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Comment by Podgajski | Hacker News Reader

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There is that old lottery promo "you can't win if you don't play". There is this quote: "You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don't take. Even though there is only a 1-5% probably of scoring". There is the saying 9 times down 10 times up.

Getting lucky is a function of trying, as well. Saying you have to get "lucky" isn't about luck, it's about a mentality of keep at it.

Playing the lottery versus not playing the lottery doesn’t change your luck, it changes your odds.

If two people play the lottery the same amount of times and one person wins way more than the other, You would say one person was luckier than the other.

The meaning of the word lucky has shifted over time as we stopped believing that certain people have things go their way more often than average because fate, the gods, or whatever favors them.

I had stopped believing in fate, too—until I learned that (popular astrology app) Co-Star makes heavy use of Haskell[1]. So since they got my horoscope to compile, it’s probably correct.

[1]: https://www.costarastrology.com/why-haskell

Success is always based on luck. With hard work you can increase your odds to win, but anyway it is about the luck.

Anyone who is successful by your standards was lucky enough to born free in a good wealthy society. They could born and live as slaves in Africa and work for food and shelter without any chances to be successful.

That’s a losing attitude. To make the most of life, you’ve got to take charge of it, luck or no.

Who says I’m not taking charge of life? I just know the role that luck has to play in life as well. That way when I’m not lucky I don’t keep all that blame on myself or when other people are unlucky I don’t blame them for their failures. Because who the hell knows?

My apologies - not calling you a loser.

Just saying that blaming one’s own or other people’s success on luck will always lead to suboptimal outcomes for the blamer. Good and bad events will happen one way or another, and it’s up to each one of us to make the most of it.

Therefore, if you think luck is the main determinant of outcomes, you’ll try much less hard.

He went from calling something success to “making the most of it”.

You’re assuming I’m a nihilist and I’m not. I’m going to die, but I don’t kill myself.

In my opinion, if we looked at peoples success and failure as all based on luck, we would be much kinder to each other.

That would be a horrible society.

High achievers getting zero credit. Moping losers blaming their failures on “bad luck”. Zero reason to strive for greatness because you’ll get sympathy if you fail and jealousy if you succeed.

No thanks.

This tells me a lot about you as a person.

Let me tell you how I would see it. High achievers, knowing that they’re successful based on lock would be more helpful to people who didn’t have good luck. This would turn out to be a more stable and even society.

I guess you like the separation of wealth we’re experiencing right now?

Sadly, without a strong impetus to strive upward, there won’t be any high achievers to mooch off of or blame when things go wrong.

Everyone gets a steady stream of good luck and bad luck. Consistently sailing upstream towards success takes a lot of grit and determination, something completely lacking in the minds of those who think they’re at the mercy of their circumstances.

Well, I hope one day if you’re down on your luck, someone lend you a hand. I know I would.

I’ve been lucky lots of times in life.

I’ve been helped by many, deserved and undeserved.

But to remove the role of agency from success is an overreaction.

The extreme right says life is a perfec meritocracy. The extreme left says it’s all down to luck and power dynamics. As usual, they are both wrong and it’s a healthy mix of both.

But since agency is the only thing you control, it’s best to focus on that.

I’m not removing the role of agency from success, as long as luck is on your side.

I wonder what someone like Viktor Frankl would think of all this.

On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles - whatever one may choose to call them - we know: the best of us did not return.

Viktor E. Frankl

He would say he was lucky.

I'm frequently astonished by the sheer force of some people's desire to be unhappy.

Viktor Frankl is an amazing example of someone taking an absolutely shit situation and applying some agency to it to make it better. My entire point is even he had good and bad luck, and chose not to focus on that, but on his zone of control, his agency.

If it is in fact your contention that Viktor Frankl - Viktor Frankl - was lucky, then there's really no point in any further discussion.

I’m not calling him lucky, he called himself lucky. I literally just showed you the quote where he said he was lucky.

I’m not demeaning his agency everything is written but if he wasn’t lucky, we wouldn’t be able to read anything he wrote about his experience.

Great! You've circled your way around to agreeing with me.

A man in the most unlucky circumstances looked for the ways in which he was indeed lucky, and then went on to turn that into a good outcome.

Pure agency. Luck had nothing to do with it.

Louis Pasteur would disagree: "Chance favours the prepared mind"

Are you sure you want to be quoting Louis Pasteur on this topic? For my recollection, he seem to have created a lot of his own luck out of thin air.

Luck happens to those who let it.

Random opportunity comes along, you happen to be in a position to take advantage of it, and you happen to see it as it arrives.

What’s with all the woo hoo here on HN? The very definition of the word luck goes against your “frame it on the wall” feely good saying.

“success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.”

but I guess you’re also saying that people who get cancer are just letting it happen? Maybe they should’ve investigated the edges. You see there are two types of luck, good luck and bad luck. How do you know if by increasing your good luck in one area you’re not increasing your bad luck in another?

In these comments your agency is entirely aimed at negativity. In order to justify this you reframe it as realism.

It's kind of like walking outside with your attention constantly focused on the fact that you might step on dog shit.

If you do this, your agency is pulled away from appreciating a beautiful flower, or interchanging smiles with a pretty person, or seeing a hundred dollar bill off to the side.

The fact that it is true that you can step on dog shit doesn't make it more true than the fact that most of the time you don't step on dog shit, and that you have the agency to walk and go around as if you weren't going to step on dog shit today.

Your interpretation of my comments is negative. I’m not saying you can’t change your opportunity in life, I’m saying that if luck has anything to do with your success or failure, then it’s all based on luck, and nothing to do with what opportunities you create.

It may will be that I do everything wrong in life and limit my opportunities, and still win the lottery because I tripped and fell on my face and lo and behold there was a winning lottery ticket that someone misplaced.

What I am saying over and over again is increasing your odds of success. Does not change your luck. Just like you cannot change the fact if a coin lands on heads or tails. You have zero agency in that outcome.

> I’m saying that if luck has anything to do with your success or failure, then it’s all based on luck, and nothing to do with what opportunities you create.

Your statement excessively (because it’s non-predictively useless) reductionist.

Yep, it’s absolute luck that that particular sperm and ovum happened to combine, that the pregnancy successfully proceeded, that you were born in a country not at war (I’m guessing), that that car didn’t run off the road and squash you when you were eight, etc. But acknowledging all that doesn’t provide any guidance.

My “woo woo” statement was literally the case: yes some incredible opportunity could sweep by and be missed because you happened to be looking the other way. And that will definitely happen — tant pis. But if you are willing to consider lucky opportunities when you are looking the other way your odds will improve.

Well I default to the views of Cate Hall, who wrote the article, and she agrees that it’s all about luck and little about agency.

https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/things-you-learn-dating-c...

Cate views her own life through a frame of responsibility: she takes responsibility for what happens to her. At the same time, she is genuinely not proud, and genuinely doesn’t think she’s better than anyone else. She credits luck for her good fortune and unusual attributes more than anything else, and is compassionate and curious toward everyone we meet. This is, I think, what sticks with me most.

The way I frame luck in my mind is that there will always be elements of your success which lie outside of your control. The ability to which you can capitalize on opportunities which come from outside of your of control is contingent on factors of your life which exist within the boundaries of your control.

You may have been lucky because a recruiter has reached out to you for a role which you would fit well in, but that's because you've made a conscious effort in dedicating time your craft and to advertising your capabilities.

Luck (or the lack of) is nearly never the sole factor in your successes or your failures.

It might also be that you find that lottery ticket and don't play it, because you believe you have no agency to do anything with the money anyway.

> Just like you cannot change the fact if a coin lands on heads or tails.

You can, just throw the coin again until it lands the way you want.

> You can, just throw the coin again until it lands the way you want.

Oh, I didn’t realize life is that simple. I can just keep doing things until they turn out the way I want.

There's a glimpse there, beneath the deprecating sarcasm, of beginning to understand the point of the article.

I’m saying you don’t even understand what Cate is talking about because even Cate agrees with me:

https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/things-you-learn-dating-c...

“ Cate views her own life through a frame of responsibility: she takes responsibility for what happens to her. At the same time, she is genuinely not proud, and genuinely doesn’t think she’s better than anyone else. She credits luck for her good fortune and unusual attributes more than anything else, and is compassionate and curious toward everyone we meet. This is, I think, what sticks with me most.”

Cate highlights positive aspects. Again, your posts focus every time on negativity. This is the point that I'm trying to get across. You talked about cancer, about blame and failure, "doing everything wrong in life and still winning the lottery" (winning the lottery isn't inherently positive, because it's what you do with it that matters).

It is not luck that shifts your mind to highlight these negative aspects, that is where agency takes place. Take care.

It is a numbers game. And by increasing the number of chances to "play", you increase the probability of scoring (i.e. "increase your luck surface area").

> How do you know if by increasing your good luck in one area you’re not increasing your bad luck in another?

I think you do know. Eat healthy and move => most likely will increase the probability of be able to be more active at an older age. Build and launch projects => increase the probability of building a profitable business (but if doing that makes you burnout - sure, you could say you increased your "bad luck" from a health perspective)

Respectfully, I find your definition of luck more "woo woo" than everyone else's.

I might be misunderstanding your point, but other people are treating luck as mere chance or odds, while you seem to me to be treating it as something binary that sounds a bit like "destiny" or "predeterminism".

Yes, at any point in time, you can be lucky or unlucky.

By changing the odds of an outcome, you’re not changing your luck, you’re changing the odds. Even having 99.999% certainty you can still be unlucky and land in that percent. Probability is not deterministic. And what determines the outcome? Luck.

> What’s with all the woo hoo here on HN?

It’s mostly pseudo-intellectual posturing. Code monkeys desperately striving for some perceived superiority.

"Apparently" doesn't mean "actually".

so what? That doesn’t change what I’m saying.

So that definition you keep posting doesn't say what you're saying it says. That which is apparently not caused by one's actions might, in fact, be largely caused by one's actions. Yes, there are things that are not in your ability to control and perhaps you could call that "true luck", but even your given definition admits labeling things that can be affected by personal actions as luck.

> The very definition of the word luck

Maybe you can define it for us.

Being in position to take advantage of opportunities is the luckiest thing that can happen to someone.

Lucky for us, it's turtles all the way down.

You can directly control the amount of luck you receive:

“Your Luck Surface Area, is directly proportional to the degree to which you do something you're passionate about combined with the total number of people to whom this is effectively communicated.”

How to increase your luck surface area (2010) — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25968751

The very definition of the word luck goes against what you’re saying.

“success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.”

This is a saying that sounds good, but makes no sense. For example, how do you change your luck of getting a coin to flip 90% of the time on tails?

So you would say that one was lucky if they flipped a coin 10 times and nine times out of 10 It landed on tails when they needed it to land on tails. But you know what? If they needed it to land on heads those nine out of 10 times they would be unlucky.

What you all are talking about is not luck, it’s opportunity. You can increase your opportunity, but your luck never changes.

You can’t control the outcome of the coin flip, but you can control how many times you flip the coin.

Increasing the surface area of luck is about fostering opportunities to flip a coin

Just simple stuff like showing up to work every day. Going to social events. Networking. Taking classes. These will increase the opportunities you have to flip the coin.

Thinking there’s a fixed number of flips in life is false and really a poor way of thinking.

> You can’t control the outcome of the coin flip,

That’s my point. That’s my only point. The outcome is still always every time going to depend on luck. Because you can flip that coin 100 times and it could land on heads every time when you wanted tails. Is it unlikely? Yes, is it impossible? No.

That’s why you flip 200 times instead of 100.

Focus on what you can control. People who flip more times are more likely to have heads. So be that person.

You’re trying to make opportunity the same thing as luck. Of course I can increase my opportunity but I can’t change the outcome ever.

It’s obvious to focus on the things you can control, which is why I don’t focus on luck. And that’s also why I have sympathy for people who fail.

The confusion, I think, is that many people see opportunity as luck, especially so when that opportunity was grasped by someone else.

Also even if luck is a stable quantity, it's helped by attempts at success.

No, you’re wrong, luck isn’t helped by anything. It’s just luck. You can change all the opportunities you want but if you have bad luck you have bad luck if you have good luck you have good luck.

Other words, the odds don’t care about your luck.

You keep missing it.

If I go to a job interview and at the end of it, the person says “ok, I’m gonna flip this coin — guess the outcome and you get the job”. I guess — I miss.

Then they say “want to guess again?”

Repeat until I get the job.

Probability has an effect on outcomes, but only insofar as the chances you’re willing to take. Luck is just an observation of a single outcome.

I don’t even know what’s going on here anymore.

You’re artificially predicting a positive outcome. You said “repeat until I get the job“. But you could be very unlucky person and keep sitting there flipping and flipping the coin and never guessing right. I’m not saying to not keep trying. I’m saying your certainty of positive outcome is false.

It seems like you’re just being obstinate. At some point in the game, you’re going to be so unlucky that it’s improbable you don’t succeed. If I’m making an absurd claim, you’re doing exactly the same thing.

You’re not making an absurd claim at all and I agree with it. But you’re still using the same term which denotes the need for luck, that term is improbable. By saying it’s improbable you’re not saying it’s a certainty, so therefore luck is still a factor in your success.

> You can increase your opportunity, but your luck never changes.

Exactly. Congrats, you have realized what the point of the article is.

No, I didn’t miss the point of the article, I’m expressing the fact that she totally negates luck in anyone’s life circumstances, that it is all about agency. After all, you have to have some amount of luck to have agency in the first place.

If luck is a stable quantity for a given individual and it's range is ]-1,1[ you are right.

But if luck is a quantity that fluctuate and is positively biased, (a reasonable a priori seeing that most people succeed at something) or that it's range is ]0,1[ , you are wrong and willful exposure to opportunities increase your total amount of wins.

Why are you saying that luck is positively based question. And what’s your definition of success.? I mean I put my coffee cup down on a table, do I count that as success?

You made your coffee and it doesn't taste bad. Congratulations you succeed at making good coffee!

Luckily, I was born in the 21st-century.

Ok never mind you did entirely miss the point of the article. Shame.

I think Podgajski is trying to make the following argument:

Assume a standard 2-axes scatter plot, with a randomly placed horizontal line that represents chance/luck. The scattered points represent opportunities.

Any opportunity that occurs above the luck line is successful, anything below it is unsuccessful.

Above a given threshold of luck, maximizing opportunities is a good strategy because there's a high likelihood they'll pay off.

But if your luck is too low, then maximizing opportunities will still result in a larger number of successes, but at a much greater cost. A more efficient strategy might be to invest more resources in the successes you actually get.

I'm not picking a side here, just trying to bridge a potential disconnect in the discussion. Podgajski, please correct me if I've misrepresented your position

Kind of but not really. But truly thank you for hearing what I’m saying. What I’m not saying is that people have good or bad luck in general. That you have a predetermined amount of luck.

Maybe this can simplify it even more. You have no agency deciding whether a coin lands on heads or tails. We would say someone is lucky if they said a coin will land on heads more than tails and they were right.

If Someone can explain to me how you can change your agency without physically manipulating the coin then have it. And these random things happen every day in our lives.

And I’m not even saying don’t try for success, I’m just saying, don’t listen to these people who talk about success like it’s something that you can achieve without being on your side.

The truth is you don’t have 100% agency in your life and you never will. It’s impossible. So since you don’t have 100% agency, the rest is up to luck. Good or bad luck whatever it is I’m not being negative here.

Few people are constantly unlucky, like, day after day after day. Most of our lives are stochastic enough that luck and bad luck, on average, balance out. A random walk in both directions.

"Oh, and being rich helps your agency quite a lot." - Yeah, if you can manage your wealth, but if a stupid person somehow gets a lot of money, my bet would be on them losing those in spectacular way within a few years.

> Few people are constantly unlucky,

But quite a few people feel constantly unlucky. And for some this distorts their behaviour in such a way as to make them even unluckier.

>Oh, and being rich helps your agency quite a lot.

I inherited my agency from my father.

Really? Wow how lucky!

Yeah, so no I run the largest Private Wealth Management Agency in the tri-state area.

On average your luck cancels out.

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