Why Luck Plays a Big Role in Making You Rich | Hacker News Reader

Why Luck Plays a Big Role in Making You Rich

bloomberg.com

90 pointsapplecore50 comments

It's nice to see this getting discussed more, especially in a business outlet like Bloomberg. Warren Buffett has long been honest about how lucky he is; see his talk about the Ovarian Lottery.

The just-world fallacy [1] is enormously pernicious. I find myself falling for it all the time, and on both sides of it. My successes are clearly a sign of my genius; my failures are obvious proof of my permanent cretinism. It was Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "Fooled by Randomness" [2] that finally got me to buy fewer tickets for what Kent Beck calls the "genius-shithead rollercoaster". Perhaps one day I can stop riding it altogether.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Markets-Ince...

It's true that luck is a big deal. Myself and colleagues/friends were working an internship at the end of grad school and they didn't have any room to keep us on. So we were all furiously applying to places and having zero luck at all, we all wanted to work at the internship place permanently.

Months of searching later, I ended up running into my old boss on a chance trip for eggs to the grocery store. A spot had just opened up and she put me up for it because she was reminded of my work from our chance encounter. I ended up getting the only position out of about fifteen of us, and I was far from the best intern. Years later I built on that and have an awesome career that I'm very proud of, whereas just about everyone else ended up floundering significantly.

If I hadn't decided to bake something, pretty out of character for me, and realized I was out of eggs, and then had the drive to actually go to the store to get eggs, and then happened my old boss happened to be leaving just as I was walking in, I wouldn't be anywhere near the career level I am today. Literally if I had hit an additional stoplight on the way or decided to sit in my car for a minute extra or something I would have missed my old boss and the whole course of my career would have changed.

Stuff like that makes me realize how much of a role luck plays.

fallacy or not, I do believe that doing good is... good for mankind, especially long term. it might not come back to you personally, maybe your kids and maybe not, but it will make a small difference. and at the end big difference is nothing but a sum of small differences

How does that relate to the just-world fallacy?

The note about technology increasing winner-take-all systems is important, and one that has applied throughout human history; technology has always run ahead of our normal capacity for work, so that by increasing the power of any individual, it ends up increasing the power of whatever individual is lucky enough to be the first to hit it big. More lines of communication and the encroachment of AI onto more industries could push this issue into true unsustainability, with the one hardworking pioneer lucky enough to capture the market owning more means of production than ever.

I do not think it is possible for me to agree with you more! I've always had a hard time trying to articulate it as well as that however.

I came at it from a rather clumsy angle of damage/destruction. Imagine 500 years ago, how much damage could one person do to others. Now as humans have become so much more efficient in almost every aspect, how much damage could be done by a single person? An erratic leader with nukes, a big global tech company running essential services, or even heads of financial institutions and the monetary supply. One wrong move, even if accidental, can be amplified so much in this day and age.

Luck is huge, but remember the old saying that "fortune favors the bold".

Timing and good fortune are often presented as a chance, but you have to be in the game to take advantage of them. Hard work is a big part of that.

It always amazes me how many people refuse to even put themselves in a position to be lucky. The small amount of success I've had in my life has been 99% related to just showing up.

Conflating risk with "position to be lucky". It so happens that to most people, actual big opportunity is often available only at the levels of existential risk.

As in "you may become homeless" level of risk.

Not necessarily. Sometimes all it takes to be in the position to be lucky is to reach out to executives at companies you are interested in via a cold email. Some people are too afraid of rejection to do something like that. But I've found that in 1% of those cold email attempts, something really amazing happens. Just gotta put yourself out there.

But how much of that is just a story we tell ourselves so the world seems more just. The biggest CEOs weren't lucky they just worked harder took more risk. But, almost by definition success is luck x risk factor x potential reward.

I shared a seat on a train with a guy who was an SVP of a very big private company and essentially ran the place.

He attributed just about everything that happened in his career to a single, chance encounter when he was an intern.

Fortune can favor the bold, with boldness still being correlated with failure. There are plenty of hard-working people in the game, willing to take big risks and skillful enough to follow through on them, who still end up losing.

Self-repost from another thread [0]... This reminds me of a bit from "The Dilbert Future" (1997):

> Most people won't admit how they got their current jobs unless you push them up against a built-in wall unit and punch them in the stomach until they spill their drink and start yelling, "I'LL NEVER INVITE YOU TO ONE OF MY PARTIES AGAIN, YOU DRUNKEN FOOL!"

> I think the reason these annoying people won't tell me how they got their jobs is because they are embarrassed to admit luck was involved.

> I can't blame them. Typically the pre-luck part of their careers involved doing something enormously pathetic. Take me, for example. I'm a successful cartoonist and author because I'm a complete failure at being an employee of the local phone company.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11123374

Conversely, bad luck can play a big role in making you poor. For example, Nick Leeson singlehandedly brought down the world's second oldest merchant bank, Bearings Bank which was founded in 1762. Lesson was working in Singapore in a bank that was purchased by Bearings and was allowed to do rogue trading because the bank's controls weren't yet put in place in the subsidiary.

What brought everything down was Lesson placed a short straddle on the Tokyo and Singapore stock markets on January 16, 1995 betting there would not be significant market movement. The Kobe earthquake hit early in the morning the next day, Jan 17.

That was the beginning of the end.

Lesson did serve jail time, but published a book, Rogue Trader, and a major movie was made as well. Also a documentary.

That was an interesting read. I wish people in our industry were less hostile to the notion that luck plays a large role in determining success.

In regards to a progressive/punitive consumption tax --

"The most successful people will still be able to afford the best stuff–the waterfront homes, the front-row seats, the haute couture—but they’ll feel less pressure to spend and they’ll have less competition for the rarest luxury goods."

Or put another way, tranfer of consumption from consumer goods to public/lobbyist-influenced goods.

Most of the wealthy people I know are not lucky, but the opposite: They were bullied, sexually or physically abused, had their parents die as kids...

People like Elon Musk for example had lots of problems as a kid, he was bullied a lot.

Steve Jobs also had a lot of problems and as a person he was very difficult to manage.

Steve Blank had lots of problems in his childhood too.

I personally know well one of the richest persons in the planet, because of a common hobby. I am not that rich, I don't envy this person and what he went through.Life becomes so easy after that, even in hard times.

It is fairly common, it looks like if you survive such strong experiences it can benefit or punish the rest of your life. Some will go to the streets , others will rule companies.

In particular, I believe it has a lot to do with your attitudes toward risk. And of course luck, but most of these people can help but keep trying.

If you try 10 times and fail most people just leave. But if you continue and success in the 12th, it is no luck. In fact if you never succeed your behavior will be called and obsessive compulsive and pathologic.

How many times Elon Musk tried to launch and then land a rocket?, the personal risk that he took was astronomical, most normal people will leave soon under the same circumstances.

I have seen people doing that, succeeding only at the end, for example when normal people did it in search for gold it was called the "gold fever", because people kept trying and trying, even with failure after failure.

Of course when you succeed everybody knew you were the man(the same people that criticized you when you failed), everybody wants to be your friend, and politicians want the money you have(and want to raise your taxes with excuses like how lucky you are or not being fair).

"But if you continue and success in the 12th, it is no luck. In fact if you never succeed your behavior will be called and obsessive compulsive and pathologic."

You say that if you eventually succeed after many failures, it's not luck. But then you also acknowledge all of the people who never succeed despite their dogged persistence. How do you reconcile those two statements?

There are failures and there are critical failures...

For the less well off (initially lucky), the line between those is much thinner.

Sorry, but those entrepreneurs attended most prestigious universities in the world at the time. That alone is way up on the top percentile of luck. Those are expensive and exclusive.

Dig deeper and you will find layers upon layers of luck.

> Most of the wealthy people I know are not lucky, but the opposite: They were bullied, sexually or physically abused, had their parents die as kids...

For every one kid in this situation that turns out to be wealthy, I'm sure you could find many more that turn out to be criminals, addicts, etc.

So what is the difference between the kids that end up rich and the kids that end up poor? Wouldn't you call that luck?

> Which would you rather drive, he asks, a $150,000 Porsche on a well-maintained highway, or a $333,000 Ferrari on roads with deep potholes?

Great way to sum up paying higher taxes. I'm going to try and remember that one the next time I get in a similar discussion.

Except there aren't any in the air or on water. One of the favourite ways of spending guide amounts of money is a yacht or private plane.

Good point - still have to take off and land in the airplane right? I used to fly in my Dad's two seater, and I can remember him being very grateful there was a small, municipal airport in Dubois, WY where we could land and fuel up.

This makes sense for consumer examples, but not for investment examples.

Would you like to have $150,000 in your retirement account, or would you rather have $333,000 in your retirement account?

> This makes sense for consumer examples, but not for investment examples.

It might make sense in investment examples, if you actually used a parallel structure.

> Would you like to have $150,000 in your retirement account, or would you rather have $333,000 in your retirement account?

You've only stated the analog of the "Porsche v. Ferrarri" part, but not the "well-maintained highway vs. road with deep potholes" part.

Being lucky is mostly about attitude:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/as-luck-would-have...

"Lucky" people are those who looks for innovative ways of doing things while "unlucky" people are those who just blindly does what they are told. There are opportunities everywhere, you just have to open your eyes to see them!

But there are certain ethnic groups that if you are a member, you have a higher likelihood of being wealthy. For example, take a look at the Forbes 400.

Luck = Skill + Opportunity

Success = Skill + Opportunity * Charisma * followers effort

Opportunity = Risk * Potential Reward * Luck

Skill = Hard work * Time

Potential Reward = Scale of Problem * Better Solution * Number of people effect

Which finally equals Bull Shit the key to success is Bull Shit * the number of people that buy into your Bull Shit.

Could you explain how that isn't circular? As I see it, opportunity is infrequently in one's control. Whether one can take advantage of it is less infrequent, but still often enough outside of one's control. The only thing about opportunity that isn't heavily influenced by luck is whether, having the means, one takes advantage of the opportunity.

The point is that there no such thing as luck as we generally understand it, but rather it is equivalent to opportunity plus skill (or better, preparedness). That is, you need to be prepared for the opportunity when it presents itself. Most people aren't and they deem themselves unlucky.

My point was that you're kind of defining luck as a form of opportunity, which is itself a product of chance. I think maybe you're just describing luck in different terms without altering what is meant by the concept.

Well luck is usually thought of as favorable chance occurrences, usually as a way of rationalizing why some people have success in some area and some don't. The argument is that this form of "luck" doesn't exist. Certainly chance occurrences are a part of reality, and some of those happen to be favorable for some people. But ultimately "favorable chance occurrences" isn't a good explanation for the observed disparity of success. What is a good explanation is chance occurrences plus preparedness. And so what we generally refer to as luck is really better understood this way.

How is your explanation better? What studies and research support that?

I don't think the meaning of concepts are the types of things studies generally shed light on. It's just a philosophical argument. Feel free to accept it or not.

You also first need to be at the right place and time. To do so, you need to know what that is for the opportunity you want to invite and have means to get there, as well as means to recognise it.

Those things do not come free.

That function can be corrected as 'Luck = Opportunity', the Walton family isn't particularly skilled.

Sam Walton was incredibly skilled. Certainly his children are lucky but it is not correct to say that their money was not gained primarily through luck. It was their father's skill that was responsible.

The luck of winning the genetic lottery and being related to someone with skill is still luck. Really, the purest form of luck, since there is absolutely no way you could have any influence over it, unlike most other instances of "luck" which have often have some element of personal choice to at least opt-in to a particular opportunity, even if the outcome once that choice was made had a significant contribution from chance.

>It was their father's skill that was responsible.

As in, not theirs? As in, they aren't that skilled? As in, they are very lucky to have Sam as a dad?

Put it this way, if you or I had Sam Walton as a dad would the outcome be different?

If you really believe that luck plays such a big role in making you wealthy, why not quit your job, spend all the money you have on blackjack and lottery tickets, and hope for the best?

Go on - what's stopping you?

Go on - what's stopping you?

The fact that I understand context and false equivalencies, which you apparently don't.

Hard work and luck are both necessary and both insufficient for success. That's the very clearly stated argument of the article.

Because working for a living, while still a game of chance, gives me much better odds of coming out ahead, with minimal risk of losing everything in an instant. Plus I get some choice in how the game is played and have the ability to use my personal talents to tilt the odds further in my favor.

Rubbish

> There was a car accident a few hundred yards away from where Frank collapsed. Two ambulances responded but the injuries were minor and only one was needed.

Or could it be he was on a tennis court (in the slums perhaps?) that had great medical reply rate, two ambulances sent when one wasn't even needed.

Unless you badly loophole it, via the luck gene or luck parents, which are part of 'YOU' so I don't think that's allowed.

Your future is what you make of it don't blame or rely on luck, that's a fools game.

Two ambulances where sent to a different, but very close location. Only one of those where needed. If that other ambulance was sent somewhere else or stayed at base he would probably have died.

At best his location, health, and timing may have raised his survival from the default rate of around 2% to around 10-50%, but that's still not great odds.

> cardiac arrest..kills 98 percent of its victims.. most of the rest permanently impaired. .... two weeks later... back on the tennis court.

You really buy into this?

It's 6%-18% depending where! You can chose where you live :) and bloomberg .... 6% is the lower end not relevant to the story.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/9687421/Cardiac-...

Sudden cardiac arrest is a much more dangerous type of heart attack. There is none of the pain in extremity early warning and it has very low survival odds. Remember you normally get some blood flow in a heart attack but this is normal to zero in seconds.

Much like how blood clots are dangerous but getting a blood clot in your lungs, brain, or heart are far worse than average.

PS: You could be sitting and talking to your Doctor and it would still have good odds of killing you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com