Earlier quoted context omitted.
>What else would you do instead? Acknowledge when luck was the major reason for your success. Don't stand in front of a room of people and tell them if they weren't so damn lazy, they could have hundreds of millions of dollars as well. In other words, if luck played any major part in your success, you really have no justification in lecturing people on how to be good at something.
I think you misunderstood me. I am not "successful" in that sense. By "you" I meant us "unsuccessful" people who are the target of such "success stories". What are we supposed to do? I'd say it's waste of time to get too pissed at success stories that are affected by survivorship bias.
Consider Bill Gates: by all accounts, he was a good programmer and willing to work long hours. Over the years I've heard a lot of people talk about that without also acknowledging things like the starting advantage of coming from a wealthy family and making his first big sale when his mother was on IBM's board, and the luck of starting a business just as the industry was making a huge change which upset a lot of established players.
That doesn't mean you need to hate him or say his success was undeserved – ignoring the later anti-trust actions – but it does say that for most of us the more realistic model would be, say, Gary Kildall. That also says that e.g. many people might reasonably conclude that a career at a large corporation which gives them some interesting technical work and leaves them with time to spend on their family, personal health, open-source projects or other hobbies, etc. is actually a better deal than a stressful attempt at something which might pay somewhat but not game-changingly more but also has a number of likely outcomes which aren't as good.