Southern belles and the limits of self delusion

There are few probabilistic events more commonly known than a coin toss. Almost everyone carries a coin in their pocket (although will change soon with the increasing popularity of the electronic means of payment) and the mechanics are extremely simple. One party gets the "heads" and the other the "tails", and if the coin is properly tossed the chance of either outcome is approximately equal, 50% each.

If we repeat the toss a number of times each results is independent of the previous one, so the fact that you got "heads" in one toss does not mean that you have a higher probability of getting "tails" on the next one. For instance, if you have tossed five consecutive times "heads", you still have a 50% chance of getting a sixth repeat. It is the laws of probability that makes it unlikely to get six straight heads, but not extremely unlikely (approximately 1/64 or  1.6%).

Photo: Max Pixel

There is a curious statistical effect called "regression toward the mean" that basically explains that, if in a random experiment you have obtained a rare result, a repetition of the experiment is likely to give a more normal one. In the case of our six coin tosses, if we repeat the experiment the chances are overwhelmingly in favor of getting less than six heads (in fact 63/64 or 98.4%). However, this is only true if the mean we are assuming is actually the man of the experiment. If our assumptions do not correspond to the reality, the result might be different. If we are playing the game with a "double-headed" coin (with head on both sides), where the chances of getting "heads" are exactly 100% (and 0% of getting tails), getting six straight heads is perfectly normal and, indeed, it is guaranteed to happen if we repeat the experiment. It is keeping its own mean, not the ideal mean.

This brief lesson on statistics comes on occasion of a reflection about life opportunities and outcomes. Human societies are very complex and the number of factors contributing to the events in everyone's life are countless, so it is impossible for all practical purposes to establish an accurate prediction of how someone's life is going to turn out and instead we rely on statistics in the same way that use them to determine if a coin is "fair" or not. This is precisely the background of news pieces about life expectancy, housing prices, education level, work satisfaction and many more: they do not mean to represent the situation of any individual in a group but they can be very useful at comparing different groups because the mean in each group can be different, so a random pick might have significantly different results depending on which group you pick from.

This rises the question of what to think about the oddballs we encounter in life. How much of someone's success (or downfall, this works in both directions) can be attributed to their own effort (or lack thereof) and not to a statistical fluke? In other words, if someone gets six straight heads is it because they are good at getting heads, so they could do it again (the equivalent of having a double-headed coin), or is it by chance that they got the six heads and, in a new attempt, they are likely to have a more "normal" result?

Of course in life we do not get to repeat our choices over and over again, so this exercise is not applicable in a strict sense. However, and it spite of the repeated warnings in the advertising of every financial product in the market, past performance is often considered as a predictor of the future one so it becomes important to determine the difference: if the success (or mishap) is just a rare combination of events the performance is not likely to be repeatable and then the prediction becomes unreliable, but there are cases where the success is known to be much more than just a coincidence: people with better education are known to have better employment and income chances than those with just a high school degree; people of money are also known to have better performance on average, because the connections that their money provide actually improve their chances of succeeding (or at least improve their resiliency against setbacks). In that sense, we can legitimately say that some people play with "loaded" coins: the deviation is not as flagrant as having two heads, but their odds are certainly better than the usual 50%, and the converse situation happens for disfavored population groups, who have the odds stacked against them and will need to work harder and have more luck than their peers to reach the same level of success.

Under these circumstances, who would agree to change in the system? To replace the existing coins with new ones that are more reliably balanced? Certainly not those who enjoy a favorably loaded coin. They were lucky just once, when they got a "good" coin, so they have been able to repeatedly outperform their cohort even accounting for some random effects. This is precisely why the rich tend to vote conservative: unaware of how good their coin is compared to the rest of the people, they consider the world to be fair and a good place to live, so they see no need to change it. They consider that people who fail in life do so because they do not push themselves; they are unaware of their privilege and expect that anyone making an effort comparable to theirs should succeed equally.

This is the case of the proverbial Southern belle: women born in families of wealth, well educated, with a supporting social circle and a host of servants or slaves, they could afford lives of self care, child rearing, cultural pursuit and charity without all the hassles of their working-class counterparts. Who, in their position, would advocate for equal pay for white and black workers, do away with slavery or pursue better living standards for the poor (at the expense of their own)?

Karen and I have discussed a number of times how beautiful people just "have it easier": they get more respect (even obsequiousness) from strangers, receive better tips and donations and even get hired more often in job interviews. But I had never before thought about the political views: as this article (admittedly, a bit old, it is from 2017) reports, the attractiveness of a person's face is positively correlated with the conservatism, and the explanation is precisely aligned with the one above. Beautiful people are more likely to be treated fairly (or better) than average looking ones, so why would they push for a change? They would definitely prefer to continue being Southern belles and enjoy their success.

If you belong to the lucky ones I hope that you do not read this as ill-intended. I just meant to point out that inequality in life has many ways to express itself, and the fact that you are lucky does not mean by a long stretch that the world is fair and that all the poor have deserved their fate. It is easy to convince oneself that all the gains are the fruit of our own work, but that is, in many cases, a very evident case of self delusion. Let us start by admitting that most underprivileged people are just victims of bad luck in life and not just lazy, and perhaps we will be more ready to give them an opportunity to prove themselves and overcome their doom. Have a nice evening.