Sicilian programmers have created a virtual model of society and have shown that it is not only talent and perseverance that are important for building a brilliant career, but also a good combination of circumstances.
Random events can turn your life around and change it for the better in a short time, and Bill Gates is a prime example of this. The knowledge that he gained through additional studies on the computer allowed him to gain experience in programming, although 0.01% of the population had access to computers at that time. And his mother's acquaintance with the chairman of IBM allowed the young man to sign a contract with a leading PC manufacturer, and this moment became a key moment in the process of creating the Microsoft empire.
"Of course, you should not belittle the level of intelligence and efforts of Gates, but they clearly would not have been enough for such success," says Chengwei Lau of the University of Warwick Business School in England. He and his colleagues are trying to understand the importance of luck in our lives, and believe that the richest and most successful have a mindset that allows them to benefit from the so-called "phenomenon of justice" ("the poor get poorer, the rich get richer"). which pushes them up the career ladder.
To find new evidence for the importance of luck, scientists at the University of Catania in Sicily created a computer model of a society of 1,000 virtual people, half of whom they endowed with more talent and money, and the rest with less. In addition, the model reflected the real-world principle of distribution of wealth, known as the "80:20 ratio": 80% of the population owned 20% of all capital, and the remaining 20% owned 80% of the same capital.
For virtual 40 years, the "participants" in the experiment built their careers. Some of them were given opportunities, thanks to which they began to rapidly climb up, and someone regularly faced failures and could not achieve anything. Then the specialists studied in detail the characteristics of those who became the most successful, and it turned out that these people are more often than others, they received “gifts of fate” in the form of useful acquaintances and suddenly acquired skills.
The lead author of the work, Professor Alessandro Pluchino, believes that the role of luck is clearly underestimated today. “A lot of the research or technical development that gets outside funding today can be detrimental to investors just because they are unlucky enough to do something at the right time in the right place,” he adds. “Therefore, instead of sponsoring those who have achieved something in the past, the financial authorities should distribute the money evenly among everyone - this is the best strategy to not miss out on luck.”
Evgeniya Chernysheva
