7 ms·

Luck just means you don't know the cause behind an effect. Attributing success to "luck" is therefore simply putting the conditions for success outside your lo

Luck just means you don't know the cause behind an effect. Attributing success to "luck" is therefore simply putting the conditions for success outside your locus of control. Attributing it to "grit" or some other personal quality puts the conditions for success within your locus of control. For many people (myself included), the latter philosophy is more helpful as it makes success seem more deliberately achievable. Combined with a strong sense of agency, this philosophy can imbue its proponents with more confidence than those waiting for "luck" to happen (or who have given up on it happening).

ThomPete 10y ago
That doesn't really change that of all those with grit those who are the luckiest win over those with grit who aren't. You are trying to apply a method to being successful. Have grit and you will be succesful. But having grit is only going to take you so far. Many people have grit. Luck will take you the rest. The problem with you way of looking at things is that you are basically saying that those that don't have success don't have grit and therefore imply that it's their fault they don't. Which then create weird myths like the poor people are just lazy and don't have enough grit etc. This is a lie with enough evidence to contradict. The fact that much of success is due to circumstances has been proven again and again. That does not mean that those that were successful din't also have grit. They did, they were also just the lucky ones with grit.
- notduncansmith 10y ago
  > you are basically saying that those that don't have success don't have grit I don't remember saying that - please point out where I did. Thinking about your success in terms of factors you can control can improve your chances of success if you draw confidence from that philosophy, and lots of people do. The appearance of confidence (and the correlation between confidence and appearing confident) has been shown to improve chances of success in various situations.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    You are saying that by trying to force it into being a thing you can control. And again many people have confidence that doesn't mean they all have success. Keep in mind this article was trying to find the most encompassing reason for success. There is none as encompassing as luck. All the others are a subset.
    - notduncansmith 10y ago
      I said originally that luck is just the set of things you don't know about. By definition, it thusly can't be an "encompassing reason" (implied singular) - it's a name that refers to a collection of reasons (a subset of all possible reasons). The discussions of confidence mindset and one's control over "success" are orthogonal, but I'm happy to discuss them.
      - ThomPete 10y ago
        Of course it can be an encompassing reason if that is the one that is to find in every case. Grit isn't, some are successful without grit, confidence isn't either some are successful while not confident. But luck, luck you find in every single case. The reason of success is luck luck in chance encounters which then leads to unpredictable outcomes amongst others success.
        mindcrime 10y ago
        Sounds like a post-hoc fallacy to me. Or maybe a "just so story". You can always unwind somebody's story and find some point in the story where something happened that they could not necessarily have predicted, and cry "see, this person only succeeded because of luck". But we can't evaluate all the branches in the tree of outcomes that didn't happen exactly because they didn't happen. If you believe that people, to some extent "make their own luck" via their choices and actions, then you could just as easily speculate that if "lucky event A" didn't happen, then something else "lucky" would have happened anyway.
zepto 10y ago
Luck does indeed mean you don't know the cause and effect and that those conditions are outside of your control. That's because they are. It may be helpful for you to maintain a belief that all of the conditions for success are within your control. That doesn't stop it from being a false belief. It also won't be so helpful if you turn out not to be successful.
- notduncansmith 10y ago
  > all the conditions for success are within your control I don't feel this is a necessary conclusion. In addition to accepting that some factors are outside your control, one must also realize that not all factors are weighted equally.
  - zepto 10y ago
    Why did you say it then? You talked about choosing how to attribute success based on how 'useful' the belief is rather than how accurate. If you are now trying to claim that luck is a factor but isn't weighted highly, this changes nothing about your desire to choose a belief that is false based on how motivating it is.
    - notduncansmith 10y ago
      So there are a few orthogonal discussions here (largely due to lack of focus in my original comment, I'm afraid - haven't had my Sunday morning coffee yet). Firstly, luck is a label for a subset of all factors on the outcome of a particular endeavor: specifically the subset that we aren't consciously aware of. I wanted to refute it as a singular reason for success (being, by definition, multiple reasons). Secondly, I think an attitude that mostly dismisses the importance of luck (by emphasizing the importance of factors you can control) can help inspire confidence, an often-necessary and entirely-insufficient factor in successful human endeavors. Thirdly, I make no claims as to knowing the single most heavily-weighted factor for success, or even the absolute weight of any given factors. I have lightly-held opinions about relative weights of various factors, based on my own experience and things I've read on the Internet.
oceanplexian 10y ago
The problem with that viewpoint is that if you view people as fully free agents you start to attack an entire political/socioeconomic ideology that, sadly, runs our educational institutions and is closer to a religion than anything scientific. If you allow for the idea that any individual with a basic education and spirit can change the world, you unravel the idea that governments/corporations/institutions are more important than personal freedom, because we'd all be a bunch of broke, irresponsible losers without their "help".
eru 10y ago
ThomPete's comment was about learning from other people. If you look at eg lottery winners, you could try to put getting the winning ticket into their `locus of control'. But it wouldn't tell you how to replicate that success.

ThomPete 10y ago

That doesn't really change that of all those with grit those who are the luckiest win over those with grit who aren't. You are trying to apply a method to being successful. Have grit and you will be succesful. But having grit is only going to take you so far. Many people have grit. Luck will take you the rest. The problem with you way of looking at things is that you are basically saying that those that don't have success don't have grit and therefore imply that it's their fault they don't. Which then create weird myths like the poor people are just lazy and don't have enough grit etc. This is a lie with enough evidence to contradict. The fact that much of success is due to circumstances has been proven again and again. That does not mean that those that were successful din't also have grit. They did, they were also just the lucky ones with grit.

notduncansmith 10y ago
> you are basically saying that those that don't have success don't have grit I don't remember saying that - please point out where I did. Thinking about your success in terms of factors you can control can improve your chances of success if you draw confidence from that philosophy, and lots of people do. The appearance of confidence (and the correlation between confidence and appearing confident) has been shown to improve chances of success in various situations.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  You are saying that by trying to force it into being a thing you can control. And again many people have confidence that doesn't mean they all have success. Keep in mind this article was trying to find the most encompassing reason for success. There is none as encompassing as luck. All the others are a subset.
  - notduncansmith 10y ago
    I said originally that luck is just the set of things you don't know about. By definition, it thusly can't be an "encompassing reason" (implied singular) - it's a name that refers to a collection of reasons (a subset of all possible reasons). The discussions of confidence mindset and one's control over "success" are orthogonal, but I'm happy to discuss them.
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      Of course it can be an encompassing reason if that is the one that is to find in every case. Grit isn't, some are successful without grit, confidence isn't either some are successful while not confident. But luck, luck you find in every single case. The reason of success is luck luck in chance encounters which then leads to unpredictable outcomes amongst others success.
      - mindcrime 10y ago
        Sounds like a post-hoc fallacy to me. Or maybe a "just so story". You can always unwind somebody's story and find some point in the story where something happened that they could not necessarily have predicted, and cry "see, this person only succeeded because of luck". But we can't evaluate all the branches in the tree of outcomes that didn't happen exactly because they didn't happen. If you believe that people, to some extent "make their own luck" via their choices and actions, then you could just as easily speculate that if "lucky event A" didn't happen, then something else "lucky" would have happened anyway.

zepto 10y ago

Luck does indeed mean you don't know the cause and effect and that those conditions are outside of your control. That's because they are. It may be helpful for you to maintain a belief that all of the conditions for success are within your control. That doesn't stop it from being a false belief. It also won't be so helpful if you turn out not to be successful.

notduncansmith 10y ago
> all the conditions for success are within your control I don't feel this is a necessary conclusion. In addition to accepting that some factors are outside your control, one must also realize that not all factors are weighted equally.
- zepto 10y ago
  Why did you say it then? You talked about choosing how to attribute success based on how 'useful' the belief is rather than how accurate. If you are now trying to claim that luck is a factor but isn't weighted highly, this changes nothing about your desire to choose a belief that is false based on how motivating it is.
  - notduncansmith 10y ago
    So there are a few orthogonal discussions here (largely due to lack of focus in my original comment, I'm afraid - haven't had my Sunday morning coffee yet). Firstly, luck is a label for a subset of all factors on the outcome of a particular endeavor: specifically the subset that we aren't consciously aware of. I wanted to refute it as a singular reason for success (being, by definition, multiple reasons). Secondly, I think an attitude that mostly dismisses the importance of luck (by emphasizing the importance of factors you can control) can help inspire confidence, an often-necessary and entirely-insufficient factor in successful human endeavors. Thirdly, I make no claims as to knowing the single most heavily-weighted factor for success, or even the absolute weight of any given factors. I have lightly-held opinions about relative weights of various factors, based on my own experience and things I've read on the Internet.

oceanplexian 10y ago

The problem with that viewpoint is that if you view people as fully free agents you start to attack an entire political/socioeconomic ideology that, sadly, runs our educational institutions and is closer to a religion than anything scientific. If you allow for the idea that any individual with a basic education and spirit can change the world, you unravel the idea that governments/corporations/institutions are more important than personal freedom, because we'd all be a bunch of broke, irresponsible losers without their "help".

eru 10y ago

ThomPete's comment was about learning from other people. If you look at eg lottery winners, you could try to put getting the winning ticket into their `locus of control'. But it wouldn't tell you how to replicate that success.