Hot take: Success in life is mostly due to luck (2023) | Hacker News Reader

Hot take: Success in life is mostly due to luck (2023)

wallstreetoasis.com

9 pointsmgh28 comments

That is what Bill gates once said. For all the success he had, he also acknowledged that there was a lot of luck involved as there were a lot of other companies and people that had better technology than Microsoft had but they didn't have the luck to be in the right place.

I had said that if it was just down to technical capabilities/potential and no luck involved, we would be running some form of Amiga systems on PowerPC chips running BeOS. I don't really believe that but it just to highlight that there is a lot that happens outside of pure merit.

> However, the Sylvania offer is $1 dollar a month higher than the Ford offer. Chang calls Ford and asks if they’ll match the offer. But the person he speaks to is rude and dismissive, refusing to negotiate at all, and Chang gets so angry that he decides to take the Sylvania offer instead.

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/morris-chang-and-the-...

When I was young, I always thought that success was due to my own efforts, while failure was the result of poor planning or wrong decisions.

But many years later, I realized that all successes and failures are actually determined by genetic factors.

Almost all of our decisions and choices are, in the end, determined by our genes. In other words, genes determine our choices, and our choices determine whether things will be successful or fail.

You are assuming the luck is in our decisions, but most things are outside our control. If you were born 100 years ago, your options would be completely different.

I agree that the circumstances we are born into are largely outside our control.

I may not have expressed my own point clearly: I’m not saying that luck lies in our decisions. I’m saying that our decisions themselves are not entirely under our conscious control. Our genetic makeup influences our dispositions and choices, and we often don’t even understand why we are inclined to choose one thing over another.

So my broader point is that luck is not the result of anything we consciously choose to do, including whether or not we work hard. Whether an outcome turns out to be fortunate or unfortunate is not something we can choose or change through conscious effort.

Maybe I'm being a bit too pessimistic here?

Getting the lucky break is only half of it. Recognizing a change as a lucky break and being able to take advantage of it is also important.

Those who get lucky usually recognize the opportunity. Hence the luck (that others don't get to see the opportunity.)

Without other factors, luck alone is useless but all other factors are not sufficient without luck

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