Why Some People Become Successful — Prof. Jiang Xueqin

Prof. Jiang Xueqin asks a deceptively simple question: who succeeds, and why? The lecture walks through three famous theories of success, then dismantles them — arguing that what looks like individual virtue is often a consequence of class, parenting, and the game you're playing in society.

Three classic theories of success

1. Delayed gratification (Walter Mischel — Marshmallow Test)

A child sits alone with one marshmallow. If they wait until the experimenter returns, they get two. Mischel tracked participants for decades and found that children who waited tended to do better in school, careers, relationships, and health.

The popular takeaway: success = self-control / long-term planning / emotional regulation.

2. Growth mindset (Carol Dweck — Mindset)

People with a growth mindset treat failure as feedback: what did I do wrong? I'll try harder next time. People with a fixed mindset give up, believing ability is innate and unchangeable.

The takeaway: success = resilience.

3. Deliberate practice (K. Anders Ericsson)

Top musicians and athletes don't just practice long hours — they practice strategically: set goals, assess weaknesses, revise the plan, repeat. This ties to the Dunning–Kruger effect: the worst performers often overestimate themselves because they lack the capacity to assess their own incompetence.

The takeaway: success = self-assessment and strategic improvement.

The central critique: correlation ≠ causation

Schools teach self-control, resilience, and self-reflection — but teaching these traits to a struggling student doesn't reliably improve outcomes.

The key insight:

Just because successful people get up at 4am, work hard, and have a growth mindset does not mean doing those things will make you succeed.

It's often the reverse: once you're successful (or rich), you develop self-control, resilience, and a growth mindset — because your circumstances reward and reinforce them.

Macro studies suggest parental wealth predicts life outcomes more strongly than school performance. If your parents are rich, you're likely to succeed; if they're poor, the odds are stacked against you — regardless of how well you do in class.

Rich vs poor parenting — three differences

Dimension	Rich parents	Poor parents
Communication	High vocabulary, long explanations	Short commands ("no", "go away")
Attitude	Friendly, explanatory ("let me explain why the stove is hot")	Authoritarian ("DON'T YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN")
Promises	Stability — can afford to keep commitments	Volatility — promises often broken due to money

These differences shape how children enter school: rich kids see teachers as friends; poor kids see authority figures as threats.

Reinterpreting the "virtues"

Marshmallow Test → trust, not self-control

Waiting for the second marshmallow isn't about willpower — it's about whether you trust the authority figure to keep their promise. Poor kids who eat immediately may be rational, not impulsive: in unstable environments, waiting often means getting nothing.

Resilience → belief the world will help you

If you're rich and fail, someone picks you up. If you're poor and fail, it signals you shouldn't keep trying. Resilience requires confidence in others, not just inner strength.

Self-assessment → requires safety

A child under chronic stress can't reflect inward without reliving pain. Self-reflection is a luxury of stability.

Different games for different classes

Poor and rich people live in different worlds and play different games:

• Poor parents optimize for fitting in — obeying police, bosses, and family norms. Commanding children teaches compliance with authority.
• Rich parents optimize for negotiation — debate, argue, persuade. Respecting children teaches them to negotiate with authority rather than obey it.

Poor parenting strategies aren't "wrong" — they're locally optimal for survival in a hierarchical, unstable environment. Changing them can make your community think you're the problem.

Jiang Xueqin gives a personal example: he and his wife raise their three kids with freedom, democracy, and storytelling instead of the typical Chinese schedule of math/swim/piano — and have no friends in China because family thinks they're crazy. The incentive isn't "make my child succeed globally" — it's "make my child fit into this society."

Can poor kids succeed anyway?

Yes — but mostly as exceptions, often requiring:

• Leaving your community (high risk, individualistic) — Jiang Xueqin immigrated to Canada poor, succeeded by getting a scholarship to the US
• War or revolution (high risk of death)
• Marrying up (status mobility through partnership)
• Immigrating to a place with more mobility (often the US)
• Luck — Jiang Xueqin: "I was born poor. I lucked into Yale. It's luck."

Luck can be strategized (position yourself where luck is possible), but it remains luck. Success at the margins requires individualism, ambition, high risk tolerance — traits most people don't have, and shouldn't need to gamble on.

Why societies collapse — game theory and revolution

The rich–poor divide looks like a stable equilibrium — until it isn't. Over time, inequality produces:

1. Indebtedness — the poor borrow to survive; interest traps them
2. Slavery — debt becomes hereditary
3. Landlessness — collateral seized, no path to self-sufficiency

When enough people have no incentive to live, a splinter elite offers: "Follow me — I'll cancel your debts, give you land, end slavery." Every major revolution follows this pattern (communism, early Islam, Julius Caesar, and Jiang Xueqin draws a parallel to Donald Trump's appeal in debt-burdened America).

Social mobility as the best governance

Social mobility is the best form of governance — not democracy, not capitalism per se. When talented, ambitious people can climb, society is stable and prosperous (1950s America, post-war 1950s China).

The problem: within a generation, power positions fill up. Those who climbed rig the system so their children inherit slots — corrupting exams (Keju), closing ladders. Examples: Hong Xiuquan (failed Keju → Taiping rebellion), Mao Zedong (Keju abolished → revolution).

When the game is rigged, the only move left for the 90% is game reset — revolution.

100 people playing a game. 10 keep winning forever. The other 90 say "screw this game, let's start a new one." The 10 say "we're happy." They can't agree → revolution.

That's why schools for the rich look nothing like schools for the poor — freedom and creativity vs obedience and control. The system is designed so certain people succeed and everyone else doesn't.

Key Takeaways

• The Marshmallow Test, growth mindset, and deliberate practice describe correlates of success, not reliable causes
• Correlation ≠ causation — teaching "virtues" to poor kids doesn't fix structural inequality
• Rich vs poor parenting reflects different survival games: obedience vs negotiation
• The Marshmallow Test measures trust in authority, not willpower
• Poor kids who "fail" these tests may be rationally adapting to unstable environments
• Real mobility for the poor usually requires luck, high risk, or leaving your community
• Social mobility is the best stabilizer — but elites eventually rig the ladder for their children
• Revolutions follow a pattern: debt → slavery → landlessness → elite promises debt cancellation and land
• Schools mirror class structure by design — not by accident