The Infinite Monkey Theorem argues that a random text generator will eventually type out the works of Shakespeare at random. That could be a monkey in a vast random typing pool.
Now the way people think, that Monkey would gain celebrity as the smartest monkey on the planet. How can a monkey have memorised the whole works of Shakespeare in order to type them out you might think, or how can a Monkey even read and write.
But its an obvious problem that not faced with the context we can't actually deduce that much. We might--knowing a bit about monkeys' weak linguistic skills--deduce the monkey was just lucky and from a vast typing pool (given it would take more than the time of many universes to achieve this at random).
But is not the logic of Capitalism like this? We like to argue that rewards are merit driven. But we wouldn't say the monkey above had achieved much merit, yet it would make money (for someone) as it toured chat shows etc. Almost all the great achievements are luck. Its true that people who work hard are more likely to have this luck, but not necessarily. There is no direct connection. Life is a lottery, and its true you need to buy the ticket (get educated and work hard) but after that it is monkeys and type writers.
How many people have worked hard and not achieved greatness or wealth. How many have stumbled on it, or just innately had it like Mozart (which is luck).
A greatest test for true greatness is to repeat the achievement. The "second album test" I would want to call it.
The first achievement is a many to one achievement. From a vast pool of monkeys you get lucky and get selected according to the criteria (say the works of Shakespeare).
This achievement means nothing.
But once you have been selected the pool is now just you. Luck is no longer a factor now. If you can produce a massive second album then the record company knows you are a valuable talent.
So there are 2 stages in any achievement. The 1st being noticed and the 2nd actual achievement. The 1st can be just luck.
If the probability of doing something amazing is p then in a pool of n people the probability that someone does something amazing is '1-(1-p)^n'. That is the 1 - probability that no one does anything amazing.
But in reverse what is the probability of that person doing something amazing. Well it might be p. But there are geniuses so it might be g which is much greater than p.
So it might be that the mass of p achieves fame through randomness and the genius g is sitting there thinking why am I never rewarded!
How would a selector know whether there was a monkey out there who has some reading and writing ability if he was surrounded by many universes worth of random typists who regularly produced the works of Shakespeare at random?
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Of course this is just one reason why true talent may never be recognised. I feel the more powerful one is to do with how society works. "Its not what you know its who you know." Power is a social thing.
And this is now a new blog about something I realised recently. There is a direct connection between the "weirdo loser" in your area who nobody really knows and the President who is endorsed by millions. And it has nothing to do with talent.
The problem for humans is that we are social and that means we gain security from society. It means that when we meet someone the very first thing we do is reference them with the society's opinion of them. If we are at a party we know already that the host has invited the guests and so they have passed the social status thing. But if we meet a complete stranger we are potentially a bit suspicious because they have not been vetted. We would not trust a stranger with a £100 loan, but we would someone at the party. Similarly in the vapid world of social media we look at the number of subs or likes and immediately form an opinion about this person simply upon their social status. The content may be rubbish, but its socially vetted and that feels good. We feel like we "belong." Usually "belonging" is considered a thing-in-itself in some weak hug-a-thon but I'm suggesting here its real meaning lies in establishing how people will see us. I may have few likes myself, but at least if I hang with people with may many likes and perhaps Holy Grail even get a sub from someone with more likes than me I am going up in the world. So its not so much about "belonging" as establishing your status (a pointless game if you ask me) but a game all the same.
On an aside doesn't all the grief associated with Social Media stem from this game of being liked? You may get bullied on social media, but if you are honest didn't you start this by setting out to be liked? You should deal with that need to be liked before going on social media cos if anyone finds out you want to be liked they are just going to use it by other people who want to be liked and can use you as a stepping stone up in the world. Consider how many likes the bullies get! The best way to beat a bully is to deny them the likes and you do that by not giving a shit. Okay that is hard, its an act mostly, but you need be honest with at least yourself. You wanted likes and you didn't get them. Now why do you want likes? Will likes make you a better person? No! No one ever became better by gaining anything. Really the best way is to give likes, honestly and sincerely, and not expect any in return. But that requires a full and deep investigation of self and existence so its the King's Way indeed!
Anyway its no accident that a political organisation is called a "party." It is purely a social vetting process. "Oh you know A who is famous" that bumps you up the social network. In maths there is the Erdos Number which is the research equivalent. Someone who knows people at at the top we think we can trust simply because so many other people trust then. To be at the top means you have been vetted by a lot of people. And in return the risk of scandal means you have a lot to lose, so you might not be as likely to cheat.
However unfortunately its not such a pure system because with power comes corruption. People may turn a blind eye to corruption in order to rise the ranks themselves. You might vet someone just to improve your own status without it actually corresponding to talent. And so invariably the people at the "top" are not the most talented. They have simply risen in a game where everyone else is playing the same game.
This is much more likely the reason that the genius does not gain reward. They may indeed be a super talented person but if they are the lone "weirdo" who hasn't managed to make social connections and get a network of vetting then they are much more likely to be overlooked and never see achievement or reward.
Nothing essentially bad about that, its the way it is. But it raises questions about the "justification" of Capitalism that it rewards the talented. No it doesn't. It rewards the "successful" which is often quite different.
I think there is a lot of resentment amongst the true talents that often because of quite arbitrary and irrelevant things like social skills they get overlooked. Its a testament to Socialism and Government that it often provides avenues for such people. Alan Turing, of Enigma fame, being one. He was so socially unskilled that he almost failed to achieve anything. But he was at Cambridge and got noticed by the famous Von Neuman who championed him and enabled him to gain success most importantly being selected to work at Bletchley Park by the British Government and the rest is history. Of course that same government gave him a death sentence because of ignorant (by modern standards) laws against homosexuality at the time. But Turing is himself is a classic example of talent not being fully recognised. There were many talented people at Bletchley and in my mind the most over looked is Tommy Flowers. I bet almost no one has heard of him, and yet he designed and built the first programmable computer. And what is most remarkable is his work was so fastidious and accurate that it worked first time! What a towering talent. People can barely get a program to work first time these days. And it is Turing who seems to have stolen that fame cos all Turing did was design the Bombe which just checked combinations of enigma codes. And in fact the breakthrough I believe was suggested by Gordon Welchman who realised that feeding the output back in to create loops of related codes massively increased the chance of finding the Enigma settings. This is the basis of Rainbow Tables used in cracking hashes today. The genius logic is captured in the 100 Prisoners Problem.
So clearly no monkeys and typewriters here. All incredible people at the height of their game. But what actually is the role of luck here. It seems with Turing he does have a string of ground breaking papers to his name, so he was not a one hit wonder. But how do we know there were not even more talented people out there who never got noticed and never had any success. Perhaps in an attic one day a box of scribbled notes will be found written by a Patent Clerk (Einstein was a patent clerk!) which turns out too be utterly ground breaking.
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