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> what an outsized role is played by luck This speaks to me. So much of our life circumstances are beyond our control (parents, genetics, geography, society, w
by ropable 1y ago
> what an outsized role is played by luck
This speaks to me. So much of our life circumstances are beyond our control (parents, genetics, geography, society, wider economy, etc.) It's humbling, how much of our success or failure is influenced by pure chance.
- whiplash451 1y agoYou can still work to increase your luck surface, though.
- oulipo2 1y ago[flagged]
- flanked-evergl 1y agoAn even more outsized role is played by a virtuous life. It may not make you a billionaire, but if you finish high school, get a full-time job once you finish school, get married before you have children, then you are quite likely to have a good life. We are doing a disservice to our fellow man by not telling them this truth.
- nly 1y agoThose are some strangely arbitrary not-virtues.
- astura 1y agoIt's a shitty conservative talking point called the 'Success Sequence.' https://archive.is/9Onj3 https://archive.is/9Onj3
- darkwater 1y ago> get married before you have children, then you are quite likely to have a good life. Based on what, exactly? I think you have cause and effect inverted.
- flanked-evergl 1y agoNope. Statistically, having children before you get married is much more likely to result in worse outcomes. Maybe cause and effect is inverted, but maybe the better option is to not run a social experiment in fatherless children as we have been doing for the past couple of decades with absolutely no research to suggest that it can result in positive outcomes and loads of data to show that it's almost definitely can't result in positive outcomes.
- piva00 1y agoThose are just statistics describing what happens, not why it happens. Why does having children before getting married creates worse outcomes? Can individuals or society do something about the qualitative aspect of it? Quantifying something doesn't explain it, it just... Quantifies it, deeper inspection is needed to understand what the statistics says. You are prescribing what needs to be done based on something that is, ultimately, descriptive.
- flanked-evergl 1y agoDo we have any data whatsoever that would support the claim that whether you are married before having children has no impact on your life outcome or the life outcomes of your children?
- piva00 1y agoI don't think you understood my comment, I will spell it out: data by itself just quantifies, doesn't qualify. It doesn't qualify why marrying before having children is better, it just states that, for some reason, the outcomes are better. Now you need to do the qualitative research to understand what are the causes for it, it could be that marriage is a signal for stable relationships, in that case marrying doesn't matter but a stable relationship does (which is quite self-obvious, it's just an example). Marriage could also have tax implications in some countries, which in turn could help the average to better outcomes, so on and so forth. The data on this is enveloping much more than just "marriage" as a virtue, or any other moral aspect of it, you are using the data to imply that marriage is virtuous and is the cause for better outcomes which doesn't hold by just quantification... It's blindness by statistics, it's quite common when ascribing data as the sole truth. Data can guide you to investigate other aspects that will qualify why the data shows what it shows.
- hdgvhicv 1y agoYou’re far more likely to have been born in rural China, India or Africa than in the west.
- flanked-evergl 1y agoI guess every unemployed druggy is just a roll of the dice away from a successful career and happy family.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bwfan123 1y agoAnd you can have an enlightened life in any one of those places - for example, the ideas laid out in the piece are abstract, and not environment specific. All sorts of folks have lived in all sorts of places across time. Trappings and environments have varied. Attributing things to luck in and of itself is an illusion. There is nothing that is lucky or unlucky. You play the hand you are dealt.
- fpsvogel 1y agoTo take one of your examples, high school graduation rates vary from ~25% to ~98% in U.S. school districts. It's not because some districts have a lot more virtuous young people, but because some districts are poor and others are wealthy, among other factors. Even if one of those factors is virtuous parents, kids can't choose their parents. I'm not denying our moral agency, but it is often constrained by environment. Some people are lucky enough that virtuous choices are easier for them.
- flanked-evergl 1y agoPeople in all western countries can do all of these things without much difficulty. We can go off the theory that you are just as likely to have a successful life if you drop out of school, have children with many women and/or absent fathers, and not get a permanent job — but there is no data to support any of those claims, and we have been running this experiment for decades now with nothing getting better.
- bluGill 1y agoNo, but a few of those poor kids see the claim change their life instead of following their parents examples and those kids tend to do well. We see this most in immigrants where the parents come with nothing and barely get by but their kids despite going to the same bad schools do well
- fpsvogel 1y agoAdsolutely. I agree that our lives aren't determined by family background, and we can draw on many other resources, both within ourselves and from other people besides family. If I overstated my point, it's only because I was pushing back against the idea that education, employment, and a traditional family are equally attainable by all, and if someone has failed in any of these areas, it's because they lack virtue compared to other people (many of whom had more advantageous starting points in life, but supposedly that doesn't matter). Or in simpler terms, "poor people are poor because they're bad and they deserve it". It's a sentiment that's been very useful for the ultra-wealthy class, and detrimental to everyone else, not just the poor.
- padjo 1y agoFor your definition of virtue I assume?
- ropable 1y agoI don't entirely disagree, however: it's a far sight easier to live a "virtuous" life if you weren't born into poverty, or with a mental illness, or in a country that is actively at war, etc. These things are all beyond our control, as are so many other things. Luck. It's obviously always possible to make the best of bad circumstances (and make the worst of good circumstances!) but it's easier to "win" when you're dealt a good hand.
- summis 1y agoOverall I agree with this comment. A determinist would take this position even further and argue that there is nothing left that we could be in control of - it is causes and effects and maybe some randomness all the way down. Even those things we think are our free choices.
- Quekid5 1y agoThat's the thing about free choice. I don't believe it fundamentally exists, but I can't help behaving as if it does.
- psychoslave 1y agoYes, that’s the ultimate argument against determinism. Either one actually sincerely believe in determinism and trying to convince someone else they are wrong about free-will are just displaying their inability to take their hypothesis to its full conclusion, or they are just trying to dispel their own doubts by bending other people opinions.
- bregma 1y agoYou can always choose to believe free choice does exist. In fact it's almost mandatory to do so just to get by.
- Quekid5 1y agoCongrats, you got the joke! (Not being sarcastic.)
- mytailorisrich 1y agoYes but as the saying goes you also create your own luck with the way you act in order to get around more opportunities and then to seize them.
- latexr 1y agoThat’s true to an extent, but has severe limitations. Of the five thing your parent comment listed (parents, genetics, geography, society, wider economy), only one (geography) is truly under your control, and even then it can be very hard to change depending on where you start and the other four (and more).
- mytailorisrich 1y agoI object to those 5 things. Parents and genetics are one thing, but geography, society, and the wider economy are for everyone to navigate so make your own luck.
- latexr 1y agoIf you were born poor in a society which sees part of your genetics as undesirable or outright criminal—none of which were your choice—you’ll find yourself in very dire straits and changing your situation—heck, even knowing a better life is possible—will be extremely difficult. It is not reasonable to tell a child sold into slavery or forced to be a soldier to “make their own luck”, that “society, and the wider economy are for everyone to navigate”. A person in the eye of storm and another in calm waters cannot navigate the same way. People who firmly believe they above all “made their own luck” are the ones who had such a large amount of it outside their control they don’t even realise how much of it they had, like a fish unable to perceive the water.
- mytailorisrich 1y agoI am not saying that it is easy or that everyone starts with the same opportunities. But you can make your own luck in any case to improve your life or at least to have a better shot at it. If you believe that you are a victim that nothing you can do will make a diference, and therefore don't even try then you will definitely not improve your situation! Now if you are born in poverty as an albino in Africa, orphaned at a young age, sold to slavery and then to a witchdoctor for organ trafficking are you fucked? Probably but that does not change the point. [I am pushing your reply ad absurdum to highlight that it is not a counter-argument...]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ErigmolCt 1y agoIt's wild how much of what we chalk up to merit is really just the invisible scaffolding of luck: being born in the right place, with the right wiring, at the right time...
- smokel 1y agoThe problem lies in the word "we". I personally don't think this, and neither do most other people who gave this subject some thought. It's just that silly ideas get to live around for a long time, and simply proving them false has little to no effect.
- tclancy 1y agoYou probably want to revisit the author’s sixth point. Perhaps the people who don’t agree have given it a lot of thought too?
- AaronAPU 1y agoIf things generally worked out very well for you, it feels good to believe you got there because of your virtues, and that those who didn’t got there because of their vices. It’s the narrative of least resistance.
- miguelxt 1y agoWhile I do agree with your opinion, I think the opposite is also true. It feels good to believe you didn't get there because "The game is rigged", "You have to be born lucky", "The house always wins", etc, etc. This defeatist/powerless way of thinking may in fact make it worse for you. When hope is lost, what's left?
- AaronAPU 1y agoSounds like we agree with each other!
- lotsofpulp 1y ago>When hope is lost, what's left? That is what all societies are finding out right now. Before, they could count on women having babies providing a need to hope, but now that children are optional, societies don’t seem to have a replacement mechanism.
- vladms 1y agoWhile strictly true, I wonder what does this sentence generates in the minds of the readers. I personally would prefer other formulations, because while I agree with the core, I think this idea should just reduce frustration if you don't succeed, while I am afraid it can be used as an excuse for not trying. Yes, you need luck, but if you never get out of your room/street/neighborhood/city/country, you might have less opportunities for luck than otherwise.
- bobotowned 1y agoThe quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and return it to your safe
- bregma 1y agoSerendipity favours the prepared mind.
- koolba 1y agoDamn straight. Often, being at the right place at the right time is more of a matter of predicting the places to be and arriving there in advance of said right time.
- erenst 1y agoI like to call it "Exposing yourself to luck." You can't win lottery if you never play. Play the lottery with the best odds and play it as much as you can.
- Poomba 1y agoOther than moving to the right location, what are other ways to expose yourself to luck?
- only-one1701 1y agoI think it’s just trying to be exposed to as many opportunities as possible with the best tools you can have. You can’t determine whether or not you can catch a fish, but you can acquire the best fish-catching tools you can get, try to get to the fullest river, and stay out there as long as you can. I think the role of “luck” really hits when you realize how some people are born on the side of the river with a gigantic, well-made net.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoThere is an idealistic fiction of "meritocracy" that doesn't really exist anywhere to varying degrees. Racism, sexism, poverty, sectarian, citizenship discrimination, lack of influential friends and family, and more biases exist and are very unlikely to ever disappear completely.
- gausswho 1y agoThe pejorative invention of "meritocracy" is such an own goal. The answer to overcoming these adversities is to stop moaning about it and demonstrate your own merits.
- lvl155 1y agoAnd this is also why people resort to crime.
- criddell 1y agoWhat they said also applies to criminals.
- lvl155 1y agoCrime is basically your way of cheating the probabilities. If everyone is playing by the rules and you don’t, you basically made your odds better. I am not saying this is right. I am just saying this is why people deviate and commit crimes though crimes are also committed for different reasons.
- Neil44 1y agoI agree. But there's different ways to respond to it. You can be fatalistic and say well I wasn't born rich or I'm no good at XYZ so why bother. Or you can do well and then say it wasn't luck I work hard every day. To me having had some people I've known a long time die or be debilitated by desease in recent years, I feel very lucky just to be alive and healthy with opportunities in front of me and people I love close to me. A lot of people don't have that and it's not their fault.
- steveBK123 1y agoWell the other way to look at it is beyond initial conditions luck. You get to take swings every day and luck plays a role there. So keep moving forwards, flipping the coin in life.
- grumbelbart2 1y agoThe bigger picture is though that taking swings every day also requires a bit of "luck". Some people just don't have the energy, education, mindset, or environment. It's easy to assume it would be in our control, but if you're just tired all day every day because, say, your hormone balance is off and no one can tell you why, you might statistically accomplish less than others.
- steveBK123 1y agoPeople need to adopt a mindset that no one is coming to save them and have a bias for action. You can go to the doctor. You can move somewhere with better jobs. You can learn stuff online. Obviously any of these things are harder or easier for some people, but no matter what level you are at you need to avoid learned helplessness.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- throw0101c 1y ago> This speaks to me. So much of our life circumstances are beyond our control (parents, genetics, geography, society, wider economy, etc.) Philosopher John Rawls made this a key point for this thinking: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luck_egalitarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luck_egalitarianism * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rawls#A_Theory_of_Justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rawls#A_Theory_of_Justice
- km144 1y ago> According to this view, justice demands that variations in how well-off people are should be wholly determined by the responsible choices people make and not by differences in their unchosen circumstances. Luck egalitarianism expresses that it is a bad thing for some people to be worse off than others through no fault of their own. When I see this line of reasoning, it leads me down the road of determinism instead. Who is to say what determines the quality of choices people make? Does one's upbringing, circumstance, and genetics not determine the quality of one's mind and therefore whether or not they will make good choices in life? I don't understand how we can meaningfully distinguish between "things that happen to you" and "things you do" if the set of "things that happen to you" includes things like being born to specific people in a specific time and place. Surely every decision you make happens in your brain and your brain is shaped by things beyond your control. Maybe this is an unprovable position, but it does lead me to think that for any individual, making a poor choice isn't really "their" fault in any strong sense.
- PTOB 1y agoThis is a great question. One of the hardest lessons I've learned is that some people don't know that the choices they're making are going to hurt them. There are children who are actively taught by the people they should be able to trust that belligerence, lying, and stealing will get them what they need in life. On the other side of the coin, there are children who are taught to assume that everyone else has the up-bringing and or at least the natural intelligence needed to enable good choices every time a moral dilemma is presented. Both - it turns out - are equally short-sighted. What's worse is that many of us assume that others can easily change their entire worldview on a dime. In the middle of my life, I'm coming to accept that I need more years that will be available to me to fix all the broken parts of my psyche and intellect.
- larsnystrom 1y agoOn the other hand, many things attributed to chance are actually the aggregate effect of other people's choices. If we make choices based on not just what's best for ourselves but what's best for all of us, we will all suddenly become more "lucky". And vice versa, if we only think about ourselves that luck will diminish.
- nemomarx 1y agoI think it's hard to put into practice, but the veil of ignorance is an interesting philosophy for this
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- getpost 1y agoYou're lucky to have that perspective.
- mfro 1y agoWhat are you trying to say with this, that you disagree, or that it's an intelligent perspective afforded to those who are not hopeless? I don't see how anyone can disagree that the aggregate actions of your parents, your locality, your culture, your nation, play the largest role in the cards you are dealt from the beginning.
- bdangubic 1y ago> If we make choices based on not just what's best for ourselves but what's best for all of us, we will all suddenly become more "lucky". I personally know handful of extremely lucky people who spent their entire lives doing the exact opposite of this
- jrussino 1y agoI think the point is that this only works in the aggregate. Individuals in a group/organization/society can make small positive decisions that improve the likelihood that any individual in that same group will get "lucky". There's a sort of "freeloader" problem, though, which is that the ones who get "lucky" don't themselves have to be making positive choices. In fact, being a selfish individual in a group of generous ones can be an easy way to get ahead - as long as you can get away with it without being noticed or punished.
- wg0 1y agoMost people don't get it in their earlier part of life. It's only later that you realize.
- speed_spread 1y ago"Luck" is just a subjective view of statistics. We can't change past events but we can often make choices that will pay off over time. So one can in effect build their own luck by leveraging whatever they start with. It doesn't guarantee anything, you can still be smart and fucked. But you can _try_ to change things.
- ant6n 1y agoIf life is decided by coin flips, you need to maximize the number of coin flips.
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoDepends on what happens if you lose the flip. If it's zero, vs a payout if you win, sure, maximize the number of flips. But take, for example, smoking. You're flipping where the best outcome is zero, and the worst is cancer. Minimize the number of those flips.
- bluecalm 1y agoThere are many positively skewed coin flips as well which we don't take because of various biases, fears, habits or our upbringing. I like a quote from Magnus Carlsen (the chess player): "The correct mindset in chess is somewhere between optimist and delusional". I think it applies to life as well. I am naturally pessimistic I think I lost a lot of opportunities because of it. Thankfully I also get those periods where I am blindly all-in on something. Some of those made me very good at useless things but some resulted in very good opportunities and then outcomes. Energetic optimists who avoid very dumb choices do very well in life in my experience. People who talk about luck a lot usually can't produce a decently long list of things they tried or keep making blunders (smoking, alcohol, associating with destructive and apathetic people).
- ant6n 1y ago"The correct mindset in chess is somewhere between optimist and delusional" - until you need to raise money for your delusional project.
- high_na_euv 1y agoSkew the Odds
- speleding 1y agoI like the concept of "luck surface area". Sure, I started out with a bunch of luck. But the harder I work, the luckier I get. You have to put yourself into a position to cash in on your luck.
- android521 1y agoIf it is true, there is no point reading what he wrote because it is moslty luck
- VagabundoP 1y agoYeah. It makes me grateful for all the luck Ive had in my life and despair at the amount of unlucky people who suffer.
- belter 1y ago"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." - Jean-Luc Picard
- tsoukase 1y agoBetween pure "luck" and personal struggle during a lifetime there lies a whole lot of dexterities that psychology, evolution and education cannot decide if they are developed due to luck or struggle. Like intelligence, intuition, talent, self confidence etc. And this fuzzy grey zone is the majority of our basis.
- ksec 1y agoSomewhat strange to see the narrative flips again on HN. The pendulum not only swings back in other areas, but this too.
- idiotsecant 1y agoHuh? What 'narrative' is flipping here?
- animitronix 1y agoThe narrative that you make your own luck vs. not. Duh.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoI wonder how well that narrative correlates with the Fed Funds rate.
- e40 1y ago> Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity I know that quote is reductive, but I do find it is relevant to my life and what I observe in others. The opportunity part is what we usually call luck. Preparation is another matter, though. Many people just aren't prepared to take advantage of situations which present to them.
- CM30 1y agoYeah, and it's kinda depressing how hard it is to get people to accept that. Every community and group seems to operate under the assumption that anyone who's not 'successful' is too lazy or selfish to deserve it, and that those who are winning have to be the smartest, hardest working people around. The just world fallacy is strong in communities, especially for artistic and creative endeavours like writing, art, music, filmmaking, game design, etc. Does that mean that effort is worthless? Of course not. Does that mean you should just say "well, I'm not successful, I guess that's just life?". Again no. But you do need to be humble and accept that in some ways, both your successes and failures were affected by external factors as well as your own efforts. That for how tempting it is to look down at people, that it could just have well have been your life circumstances that didn't work out well, your bets that didn't pay off and your efforts that didn't amount to anything in the end.
- thegrimmest 1y agoBest only to worry about what you can control, no? If there are external and internal factors to your success then you should spend 100% of your time focusing on the internal ones, since these are the only ones where productive gains can be made. Also, the research is in. Grit is the single biggest predictor of economic success. Anyone who is lacking in economic success can be reasonably assumed to lack grit. Whether you label that “lazy” or not is semantics.
- fuzzfactor 1y agoKeep in mind that there's forms of success other than economic, that actually do require more grit than that.
- hamburglar 1y agoI think that in a sense, there is a skill to being lucky. You may have exactly the same opportunities as another person but you may have more capacity to take advantage of those opportunities due to being open minded, adaptable, giving, and curious. I call that lucky.
- id 1y ago>due to being open minded, adaptable, giving, and curious And how do you become that? Exactly, by being lucky.
- hamburglar 1y agoLuckily, these things are all learnable.
- codazoda 1y agoBut, never forget, it’s possible to maneuver yourself into better position for luck to find you.
- SoftTalker 1y agoLuck is ambition and preparation combined with opportunity. Lots of people pass or aren't prepared to do what is neccessary when opportunity presents itself. The people who are, are called "lucky"
- reyqn 1y agoI'm lucky. I'm lucky because I didn't ever have to try hard at anything in my life, and I have a good life. I was born from two parents that cared about me. Luck In a country where most people have a decent shot at life. Luck I'm lazy, but I was granted a body that never failed me, and was pushed by people around me to try stuff. Luck I'm lazy, but my laziness is somehow useful in this computer driven world. Luck All this luck compounds, and thanks to the activities I was pushed to do, the schools I was pushed to go to, I was lucky to meet great friends, an amazing girlfriend, and have a cushy job, a nice house in a beautiful place. Luck. Luck. Luck. Luck I have no ambition, I was never prepared for anything, but all I've had was luck. That's what you call luck, and a lot of people try to convince themselves everything good that happens to them is because they somehow deserve it. Because they were "ambitious" and "prepared", and an "opportunity" struck at the right time, and obviously they seized it, and everyone that didn't just didn't deserve it as much as them. Obviously some people weren't as lucky as me, and actually had to work hard, and managed to seize an actual opportunity that wasn't gifted to them. But that's not all luck, only a little part is. And those people are quite rare.
- rfwhyte 1y agoGuess the child born into abject poverty in a war-torn country in sub-Saharan Africa who died before their 5th birthday due to malnutrition and disease just didn't properly prepare or have enough ambition then right? Classic survivorship bias BS. The privileged always think the people on top got their through their hard work and ambition, and those on the bottom just lacked the strength of character to succeed and give no consideration whatsoever to the structural / systemic conditions created by those on top to ensure they remain there, and no consideration paid to how said conditions disproportionately negatively impact those on the bottom. Must be nice to sit all the way up there on high and look down on the world with such a smug sense of superiority.
- damethos 1y agoI recommend reading https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50364458-the-tyranny-of-merit https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50364458-the-tyranny-of-...