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Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

nautil.us

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Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#171

Post by mongmong »

wazoox wrote: post #166
mindcrime wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being religious or not has nothing to do with believing that effort is the dominant factor affecting success. I'm an atheist who also believes that effort reigns supreme. That doesn't mean that I don't believe that what we call "bad luck" can't come along and derail you, but I firmly believe - based on my own experience - that you "make your own luck" through effort and the decisions you make. I grew in dirt-poor in…

You're an atheist, but you somehow believe that the good guys mostly win in the end. I call this religious, no insult intended, I'm speaking of a turn of spirit, not of actual religion. I think that the fundamental philosophical and political dissent lies there, that the irreconcilable point is that: either you think that the world is totally unjust, may crush you even if you're hard working, nice, polite, and let Po…

I agree with you if youre saying we should acknowledge that bad luck can trump effort, but i don't agree this is a healthy attitude to carry over in your day to day life. Effort is something I can control. Could I fail no matter how much i try? Yes absolutely. Ask Hillary. But you won't know until you try.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#172

Post by mindcrime »

wazoox wrote: post #166
mindcrime wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being religious or not has nothing to do with believing that effort is the dominant factor affecting success. I'm an atheist who also believes that effort reigns supreme. That doesn't mean that I don't believe that what we call "bad luck" can't come along and derail you, but I firmly believe - based on my own experience - that you "make your own luck" through effort and the decisions you make. I grew in dirt-poor in…

You're an atheist, but you somehow believe that the good guys mostly win in the end. I call this religious, no insult intended, I'm speaking of a turn of spirit, not of actual religion. I think that the fundamental philosophical and political dissent lies there, that the irreconcilable point is that: either you think that the world is totally unjust, may crush you even if you're hard working, nice, polite, and let Po…

I see that argument as just sophistry - redefining "luck" to fit a particular worldview and set of circumstances. shrug

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#173

Post by rrrx3 »

colanderman wrote: post #103

The article (and some comments here) seem to conflate luck and what I will call lot . "Luck" I define as random happenstance during one's life. You can manage luck. Doing so is the central theme of many board games. You can increase your luck "surface area" by taking more chances. Entire industries (e.g. insurance) exist to manage luck. Your "lot", on the other hand, I define as what you were born with. How you were…

This definition of "luck" sounds more like "risk mitigation" to me. Luck has a clear and easily understood definition.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#174

Post by sireat »

andrewclunn wrote: post #58

A lot of this "luck" can be traced back very easily to causes like "had two parents who gave a damn" or "had enough to eat eat growing up." The people pushing this narrative that you're not really responsible for your failure / success want it both ways. They want to make you admit that you benefit from living in a peaceful stable society with infrastructure, while also not wanting to hold parents accountable for hav…

This particular author (Robert H. Frank) is not pushing a particular narrative to justify dismantling of family unit.

Where did you find an attack on the family unit in the article?

Upon reading this article I started reading his 1996 book The Winner-Take-All Society .

The book is quite prescient in that the professions with similar top heavy compensation structures have multiplied since.

He is well aware of fallings of state run economy.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#175

Post by hnal943 »

Frondo wrote: post #149
kyleschiller wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the disagreement is even more fundamental than that. Even if you consider luck to be a major factor in determining success, there's still the question of what the government should reward. I'm socially and fiscally liberal, but I don't think it's absurd to think that the government should reward hard work even though luck is more important. It just so happens that you can motivate people to work harder, and c…

Agreed that the government should reward hard work, but I'm always uncomfortable with the discussion around what is hard work. Some poor people I know, they work harder than most of us desk monkeys, because they're doing back-breaking labor day after day. Holding down two, three jobs, shuffling around town on the bus to work 60, 80 hours a week for very little money. This is not even an uncommon story. People working…

Value creation is what we want to reward, I think.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#176

Post by aomurphy »

charles-salvia wrote: post #90
kahnpro wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that success is based on effort is fundamentally... wrong. For every famous singer, there are thousands of other people putting in years of effort who cannot even earn a salary. For every Facebook, there are thousands of other products or companies who have put in heaps of effort but just didn't have the right timing, or that special something, that let Facebook take off. For every well thought out or engine…

I wouldn't go as far as saying effort is irrelevant - just not the only, possibly not even the dominant factor that contributes to success. I view it as something like 40% effort/motivation, 60% luck

I think, usually, hard work is necessary, but not sufficient. You won't succeed without it, but if you're not lucky, you won't succeed either.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#177

Post by bufordsharkley »

hueving wrote: post #168
criddell wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cory Doctorow pointed to an interest article that described the subsidies that flow to wealthy households: http://boingboing.net/2016/07/03/low-income-us-households-ge... I wonder if your father thinks of his mortgage interest deduction as an example of receiving help he doesn't deserve?

If you're willing to criticize the mortgage interest deduction, are you also willing to criticize property taxes? Both are unfair advantages/disadvantages given to homeowners.

As a Georgist, I would say that most unearned wealth ultimately results from private ownership of natural resources (namely land).

When homeowners claim valuable land and hold onto it for decades, without paying the correct market rate for that land (which, of course, they didn't create the value for), they get the benefits of owning this resource without the responsibility.

In short, property taxes are much too high for the actual structures we build, but should be much higher on the underlying land. It's a sane revenue source that would unburden the load placed upon income tax, etc.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#178

Post by wazoox »

mongmong wrote: post #171
wazoox wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're an atheist, but you somehow believe that the good guys mostly win in the end. I call this religious, no insult intended, I'm speaking of a turn of spirit, not of actual religion. I think that the fundamental philosophical and political dissent lies there, that the irreconcilable point is that: either you think that the world is totally unjust, may crush you even if you're hard working, nice, polite, and let Po…

I agree with you if youre saying we should acknowledge that bad luck can trump effort, but i don't agree this is a healthy attitude to carry over in your day to day life. Effort is something I can control. Could I fail no matter how much i try? Yes absolutely. Ask Hillary. But you won't know until you try.

Well I was just trying to set some contrast on the fundamental difference of points of view from the first comment I answered to.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#179

Post by foobarrio »

mindcrime wrote: post #146
wazoox wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, he believes in a just world, in providence, and you don't (in other words, he's religious and you're not). I think this is the crux of most of these arguments.

Being religious or not has nothing to do with believing that effort is the dominant factor affecting success. I'm an atheist who also believes that effort reigns supreme. That doesn't mean that I don't believe that what we call "bad luck" can't come along and derail you, but I firmly believe - based on my own experience - that you "make your own luck" through effort and the decisions you make. I grew in dirt-poor in…

What about all the people that work hard but are not successful? I know people that no matter how hard they try they won't be software developers (not that this is the only well paying job). They do all those things you are talking about but they have to pick much less lucrative work. There is no big promise of high paying job. Those people are essentially being rewarded less for the same effort no? One of my close friends is in this position. He is working towards being a small business owner. He puts in so much more effort than I do. There is no doubt he'll eventually make it... but I still will get paid more because my skill-set is currently in much higher demand.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#180

Post by Swizec »

kajecounterhack wrote: post #161
Swizec wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add a third category: fortune . Lot is what you were born with. Luck is when random things do or don't happen regardless of skill. You can manage it to an extent. Bad luck through being careful and various types of insurance, good luck mostly through participating. Buying bitcoin 3 years ago and selling at great profit now is pure luck. Maybe you influenced the market to grow, probably it was pure luck. Fortu…

nit: seems like OP's definition of luck is roughly your definition of fortune. s/fortune/luck/rg in your post and I think you say the same thing. Creating a new bucket to qualify things that happen regardless of skill seems redundant with the definition of lot. "Lot" in the context of OP's post happens despite skill.

I think there's a difference between lot and luck though. Lot is what you have before, luck is what you get during.

To crib from Warren Buffet [1], imagine a coin flipping contest. Everyone bets $1 and calls the flip of a coin. Miss and you're out. Betting pool is distributed among everyone else.

20 rounds in, there are 215 people with a few hundred thousand dollars made from a $1 investment and some time.

It's pure luck. They weren't even the one flipping the coin so couldn't have influenced the 50:50 chance even if they tried. That's luck.

Fortune is when you both bet and flip the coin and find a technique to influence the flip to be 40:60 in your favor and it works out.

Lot is when your dad gives you $100k to start a business.

[1] http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2010/03/19/warren-buffet...

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