The problem isn't that life is unfair – it's that you don't know the rules (opens in new tab)

Life is unfair and its disingenuous to say it isn't. Yes, life is competitive but not all successful participation is genuine-- winning by any means necessary is incredibly toxic, especially when it involves 'winners' perpetuating bad heuristics to sustain status quo. If Oliver Emberton came from a different socio-economic background, he would be more aware of how much of a myth meritocracy is.

Also a meta-rule: People lie. Or often times, they just omit and hope nobody asks. That's how they manage to cover up what the actual rules are.

If you think that life is unfair, it may be more productive to ask yourself "What am I missing here? What have I been told that doesn't square with how I see people act?" and then update your mental model accordingly. Once you build mental models that derive the rules from what people do and not what they say, you'll often find they can take you surprisingly far.

> A cancer researcher is rewarded less than a supermodel. Why? Because those abilities are rarer and affect more people.

Really? World has more - or even proportionally more - cancer researchers, than it has supermodels? Or, putting it another way, the superstar cancer researchers make something comparable to supermodels?

If I were to schedule a football game between the New England Patriots and a good local high school team, one could agree to play it by pro, high school, or NCAA rules, and referees could call all penalties scrupulously. It would then follow the rules. Would it be fair?

I don't even understand how you could claim "the problem isn't that life is unfair" with a straight face. That is so nuts.