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The question is bad, the binary options are false. Imagine I build and launch twitter2.com. I put a lot of hard work into it. It fails, of course. Was I unluck
by sho 18y ago
The question is bad, the binary options are false.
Imagine I build and launch twitter2.com. I put a lot of hard work into it. It fails, of course. Was I unlucky?
Obviously there is (at least) a 3rd dynamic at work. It's hard to nail it down, but let's called it insight.
When I first saw twitter, soon after it was launched, I thought it was stupid. Actually, I still think that. But obviously they were onto something. Obviously the market for that kind of service is much larger than I would have imagined.
They worked hard, no doubt. They had luck, I suppose, that the idea first occurred to them, that they had the skills necessary to pursue it, that they were born into a rich society with the leeway available to pursue speculative opportunities, etc. You can go as far as you like with that kind of digging.
But without insight, that people would want such a thing, they'd have nothing. "Luck OR hard work" is meaningless. It removes any kind of decision-making from the equation. That decision, of what to work hard on, in which arena luck might have the opportunity to shine on you, is critical. Anyone can work hard. Anyone can experience a little bit of random luck. Insight is what ties it together, turns good into great, turns mere effort into rousing success.
- zdmc23 18y agoBah! There are plenty of people who think they have insight into a particular market when they release their product. Some of those people show "insight" in hindsight, but what about the others? Were they less insightful? If twitter2.com takes off: you look like a genius; but if it flops, you just lacked insight?
- sho 18y ago"Some of those people show "insight" in hindsight, but what about the others? Were they less insightful?" Well obviously? "If twitter2.com takes off: you look like a genius; but if it flops, you just lacked insight?" Sure, more than you lacked "hard work" or "luck". I was presenting "twitter2.com" as an extreme example. Of course, it will never succeed. We can recognise that because it takes just a minimal amount of insight to predict it. What I'm trying to demonstrate, through this contrived example, is that luck won't save you if you worked hard on something dumb. Insight! Decisions! What to do, what to make! These are key; why bother arguing? The question presumes that there are just two factors to success: hard work and luck. I'm trying to say that there is at least one more critically important factor, which I loosely labelled "insight", with a disclaimer no less! I don't see why this is controversial, it seems self-evident.