Are You Downplaying Luck’s Role in Your Life?
nautil.us
nautil.us
For example, I heard about crypto because some guy in WoW wanted to buy my character off of me painlessly. He told me to register on btc-e, then I got a bunch of BTC and that was it. 5 years later I hear about crypto again, remembered those coins, and boom, life changed. All because I was in some virtual world at 3am on a Thursday trying to sell off my WoW character for beer money for the next day.
I'm not rich, I can just pay my rent for a decade and a half before really having to dip into savings.
Mine is the opposite :( I mined about 500 Bitcoin in mid 2010. But I got paranoid about the lack of anonymity, so I sold them, for maybe $0.06 each. So it goes.
But anyway, I would have probably have sold it at the ~$1K peak, and the money would all be gone by now ;)
Two years ago I suffered an extreme bout of depression and hung myself. I'd apparently called 911 beforehand so that someone prepared would find my body. The police got there first and cut me down, but I was not breathing and had aspirated (vomited into my lungs). The ambulance arrived and took me to a nearby hospital where they performed an endotracheal intubation (tube through the mouth, down the esophagus) and hooked me up to a ventilator. I was sedated for 10 days, put on longer-term life support (tracheotomy and PEG feeding tube, etc. It was expected that I would almost certainly have brain damage if I survived. The aspiration had lead to substantial pneumonia, further complicating treatment. When I awoke I was hallucinating from the sedatives and had lost all memory of the week leading up to the suicide attempt. After a few days they were able to take me off the ventilator and just use oxygen, and eventually the tracheotomy tube was removed from my throat. Luckily the opening healed, and I could speak and breath on my own. I was transferred to an inpatient mental health facility and learned to better cope with depression. There was no brain damage. Hanging has a higher rate of completed suicides than shooting. Almost all of the incomplete (survival) hangings result in permanent brain damage. I am ridiculously lucky. My survival is due to the hard work of a large number of people, for which I will always be grateful. But there's still a lot of luck involved.
1. I did not end up as a spontaneous abortion (if you include fertilized eggs that don't implant, 70-75% of conceptions end in a spontaneous abortion.
2. I did not have any severe genetic abnormalities
3. I was born healthy and full term
4. I was born to parents that loved me and took good care of me and did not abuse or neglect me.
5. I was born in a developed country
6. I was born at a time in history with generally low levels of violence
7. I was born in a time in history when they had treatments for common infections and other childhood conditions
8. I was born in a time in history and a place that encouraged individual freedom.
9. I learned English as my first language
10. My parents had enough money to buy me a computer
11. My parents had enough money to buy me programming books
12. My parents believed in children going to college
13. I had good friends that did not get me in trouble.
That being said I think there is a minimum level of effort, intelligence, and resilience required to take advantage of certain lucky opportunities if they present themselves. When I look at how much some of my peers had to endure and overcome to reach those minimums compared to what I had to do, it's easy to see how lucky I've been.
And being an asian, male, and good at math isn't?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...
Lucky you for having been born with willpower and smarts, then.
I am insanely lucky for my strait, white male privilege. But I'm lucky for every disadvantage that taught me empathy and patience with those not so lucky. It taught me that manifest destiny may be present in our lives, but it's value is to help connect and help those whose life didn't go the same path. I think gratitude is a truly differentiating factor when interacting with others.
My merit means nothing if it only exists to serve me. Meaning is found by leveraging those strengths for others :)
Ann's whether a new circle will be beneficial is not obvious.
Those three bits of luck make up a huge part of where I am today.
I think the old adage that luck is when preparedness meets opportunity is much closer to being the truth. Look at the example they give with Bryan Cranston. That's an opportunity that happened to open up for him through a series of events outside of his control. But he wouldn't have been offered that part if he wasn't of a certain caliber in the first place. Successful people generally work hard and usually that pays off in the long term for them by being able to seize opportunities when they arise. No one is going to run after you to say "hey I have this great thing that you need to be involved in" if you are mediocre.
I can smell the privilege and white guilt ideology that underpins articles like this. I've seen it before in much lengthier pieces. This one is no different.
How many actors were of that quality and didn't get a series of events leading to that opportunity? Opportunities arising are luck, no one is saying hard work isn't necessary to take advantage of the opportunities.
>I can smell the privilege and white guilt ideology that underpins articles like this. I've seen it before in much lengthier pieces. This one is no different.
This one is different as it does not take the further step of showing how rich white men tend to get far more opportunities than other groups. If you start from the question "what makes people successful," you will see luck playing a role before you look to see which people are luckier. Saying that a "white guilt ideology" drives this is looking at it backwards.
What made him make those choices?
I.e., if you are lucky enough to be able to work on something that earns you lots of money, you may still end up having to spend energy/effort/time on something to earn that money. Even if the situation is lucky, there's effort being expended, and in a relative sense, the amount of luck is irrelevant to the amount of effort.
I.e., "you're lucky to be able to be a software engineer" != "you did no work and got everything for free".
On the other hand, bad luck can hit out of nowhere in the form of random medical expenses.
I think that's generally what's happening. When people work for something and then get it, they generally aren't going to consider that the availability of the situation itself is luck, because they're more focused on the work they put in. When bad things happen to them, or when good things don't happen, the individual often has nothing to do with it, hence it looking like pure luck.
Talent comes down to luck in large part. Sure you have to hone it, but you also have to be born with it and at the right time and place to be able make use of it.
In real life, lottery wins happen, but not often enough to bank on.
Being born a human is huge. Being born in the right country is huge. Being born without genetic problems is huge. Being born to decent parents is huge. These account for the vast majority of a given's person experience pool. Once you get to individual decisions, all the most important things have already been determined. If you're sitting at a place where you feel like you can make all the important decisions yourself, you're already way ahead of the game.
The other problem is that decisions are not fully free and are very strongly influenced by luck, as well. Things like education, information availability, clarity of mind, and, if you want to go there, fluid intelligence, likely influence the quality of your decisions, and that's also luck. Everyone wants to make all the best decisions, otherwise you're saying that lots of people are deliberately trying to reduce the quality of their lives...
It doesn't always smooth out in the long term, except for that in the long run we're all dead.
To a certain extent, I'm still paying for that mistake.
Fortunately, I majored in CS anyway because I had been passionate about it all my life. I only discovered that I was wrong to worry when I graduated in 2009 and was flooded with job offers. I still wonder why those Slashdotters were having so much trouble finding work.
That's exactly the same bias as in this article. "Luck" is only a post-hoc interpretation of stochastic events. Explaining these events by "luck" is like explaining them by "good angels" or "aliens influence": pointless.
That not science, and making any conclusion based on this "research" is a bad idea.
Are you really surprised if people tend to downplay luck, angels or aliens?
Luck is like religions, trying to find meaning in something supernatural...
Fuck luck.
It's not the end my friend.
I did it because of principle. I didn't / don't think it was moral correct for the government to take tax money and hand it to someone blindly. It should be a choice of individuals to contribute, not the right of the masses.
Not exactly luck, but most people look at me like I'm insane. I'm sure there are people out there willing to eliminate luck for a similar reason.
But here's a thing: pretty much anyone of my old non-CS schoolmates/university friends would call that 'luck', but somehow most of them would consider a suggestion to learn Computer Science to be arrogant.
I also know that while I was lucky, I wouldn't have been in a position to be lucky if I hadn't made some good decisions. I didn't just sit back and wait to be lucky.
The way to maximize the role of luck in your life is to behave like luck has no role in your life.
I.e. even though you made some good decisions, you were still lucky to be born/raised in an environment and with a body that enabled you to make those good decisions.
I agree with your last sentence.
And I have serious respect for those who manage to overcome these issues, if luckily.
It's rare enough that I feel the need to express some kind of solidarity / comraderie to someone else dated to look at the world the same way.
So well done (not like you had a choice.)
Keep following that chain back; honestly keep asking yourself how everything isn't a matter of luck.
The first thing a couple family members said to us was, "you're so lucky!" And quite honestly just that infurates me. It's one of the most insulting phrases I think I've ever been told. I know they didn't mean it, and I actually questioned why I was so mad there for a while. Obviously, I didn't let the family member know, but later, my wife told me she was just as mad.
A bit of back story, my family was poor. I had to start working at 14 to pay for my clothes, sports, really anything. Now, I never went hungry and always had a home - so it wasn't the worst. We all pitched in, and it taught me a lot and made me tough. I literally pride myself that I kept a Pentium III computer until I was 19 going (aka 7 years or something).
In high school, I taught myself to program and worked odd jobs to make money. In college, I did the same. I went to junior college, worked 40 hours a week, then transferred to UIUC where I continued working 40 hours a week, and took a full course load. I graduated with a 3.1 GPA - cutting it as close as I could to keep a 3.0+ average, while still supporting myself. In the end, I still have $70k loans (In part, because I helped my now wife who was astranged from her parents, aka no student loans possible).
I've had so much bad luck I can't explain it here. Sure I didn't get cancer, but I have severe allergies, I have a learning disability [1], my wife and I had to fight in court with her crazy parents, so on and so forth.
Now, we are both living in a nice house. She's about to start her PhD in Neuroscience. I have a good job, and we are both starting a company (which makes some pocket change). Luck right?
The point is, I work hard 80 hours a week; my wife the same.
So fuck luck. We've earned it.
Things fall the way they do, we've had a hundred failures for every success, but the success is what counts. I'm not going to apologize for getting lucky, nor am I going to blame luck for failures. All you can do is constantly position yourself for success.
I've been in positions that benefit me, the best example is actually my teachers kicking me out of my "regular" course work in high school. They told me if I wanted to graduate I had to start in the honors courses. Is that luck? I definitely had teachers who cared, but it was what they saw that made it count. We (as in people) make our own luck, through our personalities, our perseverance, our ethic.
That family member who says "your so lucky" implies they don't understand how tough it can be. They either don't have the ethic, or have given up. Sure things can fall in your lap, but even then. Keep positioning to do better, else you increase the potential bad luck.
If for instance, I stopped after my teachers pushed me into honors courses, then I probably wouldn't have had any future luck, right? It's the perseverance and drive that keeps us going.
Articles like this, breed whiners and failures. What's the PG quote, "Startups rarely die in mid keystroke. So keep typing!"[2].
Make your own luck, and don't give up.
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Its true you have worked hard all your life, and overcome many obstacles.
Its also true that many people do all of that, and are still unable to attain the lifestyle you have (whatever it may be).
You have worked hard and overcome many obstacles and been very lucky.
That is pretty cool.
I guess my whole point was, you're job is to position luck to fall in your favor. It's a lot of work, but it's controllable. Making it seem like it's not (to some extent) controllable, is just doing a disservice to everyone.
If you buy into oversimplifications and weak analysis, this article probably appeals to you.
Success, overwhelmingly, looks a lot like hard work. That hard work might present in a lot of different ways, but it is almost always there. And mostly when it's not, the "success" was not truly earned.
And if two people do the hard work with one becoming much more of a success? It's not either or, luck plays a huge factor. Acting is an easy example, how many thousands of people work hard to become an actor? What evidence is there that the successes worked harder?
That is an ABSURDLY racist and sexist thing to say, and it is terrifying to me that it is becoming not only socially acceptable, but socially required, to believe and say such things.
What happens to people of all colors/genders if racism/sexism becomes socially acceptable again?
I know you are smart enough to be able to appreciate this difference, so stop being disingenuous.
Oh wait, no it didn't.
Funny how I can dress in a hoodie, fake a pimp walk, and get an equal amount of discrimination against me.
Or put in some fake teeth and speak with a southern accent.
Or just be myself and experience discrimination when in a poorer neighborhood.
Its mostly about class nowadays, except in isolated bumfuck areas way out of the cities.
Seriously, cut the crap. This is not a particularly difficult concept to grok.
Sure, you can be born poor, and that makes life hard. I've seen it, or more appropriately my dad did.
And while he picked himself up by the bootstraps, thats increasingly hard to do nowadays.
Ask my poor white brothers who have a HARDER time than someone who can get the Racial Bonus of Hiring +1.
Its your stupid obsession with the decades-expired innate disadvantage of color which is getting you mocked, and for good reason.
If I'm incorrect, I'm sorry for misreading you.
LOL can you imagine if the South Park writers made a Broadway play mocking Muhammad?
I can only imagine all of the openminded liberal attendees laughing at all of the mockery like they laugh at the mockery of the Mormon religion.
The current chattering class views on race are fucking sick.
Also, it appears that the overwhelming reaction to the musical is that it's not mockery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Mormon_(musical)#L...
Edit: And about Mormon reaction to the musical. That's just evidence for their coolness :) I mean, can you imagine the reaction to the Islamic equivalent?
In Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy, there's an Islam-like religion. Its prophet is a cannibal ;) I doubt that'll ever make it to HBO.
live longer than a white man.
Less risk to end up childless.
Less risk to end up homeless.
In average have bigger social network for support.
Less risk to end up in jail.
Less risk of being killed by violence.
Less risk to be killed at work.
How are those benefits weighted compared to the disadvantages? How much is a few extra years in life expectancy worth today.
Totally sorry if I was rude. I can help you with what those words above mean if you like.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15086798 and marked it off-topic.