I believe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13437977 ties in with this in that many "lucky" people prepared so that when luck struck things were aligned to take off.
Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
181–190 of 303 posts
Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#182This reminded me of the film "Match Point" directed by Woody Allen. IMO his best film.
Came here to second this.
Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are ignoring the fact that someone born into a poor family in an inner city like has an underfunded, underachieving public school, overwhelmed and inexperienced teachers, a below average guidance counselor, no role models who have gone to college, parents who do not know anything about applying for scholarships or financial aid, a diet of fast food, and few examples of other people in similar roles who became mil…
an underfunded, underachieving public school, overwhelmed and inexperienced teachers, a below average guidance counselor, no role models who have gone to college, parents who do not know anything about applying for scholarships or financial aid, a diet of fast food, and few examples of other people in similar roles who became millionaires That sounds like my life except for the inner city part. Substitute "redneck-vi…
First off, congrats on getting to where you are today. It sounds like your hard work is really paying off. I would just note that one of the points of the article is that it is difficult for a successful person to recognize the lucky events in their life. Perhaps in one of your job interviews you hit it off with the interviewer because you went to the same college or were both from "redneck-ville." Another person with equal skill and work ethic could have not gotten that job because they weren't form the same background and didn't have the rapport with the interviewer. I think you can say in that scenario one person got lucky and the other was unlucky. No one is saying it is bad to be lucky. It just helps with empathy when you take the world view that not every outcome is completely fair and logical.
Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#184Earlier 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.
You do realize that renters pay property tax, just indirectly, right? Property taxes aren't paid only by owner-occupied homes.
Mortgage tax deductions are only on a primary home, so they don't apply to owners of rental units.
Put simply: property taxes are NOT a penalty for homeownership, they are paid by everyone. Mortgage tax credit is only given to homeowners.
Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#185My father and I have somewhat productive political conversations: He's fiscally conservative, I tend towards the liberal side of the scale. Drilling in to find what we really disagree about, it seems to boil down to two concepts: (1) I view success as a matter of luck that your effort can make better or worse. He views effort as the single most important deciding factor in success in life (2) I'm willing to tolerate…
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…
Thank you! Hard work is necessary, but not sufficient for success. (Almost) everyone successful is a hard worker. Not every hard worker is successful.
Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#186Why would I? They live in this timeline.
Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#187The 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…
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…
I'd separate hard work into two components:
A. The rewarding part of your craft, e.g. the flow you get into when deeply programming all night. B. The sacrifices your craft requires, e.g. the living in the unheated apartment.
One thing the hard work people forget is that it isn't very impressive to just do type-A enjoyable work for sustained and or even super human periods. Other people would pay for that experience.
I think this separation opens up a few interesting ways of viewing those who are "too lazy" to do the hard work. First, different people flow in different tasks and so even if you gave Peter Dinklage a chance to work for openAI on any project he wanted, he might find it tiring and burn out. This is obvious, but by induction, there's this whole class of school-type activities that many people seem to mentally resist.
Second, there seem to be different expectations on how much of B-type work one has to do in order to get the A-type work they crave. I think people perceived as lazy are those who doubt that almost any amount B-work they contribute will earn them their goal, only more the same. This is excellent when it discourages the average thirteen year old from pursuing pro sports as a career, but I think it also might be the largest reduction to productivity in our economy we have today, as discouraged people tend to lower output and cause problems for their company. And that's only the economic side, the social side of hopelessness and lack of meaning is way worse!
Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You do realize that renters pay property tax, just indirectly, right? Property taxes aren't paid only by owner-occupied homes. Mortgage tax deductions are only on a primary home, so they don't apply to owners of rental units. Put simply: property taxes are NOT a penalty for homeownership, they are paid by everyone. Mortgage tax credit is only given to homeowners.
And importantly, only enjoyed by homeowners who got the mortgage before the benefit of the tax deduction started getting capitalized into the value of the house.
Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#189The 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…
You seem to be circling around the crux of the fundamental attribution error (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error).
Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are ignoring the fact that someone born into a poor family in an inner city like has an underfunded, underachieving public school, overwhelmed and inexperienced teachers, a below average guidance counselor, no role models who have gone to college, parents who do not know anything about applying for scholarships or financial aid, a diet of fast food, and few examples of other people in similar roles who became mil…
an underfunded, underachieving public school, overwhelmed and inexperienced teachers, a below average guidance counselor, no role models who have gone to college, parents who do not know anything about applying for scholarships or financial aid, a diet of fast food, and few examples of other people in similar roles who became millionaires That sounds like my life except for the inner city part. Substitute "redneck-vi…
Since people from "easier" backgrounds don't need those things to succeed, isn't it reasonable to suggest you are "lucky" to have the attitude and determination that made you the exception?
Edit: I think it might be productive to society for the exceptional cases to ask how a better attitude could be encouraged in their former peers. Do the ones who fail lack faith that their efforts would pay off, or do they just not care?