Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Role of Luck in Life Success

blogs.scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 213 posts

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#201

Post by alok-g »

kazinator wrote: post #147
raleec wrote: post #94

Apologies in advance but I must confess.. I don't get it. Can someone define luck? -I didn't choose my DNA. -I didn't choose my parents. -I didn't choose my circumstances. -I didn't choose which neural pathways were reinforced based on my experiences. -I didn't choose which environmental factors altered any of my biological systems. -I didn't choose not to die in my sleep every night from an undiagnosed ailment. Remo…

Suppose you have an identical twin (not separated form you at birth: same environment, same opportunities) who does much better than you due to some external events. Like being at the right place at the right time without you. The difference in success between you and that identical twin could be attributed to what we might call "situational luck". All else (those things that give you initial equal footing, making yo…

Beautiful. I had never heard of baseline and situational luck before. I am going to read more on the topic. :-)

I'm wondering what would be the formal definitions of these two. Is birth separating them? From a mathematical standpoint, could there be continuity between these two?

Thanks.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#202

Post by juanmirocks »

internetman55 wrote: post #99
juanmirocks wrote: post #55

And then the problem is that we are biased to believe that the winners did almost everything right, and the losers did almost everything wrong. Often is chance. Having said that, those who persevere, by definition are more likely to succeed. They have more changes. "The harder I work, the luckier I get".

Maybe I have a stronger intrinsic work motivation than most people, but I seem to get luckier when I slow down, assess the situation, and start making simple but sometimes extremely emotionally difficult changes.

Well, I think your scenario applies to another idea: most often we avoid doing that thing that really is the most important, because we emotionally fear it somehow. It can be just calling a client, or changing a career, or even translates for asking a partner out.

For this, you are right, it is vital to stop from time to time, assess the situation, identify the most important thing, and regardless of how difficult it is, do it.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#203

Post by juanmirocks »

juanmirocks wrote: post #202
internetman55 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I have a stronger intrinsic work motivation than most people, but I seem to get luckier when I slow down, assess the situation, and start making simple but sometimes extremely emotionally difficult changes.

Well, I think your scenario applies to another idea: most often we avoid doing that thing that really is the most important, because we emotionally fear it somehow. It can be just calling a client, or changing a career, or even translates for asking a partner out. For this, you are right, it is vital to stop from time to time, assess the situation, identify the most important thing, and regardless of how difficult it…

And you are right, often in hustle mode we go fast and work hard, but don't work intelligently.

I'm trying myself to incorporate forced "retreats or slow-downs" to better assess my progress.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#204

Post by BatFastard »

amoorthy wrote: post #109
BatFastard wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love that. I am looking at a great idea that I have been working on, but I am afraid to release it because I know it will be cloned in a matter of months since I can not afford worldwide patent protection.

Without much more data I'd say: 1. I once thought the same of an idea I had. When I finally launched it failed. So no one cared to clone it! 2. I have another idea I now think has merit. I've proven some traction with users. Enough that filing a provisional patent makes sense for about $2k. Might want to try this path too.

This is not my first time down the primrose path. I already have a few patents in my basket. I been tempted to try filing it myself masochist that I am.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#205

Post by heurist »

skookumchuck wrote: post #192
heurist wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your experiences led you to "choose" differently. I had the same, though it took a while. Not everyone has those same experiences.

If you don't have free will, then why did you choose to participate in this discussion?

Same reason you did. Right place, right time. If you were omniscient and knew everything that happened in the universe up to bow, you'd be able to perfectly predict the next instant, and the instant after that.

It was only after I understood that I had no control that I felt free to do whatever I wanted, ironically enough.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#206

Post by nezzle »

oldcynic wrote: post #28

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 ca…

Actually this attribution - internalizing success and externalizing failure - is important for mental health.

Discussed in 'How to Be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use'

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#207

Post by kazinator »

alok-g wrote: post #201
kazinator wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you have an identical twin (not separated form you at birth: same environment, same opportunities) who does much better than you due to some external events. Like being at the right place at the right time without you. The difference in success between you and that identical twin could be attributed to what we might call "situational luck". All else (those things that give you initial equal footing, making yo…

Beautiful. I had never heard of baseline and situational luck before. I am going to read more on the topic. :-) I'm wondering what would be the formal definitions of these two. Is birth separating them? From a mathematical standpoint, could there be continuity between these two? Thanks.

It's just "conditional probability", explained for simpletons.

This lets us reason about the probability of new events separately from the probability of having arrived at that situation.

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#208

Post by alok-g »

kazinator wrote: post #207
alok-g wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beautiful. I had never heard of baseline and situational luck before. I am going to read more on the topic. :-) I'm wondering what would be the formal definitions of these two. Is birth separating them? From a mathematical standpoint, could there be continuity between these two? Thanks.

It's just "conditional probability", explained for simpletons. This lets us reason about the probability of new events separately from the probability of having arrived at that situation.

Ok. In that case, I have just learned simpleton terminology for this. :-) (Conditional probability, I already understand, of course.)

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#209

Post by sokoloff »

psyc wrote: post #128
lisper wrote: post #108

I am financially independent and it is almost entirely due to luck. I was in a stable career as an AI researcher when, in 2000, pretty much on a whim, I decided to apply to work at an obscure little startup company called Google. It was the only startup I had ever applied to at that point (until then my ambition had been to become a university professor). Since 2005 I have participated as a principal in half a dozen…

Around 2001, a cohort of recent grads was working on an obscure experimental thing at Microsoft that never went anywhere. Half of the group went to Mountain View, and half stayed in Redmond. The first half are all millionaires now, and the second half are just well-off. You can look at this from many directions. Did the natural hustlers hustle their way to Google, while the naturally complacent stayed put? Did the Go…

I would be shocked if more than 10% of those recent grads who were working at Microsoft in 2001 and stayed in the industry anywhere are not now millionaires. (It's not that high nor noteworthy of a hurdle for our industry.)

Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success

#210

Post by listen_er »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #153
raleec wrote: post #94

Apologies in advance but I must confess.. I don't get it. Can someone define luck? -I didn't choose my DNA. -I didn't choose my parents. -I didn't choose my circumstances. -I didn't choose which neural pathways were reinforced based on my experiences. -I didn't choose which environmental factors altered any of my biological systems. -I didn't choose not to die in my sleep every night from an undiagnosed ailment. Remo…

Because i’ve Been fascinated with “free will” and having quite the difficulty to find an example of it, consider adding these to the list when considering “choice” and “free will” in the context of any given action: all your experiences, memories, traumatic experiences up to date; the circumstances around you at this moment; the language your mind uses to converse with itself; your habits and preferences; your though…

I agree that free will, in the sense you've defined here, doesn't exist. But it may exist in the sense that there are levels of determinism to our actions. I like how Steven Pinker explains it in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYbpfKgDKR0
Post reply on HN