Humanity has been fascinated by the pursuit of fortune since time immemorial, and many successful outcomes benefit from strokes of luck. But success is subject to complexity, uncertainty, and change — and at times becoming increasingly unequally distributed. This leads to tension and confusion over to what extent people actually get what they deserve (i.e. fairness/meritocracy). Moreover, in many fields, humans are overconfident and pervasively confuse luck for skill (I win, it is skill; I lose, it is bad luck). In some fields, there is too much risk-taking; in others, not enough. Where success derives in large part from luck — and especially where bailouts skew the incentives (heads, I win; tails, you lose) — it follows that luck is rewarded too much. This incentivizes a culture of gambling, while downplaying the importance of productive effort. And, short-term success is often rewarded, irrespective, and potentially at the detriment, of the long-term system fitness. However, much success is truly meritocratic, and the problem is to discern and reward based on merit. We call this the fair reward problem. To address this, we propose three different measures to assess merit: (i) raw outcome; (ii) risk-adjusted outcome, and (iii) prospective. We emphasize the need, in many cases, for the deductive prospective approach, which considers the potential of a system to adapt and mutate in novel futures. This is formalized within an evolutionary system, comprised of five processes, inter alia handling the exploration–exploitation trade-off. Several human endeavors — including finance, politics, and science — are analyzed through these lenses, and concrete solutions are proposed to support a prosperous and meritocratic society.

中文翻译：

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公平奖励问题：成功的错觉以及如何解决它

自古以来，人类就对追求财富着迷，许多成功的结果都得益于运气。但成功取决于复杂性、不确定性和变化——有时会变得越来越不公平。这导致人们在多大程度上得到他们应得的东西（即公平/精英）的紧张和困惑。此外，在许多领域，人类过于自信，普遍将运气与技能混为一谈（我赢了，是技能；我输了，是运气不好）。在某些领域，风险承担过多；在其他方面，还不够。在成功很大程度上来自运气的情况下——尤其是在救助计划扭曲了激励措施的情况下（正面，我赢；反面，你输）——因此，运气得到了太多的回报。这鼓励了赌博文化，同时淡化了生产性努力的重要性。而且，短期成功通常会得到回报，而不管长期系统适应度如何，并且可能会受到损害。然而，许多成功是真正的精英，问题是根据功绩来辨别和奖励。我们称之为公平奖励问题。为了解决这个问题，我们提出了三种不同的衡量标准来评估优点：（i）原始结果；(ii) 风险调整结果，和 (iii) 前瞻性。我们强调，在许多情况下，演绎前瞻性方法的必要性，它考虑了系统在新的未来中适应和变异的潜力。这是在一个进化系统中形式化的，由五个过程组成，尤其是处理勘探-开发权衡。通过这些镜头分析了包括金融、政治和科学在内的几项人类活动，