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Comment by Podgajski | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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