# Predictors of Successful Game Play By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2023-04-17 There is a lot of evidence that the best predictor of professional success is your parent's socioeconomic status. In other words, a group of average-intelligence individuals with rich parents is more successful than a group of above-average intelligence with poor parents. In all likelihood, you are well aware of this dynamic. It's captured in endless stories, myths, and ancient cultural artifacts. What do you do with this knowledge? Do you accept or ignore it as you cannot choose your parents? One viewpoint is to accept the suffering of the universe. Your destiny has already been chosen. Another viewpoint is that these probabilities are only useful in aggregate and cannot predict any individual's unique fate. You do you and take the bull by the horns. Whatever your individual beliefs, which are also influenced by the socioeconomic position of your parents, the societal impact is often overlooked or misunderstood. Say you want to eliminate poverty. How does one go about doing that when the system is rigged for the rich to continue being rich? You may emulate some version of Robin Hood: take from the rich and give to the poor. Has this fixed the problem, or simply reset the system? So far, all efforts seem to just reset the system. The successful are successful for a reason. They will continue to be successful, and then their children will be successful. By definition, there are always individuals more well-off whenever a game is played, and life and society are just big games by mathematical standards. In theory, at least the reset allows everyone a more equal chance to be successful based on their merits to play another round of the game or a new game entirely. This is the ancient idea of forgiving debts after seven years or burning government records during a revolution. I'm not advocating that either of these options is the right path forward, and I'm not convinced there is any way out of these cycles. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make things better for our fellow humans. It all comes down to your beliefs, and I am not delusional enough yet to think I can change them. #### Related Items [[Poverty]] [[Society]] [[Storytelling]] [[Thinking]] [[Systems Thinking]] [[The Human Condition]] [[Culture]]