>This is the crux of why I think the concept of privilege is extremely dangerous. You have no idea who I am and I've already stated that I fit some of the demographics that you deem underprivileged. Yet instead of listening to what I had to say (which is a quite simple explanation -- work smart/hard == do good) you fit a very elaborate psychological explanation over my experiences (of which you know nothing about).

It doesn't really matter who you are, it's unlikely that you're immune to bias. I absolutely listened to what you said, it's just orthogonal to the point I made, which is that no matter your experience, how your brain works is probably not unique. You're almost certainly subject to the psychological quirks as everyone else. Do you want me to give your experiences special deference because you come from an underprivileged background? I thought that's explicitly what you were arguing against.

>Do you believe that poor people cannot succeed without help? If the answer is yes, then why would you question someone telling you that's what happened? If the answer is no, then I think you need to reexamine your philosophy as it's fairly dehumanizing to be told that you're not capable of success.

No. And I don't think I've ever said that poor people cannot succeed without help. I've said it's more difficult for poor people to achieve the same success as rich people, all else equal, but I don't see anything dehumanizing about that. I'd ask that you take another look at what I'm actually saying, because you're turning my words into something that they very much aren't.

>Poor people who became wealthy are told they're experience is invalid, an outlier, not useful. Really shouldn't they (we) be the ones that have the most valuable opinion since we've proven it can work?

No. Not at all! For the same reason that I wouldn't ask Jeff Bezos for life advice. Its survivorship bias, plain and simple. For every person with your story, there's someone else who had a similar background, worked just as hard, and isn't successful.

The common explanation for this is that a lot of successful people say that a good things is to take risks. They all have this in common. They took risks. But so did tons of other people who ended up broke or bankrupt or otherwise unsuccessful. Only listening to successful people will result in exactly what you're doing now: thinking that [hard work/risk taking/keeping a strict schedule/buddhist minimalism] is enough to do succeed, ignoring the fact that there are many people who did exactly the same thing who have failed.

Just to be clear, are you arguing that you worked harder/smarter than every person from your hometown who has seen less success than you? Because I'd find that highly unlikely. It certainly wasn't true for me.

> Just to be clear, are you arguing that you worked harder/smarter than every person from your hometown who has seen less success than you?

Yeah I'm arguing that. I used to try to help these people. I spent a lot of time doing it in fact. I would try to teach people in my town about computers but was told it was "geek stuff". I would try to get them to read books but again...that's for the nerds. I'd try to tell them there's more to life than football (was told there wasn't). I would tell them that maybe it wasn't a great idea to use crystal meth (this was before they all got hooked on opiods). I'd tell them that joining the military wasn't a path to success. I would tell them that they shouldn't be afraid of people from other cultures and that maybe they could learn from them and teach what was unique to their culture.

It all fell on deaf ears or was met with overt hostility. Even when I started to become successful and it looked like maybe some of this geeky stuff was actually valuable, all I got was anger for "abandoning" my roots. So at some point I just said fuck it. They don't want help. They are lazy and afraid and if you try to help them they will bring you down too.

Fast forward 20 some years and I see very privileged, successful people (such as yourself) making very well meaning but very misguided arguments about how to help underprivileged people. Do they, I and nearly everyone else face some systematic biases? Yes!! I've hit multiple glass ceilings and currently reside at one I don't have the energy to break through. That's not the main problem though. By far the biggest thing holding people back is their own fear of trying to succeed and the lack of strength to stand up to their own community who holds them back.

I don't know your background, but if it were practical I'd suggest actually going to live with some poor people. I think you'll find it's not the "myth of meritocracy" or the "patriarchy" holding them back. It's for the most part their own bad habits. I think most people who have escaped poverty would agree.

>Yeah I'm arguing that. I used to try to help these people. I spent a lot of time doing it in fact. I would try to teach people in my town about computers but was told it was "geek stuff". I would try to get them to read books but again...that's for the nerds. I'd try to tell them there's more to life than football (was told there wasn't). I would tell them that maybe it wasn't a great idea to use crystal meth (this was before they all got hooked on opiods). I'd tell them that joining the military wasn't a path to success. I would tell them that they shouldn't be afraid of people from other cultures and that maybe they could learn from them and teach what was unique to their culture.

And every person in your town was like this? You were the valedictorian of your high school and worked jobs on the side to make money because your parents didn't but you needed to be able to take care of your sister and keep the lights on anyway.

>I don't know your background, but if it were practical I'd suggest actually going to live with some poor people.

Aren't you the one assuming things now? I've lived with and interacted with some very-not-well-off people, more similar to the crystal meth hooked in-and-out of jail people you describe than you might at first think. Some of them are even relatively successful now. And yeah it absolutely took hard work and determination and grit in every case. But that's not all it took, for any of them. They all got lucky breaks, and they mostly admit that readily. I'm not as naive about this as you want to believe.

I mean, to be clear here, you appear to have had reliable access to computers 20+ years ago. That's a huge advantage over many people. And don't get me wrong, I don't mean to belittle your success, success is a good thing. But you seem resistant to recognizing your biases. Biases that everyone has and that are well documented. I don't really know why that is, but the fact that you picked that specific line to target, and ignored everything else I said is revealing. That you think hard work is all it takes is, if nothing else, naive.

Yes, my town was a hellhole and very, very small. I'm the only person who has achieved professional success. Most are dead, in jail or hooked on drugs. My relatives included.

> You were the valedictorian of your high school

No, I was a very poor student as I knew back then that school had little to do with success.

> worked jobs on the side to make money

There were no jobs in my town.

I admit I'm making some assumptions about you since I've literally never heard a poor person say the things you're saying but many, many middle-upper middle class people say them. I could be very wrong though.

> you appear to have had reliable access to computers 20+ years ago

My school had some very dated Apple IIes. The rest I got from magazines and library books. If there was a privilege there it was that I was alive at a time that booting up a machine dumped you into BASIC.

I'm 100% sure I'm biased. Everyone is, including yourself. Our conversation has drifted far from the original topic but I do appreciate you taking the time to have it. I don't think we could ever agree on many of these issues but its interesting to see them juxtaposed.

>No, I was a very poor student as I knew back then that school had little to do with success.

See, this is the kind of thing I mean. This is essentially a post-hoc justification of your success. Why did you "know that school had little to do with success". Why didn't your classmates? Did the valedictorian also end up on drugs and in jail? Or did they just end up less successful, despite working hard?

I mean I can actually take this same argument and apply it to some absolutely terrible choices: "I knew school had very little to do with success, so I decided to forgo school and start hustling and selling drugs at a young age, and here I am now an upper ranking member of a street gang, by many measures a fairly successful person". It's not like everyone who does the first does the second. A lot of them end up dead or in jail. But given what you've said so far, you would believe that individuals should follow that advice.

And if that's not the case, I ask what the difference between

> Take my advice, ignore your schoolwork and work with computers instead, you could become a millionaire, just look at Bill Gates!

and

> Take my advice, ignore your schoolwork and start selling drugs instead, you could become a millionaire, just look at [insert local gang leader or dealer]!

I could be wrong, but it really sounds like you're looking at your past through rose colored glasses. And as a result of this, you ascribe your success more to the "smart choices" you made than to the "lucky choices" or "lucky breaks" or "random opportunities" you got. I'd suggest you go out and look for people from similar backgrounds who made similar choices to you, I think you'll find it will be sobering how many of them didn't find success, despite the hard work, and that you're luckier than you think. Heck, I think if you really try and take an objective look, you'll find that some of the people who you feel like made worse choices than you were more similar to you thank you think, but didn't get the same lucky break.

Just in general, I think it's a good idea spending more time listening to unsuccessful people. It reminds me how they're not so different from me, and that's why I think privilege theory is both important and often correct. I hope you take the time to do that too.

Edit: I also think you're misunderstanding my use of the word bias in this context. I mean "evolutionarily hardwired to view things through a certain, objectively wrong, lens". See my earlier citations for how that reveals itself, but the result is that you, like everyone, are likely to take more credit for your achievements than you objectively deserve. This isn't unique to you, but it means that I basically have to take your entire description of your success and everyone else's failures with a grain of salt.

Your assumptions about me are pretty off base and that’s the problem. You’ll never be rhetorically successful by invalidating people’s personal experience. I have a lifetime of making decisions and viewing their outcomes to draw from. You have theory. I can look at what works for me, do more of it and see it pay off. I can see people do the opposite and fail.

This is why I think the concept of privilege will never grow beyond the people who already believe in it. It’s just too smug at its core.

>I can look at what works for me, do more of it and see it pay off. I can see people do the opposite and fail.

And this is the fallacy in your thinking. I can find people who made terrible choices and became more successful than you. I can find people who made similar choices to you and are much less successful.

If that's all you do, then plain and simple, your experiences are invalid. They don't matter. They're not data. And anyway, you're already successful now, so your choices practically don't matter anymore. Success begets success.

To put it simply, you need to accept that there are people who made good choices as you did, and aren't successful despite their hard work and good choices. Because that's fact. That's the world we live in. That's not smug. It's a hard pill to swallow, sure and I don't really blame you for refusing to. But there's nothing smug about it.

Do you really believe that nothing we do matters? That it’s all a roll of the dice or uncontrollably riding the waves of systematic oppression and privilege?

I don’t see how that’s useful. Yeah, life is not always fair but if you don’t believe in free will or that you can actually have some impact on your own existence, then what’s the point of even living it?

And let’s be real, if you’re good at what you do, you’ll be fine. Every good developer can get a job. That’s the economic reality we live in. People are capable of achieving that with hard work.

Like you said though, it doesn’t matter. It worked for me and it worked for millions of other people so whether you think that was luck, privilege or something else it doesn’t impact my success. What you may accomplish is encouraging people who could help themselves to not do so. Probably not even that though because the kind of people who can help themselves are already used to ignoring the naysayers.

>Do you really believe that nothing we do matters? That it’s all a roll of the dice or uncontrollably riding the waves of systematic oppression and privilege?

No, and this is the second time now that you've made a ridiculous strawman out of my statements. I'm saying systematic oppression and privilege matter and have an impact. This is opposed to what you said which, if I understand correctly is "work hard and you'll be successful, no matter the situation". When I say "no the situation matters too", you manage to interpret this as some kind of fatalistic "everything is predetermined" argument, which it is not.

To be clear, I'm not saying that privilege is the only component of success. I'm saying that hard work is not the only component of success. So far you seem to be interpreting the second as the first.

Perhaps if you actually tried to understand what I was actually saying, instead of going out of your way to misinterpret it, you would realize that it wasn't as much nonsense as you think.

>And let’s be real, if you’re good at what you do, you’ll be fine. Every good developer can get a job. That’s the economic reality we live in. People are capable of achieving that with hard work.

There are a lot of people that don't have the means to "become a good developer". I'll agree that good developers can get a good job, but for a lot of people, there aren't enough hours in the day to do what you handwave away as a given.

>the naysayers.

What, specifically, am I doing that is naysaying? Is saying "your success is a product of both your hard work and your circumstances" naysaying? Really?

You say this:

> To put it simply, you need to accept that there are people who made good choices as you did, and aren't successful despite their hard work and good choices.

I 100% disagree. If you make good decisions and work hard you'll be more successful than you would have been without doing that. If you study something with economic value, you'll get to participate in that value (if you're good).

I've never seen someone who is actually good at what they do (if it's something that's valued economically -- I've seen plenty of poor but skilled musicians for instance) live in destitution. Not once.

> There are a lot of people that don't have the means to "become a good developer".

There are people who don't have the mental capacity to do it yes, but I accept that and have no problem with it. We can't all be successful, utopias are a fantasy. I'm talking about the people with the capability to be successful. They should work hard and not give a moment's thought to anyone telling them to "check their privilege". It's a pointless exercise, you don't owe anyone an apology for doing well.

>If you make good decisions and work hard you'll be more successful than you would have been without doing that.

Sure, but relative success is not particularly relevant to what we've been discussing. I'm sure that many people from your hometown are relatively more successful than others. But you've already said that they aren't successful in a concrete sense.

My point is that

>study something with economic value

>someone who is actually good at what they do

is not an opportunity available to everyone. The opportunity to study something with economic value is a privilege. There are many people who don't have that privilege either due to economic or time constraints. If you're argument is that "people who had the opportunity to study something of economic value are able to be successful with only hard work", then I'd agree.

But those people already got lucky/privileged/an opportunity that isn't available to everyone when they had the ability to spend time and study something of economic value.

You can't "work hard and study something of economic value" if you have to work two jobs to keep the lights on. There aren't enough hours. It doesn't matter what your mental capacity is. Your physical capacity is too small.

>you don't owe anyone an apology for doing well.

And I never said you did. Please, again, listen to what I'm actually saying, and don't continue to make things up. I get that you disagree with me, but that means that you should be careful to read what I'm actually saying, not be biased by your predispositions. Remember that this conversation began because I said you misunderstood what privilege was. Responses like this make it look like you're not engaging in good faith and simply want to argue against privilege because you've been told you should disagree with it, and that you're unwilling to learn what it actually is.

Edit:

>I'm talking about the people with the capability to be successful.

Right, and I'm simply saying that the capability to be successful is not solely your innate intelligence or whatever, but also your in part your circumstances.

To give a simple example, which is more likely: that your children will get accepted into Harvard Law, or that Malia Obama's eventual children will?

> There are many people who don't have that privilege either due to economic or time constraints.

This goes back to my early statement about school not teaching valuable skills. I told you I was a poor student, that was because I spent my time learning about computers instead of the curriculum I saw as wasteful of my time. You have to have the strength to make those types of decisions. Was it easy? Absolutely not, I paid all kinds of prices for doing such a thing. I stood by my convictions though, and thus have little sympathy for those who don't.

> You can't "work hard and study something of economic value" if you have to work two jobs to keep the lights on.

As mentioned above, if you're just starting to think about these things when you're old enough to work two jobs, you've already made bad decisions that are going to be very hard to reverse.

> Responses like this make it look like you're not engaging in good faith and simply want to argue against privilege because you've been told you should disagree with it, and that you're unwilling to learn what it actually is.

I'm arguing with you (neither of us are convincing each other of anything at this point) because you literally told me that my life was invalid and my philosophy as defined by my experiences are due to my own cognitive bias. You have no idea who I am yet feel totally comfortable saying such a thing.

If you take anything away from this it should be that if you're going to tell someone that their life experience is invalid, you're not going to convince them of anything. In fact they'll just entrench their positions. I'd eliminate that from your rhetorical bag of tricks if I were you.

And with that I'm done. We both learned nothing, and I'm still convinced that the core of your message is routed in smugness. Maybe you'll have better luck if you avoid making assumptions about people you've never met.

>As mentioned above, if you're just starting to think about these things when you're old enough to work two jobs, you've already made bad decisions that are going to be very hard to reverse.

I mean, I know people who were working multiple jobs in their early to mid teens. Are you suggesting that middle school is when you really need to be making choices about your career prospects? Its this kind of comment that really convinces me that you had a lot more "privilege" than you want to admit. A roof over your head, a stable home, and access to technology and resources are privileges that you appear to have had, and are not as universal as you seem to believe.

>my life was invalid

What does this mean? I'm absolutely willing to say that its inane to base your entire moral philosophy on a single person's experience. But that doesn't mean that your life or experiences are invalid, just that generalizing them to everyone is ridiculous. That's the entire point though not everyone's circumstances are the same as yours. That's the whole central point of what privilege is about. That doesn't make your life "invalid", again, I don't know what that means. Its real, I'm sure it happened. It worked for you. That's great. That doesn't make it generalizable. But you seem to once again be misinterpreting my statements that your experiences are not generalizable as your experiences not being real. That's completely untrue, and I don't know why you feel the need to so completely misinterpret my words.

I'm not making any assumptions about you beyond that you are a human being, a human being who suffers from the same cognitive biases as every other human being. In the absence of any compelling evidence to the contrary, that absolutely seems like a sane assumption to make.