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Examples of luck: - Being born into a good family. - Winning the lottery. Luck: Something you cannot affect yourself. If luck is your only game, prepare to b

by kebman 8y ago

Examples of luck: - Being born into a good family. - Winning the lottery. Luck: Something you cannot affect yourself. If luck is your only game, prepare to be disappointed. Also: 70 percent of lottery winners, end up broke just a few years later. Question: Is having good luck actually bad luck? Or does it trigger bad behaviours that rich people don't have? ... I think this well and truly debunks any notion that luck's got anything to do with it. In fact I think the opposite. I think luck's got nothing to to with it, and that the only way you will keep your wealth, is to learn how to 1. increase it fast, and 2. how to hold on to it. As a matter of fact, most people live from hand to mouth. They aren't even able to hold on to the little wealth they create. And thus so many of them think they're slaves, when they are in fact free to do as they like. Thing is, most people are terribly afraid of the freedom, and – as the example with the lottery winners prove – most can't handle large sums of money anyway. If you want an example of a guy who really learned about money before he got rich, look up Elon Musk. One of the reasons he dared to risk everything, was because he learned to live on much less than normal people would ever accept. He knows his bare minimum. Do you? With that security securely at the bottom, he could risk the venture that starting a new company from scratch is. In any case, luck's got nothing to do with it.

jf- 8y ago
That’s a rather simplistic notion of luck. The success or failure of any new business is largely up to luck, simply due to the number of unknowns: market demand, marketing strategy, economic conditions, access to resources, access to talent. It is also not a fact that if you build a perfect, shining example of the thing you had in mind that it’s automatically successful. And people aren’t ‘terribly afraid of freedom’, what does that even mean?
- hueving 8y ago
  Other than a change in 'economic conditions', the rest of those issues can be avoided with adequate business research. Just because most technologists don't doesn't mean it's actually such an unknown.
  - jf- 8y ago
    Prove it.
    - hueving 8y ago
      There exists entire industries of market analysts to give you things like TAM and other critical information to avoid creating a solution to problems nobody has.
      - jf- 8y ago
        By this logic any large company can guarantee the success of any product it launches by throwing money at analysts. It should be obvious this is not the case.
  - JackFr 8y ago
    > the rest of those issues can be avoided with adequate business research. That's simply wrong.
    - hueving 8y ago
      If you had an idea to improve on the telegraph that makes it 15% faster for operators, would you start a telegraph business right now? Why or why not?
      - JackFr 8y ago
        I don't think i said research was valueless. Certainly risks can be mitigated with research, but I reject that they can be avoided entirely. If "with adequate business research, those can be avoided" is true, it can only be true as a syllogism where 'adequate' is defined to mean the research necessary not to fail, and any company which fails hasn't done 'adequate' research.
taeric 8y ago
Did you just make up that lottery stat? Hard to take musk as a good example. Plenty of people lived on less making the biggest bets they could, and have nothing to show for it. Just consider if he had been born in another country or timeframe. This is not to claim rich people don't deserve their riches. In large, that is a statement many of us fine meaningless. Rather, spare us the nonsensical justifications that require near deification of people that have acquired lots of money. Respect does not have to equal devotion.
JackFr 8y ago
I think you miss the point of the parent. There is tremendous survivorship bias in this analysis. While these traits were found in a substantial portion of people who "Get Stuff Done", how about the people who exhibit these traits, but don't "Get Stuff Done"? We have no idea how large that population is. Assuming the author's research is perfect, and every successful person who "Gets Stuff Done" exhibits these trait. The author, at best, has shown these traits are necessary, but not sufficient. Since many people potentially have these traits and don't "Get Stuff Done", there must be further special sauce which differentiates them.
projektir 8y ago
> Thing is, most people are terribly afraid of the freedom, and – as the example with the lottery winners prove – most can't handle large sums of money anyway. This hardly proves much since the group of people who buy lottery tickets is self-selecting. A person who understands probability will not be buying a lottery ticket. Most people buying them are not in the best situation. There's a lot more going on in the world than people who work hard vs people who buy lottery tickets.
dahart 8y ago
> Also: 70 percent of lottery winners, end up broke just a few years later. This often quoted line is a complete media distortion of what really happens. It is wrong. I highly recommend being skeptical of the misinformation spread by news and looking into the primary sources yourself. Here’s the Florida study that this line is referring to: https://eml.berkeley.edu/~cle/laborlunch/hoekstra.pdf https://eml.berkeley.edu/~cle/laborlunch/hoekstra.pdf Here’s the actual results of the study: Results show that although recipients of $50,000 to $150,000 are 50 percent less likely to file for bankruptcy in the two years after winning relative to small winners, they are equally more likely to file three to five years afterward. First, this study wasn’t people winning millions and blowing it, it’s people winning modest amounts under 200K. Second, they’re not going bankrupt at higher rates than other people, they’re filing less often in the short term, and at the same rates in the long term. In other words, the lottery winnings of $10K - $200K didn’t help their longer term life prospects. Is that some sort of surprise? Anyone would spend $200K in 5 years. The winnings did not create higher rates of bankruptcy, and I don’t know right now where the 70% number came from. The number of people who filed for bankruptcy was 5.5%.
- dahart 8y ago
  BTW, you don’t have to take my word for it: “DENVER — Over the past couple of years several news organizations have attributed a statistic to the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) stating that 70 percent of lottery winners end up bankrupt in just a few years after receiving a large financial windfall. This statistic is not backed by research from NEFE, nor can it be confirmed by the organization. Frequent reporting—without validation from NEFE—has allowed this “stat” to survive online in perpetuity.“ https://www.nefe.org/Press-Room/News/Research-Statistic-on-Financial-Windfalls-and-Bankruptcy https://www.nefe.org/Press-Room/News/Research-Statistic-on-F...

by kebman 8y ago

jf- 8y ago

That’s a rather simplistic notion of luck. The success or failure of any new business is largely up to luck, simply due to the number of unknowns: market demand, marketing strategy, economic conditions, access to resources, access to talent. It is also not a fact that if you build a perfect, shining example of the thing you had in mind that it’s automatically successful. And people aren’t ‘terribly afraid of freedom’, what does that even mean?

hueving 8y ago
Other than a change in 'economic conditions', the rest of those issues can be avoided with adequate business research. Just because most technologists don't doesn't mean it's actually such an unknown.
- jf- 8y ago
  Prove it.
  - hueving 8y ago
    There exists entire industries of market analysts to give you things like TAM and other critical information to avoid creating a solution to problems nobody has.
    - jf- 8y ago
      By this logic any large company can guarantee the success of any product it launches by throwing money at analysts. It should be obvious this is not the case.
- JackFr 8y ago
  > the rest of those issues can be avoided with adequate business research. That's simply wrong.
  - hueving 8y ago
    If you had an idea to improve on the telegraph that makes it 15% faster for operators, would you start a telegraph business right now? Why or why not?
    - JackFr 8y ago
      I don't think i said research was valueless. Certainly risks can be mitigated with research, but I reject that they can be avoided entirely. If "with adequate business research, those can be avoided" is true, it can only be true as a syllogism where 'adequate' is defined to mean the research necessary not to fail, and any company which fails hasn't done 'adequate' research.

taeric 8y ago

Did you just make up that lottery stat? Hard to take musk as a good example. Plenty of people lived on less making the biggest bets they could, and have nothing to show for it. Just consider if he had been born in another country or timeframe. This is not to claim rich people don't deserve their riches. In large, that is a statement many of us fine meaningless. Rather, spare us the nonsensical justifications that require near deification of people that have acquired lots of money. Respect does not have to equal devotion.

JackFr 8y ago

I think you miss the point of the parent. There is tremendous survivorship bias in this analysis. While these traits were found in a substantial portion of people who "Get Stuff Done", how about the people who exhibit these traits, but don't "Get Stuff Done"? We have no idea how large that population is. Assuming the author's research is perfect, and every successful person who "Gets Stuff Done" exhibits these trait. The author, at best, has shown these traits are necessary, but not sufficient. Since many people potentially have these traits and don't "Get Stuff Done", there must be further special sauce which differentiates them.

projektir 8y ago

> Thing is, most people are terribly afraid of the freedom, and – as the example with the lottery winners prove – most can't handle large sums of money anyway. This hardly proves much since the group of people who buy lottery tickets is self-selecting. A person who understands probability will not be buying a lottery ticket. Most people buying them are not in the best situation. There's a lot more going on in the world than people who work hard vs people who buy lottery tickets.

dahart 8y ago

> Also: 70 percent of lottery winners, end up broke just a few years later. This often quoted line is a complete media distortion of what really happens. It is wrong. I highly recommend being skeptical of the misinformation spread by news and looking into the primary sources yourself. Here’s the Florida study that this line is referring to: https://eml.berkeley.edu/~cle/laborlunch/hoekstra.pdf https://eml.berkeley.edu/~cle/laborlunch/hoekstra.pdf Here’s the actual results of the study: Results show that although recipients of $50,000 to $150,000 are 50 percent less likely to file for bankruptcy in the two years after winning relative to small winners, they are equally more likely to file three to five years afterward. First, this study wasn’t people winning millions and blowing it, it’s people winning modest amounts under 200K. Second, they’re not going bankrupt at higher rates than other people, they’re filing less often in the short term, and at the same rates in the long term. In other words, the lottery winnings of $10K - $200K didn’t help their longer term life prospects. Is that some sort of surprise? Anyone would spend $200K in 5 years. The winnings did not create higher rates of bankruptcy, and I don’t know right now where the 70% number came from. The number of people who filed for bankruptcy was 5.5%.

dahart 8y ago
BTW, you don’t have to take my word for it: “DENVER — Over the past couple of years several news organizations have attributed a statistic to the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) stating that 70 percent of lottery winners end up bankrupt in just a few years after receiving a large financial windfall. This statistic is not backed by research from NEFE, nor can it be confirmed by the organization. Frequent reporting—without validation from NEFE—has allowed this “stat” to survive online in perpetuity.“ https://www.nefe.org/Press-Room/News/Research-Statistic-on-Financial-Windfalls-and-Bankruptcy https://www.nefe.org/Press-Room/News/Research-Statistic-on-F...