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The Role of Luck in Life Success

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#21

Post by tghw »

elnygren wrote: post #2

You can only get lucky if you position yourself to be able to get lucky. In addition, you need that carpe diem attitude to exploit any lucky breaks. A business opportunity is not gonna magically appear if you are not constantly looking for one and you won’t be able to exploit it if you haven’t learned relevant skills and built a network.

That logic is inherently flawed because luck plays a part in each of those aspects, too. To have learned the "relevant skills" means you need to have been fortunate enough to have been provided an education. To build a network that matters you need to have access to the right people. Looking for new business opportunities is only possible if you have the resources to do.

Eventually, it all goes back to who you were born as and who you were born to. Your odds of "success" are much higher if you're born as a white male in the US than if you're born as an female in rural India. No amount of effort can change those odds.

That's not to say that effort doesn't play a part, it absolutely does. But a significant amount of success is supported by good fortune layered on more good fortune.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#22

Post by snuxoll »

elnygren wrote: post #2

You can only get lucky if you position yourself to be able to get lucky. In addition, you need that carpe diem attitude to exploit any lucky breaks. A business opportunity is not gonna magically appear if you are not constantly looking for one and you won’t be able to exploit it if you haven’t learned relevant skills and built a network.

Right on the money. I wouldn't be in the position I am today without a dose of luck/chance, I was in the right place at the right time and knew the right people - but at the same time none of this matters if I was unable to execute and take advantage of the opportunities I was presented.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#23

Post by jartelt »

citilife wrote: post #8

If you sit on the couch all day doing nothing, you wont get lucky. Sure, we can identify "luck" as a path to success, but honestly that seems more like survivor bias.... There are a nearly infinite number of events that had to take place for everything to exist in its current state. We can call it "luck" or "randomness" which then leads to specific actions leading to success. However, in reality we are designed to re…

It's not ALL luck. It's just that luck can push you over the edge towards success. If you and an equally qualified person interview for the same position, the person that gets the position may just be the person who happened to go to the same college as the interviewer or that has the same hobby as the interviewer (so they really hit it off and have a great conversation). In that case, one person was lucky and the other was unlucky. They were both equally qualified, but one person just had something extra to talk about with the interviewer and made a good connection.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#24

Post by chongli »

citilife wrote: post #8

If you sit on the couch all day doing nothing, you wont get lucky. Sure, we can identify "luck" as a path to success, but honestly that seems more like survivor bias.... There are a nearly infinite number of events that had to take place for everything to exist in its current state. We can call it "luck" or "randomness" which then leads to specific actions leading to success. However, in reality we are designed to re…

You're already lucky if you have a couch to sit on. Plenty of people have no house, let alone couch to sit on.

Who you are is substantially a matter of luck, too. Somebody who has two driven parents that spend enormous amounts of time and effort raising them is far more likely to be driven and competitive than a person whose parents lay around smoking weed all day.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#25

Post by empath75 »

citilife wrote: post #8

If you sit on the couch all day doing nothing, you wont get lucky. Sure, we can identify "luck" as a path to success, but honestly that seems more like survivor bias.... There are a nearly infinite number of events that had to take place for everything to exist in its current state. We can call it "luck" or "randomness" which then leads to specific actions leading to success. However, in reality we are designed to re…

> If we recognize a pattern and make an attempt to improve our situation, it's not "luck" or "randomness" its a probability of success. Combine that over a life time and persistence will lead to success, not just one random event. It's a series of events that lead to success, each one moving you one way or the other. It's typically your "choice" which path you take.

What's success? Often all it takes to improve your situation is a change of perception. Some of the happiest people I've ever met were living in what Americans would consider to be absolute poverty. And some of the most miserable people I've met were the most 'successful'. Sometimes persistence at failure isn't the answer, but rather learning to appreciate what you have in front of you. My dad spent 40 years checking groceries. Most people here wouldn't consider that being a 'success', but he raised two kids and retired and now he's living in Florida and working on his 66 Chevy Malibu convertible, and he's as happy as I've seen him.

On the other hand, you have Trump, who is a billionaire and the president of the US and from all outside appearances seems to be living in a hell of his own creation.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#26

Post by noir_lord »

amoorthy wrote: post #20

Just read this article. Very cool how the researchers simulated the role luck plays in society with some neat models. The conclusions they reach are fascinating and counter-intuitive e.g. >"[I]f the goal is to reward the most talented person (thus increasing their final level of success), it is much more convenient to distribute periodically (even small) equal amounts of capital to all individuals rather than to give…

Perhaps to bastardise an old quote.

"When luck turns up it better find you with a bag of cash"

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#27

Post by balabaster »

citilife wrote: post #8

If you sit on the couch all day doing nothing, you wont get lucky. Sure, we can identify "luck" as a path to success, but honestly that seems more like survivor bias.... There are a nearly infinite number of events that had to take place for everything to exist in its current state. We can call it "luck" or "randomness" which then leads to specific actions leading to success. However, in reality we are designed to re…

Realistically though, is it luck? If you identify that you are exactly where you are today by happenstance, then sure. You are exactly where you are today because of 1,000 decisions you made, or not made; opportunities you've exploited, people you've met.

But just because one turn of "fate" if you want to call it that meant that one of those pieces may not have lined up and you'd been somewhere else doesn't make you a different person entirely... you could've exploited some other opportunity and ended up somewhere else, that doesn't mean you wouldn't have been equally or even more successful at it. Where one door closes, another opens... if the first door had opened, you probably wouldn't have opened the second door, but you might have. Who knows?

I think your success is a matter of hard work, discipline, paying attention, being what you need to be in the moment to exploit the opportunities in front of you and having the tenacity to turn them into something useful.

Would you call any of that luck? The specifics may be, sure, but the overall pattern of success is not.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#28

Post by oldcynic »

Of course after someone has achieved success they put it down entirely to innate worth, effort, skill and so forth. Likewise plenty who have deserved success have been wiped out by unlucky timing of the dot com bust, credit crunch, fraud.

Yes persistence pays, but however unpopular it might be around here, we are nearly all one or two rolls from disaster - be that business failure, major illness, or whatever, that can easily escalate into life ruining proportions.

I am far less inclined to simply spout "work hard and make your own luck" now than I would certainly have done in my 20s. Thirty more years of experiencing life, and seeing what sheer luck, good and bad, has done to friends, family and their businesses has changed my perspective on luck quite dramatically.

You need hard work and luck.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#29

Post by matt_wulfeck »

These kind of articles and discussions almost invariably lead to defeatists and cynical attitudes. It's akin to saying "Unless you're born with good genes, you'll never be an Olympic athlete, so don't bother training and exercising".

You may not ever be wealthy by trying and working hard because of the role luck plays. But there's value in working hard at it that everyone should know, just like there's value in physical training that everyone should know. It takes training and (very importantly) discipline to stick with it.

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