There is a dangerous kind of boolean thinking here : "Either you believe that luck is dominant, in which case, why bother with effort? or You believe that luck

There is a dangerous kind of boolean thinking here : "Either you believe that luck is dominant, in which case, why bother with effort? or You believe that luck is random, in which case it can be eliminated from your thinking and you can focus on all the stuff you can control." Life is full of stochastic processes which all have a bit of randomness to them. Luck actually does not exist. There is just random chance that some event may happen which a certain subjective point of view interprets as favorable. Take poker as a simple example. There is random "luck" in that at each point in the game, certain sequences of cards could fall that are more or less favorable to the cards in your hand. You win money at poker by considering how likely each random outcome is and making rational decisions based on this. I think the likelihood of each random or apparently random is just another factor in the decision making process. Just like in poker, it's a volume game - make good bets on likely outcomes and if you get screwed a few times it'll all even out if you play enough. Repetition is how we can get randomness under control.