"Conscientiousness will separate those who just survive from those who thrive in the 21st century."
The source of the problem is that this is simply not true, and young people are increasingly realizing it. First, if you aren't already rich or from a rich family, you and your descendants are probably already heading towards being members of the permanent underclass.
2nd, they see the opposite to be true. Conscientious people get fucked, and all those, EVERY person, at the top is an asshole who used and abused people to get to where they are.
The first is true because of the intentional designs of the 2nd.
That's not entirely true. Conscientious people can and do get fucked by the upper classes when they aren't smart about how they apply their conscientiousness, or when their capabilities outshine their abilities to self direct. The issue is that if you're at the bottom it's harder to see the game. But once you see it outpacing most people is doable.
There's plenty of upper class people who are both smart and conscientious tho, and those guys are hard to beat. They also don't make themselves obvious which is why people often imagine that the upper classes have an easy time and just let their resources do the work.
Fascinating stuff, I'll tweet it at John Burns-Murdoch and Matt Y.
No seriously, I like essays like this where I think I have ten or twenty minute's reading, then I middle-click the links and I realise I now have a couple of hours' reading to do. Thanks!
Edit. How well controlled are these time series? There is a thing related to the Paradox of Choice here. The paradox being, the more choices we are aware that we have, the harder it is to make a choice - the opportunity costs go up with choice. Women in villages, with only a few dozen men from whom to choose, marry younger than those in cities, who see thousands of men every day on the streets.
I think this is a related effect. Being aware of a greater number of people and seeing more and more "superstars". Over time, everyone is seeing more and more exemplars, exceptional people in one respect or another on social media, and so I think that self-reported conscientiousness (or any other self-reported attribute) would tend to go down over time for that reason alone.
"Conscientiousness will separate those who just survive from those who thrive in the 21st century."
The source of the problem is that this is simply not true, and young people are increasingly realizing it. First, if you aren't already rich or from a rich family, you and your descendants are probably already heading towards being members of the permanent underclass.
2nd, they see the opposite to be true. Conscientious people get fucked, and all those, EVERY person, at the top is an asshole who used and abused people to get to where they are.
The first is true because of the intentional designs of the 2nd.
That's not entirely true. Conscientious people can and do get fucked by the upper classes when they aren't smart about how they apply their conscientiousness, or when their capabilities outshine their abilities to self direct. The issue is that if you're at the bottom it's harder to see the game. But once you see it outpacing most people is doable.
There's plenty of upper class people who are both smart and conscientious tho, and those guys are hard to beat. They also don't make themselves obvious which is why people often imagine that the upper classes have an easy time and just let their resources do the work.
Fascinating stuff, I'll tweet it at John Burns-Murdoch and Matt Y.
No seriously, I like essays like this where I think I have ten or twenty minute's reading, then I middle-click the links and I realise I now have a couple of hours' reading to do. Thanks!
Edit. How well controlled are these time series? There is a thing related to the Paradox of Choice here. The paradox being, the more choices we are aware that we have, the harder it is to make a choice - the opportunity costs go up with choice. Women in villages, with only a few dozen men from whom to choose, marry younger than those in cities, who see thousands of men every day on the streets.
I think this is a related effect. Being aware of a greater number of people and seeing more and more "superstars". Over time, everyone is seeing more and more exemplars, exceptional people in one respect or another on social media, and so I think that self-reported conscientiousness (or any other self-reported attribute) would tend to go down over time for that reason alone.
I wrote about integrity, which is also conscientiousness and agency, here recently https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/how-to-become-a-man-of-integrity