I think people dislike talking about luck's role in our successes (but not failures) because it hints at a deterministic world view where our free will is less important than we'd like to believe.
For example, going to Princeton gives you a much bigger chance to be seated next to an important Lehman person, and having the right parents gives you a much higher chance to go to Princeton. Some people have such high "n" they are bound to end up "lucky".
Like you, I believe that I've had some say in getting to where I am today, but it's hard to tell how much of that is reality and how much is self-aggrandizement.
Also, most often than not, merely beating inertia and getting to do things, no matter how involved or not they are, can have a tremendous impact on one's success. Simple things really work. You just have to do stuff. Other times you just have to ask. You'd be surprised how often you get exactly what you ask for without being manipulative. Rejection Therapy [1] is a true eye opener, especially when the rejection never comes. The way I see it, it's the most profound realization that at that point luck was just made out of thin air.
And while some things definitely cannot change, like the country one was born in and the socioeconomic status of their parents, there are many, many others that can be hacked.
[0] http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surf...
This is not a lesson in self-help, but one about one's place in society.
In other words, we view the odds of an unlikely event as lucky (the chance you'll sit next to someone important) but the odds of a likely (sitting next to someone who can't get you a job) event as the norm.
We see a lot of moralizing about this, particularly in the USA where individualism and the self-made-man is practically a national religion, more pervasive and deeper-rooted than even Christianity.
We see this every day on television - politicians foaming at the mouth about lazy good-for-nothings who failed to provide for themselves and now reach their hand out to their fellow taxpayers. We see it every time the word "Entitlement" appears in yet another headline.
We see it every time when we treat the poor as people who are lazier, dumber, or just plain lesser.
If we are going to moralize about the merits of achievement, and if we're going to continue throwing people under the bus for being unsuccessful, we should come to grips with the randomness factor.
My point isn't that random isn't a big deal, or that people don't ever overestimate themselves, but that people shouldn't look at it like that anyways, it keeps you in control of your own life.
In other words you're more likely to hear, "I worked very hard" than "I worked very hard and was very lucky."
There are notable exceptions. Warren Buffet has openly talked about the role of luck in his success.
One other factor is that I think science encourages a certain humility and honesty. When you're trying novel things and checking against real data, you inevitably get your ass handed to you from time to time. I think that makes it harder to treat "because I am awesome" as a 100% reliable explanation.
A refinement of the stochastic model considers that geniuses exist but they are able to see and synthesize more than others not that they can see what others can't. They benefit from the cultural backdrop and do not innovate as islands. Their discoveries would eventually be replicated by a large number of individuals making blind turns with individual portions. In sum, not all ideas that are discoverable within a cultural zeitgeist are found, it is essentially random who discovers what but there are a few lucky individuals that tend to be over-represented [2].
How lucky? In numerous ways. In addition to having the right set of genes, epigenetic developments and beneficial stochastic fluctuations in neural development they also need the right set of skills and experiences, and then to not just pick a solvable problem but to pick one solvable by their particular mindset. Solving problems is not a deterministic process but more a sampling of a large combinatorial construction of possibilities acquired only through expertise. So there is an element of chance in fixing the right permutation of ideas. So run history twice and Einstein might not have found General Relativity. In getting recognized luck also plays a role in setting up a Matthew Effect. The only part in which luck is only partial is in being enthusiastic on a subject, the time and effort spent to gain expertise on it (base level of intelligence luck determined, 1 sigma sufficient) and the obsession to be able to think all the time on a subject.
If you are interested in this sort of thing I strongly suggest anything by Simonton (as an aside one of his papers argues that it is not what age you start that matters but how many years into your career that determines the drop off, so late starters get the same burst and drop just shifted in time).
[1] http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v4p660y1979-80....
[2] A small group of highly productive individuals is most likely to participate in multiples, including independent rediscoveries. These same persons are also unusually intimate with the "technoscientific" zeitgeist and perhaps equally gifted with an inordinate amount of good luck.
Not free: http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/psycarticles-reg/multiple-discove...
More seriously. Lots of people work very 'hard' for (what we would consider) very little compensation. Its more important to work smarter than 'harder' or with more 'effort'. (eg. Sometimes you also need to acknowledge when your efforts are leading nowhere and drop something - this might not be considered 'working hard' - though perhaps it should be)
Luck, working smarter, working harder.
Luck is a major factor for everyone, but you can't control it. You can certainly influence working smarter, but it is often a matter of juding in hindsight what was smart rather than determining it before hand. Working harder is much more under our control than the others.
It is important to acknowledge luck. This helps use be humble in our successes, not be too devestated in our failuers, and be compassionate to those less fortunate. It is also just plain true.
It is also important to try to work smart - creating a startup, writing a novel, etc at least has a chance of creating huge rewards and even changing the world...the odds of changing the world from inside the sweatshop you mention are close to nil.
But it is how hard we work that we can mostly control, and there is some truth to Goldwyn's quote...it just isn't all of the truth.
It definitely is, but it only takes you there. You have carry it from there on.
Most of rich kids feel its their 'right' to be rich, regardless of whether they 'deserve' it or not. I have a lot of friends who inherited crazy fortune from their parents. According to them poor people getting rich due to whatever reason is 'unfair' to them.
Most rich kids just like the status quo to remain unchanged. Their idea of getting rich, is they staying where they are, without much effort and others remaining poor.
From a poor guy's perspective he has to 'rise' no matter how. From a rich guy's perspective he is supposed to stay where he is no matter how. Most rich people think, the poor are poor because they don't deserve to be rich. And they are rich because of a special gift, like a unique blessing which only they are supposed to have as it was given to them at birth.
This is not just restricted to money. This sort of a thing also happens in many other things like for example born-with talents Vs Gathered skills. Naturally talented people don't like others gaining their skill through practice. Because they feel their born-with skill was a special gift they have, some kind of a unique blessing. And you are supposed to get only through that special gift.
Lets say you are a kid with the costliest video game in the neighborhood. You got it because your rich Uncle Joe gave it to you. You pride around telling you are the only guy who has it. You also know nobody else can have it because no one near has a rich uncle Joe. An year later you find another guy having the same video game, which he bought after selling lemonade on the footpath.
Now not only does he have the video game, but he has it without the rich uncle joe. In other words your rich Uncle joe isn't a special distinction you have anymore.
And you obviously don't have to be in a sweatshop to work hard. You can work hard as a Janitor, driver, programmer, stock trader, president or whatever.
To be 'lucky' through hard work you've got to be clever enough to pick up the area where you want to work hard.If by any means you can't start where you would have liked, you need to keep moving gradually to the place you would like to go.
My advice: If your hard work doesn't look rewarding in both the long and short term. Iterate quickly, take a quick feedback and play a different game. But whatever game you play work hard while playing it.
EDIT: To all those people who are downvoting. Hard work in the wrong direction doesn't give the results you expect. Is this such a difficult and surprising thing to understand?
"The luckier I got, the luckier I get"In the end, they did not get the big record deal, the band fell apart, and they all went on to different things. I've had a hindsight talk with the leader of the band and he's basically said, we thought all our hard work touring would pay off, but we probably should have been working on other things (like marketing and woo-ing labels, I presume).
Kind of OT, but the big change in my career came when I realized that promotions are not rewards for "hard work", moving up comes from demonstrating you'll be more effective at the new job. As a worker, you think that you get promoted as a reward for what you've done, but as a manager, you promote because of what the worker can do in the future.
Ignoring the role luck's roles leads to lot's of stupid decisions like this. 99.9% of the time going 90 on an interstate is fine, that does not mean it's a wise decision.
I think though people don't talk about role of luck also because it's useless to talk about it - you can't say: "my lesson for you, my son, is - always be lucky". People try to find something that they can actually do - even though many of what they end up doing is futile.
The speedy outfielder who just misses catching the ball on a flat out run gets charged with one, the hung-over slugger who waddles toward the gap after a late start doesn't.
However, if you're really into Wall Street trading, flip the order.