Counterintuitive Facts (31): Why Is Effort Meaningless?

I. If you traveled back to 1980, with your current English and computer skills, you'd be a top talent. But today, you're just an ordinary worker. You work ten times harder than your parents' generation, learned Python, got PMP certified, work overtime until 9pm every day. But your relative social position isn't even as good as your father who clocked out on time.

II. In "Through the Looking Glass," the Red Queen tells Alice: "In this country, you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in place." This is the biological Red Queen Effect.

III. In other words: Rat Race. Because your competitors are also running. Antelopes got faster, so slower lions starved, so lions evolved to be faster. Lions got faster, so slower antelopes got eaten, so antelopes evolved to be faster.