That it is the experience and being prepared, which I would personally attribute as elements of the skill factor, when met with the "lucky" opportunity creates the formula for success that is clearly not equal throughout.

[AlwaysWrong]

Hi, you might find this interesting:

From: Haney, Craig and Hurtado, Aida, "The Jurisprudence of Race and Meritocracy: Standardized Testing and "Race-Neutral" Racism in the Workplace" Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 18, No. 3, 1994 p. 227.

(I just copy-pasted from the PDF so it's a bit messy. You should be able to Google Scholar it pretty easily. Point #2 "Merit is measurable" seems to be the most pertinent.)

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The core assumptions of this meritocratic model are so central to legal thinking that they are neither made explicit nor called into question, not even in the most sweeping legal decisions aimed at eradicating racial
discrimination. Briefly summarized, these assumptions are as follows:


1. There is some more or less tangible quality, which can be loosely described as "merit," that people possess in varying amounts, t l Merit refers for the most part to the bundle of ability and skills that individuals possess and upon which they can and should be allocated opportunities and rewards. Thus, Fass (1980) has accurately described what she called the "impulse toward meritocracy," namely, "the just and equitable distribution of training and rewards according
to individual abilities" (p. 436). The law recognizes discrimination only when actions or outcomes violate this merit-allocation principle. Otherwise, people are thought to "deserve" what they get. In the early development of antidiscrimination law, courts were willing to presume actionable discrimination on the basis of disparities in outcome that could not be attributed to the absence of merit. In recent years, the presumptions have been subtly shifted: increasingly, an absence of merit is presumed to explain disparities in outcome whenever intentionally
discriminatory actions cannot be established.


2. Merit is measurable. This is the operating assumption of ability testing of all types, including that which is used to allocate employment opportunities and rewards. In the allocation of job opportunity, "merit" means primarily a measured potential to succeed or perform appropriately in the job in question. When economic rewards are being allocated, then merit often includes explicit consideration
of measured past performance (thought to involve some combination of ability and effort). Promotions function in this scheme as something of a hybrid and are allocated typically on the basis of measures of both meritorious past
performance and merit-potential for more rewarding work.
There are several separate sub-components to this assumption of measurability:


(a) The standard by which merit is measured is thought to be relatively unitary. That is, although the type of merit most relevant to a particular job may vary, the same kind of merit, measured in the same way, is equally relevant to
all people who occupy or aspire to the same job. In the context of employment discrimination law, "validation" is the process by which employers can demonstrate
that disproportionate numbers of White recipients of occupational opportunities and rewards possess greater amounts of the type of merit that is relevant
to the job in question.


(b) Merit is relatively immutable. This justifies its measurement at the outset of an occupational career, before job candidates have had a chance to learn or improve at, or even transform, the job itself. It also underpins
a consistent emphasis in employment law on the process of selection rather than on, say, job training.


(c) Finally, concerns about measuring the merit of individual workers typically override concerns about measuring and transforming the nature of the workplace. Thus, the characteristics of the job are taken as a given, rarely (if ever) to be altered in response to the distribution of skills or alternative approaches
to job performance utilized by different workers or job candidates.


3. Persons and performances that lack sufficient merit are thought to be properly devalued or punished. That is, if people do not "measure up," they are not allocated opportunity or rewarded for their actions. Group disadvantage or "disparate impact" (which is visited with uncanny regularity upon minority groups in the workplace) is thought to be the product of either a collective lack of
merit or overt discrimination. The law acts only upon group disadvantage that is not caused by a collective lack of merit and, therefore, must be the result of discrimination. But, as noted above, courts are increasingly willing to presume a lack of merit, rather than the presence of discrimination, when confronted by evidence of group disparity.

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