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Comment by TuringTest | Hacker News Reader

For a more rational analysis on the correlation between personal traits and success in a meritocracy, the "Talent vs Luck" model provides some eye-opening results.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/this-study-shows-talent-i...

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The thing I dislike most about attributing success to mostly luck is that luck is almost always defined as "good luck", but there is bad luck too. Often talented, hard working people are better at maximizing the effects of good luck and minimizing the effects of bad luck. So it is not luck (good or bad), it is not talent, it is not hard work, it is all of the above.

The model in the paper accounts for that, having both "good luck" events that double the guy's income on a successful "talent" check, and "bad luck" events that unconditionally halve income.

The different runs show that luck weights a lot more than talent in the final outcome, thought there are strategies that alleviate this problem.

I think, there is another factor - endurance. Luck does not come instantly, one needs to survive few lows before reaching high.

Good observation. The toy model in the paper has some obvious limits, for example it also doesn't account for accumulated capital allowing to "create your own luck" nor exploit successful events more easily.

However, neither accounting for endurance nor wealth changes the fact that luck is a main determinant of final success. Those with early luck will not need endurance to survive, and those with the longer overall run of lucky events will come on top of those with fewer lucky events.

As this is true random, I don't think endurance or even number of tries would make any difference. It's like saying continuously trying the same number at the lottery would finally give you the jackpot. That is not mathematically true, unless you try an infinite number of times.

Second lottery ticket doubles your win chance. Very true mathematically, just the probability is terribly small in general.

While I am working on my (hardware) idea, I see, that this is a marathon, not sprint. And with amount of development job done potential clients or partners take me more seriously I reach every milestone. So increasing win chance is also possible.

Sure, but is continuing on the same thing a second lottery ticket? Or is it a new lottery althogether?

I would say one idea is the same lottery, just different round. Of course, the things change a bit after every client interview or after each technical failure (parts not available anymore). But if I continue this year, in autumn luck might be very close. Something like buying 1/10 of all tickets. I bought first ticket in 2018, then wasted a year in between with hopeless e-commerce project.

In a meritocratic competition like the one in the experiment, each miss puts you behind in comparison with those that got lucky.

And if a success provides exponencial growth, any failure to win the lottery places you far behind the luckiest winners very fast.

That’s why I am trying to ignore as much as I can the fact, that don’t getting lucky ticket immediately makes me a loser. Because many of these lucky tickets aren’t in the reality that fair. A guy’s dad know another guy and voila, it’s funded! Or mom just buys one a property in really expensive city while you balance full time job and development in the evening to start your own something. Best success stories I know were not fair as an ideal lottery should be.

Or, you could try supporting the policies described in the article that increase the probability of talented people reaching their full potential.

I'm not sure why you'd have a 1/10 of the tickets. A lottery is any random event that can happen to you or the company. Not the whole startup. What we are saying here (and Turing also explained in the other comment) is that a series of random events can give you a huge benefit, leaving competition far behind. You make the lottery spin at each of these events. Random lotteries are independent in their probabilities. So you cannot artificially increase your probability to win.

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