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Previous to Carl Lange’s post, this was described in "How to Increase Your Luck Surface Area" - http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surface-
by jayro 13y ago
Previous to Carl Lange’s post, this was described in "How to Increase Your Luck Surface Area" - http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surface-area http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surf...
Apparently, Carl was unaware of it as well despite the post and subsequent discussion receiving a fair amount of attention on HN at different times.
Disclaimer: I wrote it.
- swanson 13y agoDon't worry Jason - I was pimping luck surface area last month: http://mdswanson.com/blog/2013/07/19/getting-traction-for-your-open-source-project.html http://mdswanson.com/blog/2013/07/19/getting-traction-for-yo... ;-)
- jayro 13y agoCool! Thanks. ;)
- ronilan 13y agoWe can't assume L is always positive. Because if it is, where does bad luck come from?
- tomrod 13y agoPerhaps. But we can assume that in expectation, conditional on previous effort, L is positive.
- ronilan 13y agoI'm not a luck scientist, but I would say this: Lets assume that doing and telling increase luck surface area. We know, through observation, that both good and bad luck exist. Thus, there should exist situations in which telling and/or doing increase bad luck surface area. All things being equal, the direction in which ones luck surface area will grow (good/bad) when telling/doing, is evenly distributed. In other words, you have even odds of good and bad luck when you tell/do. Now, lets follow the general social studies assumption that people are risk averse. You get a more tightly packed theory, albeit, less inspirational - the winning strategy in life is doing nothing and shutting up. :) Now back to work.
- mathattack 13y agoI've heard this described as "The harder I train the luckier I get" though it's as much about marketing as production.