6 ms·

This is related to the general "is it luck or is it skill" question: At the broadest scales, luck increasingly explains every factor of experience. But in the e

This is related to the general "is it luck or is it skill" question: At the broadest scales, luck increasingly explains every factor of experience. But in the everyday situation you can always point to factors of skill, until you get down to the most raw performance indicators of speed, strength, reflexes, etc.: then it becomes luck, unless you have a way of training those things, improving them with nutrition, pharmaceuticals etc. And then it becomes skill again, until you are limited by stuff inherent to a human body, and then it could be luck that you have long swimmer arms or bodybuilder genetics. You can then switch to considering mechanical assistance and developing original inventions, and now you are considering mental performance. It goes on and on like that. The most practical thing I've found to do, in light of this problem, is to focus on developing better feedback: success and failure signals for each problem that you can use to summarize how you are doing. Then the skill/luck question becomes less reliant on external comparison and more on inner growth - hence more in control, more skill-driven. But as a society our measures are mostly external. If someone succeeds, that's all we see.

throwawaysea 7y ago
> But as a society our measures are mostly external. If someone succeeds, that's all we see. The notion of external measures or what is readily apparent, is also why 'luck' feels like a simplistic and incorrect explanation for success, in my experience. A lot of people who are successful create their own luck (or rather, increase the probability for their personal successes). They set themselves up to be successful despite variability and randomness, and despite differences in natural talent relative to competition. They focus on the right things, they push themselves harder than others think possible, etc. Put another way, they make trade-offs in life that result in success. As to what they give up...it depends on the person and their circumstances, but very often they are giving up peace of mind, free time (leisure), relationships, happiness, and sometimes even their health. But delayed gratification and long-term focus (long-term trading-off) seem like key elements to success. I don't view that as just luck. The anecdote of the fund manager who was less successful in China from the article stood out to me as logically flawed. This later failure in a different time, a different market, does not mean the person's prior success was due to mere luck. The world has changed a lot (for example advent of the Internet and digital trading) and China is also a very different place. It could be simply that this person was no longer in a position where they've made the right trade-offs to be relatively competitive in the new set of circumstances years after their "prime". And it might even be a conscious choice - it is easier to make some trade-offs when you are younger (better health, more energy, lack of familial obligations, etc.) and as we get older and our priorities change, we're less likely to make some of those trade-offs (not always, but typically). But I don't think it makes logical sense to cast prior success as luck due to later failure - the causality there is spurious, at best.
- fzeroracer 7y ago
  The problem with examining from the 'create your own luck' angle is that it's prone to survivorship bias. There are incredibly brilliant people out there working hard in order to succeed, but end up having little success despite positioning themselves in all the right places. This notion also tends to ignore the people that can fail upwards: They reach positions or become managers that they're not at all qualified at, but end up doing well through a few lucky rolls of the dice. I'm sure we'd all like to say that eventually this comes back around to bite them in the rear, but unfortunately that would imply a just world fallacy.
  - oreo83 7y ago
    >There are incredibly brilliant people out there working hard in order to succeed, but end up having little success despite positioning themselves in all the right places. Then they aren't as brilliant as they think or don't work as hard as they think.
  - joyjoyjoy 7y ago
    Spot on. I always assumed I am the smartest but during my PhD I met people that I considered far smarter then me. Some of the brightest made no career at all. This made me more humble and also forgive myself a little for my non career.
  - notenoughbeans 7y ago
    It seems to me that hard work is a necessary (in most cases) but not sufficient condition for success. Anecdotally, my least successful friends and acquaintances are those who do not work hard and blame their lack of success on bad luck.
    - Qworg 7y ago
      I cannot agree more. I know quite a few hard working but unlucky folks - and the hard work is generally necessary to capitalize on the luck.
      - 7y ago
mathattack 7y ago
For stock pickers it’s absolutely reversion to the mean.
- andreilys 7y ago
  If a millions monkeys flip a coin hundreds of times, you’ll inevitably have a few who have gotten all heads for all their flips
  - bittercynic 7y ago
    You'd need far more than a million monkeys to reasonably expect that result.
  - arrel 7y ago
    To give some context, two to the 100th power is 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376. Interesting description here! http://www.freemars.org/jeff/2exp100/answer.htm http://www.freemars.org/jeff/2exp100/answer.htm
alexpetralia 7y ago
My theory: the tighter the causal feedback loop, the more agency you have (or perceive to have). For example if you want to knock over a cup, you can do that. But if you want to knock over a cup across the world, or become rich overnight, this is a very complex feedback loop, so you exercise less agency (therefore more luck).
- zwkrt 7y ago
  "Perceive to have" is exactly correct. Even though it seems easier to knock over a cup if you want to, there was a complex set of processes occurring both inside and outside your body over a long period of time (forever!) which resulted in you acquiring the desire to knock over the cup in the first place. This process is outside your control. There once was a man that said, though It seems like I know that I know, What I'd like to see Is the 'I' that sees me When I know that I know that I know
godelski 7y ago
As to luck there's an old saying that I really like: the harder I work the luckier I get. How I interpret this it that working hard increases your skills. If you are more skillful you are more able to take advantage of lucky situations you have. We all have lucky situations, some more than others (we can even say privilege plays a large role here). But here's the thing, if you don't have the skills to take advantage of these situations then they are useless. Let's make up an egregious example. Let's say you are working on battery powered rockets that use AI. If you one day meet Elon Musk at your local grocery store and somehow strike up a conversation then he's probably going to be very interested in you and your background. He'll probably try to keep in contact with you and maybe offer you a job. Now let's consider without the skill. Well you met Elon Musk which is pretty cool, but you're probably not going to get a job. It isn't so much luck vs skill, but the combination of the two. I would be willing to bet that there is not a single millionaire (yes, that low) that can't chalk up a significant portion of their wealth to something that others would consider luck. Such as family/friend's connections, stumbling into a situation, taking jobs that lead to other jobs in the right way, etc (this is why the specific wording of the previous sentence. Because most don't notice these kinds of things and when looking from the inside we notice the skill part and not the luck. Because we did in fact work hard, and you know... Human psychology)
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Though I agree with the overall thrust of your comment, I'd imagine there are thousands of everyday millionaires in their 60s and 70s who have nothing I would look at as particularly great luck [other than to be healthy and employed for 40 years while saving diligently].
  - nostrademons 7y ago
    Also being born in America (or the developed world, generally) at the right point in history. Someone born in China in 1860 who saved diligently, best case, would've lost it all in the Xinhai Revolution, Chinese Civil War, Sino-Japanese War, or Communist takeover. Worst case, they and their whole family is dead. Ditto Russia over the same time period, Vietnam in 1900, a plantation owner born in South Carolina in 1800, a Jew in Austria in 1870, etc. For that matter, that 70-year-old American isn't out of the woods yet: there's a looming demographic time bomb that's going to hit America in the early 2020s, and it's by no guarantee that they'll remain millionaires.
hermitdev 7y ago
First thought that entered my mind: is it survivorship bias? Given enough time, even the survivors die... I worked at a hedge fund in 2008 that was leveraged like 40 to 1 when the market tanked. Nearly blew up, but managed to stay afloat. 3 years earlier we had cannibalized another fund that couldn't make their margin call. Bought about 9 Billion in assets for pennies on the dollar.

throwawaysea 7y ago

> But as a society our measures are mostly external. If someone succeeds, that's all we see. The notion of external measures or what is readily apparent, is also why 'luck' feels like a simplistic and incorrect explanation for success, in my experience. A lot of people who are successful create their own luck (or rather, increase the probability for their personal successes). They set themselves up to be successful despite variability and randomness, and despite differences in natural talent relative to competition. They focus on the right things, they push themselves harder than others think possible, etc. Put another way, they make trade-offs in life that result in success. As to what they give up...it depends on the person and their circumstances, but very often they are giving up peace of mind, free time (leisure), relationships, happiness, and sometimes even their health. But delayed gratification and long-term focus (long-term trading-off) seem like key elements to success. I don't view that as just luck. The anecdote of the fund manager who was less successful in China from the article stood out to me as logically flawed. This later failure in a different time, a different market, does not mean the person's prior success was due to mere luck. The world has changed a lot (for example advent of the Internet and digital trading) and China is also a very different place. It could be simply that this person was no longer in a position where they've made the right trade-offs to be relatively competitive in the new set of circumstances years after their "prime". And it might even be a conscious choice - it is easier to make some trade-offs when you are younger (better health, more energy, lack of familial obligations, etc.) and as we get older and our priorities change, we're less likely to make some of those trade-offs (not always, but typically). But I don't think it makes logical sense to cast prior success as luck due to later failure - the causality there is spurious, at best.

fzeroracer 7y ago
The problem with examining from the 'create your own luck' angle is that it's prone to survivorship bias. There are incredibly brilliant people out there working hard in order to succeed, but end up having little success despite positioning themselves in all the right places. This notion also tends to ignore the people that can fail upwards: They reach positions or become managers that they're not at all qualified at, but end up doing well through a few lucky rolls of the dice. I'm sure we'd all like to say that eventually this comes back around to bite them in the rear, but unfortunately that would imply a just world fallacy.
- oreo83 7y ago
  >There are incredibly brilliant people out there working hard in order to succeed, but end up having little success despite positioning themselves in all the right places. Then they aren't as brilliant as they think or don't work as hard as they think.
- joyjoyjoy 7y ago
  Spot on. I always assumed I am the smartest but during my PhD I met people that I considered far smarter then me. Some of the brightest made no career at all. This made me more humble and also forgive myself a little for my non career.
- notenoughbeans 7y ago
  It seems to me that hard work is a necessary (in most cases) but not sufficient condition for success. Anecdotally, my least successful friends and acquaintances are those who do not work hard and blame their lack of success on bad luck.
  - Qworg 7y ago
    I cannot agree more. I know quite a few hard working but unlucky folks - and the hard work is generally necessary to capitalize on the luck.
    - 7y ago

mathattack 7y ago

For stock pickers it’s absolutely reversion to the mean.

andreilys 7y ago
If a millions monkeys flip a coin hundreds of times, you’ll inevitably have a few who have gotten all heads for all their flips
- bittercynic 7y ago
  You'd need far more than a million monkeys to reasonably expect that result.
- arrel 7y ago
  To give some context, two to the 100th power is 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376. Interesting description here! http://www.freemars.org/jeff/2exp100/answer.htm http://www.freemars.org/jeff/2exp100/answer.htm

alexpetralia 7y ago

My theory: the tighter the causal feedback loop, the more agency you have (or perceive to have). For example if you want to knock over a cup, you can do that. But if you want to knock over a cup across the world, or become rich overnight, this is a very complex feedback loop, so you exercise less agency (therefore more luck).

zwkrt 7y ago
"Perceive to have" is exactly correct. Even though it seems easier to knock over a cup if you want to, there was a complex set of processes occurring both inside and outside your body over a long period of time (forever!) which resulted in you acquiring the desire to knock over the cup in the first place. This process is outside your control. There once was a man that said, though It seems like I know that I know, What I'd like to see Is the 'I' that sees me When I know that I know that I know

godelski 7y ago

As to luck there's an old saying that I really like: the harder I work the luckier I get. How I interpret this it that working hard increases your skills. If you are more skillful you are more able to take advantage of lucky situations you have. We all have lucky situations, some more than others (we can even say privilege plays a large role here). But here's the thing, if you don't have the skills to take advantage of these situations then they are useless. Let's make up an egregious example. Let's say you are working on battery powered rockets that use AI. If you one day meet Elon Musk at your local grocery store and somehow strike up a conversation then he's probably going to be very interested in you and your background. He'll probably try to keep in contact with you and maybe offer you a job. Now let's consider without the skill. Well you met Elon Musk which is pretty cool, but you're probably not going to get a job. It isn't so much luck vs skill, but the combination of the two. I would be willing to bet that there is not a single millionaire (yes, that low) that can't chalk up a significant portion of their wealth to something that others would consider luck. Such as family/friend's connections, stumbling into a situation, taking jobs that lead to other jobs in the right way, etc (this is why the specific wording of the previous sentence. Because most don't notice these kinds of things and when looking from the inside we notice the skill part and not the luck. Because we did in fact work hard, and you know... Human psychology)

sokoloff 7y ago
Though I agree with the overall thrust of your comment, I'd imagine there are thousands of everyday millionaires in their 60s and 70s who have nothing I would look at as particularly great luck [other than to be healthy and employed for 40 years while saving diligently].
- nostrademons 7y ago
  Also being born in America (or the developed world, generally) at the right point in history. Someone born in China in 1860 who saved diligently, best case, would've lost it all in the Xinhai Revolution, Chinese Civil War, Sino-Japanese War, or Communist takeover. Worst case, they and their whole family is dead. Ditto Russia over the same time period, Vietnam in 1900, a plantation owner born in South Carolina in 1800, a Jew in Austria in 1870, etc. For that matter, that 70-year-old American isn't out of the woods yet: there's a looming demographic time bomb that's going to hit America in the early 2020s, and it's by no guarantee that they'll remain millionaires.

hermitdev 7y ago

First thought that entered my mind: is it survivorship bias? Given enough time, even the survivors die... I worked at a hedge fund in 2008 that was leveraged like 40 to 1 when the market tanked. Nearly blew up, but managed to stay afloat. 3 years earlier we had cannibalized another fund that couldn't make their margin call. Bought about 9 Billion in assets for pennies on the dollar.