Are You Successful? If So, You've Already Won the Lottery

You have a point, but I think it is a useful distinction when it comes to work. Talent and skill (while affected by things out of an individual's control) set the baseline of what you are able to accomplish/your potential. Luck plays a bigger role in whether or not you get the opportunity to use and/or grow those skills/talents.

Think about manufacturing a 2.6GHz processor. Many of them come out of the line unable to reach 2.6GHz, some come out to 2.6, and some can even achieve greater speeds. That is your talent/skill (which is predisposed on your luck during the manufacturing process). The processor has no control where it ends up (though the QC process will have some effect), it could end up in a scientific computing cluster where it continually works on complicated problems. Or it could end up in a soccer mom's PC where it is used for email and light web browsing.

This is an imperfect analogy as a processor is not a biological medium so they degrade, whereas a biological medium would more likely improve/strengthen when stressed. So while there is luck in creating talent/skill/potential, there is still a need for distinction between luck and the talent you are born with.

How is it "wrong, wrong, wrong"? The article gave many examples, several of them from actual studies and statistics.

You merely labelled the whole thing as "excuses" in an argument-free comment.

>At some point we'll exhaust all excuses for success in life other than grit, dedication, and plain old hard work. Chance is just another one down the line.

I can fathom how some people really believe they did more "grit, dedication and plain old hard work" than hundreds of millions of other working-to-the-bone poor that never get nowhere, from poor African Americans to third world sweatshop workers...

Inevitable link:

http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate

I can only excuse this mentality in "rags to riches" people, because, even though they are clearly outliers, their life's story and survivorship bias makes them to overlook the whole issue, and turn it into: "hey, If I've made it out from poverty into millionaire, everyone can, it just takes hard work", while forgetting the non-work-dependent chances they got that others didn't.

But they also forget the more important part: that what's important is not whether "everyone can do it" (period) but whether "everyone can do it with EQUAL effort".

If a poor black person has to put 3x the effort to make it compared to a white guy who just had it easy because of rich parents, college funds, encouragement, etc -- then sure, it's not IMPOSSIBLE to do it. But it's hardly FAIR (level starting point), and it's far harder and thus rarer (plus, if it takes 3x the effort it might not even mean we'll have only 3 times less poor black successful persons as percentage. It might even get it to 1/10 or 1/20, because the breaking point that makes you fail or give up might not scale linearly with effort).