"Trust your luck, Taran Wanderer. But don't forget to put out your nets!" ― Llonio (Lloyd Alexander)

Luck is when ability and preparedness meet an opportunity.

The point is you cannot outsmart lucky idiots.

Nope. Luck does not imply causality. Everyone can be an idiot (including you) and you can still be lucky. Or there can be a mixture of idiots and geniuses and you can still be lucky.

I think people like Cuban and Branson are good examples of those who "make their own luck", where they're running the business version of Monte Carlo simulation until something sticks. They definitely have the right mindset and skillset to do things like run a business successfully, but obviously the probability of success increases with the number of attempts.

Looking at examples of successful people is classic survivorship bias. Smart people who lucked out on their businesses do not get to write biographies.

EDIT: spelling

Yeah, but the music industry also has an issue that a surprising number of non-musical things are considered talent. "Production value" as was said in Tape Heads.

Yes you can. You just had to pop out of the right vagina.

Are you born in the west, male and white? If you are you're lucky. And those traits will allow you, even against your best efforts to fall upwards over your lifetime.

Also, you have a couch, and get to sit on it, that's a lucky thing to do.

To be lazy is an indulgence that not all unlucky people have.

Particularly when your family prepared for you

Luck by definition is an independent variable.

Edit: I don't know who downvoted me, but this is the definition of luck according to Google: "success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions"