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I don't think what you're saying holds correct. You're just applying survivorship bias at a smaller and therefore less obvious scale. We do not know the amount

by didibus 10y ago

I don't think what you're saying holds correct. You're just applying survivorship bias at a smaller and therefore less obvious scale. We do not know the amount of luck based causality versus non luck based. What we do know is the probability of ending up a millionaire vs not. So say it's 10% millionaire. I'm pulling this out of my ars. Now the question becomes what non luck based actions were performed by the 10% of millionaire and not by the 90% of non millionaire that caused them to become the ones to end up millionaires. That's not a trivial thing to answer. First, it's possible there exist no non luck based actions. Maybe all actions had an element of luck. Second, it's possible no single action had a majority role. So it becomes a sum of small actions. Now, even if we assume the best case scenario. That is, there exist a single action which is 100% responsible and has no luck involved. Well, how did the 10% knew to do that and the 90% didn't? That's also luck,or a just as complicated question to answer. Now say the survivors, aka, the 10% came and said the secret guaranteed to work action is X. It does not mean it is repeatable once there is already 10% millionaires. What if the 90% now all do that magic action, there is not enough money for 100% millionaire. So you can see that this action would not anymore suffice and therefore starts to have an element of luck again.

jerf 10y ago
We know I am correct that success is not entirely luck, because we can observe that no success comes to someone who just sits and waits for luck to strike them like a bolt of lightning. Even the lottery winner had to go out and buy the lottery ticket. Note I'm partially defining success as something like "a sustained and significant increase in wealth", so by my metric here even someone lucky enough to be born to the wealthiest person in the world and inherit more wealth than anyone else may still not experience "success" if they fritter away the wealth to no great effect. I don't think this is an unacceptable odd definition in this context, and those born into wealth so great that they literally have no responsibilities in life and can't manage to lose it no matter how hard they try are edge conditions anyhow. This bounds luck's contributions to less than 100%. Mathematically that's a pretty weak bound, but it's not hard to see that it must be substantially less than that in the real world for the observed results to make sense, though. How substantially is hard to even put numbers on, so I'm not going to try, because the real point I'm trying to make here is that it is dreadfully dangerous to sell the idea that success is entirely luck based. It is far more dangerous to both individuals and the society they live in than to sell the idea that success is based on skill and effort. As I am a rather old fashioned person who still believes that truth is better than falsehood, the fact that telling people that success is based on skill and work works better than telling people that success is pure unadulterated luck suggests to me that the "skill and work" explanation, while still not Aristotelian truth, is likely closer to the truth than the "pure luck" explanation. (I'm skipping over some connecting justification there because this is an HN comment and not a philosophy essay; if you agree truth is better than falsehood you can probably fill it in yourself, and if you do not, then why are you arguing anyhow since no argument will produce anything better than what you already have.)
- didibus 10y ago
  It seems you don't really argue to know that luck is or isn't the only factor. Which is really what I'm against. I'm against someone claiming he has proof of an answer, and he believes it is the full truth. So ya, I think the danger part you're also generalizing a little. There are some people who telling them that luck isn't a factor is doing them a disservice. Like people who have been unlucky. There are a lot of people who try and fail. Why is that? It is not enough to work hard and spend a lot of time chasing success, that's why. That's the essence of survivorship bias. You must also be talented, smart, strong, tall, healthy, handsome, connected, etc. These things I argue you have or don't pretty much based out of luck. Out of everyone who tries, those who succeed will have either because of pure luck, like imagine everyone trying did 100% exactly the same actions, and it still ends up that only a fraction of those succeed, that would be pure luck. Or, it is the luck of what has caused you to beat the others, to think of better actions, and execute them better, to end up being one of the successful ones. I personally think if our society acknowledged this, maybe we'd start thinking about society differently. Maybe we'd be more inclined to accept social programs. Instead of seeing everyone who is not a millionaire as lazy, and like it is entirely their fault. Maybe we'd have to come up with an organisation structure where maybe we don't have a winner takes most model. Or we'd need to recognize people's individual strengths, and make sure we find a way to make them helpful in those ways. I see your point, and I actually mostly agree. I think it just depends who the audience is. If you talk to youths, obviously you should try to motivate them and ingrain into them a sense of having to work for success, and try to give them the smarts to do so. Also have them believe the effort is not wasted, and will make a difference in their life. But if you talk to people struggling to succeed, even after putting in the effort, I think you should also recognize that they can't be blamed entirely, a big part of success is luck. In the end, our society must find the right balance between the two.

by didibus 10y ago

jerf 10y ago

We know I am correct that success is not entirely luck, because we can observe that no success comes to someone who just sits and waits for luck to strike them like a bolt of lightning. Even the lottery winner had to go out and buy the lottery ticket. Note I'm partially defining success as something like "a sustained and significant increase in wealth", so by my metric here even someone lucky enough to be born to the wealthiest person in the world and inherit more wealth than anyone else may still not experience "success" if they fritter away the wealth to no great effect. I don't think this is an unacceptable odd definition in this context, and those born into wealth so great that they literally have no responsibilities in life and can't manage to lose it no matter how hard they try are edge conditions anyhow. This bounds luck's contributions to less than 100%. Mathematically that's a pretty weak bound, but it's not hard to see that it must be substantially less than that in the real world for the observed results to make sense, though. How substantially is hard to even put numbers on, so I'm not going to try, because the real point I'm trying to make here is that it is dreadfully dangerous to sell the idea that success is entirely luck based. It is far more dangerous to both individuals and the society they live in than to sell the idea that success is based on skill and effort. As I am a rather old fashioned person who still believes that truth is better than falsehood, the fact that telling people that success is based on skill and work works better than telling people that success is pure unadulterated luck suggests to me that the "skill and work" explanation, while still not Aristotelian truth, is likely closer to the truth than the "pure luck" explanation. (I'm skipping over some connecting justification there because this is an HN comment and not a philosophy essay; if you agree truth is better than falsehood you can probably fill it in yourself, and if you do not, then why are you arguing anyhow since no argument will produce anything better than what you already have.)

didibus 10y ago
It seems you don't really argue to know that luck is or isn't the only factor. Which is really what I'm against. I'm against someone claiming he has proof of an answer, and he believes it is the full truth. So ya, I think the danger part you're also generalizing a little. There are some people who telling them that luck isn't a factor is doing them a disservice. Like people who have been unlucky. There are a lot of people who try and fail. Why is that? It is not enough to work hard and spend a lot of time chasing success, that's why. That's the essence of survivorship bias. You must also be talented, smart, strong, tall, healthy, handsome, connected, etc. These things I argue you have or don't pretty much based out of luck. Out of everyone who tries, those who succeed will have either because of pure luck, like imagine everyone trying did 100% exactly the same actions, and it still ends up that only a fraction of those succeed, that would be pure luck. Or, it is the luck of what has caused you to beat the others, to think of better actions, and execute them better, to end up being one of the successful ones. I personally think if our society acknowledged this, maybe we'd start thinking about society differently. Maybe we'd be more inclined to accept social programs. Instead of seeing everyone who is not a millionaire as lazy, and like it is entirely their fault. Maybe we'd have to come up with an organisation structure where maybe we don't have a winner takes most model. Or we'd need to recognize people's individual strengths, and make sure we find a way to make them helpful in those ways. I see your point, and I actually mostly agree. I think it just depends who the audience is. If you talk to youths, obviously you should try to motivate them and ingrain into them a sense of having to work for success, and try to give them the smarts to do so. Also have them believe the effort is not wasted, and will make a difference in their life. But if you talk to people struggling to succeed, even after putting in the effort, I think you should also recognize that they can't be blamed entirely, a big part of success is luck. In the end, our society must find the right balance between the two.