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just-world hypothesis

concept · in 49 videos (2009–2026)

The belief that people get what they deserve in life, which John calls the just world fallacy. The brothers reject it, stressing luck and structural injustice, and Hank says fairness is a human idea the universe doesn't care about. John adds that illness is not a moral narrative, and seeing it as one is a barrier to empathy.

Videos by year: 2009: 1 · 2010: 1 · 2011: 1 · 2012: 2 · 2013: 2 · 2014: 7 · 2015: 3 · 2016: 3 · 2017: 2 · 2018: 3 · 2019: 4 · 2020: 1 · 2021: 3 · 2022: 3 · 2023: 5 · 2024: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2026: 3

Also known as: just-world fallacy, it has to be something's fault, your illness is your fault, we want it to be something's fault, people get what they deserve, bad things happen to bad people

Questions

Often together

What comes up in the same parts of the videos; the number is how many parts.

empathy (2)

What the videos say

The most important statements of each year; all statements.

2009

  • 2009-06-20 · Neck Beards and Fitness Challenges — Hank says the world isn't fair, and if it were their lives would be worse: most viewers likely live far better than the average person, with clean water, a roof and hot showers. (hedged) — 00:00:58

2010

  • 2010-01-13 · Froghoppin' with Gatsby — John: Eyes only see, John notes, and in the novel's context that matters: life isn't fair, bad people often escape what's coming to them, and wealth and social standing improve those chances. — 00:01:59
    • John says Pat Robertson, explaining why an active God allowed the earthquake in the worst possible place, claimed Haitians made a deal with the devil and were getting payback; John calls that stupid. — 00:02:47

2011

  • 2011-06-29 · THE FAULT IN OUR STARS — John: The title comes from Julius Caesar's 'the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars'; John says that's easy for Shakespeare or a Roman nobleman to say, and he doesn't fully agree. (hedged) — 00:00:00

2012

  • 2012-09-28 · THE EYE OF LONDON: Thoughts from Northern Montana — Hank: every time we drive we are, in some alternate universe, killing animals; he did nothing different from the driver who hit the deer, yet only that driver must feel bad. That's not fair. — 00:00:58
    • Hank: punishing murderers more than attempted murderers rewards them for being bad at what they wanted to do; success is just a roll of the dice. (playful) — 00:01:27
  • 2012-12-04 · Time for AWESOME — John says at Kenyon he kept thinking how privileged he is: his race, gender, sex and orientation are privileged by the social order, and he was outrageously privileged to attend a college with small classes and attentive professors. — 00:00:29
    • John says this is why he feels strongly about extending access to opportunities: many people could bring awesome things into the world but lack the opportunity. — 00:00:58

2013

  • 2013-08-13 · Shailene's Hair, Unfair Monopoly, and the Just World Fallacy — John says this is the just world fallacy: most people believe, and cannot help believing, that people get what they deserve in life. — 00:00:41
    • John: the fallacy makes rich or successful people less empathetic and generous, since they think they deserve success and the less successful deserve their lack of it. — 00:00:49
    • John hopes viewers can recognise and avoid the 'unfair Monopoly trap' and remember the world isn't just, because only then can they change it. (hedged) — 00:03:31
  • 2013-09-24 · Started from the Bottom: Benjamin Franklin and Drake Compared — John tells Hank that the success narratives we hear are almost always privileged narratives that almost never acknowledge that privilege. — 00:02:26

2014

  • 2014-03-18 · Is the American Dream Real? — John says American national self-understanding of the American Dream rests on anecdotes like the mover's and Andrew Carnegie's, but the actual data are less dreamy. — 00:00:44
    • John says Americans are far likelier than others to believe intelligence and skill are rewarded and less likely to think family wealth is key, but this dream isn't real. — 00:02:15
  • 2014-04-29 · Influence, Airports, and the Nerdfighter Book Club — John says we are hardwired to like stories that make sense because memory is narrative, so the mind erases luck; outcomes come from causes plus lots of luck, including an editor at Time liking your book. — 00:02:15
  • 2014-05-16 · The Myth of Greatness — Hank thinks of Missoula as a little Florence full of unnoticed da Vincis; what separates the great people he remembers from those everyone remembers is, he thinks, 100% circumstance. (hedged) — 00:01:42
  • 2014-05-20 · Deserving — John: People congratulate John after seeing the TFiOS film, but he says all he did was get lucky: in the book's publication, its cover, the buyers of the film rights, and the cast, crew and director. — 00:00:27
    • John says he happened to be born into a rich country, male and white in a culture that privileges maleness and whiteness, and writes in English, a massive advantage: YA writers in Latvian rarely find broad audiences. — 00:01:00
    • The TFiOS film is not happening because John is a good person, he says; that is not the way the world works. — 00:01:13
  • 2014-06-10 (said on 2014-06-07, implied) · Our Old Friend Complexity: Behind the Beautiful Forevers — John says that in the first 100 pages the greatest mover of the narrative is luck or fate, such as losing a hand as a child at a recycling plant or being falsely accused, rather than corruption or ambition. (hedged) — 00:03:05
  • 2014-09-26 · Gettin' Real with Hank — Hank says their weird and wonderful position was granted by pure dumb luck and by the viewers, who forget they are the reason things exist. — 00:01:08
    • Hank thinks feeling undeserving is rational, since nothing special about him means people should watch him, but he doesn't want to feel he's faking it. (hedged) — 00:02:07
  • 2014-12-02 · What You Eat Of Those You Love — John says his daughter got Pedialyte, and that is the only difference between a funny family Thanksgiving story and the greatest personal disaster he can imagine. — 00:01:50
    • John says the world is profoundly unjust and probably always will be, but that does not absolve us of responsibility to face painful problems and try to decrease world suck. (hedged) — 00:02:35
  • …and 6 statements more in 2014 — all statements of 2014

2015

  • 2015-02-24 · Who I Was in High School — John says he was incredibly lucky: he got not one second chance but hundreds, and excellent teachers kept believing in him though he gave them no reason to. — 00:02:10
  • 2015-11-19 · Is Success a Bad Idea? (Pizzamas Day 9 of 10) — Hank says the only way to become such a success is to stumble into a great big pile of luck. (playful) — 00:01:15
  • 2015-11-20 · On Mental Illness (and the end of Pizzamas) — John's theory: humans dislike imagining lives as random and need narratives, so when no cause is found we invent one (depression from weakness, diabetes from diet, heart failure from not exercising), which is inaccurate or oversimplified. (hedged) — 00:01:42

2016

  • 2016-04-05 · What's Wrong with Monopoly? — John says the game was really created by a community, and the free market failed to reward it, wrongly assigning most of the value to one contributor who added very little. — 00:03:16
  • 2016-07-08 · Your Illness is Not Your Fault — Hank says we want illness to be something's fault because otherwise it is random chance — which chronic illness is: it happens to good and bad people, champion athletes and heavy drinkers. — 00:01:54
  • 2016-11-22 · On Not Seeing Hamilton — John says layers of luck and privilege surround the misfortune: affording Broadway and travel, a loving spouse, and medical care that makes a blockage an inconvenience, not a catastrophe. — 00:01:05

2017

  • 2017-03-10 · Do I Have ADHD? — Hank thinks it took hard work but also a lot of help, which he got in spades through economic advantages, early diagnosis and great tutors: he has been very lucky. (hedged) — 00:03:24
  • 2017-10-27 · The Secret to my Productivity — Hank says he is extremely lucky: a key to productivity is financial, mental and social stability, and he simply lucked into all of it. — 00:00:18

2018

  • 2018-05-01 · How to Win — John says there is so much luck in this world that no one should forget it, and we all depend on strangers' good judgment and help from friends, colleagues and teammates. — 00:02:58
  • 2018-05-11 · Looking for Alaska Movie (BUT BETTER) and YouTuber Things — Hank knows next to nothing about getting popular on YouTube except that it's hard and rare, and happens not from a great idea, hard work, luck or resources alone but when all coincide. — 00:01:29
  • 2018-11-01 · Should I Feel Guilty? — Hank says he deserves neither his guilt nor his advantages, nor his ulcerative colitis or healthy child: deserving is the wrong frame; the question is what to do with what you have. — 00:03:12

2019

  • 2019-05-14 · An Open Letter to Professional YouTubers — John: Fourth lesson: success did not come from working harder or being more talented than anyone; you were also fortunate (high-speed internet, editing software, luck), and luck and hard work don't nullify each other. — 00:01:56
  • 2019-08-13 · How I (barely) Passed 11th Grade English — John: Writing the paper, John came to understand that 'mailing it in' was itself a privilege: skipping class wasn't cool or clever but wasted opportunities many people are never given. — 00:02:26
  • 2019-08-16 · ...Not My Proudest Moment — Hank is grateful parents, mentors and teachers showed him he wasn't a clever kid good at getting away with stuff, but a person who had a lot, so people were wary of taking it. — 00:03:15
  • 2019-09-17 · 'end the stigma' — John: Nobody deserves illness: deserving is the wrong frame, and illness is not a punishment from on high but a side effect of having a body. — 00:02:26

2020

  • 2020-11-13 · How We Teach: Individualist Stories — The description says having no barriers doesn't guarantee success, but being born with enough money to avoid the student loans almost all his peers had is structural inequality, not luck. — video description
    • Hank says individualist stories do serve people: we are to some extent responsible for our own fate, and outcomes partly depend on how hard, how much and how smart people work. — 00:02:25

2021

  • 2021-02-12 · Doing Better — Hank: First excuse: the thought that these people did something wrong; Hank doubts viewers believe it, saying such thoughts arise as brains try to explain an unexplainable world. — 00:01:01
  • 2021-09-21 · how we spend our days — John says the constraints of our lived reality are generally not our fault, even if social and economic structures sometimes say they are, so our choice of how to spend our days is often limited. — 00:00:58
  • 2021-11-02 · enough — John says wealth and privilege insulate people from many kinds of precarity in profoundly unjust ways, which is important to acknowledge. — 00:01:15

2022

  • 2022-05-17 · Reasons Not to Care — John says health disparities are driven not by personal choices or values but by inequity and injustice. — 00:02:26
  • 2022-06-03 · What Everyone's Getting Wrong About Student Loans — Hank says ignoring this group misreads the student debt crisis: 40% of people whose debt is forgiven have no degree, students who did not fail but were failed. — 00:02:55
  • 2022-06-21 · On Disease — John argues we describe illness as failures of the body rather than inevitable side effects of having one, and so imagine disease as a failure of one's self, biology, circumstances or moral choices. — 00:02:55
    • John concludes that imagining disease as about human choice is justified, not because individuals are responsible for their illnesses but because our collective choices are. — 00:03:24

2023

  • 2023-02-28 · Empathy and its Limits — John says we blame illness on people's heads, smoking or diet, but illness is not a moral narrative, and seeing it that way is another barrier to empathy. — 00:02:47
  • 2023-05-19 · So, I've got cancer — Hank is not a 'let's fight this together' guy: he thinks prognosis comes down to good science, health care, outlook, attitude and chance, much more to chance than we like to think. — 00:10:45
  • 2023-08-08 · TAKE IT UP A NOTCH — John says the great risk of imagining he decides his notch situation is extrapolating that others decide theirs, which can lead to stigma and dehumanization. — 00:01:27
  • 2023-10-06 · I Quit — Hank says he has received a wildly outsized amount of support and opportunity over the years and is really lucky, odd as that is to say months after getting cancer. — 00:06:21
  • 2023-11-10 · My Final Chemo Secret — Hank says during treatment he was obsessed with being extremely lucky to live at a time and place where treatment for his disease was available, so he would probably be okay. — 00:02:05

2024

2025

  • 2025-04-15 · Chatting with ... a U.S. Senator? — John explains the title writes against Shakespeare's line that the fault is not in our stars: there is much fault in our stars, bad luck and structural injustice. — 00:19:38
  • 2025-10-07 · Luck vs. Work vs. Skill vs. Privilege — John argues deserving is the wrong framework for life: he doesn't deserve his merch sales or his OCD; Hank didn't deserve cancer or the number one app. — 00:05:16
  • 2025-11-04 · The Real Question — John says if the 20-year-old dies of TB or his siblings catch it, that will not be his fault but our shared fault. — 00:04:23

2026

  • 2026-02-24 · Risk Is a Privilege — John says risk-taking is a privilege, luck only sometimes its byproduct, and the brothers have been exceptionally lucky. — 00:01:27
  • 2026-03-03 · The Best Fan Mail I Ever Received — John is thankful they started making YouTube videos in 2007, or they never would have made it: now you have to be so good, then you just had to be there. — 00:04:56
  • 2026-10-09 · The Productivity Lie — Hank says his opportunity was part given and part worked for, and he feels it was more given than worked for. — 00:11:38