Luck and the entrepreneur, part 1: The four kinds of luck | Hacker News Reader

Luck and the entrepreneur, part 1: The four kinds of luck

blog.pmarca.com

43 pointseposts13 comments

Many intangible things are as important as they are difficult to discuss. An invisible ingredient in success. "You make your own luck".

PG in "Hardest Lessons" described some of it here:

"If you lack commitment, you'll just find that for some mysterious reason good things happen to your competitors but not to you. If you lack commitment, it will seem to you that you're unlucky."

I've had a hell of a time trying to convey this kind of stuff to other people. I've even doubted whether it's possible to convince someone who doesn't "get it". I love Andreesen's post myself, but I fear it's still to abstract to forward to the people I would like to convince.

Habit is more important in a successful endeavor than "luck."

I like pmarca. Luck is not why he is who he is. Here I thought I had about luck few days ago: http://www.entrepreneur2be.com/2007/07/20/what-luck-really-i...

I always appreciate it when folks admit that their success is not completely due to their personal greatness. Humility's one of those signs of 'good people' I really believe in.

Another consideration is to creatively use Astrology -- language of stars and psyche to explain the mysteries of one's own life as opposed to luck. Jung describe this as the first form of psychology. (Visionary Activist Astrology by Caroline Casey http://www.amazon.com)

Na, I prefer good ole fashion palm reading with a mix of the ouiji board.

I agree, pop astrology is NOT what I was suggesting, it's the metaphysical science I open myself up to explore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology

sorry didnt meant to down vote your comment

Gotta love it all. ;-D

I'd be glad to learn more about it if it works, but I'm currently under the impression that it doesn't actually work. Could you please provide some scientific evidence that it works?

http://yudkowsky.net/bayes/bayes.html

http://yudkowsky.net/bayes/technical.html

wish i could.. still exploring all possibilities

Downmod all you want, but donna is on to something-- consider it a "random stirring of the pot" or a "making oneself more receptive to new ideas/success" as outlined in TFA.

Even though I think that astrology is scientifically a blatantly idiotic field of study, I think that it's effect on human psychology can't be ignored.

Same for religion (I mean whatever religion you're not, of course). There's something about religion that convinces Joe Average to run over that hill armed with rifle and a prayer.

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