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Comment by existencebox | Hacker News Reader

I'm honestly not sure the cynicism is a bad thing.

I'd say the HN community has a higher than average grasp of statistics (the same could probably be said about many other entrepreneur communities) As such, when we see something which all broad statistics tell us is "one in a million" occams razor directs you to assume that it is in fact one in a million.

That "let's be extremely doubtful given a high bayesian prior suggesting that the doubt is legitimate" occurs strikes me as a wonderfully pragmatic viewpoint. If someone really wants to convince me there's some "trick" to being that one in a million they have to go against all of the evidence I've been presented thus far to say that simply doesn't happen. (evidence coupled with the fact that these sorts of news sources have a history and incentive aligned with the "how to strike it rich" style articles.)

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> I'd say the HN community has a higher than average grasp of statistics

No, just no. From my experience as an engineer that's transitioned into finance, I assure you that engineers and developers have the WORST pre-conceptions about statistics as applied to investing. All of those have to be unlearned fast at the start of a finance career. Took me years to fully adjust.

Fascinating - I'd have thought the opposite. Any examples?

Would you please share the examples as this would be useful to the engineers in HN.

I like the idea of a "luck surface area" which suggests that the more you put yourself out there the more likely you are to be that one in a million.

If you Google it you'll probably get a better explanation than I gave.

I get what you're saying, and it seems totally fair. If all of the possible paths any human can take are the space of all outcomes, and there is some extremely sparse set of volumes within that space that are "one in a million successes", your likelihood of finding that success will be directly related to the amount of coverage you can explore.

I don't mean to suggest there isn't an aspect of hard work here. Like many other side posters say, diligence is certainly a component to "making your own luck" which can be well expressed within the concept of a "luck volume". (Even things like opportunity and family connections fit in nicely by expanding the set of vectors you can follow)

You might like the idea, but there are millions of people who work hard, who are smart and don't get anywhere.

Of course, because they're unlucky. Most of them realize that. The mentally healthy accept it, and then ignore it.

I think that the disconnect in this thread is between people who make their decisions based on what is true and those who make it based on what is useful. The former see the factual reality - that a lot of success comes down to luck - and then conclude "And therefore it doesn't matter what I do..." The latter see the factual reality - that a lot of success comes down to luck - and then conclude "But I can't control my luck, however I can control my luck surface area, and my preparedness, and my judgment". They shrink their world down to the parts that they do have control over and don't let the stuff that's out of their control worry them too much; after all, it's not like they're going to get a better outcome by thinking about that.

The wiser of the latter group always remember that there is still a lot of luck in any success or failure that they have, but there's a lot of psychological pressure to either believe luck doesn't exist or to let it rule your life.

No doubt. But if I solely punch the clock then what is going to be the impetus for my success? If I create and network then I have to believe my chances for success are at least a little bit better. Are you suggesting otherwise?

Or as the phrase goes, it takes ten years of hard work to be an overnight success.

The problem with (and complaint about) the top comment isn't cynicism, it's emptiness. It really just says "there is survivorship bias" with nothing specific about the shared article. It's not interesting.

It's definitely interesting if lots of top 'content' is actually just lottery winner stories, in which case I might consider spending some of my HN time reading the local casino's profile on their recent slot winners.

I'd argue that stories about lotto winners are more honest than stories about successful VCs and entrepreneurs, as the writers usually are up front about the odds of winning the lotto. It's often one of the major facts cited in the article: Joe Smith's lottery win was 1-to-2 million! When writing about lotto winners, nobody pretends that the winners had a system. Even if the winner says something like "I always play my birthday numbers LOL" it's never presented as causing positive EV. While non-luck-based factors may play a role in investment success, they are all that tends to be written about.

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