[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by you&me

It wasn't taken out of context. The rest of your post was a fabricated example. The part I wanted to address was the part I quoted.

Would you mind clarifying what argument you are trying to make then? My response to Dirac was that being successful doesn’t mean that you’re naturally smarter and more productive than the population at large. You make a lot of points that suggest you are not in disagreement with that.

Of course opportunity matters, but an individual still has to be able to take advantage of any opportunity. There are very few low-intelligence individuals that can be come very successful based solely on opportunities. Again, they would be the exception.

Like I said, I acknowledge that there are exceptions and outliers.

The fact that there are any examples at all of low intelligence individuals who are successful is exactly the point. Having success doesn’t mean you are naturally smarter and more productive than the population at large by default.

However, I would take exception with your use of Galen Weston as an example (and the snarky undertone).

That’s unfortunate.

Under his stewardship, Loblaws has been a roaring success. It is also a publicly traded company and if he weren't at least qualified (if not the most qualified, then he would likely not be the CEO, regardless of his last name and any implied nepotism.

Are you suggesting the shareholders wouldn’t allow it? Are you aware that George Weston Ltd own around 50% of Loblaws? Do you wanna guess which family has the majority ownership in George Weston Ltd? That’s quite a bit of influence on the matter.

To put it another way, if he had different parents and a different upbringing, he may not have become CEO of Loblaws, but I would expect that he would still be successful.

Had he been born dirt poor I’m sure he would have still gone to Harvard as well, he would have just relied on his drive to be the best to get him there right?

I think everyone generally agrees. Knowing a lot of "successful" people, I sometimes take exception with any notion that they generally don't "deserve it" and are only there through dumb luck, being part of the lucky sperm club, screwing someone over or a dirty combination of all three. Of course there are examples out there, but those are an infinitesimally small portion of "successful" people and I feel the vast majority of successful people probably deserve more credit for their position in life than what is generally afforded to them.

No one is arguing that successful people don’t deserve credit for their actual accomplishments.