What is the perfect experiment to answer the role of money in Kylie's success? Imagine multiple universes of Kylies, all with the same strengths and talents as the current Kylie, but who start their careers with various amounts of seed money.
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After an appropriate time, we can tally how many of them were billionaires and their starting cash. The problem is her upbringing has made her who she is and part of that upbringing is lots of money, and the associated fame.
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So the influence of money pre-dates the start of our experiment. She already knows people that she wouldn't know otherwise. Other people know her. After all, she's famous.
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So we can't truly address the question of the role of money in her success with the proposed experimental setup. An even more pressing concern is if you remove the influences of money completely from her life, is she still herself?
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If not, then a comparison between Kylie without money (i.e. not really Kylie) to actual Kylie is meaningless. It doesn't answer the question of what role her unique talents played in her rise to billionaire status.
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You might say the question you care about is, "Does money affect the chances of being a billionaire?" Probably! You can answer that question without worrying about Kylie. But if your question is how much credit to give Kylie, that's technically impossible to answer.
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Addendum 1: Impossible is a strong claim. I do think this question has an answer if you settle for imperfectly answering the original question by accepting subjectivity in your definition of what it means to be Kylie if she grew up without wealth;
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Or you can cultivate an understanding of her success so precise that you can dissect the contributing factors into ones that involve money and those that don't. So, you can answer the question if you don't answer the actual question asked, or you are omniscient.
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Addendum 2: I picked the example of Kylie because it's been in the news lately and it's a concrete, simple-to-understand example. Typically, this kind of debate centers on whether one can estimate the effects of race or gender on real world outcomes.
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Addendum 3: This is not meant as a critique of Kylie Jenner whom I don't know personally and have read almost nothing about!
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I hope we work together on something someday, Kareem.
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