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I've enjoyed two great books that discuss this: "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/books/review/Johnson-G-

• sliverstorm 14y ago
  Alternate explanation: People know they can't do anything about true luck, so they want to focus on things they might be able to do something about.
  • hjkl 14y ago
    But then do people overestimate the impact of their own influence? Would it benefit themselves/the world to come to grips with randomness?
    • sliverstorm 14y ago
      Now you're just getting into life philosophies. Fatalism vs. free will is not an argument I am equipped to engage.
      • wpietri 14y ago
        I don't think that's his point. To me, coming to grips with randomness is much more about humility and tenacity, which are character traits rather than philosophical issues.
      • potatolicious 14y ago
        I don't think fatalism vs. free will was what he was getting at. We see a lot of moralizing about this, particularly in the USA where individualism and the self-made-man is practically a national religion, more pervasive and deeper-rooted than even Christianity. We see this every day on television - politicians foaming at the mouth about lazy good-for-nothings who failed to provide for themselves and now reach their hand out to their fellow taxpayers. We see it every time the word "Entitlement" appears in yet another headline. We see it every time when we treat the poor as people who are lazier, dumber, or just plain lesser. If we are going to moralize about the merits of achievement, and if we're going to continue throwing people under the bus for being unsuccessful, we should come to grips with the randomness factor.
    • jeremyarussell 14y ago
      I figure it this way, I may or may not randomly succumb to a car accident, but if the next day I lost my hand I wouldn't give up on programming, I'd learn how to type faster with one hand. I bet the other one gets in the way anyways. My point isn't that random isn't a big deal, or that people don't ever overestimate themselves, but that people shouldn't look at it like that anyways, it keeps you in control of your own life.
  • nostromo 14y ago
    Maybe, but I'm talking about retrospection here, not prospection. People, even when talking about past successes, are very unlikely to admit their good fortune. In other words you're more likely to hear, "I worked very hard" than "I worked very hard and was very lucky." There are notable exceptions. Warren Buffet has openly talked about the role of luck in his success.
    • _delirium 14y ago
      I don't know whether it's statistically more likely, but I do think I find the latter sentiment more often among scientists. Plenty of famous people in science will also refuse to admit luck had much to do with their success, of course, but many others will do so. A total guess as to why is that there's a recognition that "good science" is something you can control, but "science that gets famous" has much more of a sociological and good-timing component that's hard to control. Sometimes people know they're on the verge of a big breakthrough, but other times it's quite hard to know whether this interesting problem you're working on will turn out to be a solid but niche contribution, or a future 1000-citation paper. Sometimes you even have to wait 10 or 20 years to find out that what seemed like a minor contribution at the time was actually made retroactively important by a different advance.
      • wpietri 14y ago
        That's really interesting. One other factor is that I think science encourages a certain humility and honesty. When you're trying novel things and checking against real data, you inevitably get your ass handed to you from time to time. I think that makes it harder to treat "because I am awesome" as a 100% reliable explanation.
      • roopeshv 14y ago
        because science focuses on repeatability and control. personal successes do not. Any thing that passes as science has been proven to a degree of certainity, by definition. Any science is good science because it's been proven, and then there is science that got famous.
      • deleted 14y ago
  • Retric 14y ago
    Except people can Hedge. Some times it's better to double down when things are going your way, but plenty of people who thought they where already successful wish they had taken some money off the table. Ignoring the role luck's roles leads to lot's of stupid decisions like this. 99.9% of the time going 90 on an interstate is fine, that does not mean it's a wise decision.
• bchjam 14y ago
  I really liked Drunkard's Walk. That said, I personally prefer the interpretation of probability as addressing uncertainty rather than randomness.
• baddox 14y ago
  The notion of luck doesn't imply that we don't have free will, but rather that we don't have complete control over our lives and environment, which I assume is something everyone believes regardless of their view on free will.
• geekam 14y ago
  A question: I want to read those books. Which one should I start first?
  • graeme 14y ago
    Fooled By Randomness leads nicely into the Black Swan, Taleb's even better follow up book.
  • nostromo 14y ago
    The Drunkard's Walk was the better of the two in my view. I'd start there and follow up with Taleb's book if you want to read more. However, if you're really into Wall Street trading, flip the order.
• brudgers 14y ago
  Moneyball is a good read as well. One of the baseball statistics it addresses is errors which are entirely based on what someone scoring the game thinks should have happened. The speedy outfielder who just misses catching the ball on a flat out run gets charged with one, the hung-over slugger who waddles toward the gap after a late start doesn't.
• smsm42 14y ago
  Taleb's books were ones of the most thought-provoking I have ever read. Made me think differently about a lot of things that I thought I knew. I think though people don't talk about role of luck also because it's useless to talk about it - you can't say: "my lesson for you, my son, is - always be lucky". People try to find something that they can actually do - even though many of what they end up doing is futile.
  • anon808 14y ago
    It's very difficult to do something for the sake of doing it without focusing on the end, but in reality all we can control is what we do, not the effect of what we do. Reading talebs books completely opened my eyes to our own magnificent limitations. There's real beauty in recognizing how little control we have over outcomes. But we have 100% control over the journey . . . what we learn and create, theres a lot of comfort in that idea.
  • kinleyd 14y ago
    Taleb's books made a huge difference for me too. He basically removed a number of layers off the prism I used to see life through. Thoroughly practical too.
• speleding 14y ago
  You cannot help luck (p) but you can help the number of times you put yourself in a position to be lucky (n). The expected value is n x p, so you clearly have a big influence in your success. For example, going to Princeton gives you a much bigger chance to be seated next to an important Lehman person, and having the right parents gives you a much higher chance to go to Princeton. Some people have such high "n" they are bound to end up "lucky".
  • kennon 14y ago
    I think you may be contradicting yourself. Using your example, one thing leads to another but it all hinges on an initial lucky roll of the dice: born in the US to the right parents. No one "earns" this head start but almost everyone reading this discussion has it. Like you, I believe that I've had some say in getting to where I am today, but it's hard to tell how much of that is reality and how much is self-aggrandizement.
  • kgtm 14y ago
    I feel compelled to both upvote and comment on your post, in order to further emphasize the point you are making: you can help the number of times you put yourself in a position to be lucky. This understanding is incredibly important and relevant to every aspect of one's life, however diverse, from business to dating. Check out Luck Surface Area [0], a relevant concept largely based on the above. Also, most often than not, merely beating inertia and getting to do things, no matter how involved or not they are, can have a tremendous impact on one's success. Simple things really work. You just have to do stuff. Other times you just have to ask. You'd be surprised how often you get exactly what you ask for without being manipulative. Rejection Therapy [1] is a true eye opener, especially when the rejection never comes. The way I see it, it's the most profound realization that at that point luck was just made out of thin air. And while some things definitely cannot change, like the country one was born in and the socioeconomic status of their parents, there are many, many others that can be hacked. [0] http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surface-area http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surf... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rejection_Therapy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rejection_Therapy