>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.