How do you become a billionaire? Look at your ancestors
Preface
A number of facts established in scientific studies of recent years indicate that certain characteristics of representatives of the same clans (clans) can be preserved for abnormally long periods of time, sometimes reaching up to nine centuries.
These facts, when accepted and systematized, can cause us to rethink our view of personality structure, tracing the roots of our behavior back to the depths of time, to ancestors who lived hundreds of years ago.
Nevertheless, these observations have not yet become available to a wide audience, and have been published as isolated sensations. The example offered below is from a series of attempts to form a unified view on the influence of heredity on human behavior in society. It should be noted at once that the discussed pattern of transmission of personality characteristics through generations is extremely complex. It is by no means reduced to the transmission of characteristics from parents to children.
It should be noted that although the results we will be discussing are within the realm of mainstream science, there remain some contradictions between the work of different research groups. The contradictions do not concern the actual material, which is the subject of this example, but its interpretation. In this regard, different groups arrive at different numerical values of the so-called mobility coefficient. Omitting details, which we will focus on later, this coefficient tells us how similar the structure of each successive generation is to that of the previous one. If the coefficient is small, the next generation is practically a repetition of the previous one: rich people are the children of rich parents, educated people are the children of educated parents, etc.
And vice versa – if the mobility coefficient is high, which is considered an indicator of a prosperous society, then the chance to get an education or to become rich depends not on the education or wealth of parents, but on the talents of an individual. We will see, however, that this coefficient, which is a standard tool for considering intergenerational correlations, does not really provide an adequate description of the patterns of transmission of human qualities through many generations of the same family.
Our goal in the presented case study is to outline the indications found to date that there are common traits among people descended from a single ancestor over hundreds of years. The review is conducted from a phenomenological perspective, that is, by examining documentary historical evidence about members of the same clan. The review offered below is, of course, limited to the information available to the authors.
Research
It is fair to say that our current knowledge of heredity in human society is limited. We have little idea how much similarity can be expected among the descendants of a common ancestor who lived 100 or 150 years ago (virtually all modern research is limited to three generations of a single family). That said, for example, looking at a fairly typical tree of one Jewish clan, we see about sixty adult great-grandchildren of an individual born in 1862. Statistical methods can already be applied, albeit very roughly, to such a number of people.
If the great-great-grandfather was a businessman, we can assume that there will be more business-minded people than usual among these 60 people. However, whether this is the case and how much more is unknown. Having said that, it is obvious that most people would not attach much importance to the fact of having a common ancestor 150 years ago. However, that doesn’t mean that this significance doesn’t exist.
It is a fairly common belief that mixing the genes of parents in a child after a small number of generations leaves only a small number of ancestral genes in the individual. This would be true if the choice of a partner were random. The situation would be similar to mixing liquids of different colors. Say we start with the color blue, symbolizing the ancestor’s properties, and mix it with a random other color symbolizing the partner’s properties. As a result of this mixing, we can still distinguish the presence of the blue color. However, at one more mixing, corresponding to the transition to the second generation of descendants, it already becomes difficult.
After several such mixing-generations, the color of the mixture looks random, which corresponds to the absence of traits passed on from a distant ancestor.
However, there is a strong and incorrect assumption in the above argument that a partner is chosen at random. In reality, a partner is likely to match us in a very complex way, both genotypically (due to unconscious reactions) and phenotypically (e.g., similar social status, considering this characteristic is included in the definition of phenotype). This non-random, multifaceted matching of partners can lead to the retention of various characteristics that can return even after several generations (as Dr. Leopold Sondhi once emphasized in his work).
The structure that historically describes the kinship relationships of members of a single family is the family tree. Regularities in the transmission of characteristics of clan members are statistical and often become apparent only for trees with many generations and hundreds of individuals. Centuries-old histories of clans allow both to see the possible transmission of characteristics through several generations and to perform statistical analysis of clan members.
A pioneer in systematically comparing the individual characteristics of hundreds of individuals belonging to the same clan is the Israeli institute Am HaZikaron (People of Memory). Having studied 63 Jewish clans and information about approximately 6000 people, the institute found that the characteristics of representatives of different clans differ and persist over the centuries. In other words, the clans coexist, connecting with each other and, at the same time, preserving their identity. We will give a detailed account of one example from this research, which makes us think in particular about “free will” in its conventional sense. Our account will follow the historical sequence of the development of the research.
For one, rather famous Jewish family, it was found that in the 350 years of its history it has three times met individuals who are commonly referred to in English as “self-made billionaires”. These people, born in a family of average wealth, were able to create huge financial empires. The common ancestor of these families once created a financial empire in extremely unfavorable conditions and became one of the richest people in the country where he lived. These three men, who had dizzying and somewhat similar careers, were very distant relatives separated by many generations of family existence. Let us emphasize that we are talking about billionaires, i.e. exceptional phenomena.
The above story could be considered a coincidence. However, having considered members of the same family who spelled their surname somewhat differently, a completely similar picture was found. In one branch, the children of a simple haberdasher became financial magnates. In two others, born into already non-poor families, the sons managed to create a huge fortune, far beyond the one they started with. So, over the course of 4 centuries, the descendants of one individual demonstrated no less than 6 times the ability to create the largest financial organizations. These individuals began their careers either in poverty, with limited wealth, or in a well-run but not exceptional business.
Although the assumption of a certain unique ability of the members of a genus is reasonable, it is difficult to prove it rigorously by statistical methods. Am HaZikaron” researchers, based on their experience with other numerous clans, expressed this assumption as a hypothesis. And this hypothesis, despite its unusual nature and the fact that it speaks of extremely rare events, has been successfully confirmed by the information received since its publication. The son of poor bakery owners, a representative of the same family, who once went door-to-door selling encyclopedias, created a fortune of about 4 billion dollars. However, that’s not all. In another country, around the same time, a member of the same family, born into an ordinary middle-class family, created a financial empire and also became a billionaire.
Today, the Forbes list of billionaires contains five descendants of one man who lived about 400 years ago. These men are representatives of four branches of the same family who are unaware of their kinship. They acted apart, yet their accomplishments are both quite exceptional and similar to each other. Additionally, while working on the list, we discovered that another billionaire also belongs to this lineage (but on his mother’s side). We think the reader has guessed that, and here, a more than billion-dollar fortune was created by starting virtually from scratch. (Obviously it would be interesting to consider the transmission of ability through the non-male line as well. However, that is beyond the scope of our task in this paper, which is limited to looking at correlations of surnames in lists of billionaires.)
Moreover, there is another family of the same kind with a combined fortune of more than a billion dollars. (It is not included in this Forbes list, which speaks only of individuals with billion-dollar fortunes.)) Interestingly, this family’s capital was also inherited from a member of the family who was first a poor immigrant.
So, in total, over the course of its existence, the clan has given the world at least nine representatives who have achieved exceptional financial success that the vast majority of people fail to achieve.
Since the publication of the study saying that clan members have the unique ability required to build financial empires from almost scratch, two more clan members have been found to have demonstrated this ability. Both were born into poverty. That makes a total of eleven!
Obviously, we can assume that a kind of “charge”, which was present in the founder of this clan, continues not only to exist in his descendants, but also to be successfully realized. And if it is so, then these descendants, about whom it is written that they succeeded against all odds, – in fact, just realized a completely unique ability inherent in them genetically. The decisions made by these people at different stages of their lives, which seem to be the embodiment of how consistently making the right choice, one can “go from dirt to princes” – were predetermined in some way.
The assumption made above looks more than reasonable. So, the number of individual billionaires, as well as rich families, whose total wealth exceeds a billion, is about 2500 in the world today. Among them are five unrelated branches of the same clan. This seems almost unbelievable. You can calculate the probability of such a coincidence and see how small it is.
Let’s describe our calculation briefly. We conducted a study and compiled a list of 500 unrelated Jewish billionaires or Jewish billionaire families. This is a nearly exhaustive list of all members of this population (presumably the full number is somewhere between 500 and 550). We have limited our consideration to Jews due to the fact that we can estimate their total number and count the corresponding probabilities. As we said, the clan in question appears 5 times in this list. We have assumed that this is a coincidence. That is, that the probability of a given individual becoming a billionaire is independent of his surname and that the fact that the surname appears multiple times in the list is coincidental. We saw that, according to the most conservative estimates, the probability of such a coincidence is less than one millionth. Moreover, we noticed that in the list we compiled, representatives of unrelated families of already other clans, also sometimes occur multiple times. Although there were no more clans meeting 5 times, several clans were on the list 3 times. We computed the probability of such matches for each of these clans. In each case, the calculation requires knowledge of the total number of unlinked branches of the clan. We used our more than 20 years of experience in genealogical research to make our estimates.
We found that the overall probability that all surname matches in the list of billionaires occurred by chance is negligible, known to be less than one billionth. In other words, the probability of an individual becoming a billionaire depends on the last name. Surname in this case, an indication of a certain heredity, although, in some cases, we may be talking about mere namesakes and coincidence.
So, we can consider it proved that the talents present in ancestors, who are distant from us not less, and often much more than 150 years, retain their actual value for us. Moreover, these regularities have, as we have seen, predictive power. For example, a person from a clan, 5 representatives of which independently became billionaires, can be recommended to try to build a financial empire, even if there are no visible prerequisites for this at the moment. Clan affiliation speaks not only about the probability of success, as such, but also about the strategy of success. It makes it possible, figuratively speaking, to “consult the ancestors” about what to do and how to do it. Counseling consists in researching the clan and discovering its characteristic abilities.