How to increase your luck surface area (2010) • Hacker News Board

Re: How to increase your luck surface area (2010)

#51

Post by tomfast » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:23 PM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #31

Taleb talked about this with his recommendation to get exposure to randomness that has asymmetric upside, and is analogous to luck is preparedness meeting opportunity. What I like about the OP's model is it also explains the asymmetry of social media where people do very little at all and talk about is a lot because the kind of non-linear success we are aiming for is a function of exposure. When you have wealth of an…

Interesting comment.

Would you explain a little more about what you mean by “diversified parts of it” in “you naturally orient to getting exposure to opportunity for diversified parts of it, but when you have a scarcity view, your decisions are necessarily all/nothing”?

Re: How to increase your luck surface area (2010)

#52

Post by pototo666 » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

_jjkk wrote: post #43

pototo666 wrote: post #26

I like this idea. It's simple and elegant. I am accidentally practising it. I make games. I tried and failed to get investement and partners. So I am making games alone. Last week I started streaming my daily work. I stream my the other screen display, such that I can decide what to show and what to hide. I told myself, streaming cost me no money and I might attract attention of partners and investors. Nothing unfold…

I have seen multiple indie developers successfully begin marketing on their unfinished / unremarkable prototype far in advance. In fact some of them get so popular they pivot into "I make videos of myself making games" instead of "I make games" I would recommend doubling up exposure by recording your streams, then cutting up the best clips and releasing them as Youtube videos. Also posting these Youtube videos to Red…

Recoding stream is a good idea! Thanks for this concrete advice and example :))

Re: How to increase your luck surface area (2010)

#53

Post by jonnycomputer » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

Given just how much bad luck I've had in my life, I'm not sure I want to increase my Luck Surface Area.

Ha ha. I know, that's not what the blog post is talking about. Well, sort of. Obviously, more exposure also means more risk. Like, I never used to get publication scam spam until I got published.

Re: How to increase your luck surface area (2010)

#54

Post by stouset » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #31

Taleb talked about this with his recommendation to get exposure to randomness that has asymmetric upside, and is analogous to luck is preparedness meeting opportunity. What I like about the OP's model is it also explains the asymmetry of social media where people do very little at all and talk about is a lot because the kind of non-linear success we are aiming for is a function of exposure. When you have wealth of an…

Your observation about young people with four-figure net worths thinking it’s rational to gamble it all on options is pretty much this week’s equivalent of those living paycheck-to-paycheck “investing” in the lottery.

The bigger problem is that this is rarely just a one-time decision to gamble. And repeatedly doing this is statistically pretty certain to lose you significant amounts of money—particularly when compared to just investing in the market as a whole—over the long run. It’s just another way that the poor are trapped in poverty, even though you can of course always find individual cases where someone got lucky and made millions.

This is one of the reasons I think Robinhood is a fundamentally an evil company. It’s been pretty conclusively demonstrated that the more trades you make as a retail investor, the worse your returns. To wit: Fidelity did some internal research on their customers to see which cohort had the highest returns. The winning cohort? The dead. Dead people don’t make trades, and so perform better than the living who do. I’d be willing to bet a large sum of money that Robinhood’s internal metrics conclusively prove that the net effect of their existence is a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.

The real Robin Hood-esque company in this whole thing is Vanguard, who have almost certainly done more than most any other company in this space to return profits from the market to customers of all wealth ranges.

Re: How to increase your luck surface area (2010)

#55

Post by pototo666 » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

etrautmann wrote: post #29

pototo666 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen one that explains the origin of passion or whether it is possible to become passionate. --- As Bezos said, you can't choose your passion, your passion chooses you.

I disagree - passion can emerge after you’re much deeper into something. I liked building things but wasn’t passionate about engineering until my last year in undergrad. It took 3-4 years of grinding away uncertainly until I had enough skill to make it really fun and interesting. That knowledge snowballs. Plenty of people are passionate about work which appears arcane. Few of them started with that.

Agree with what you said.

Liking is also a great signal for passion. If we like something, we are more likely to do it for years and then have the passion. I don't think we can choose what we like.

There are of couses cases when children are forced to do something early and later fall in love with it.

Re: How to increase your luck surface area (2010)

#56

Post by villasv » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:41 PM UTC

> When you pour energy into a passion, you develop an expertise and an expertise of any kind is valuable

I don't disagree with the overall spirit, but these Paul Graham aphorisms always turn me off.

> To satisfy my mathematically oriented brain I've gone one step further and formalized the concept into the equation L = D * T, where L is luck, D is doing and T is telling.

See? There's no passion here. It really isn't relevant to what is being discussed.

Sure, passion is great. The more the better, the world is incredible when you're surrounded by it. Developers are fond of writing beautiful code, I am one of those too. But god damn, hold the inner coach and remember y'all are not psychologists. There is no reason to reduce the multitude of complex motivations to a single amorphous concept such as passion.

Re: How to increase your luck surface area (2010)

#57

Post by pototo666 » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:42 PM UTC

OrbitRock wrote: post #45

pototo666 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen one that explains the origin of passion or whether it is possible to become passionate. --- As Bezos said, you can't choose your passion, your passion chooses you.

Scott Alexander’s the lottery of fascinations is a good read in this area: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/30/the-lottery-of-fascina...

Good read, thanks for sharing :).

I will keep the article in case one day I want to persuade my child to love math.

Re: How to increase your luck surface area (2010)

#58

Post by adnzzzzZ » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:44 PM UTC

freshpots wrote: post #39

Invictus0 wrote: post #18

There is no such thing as being lucky. It is just a matter of perspective. Luck is what happens when people spontaneously feel grateful.

Check this out, your opinion may change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I (12:03)

Check this out, your opinion may change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZM_JmZdqCw (54:01)

Re: How to increase your luck surface area (2010)

#59

Post by jonnycomputer » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

villasv wrote: post #56

> When you pour energy into a passion, you develop an expertise and an expertise of any kind is valuable I don't disagree with the overall spirit, but these Paul Graham aphorisms always turn me off. > To satisfy my mathematically oriented brain I've gone one step further and formalized the concept into the equation L = D * T, where L is luck, D is doing and T is telling. See? There's no passion here. It really isn't…

It is funny, because D * T suggests that it can all be done with D with just a smidgin' of T, or that you can just do a lot of talking with just a smidgin' of D.

But I guess I forgot about the Trump Presidency. So maybe D * T is the right model.

Re: How to increase your luck surface area (2010)

#60

Post by mojoe » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

vincentmarle wrote: post #30

kharak wrote: post #11

Being passionate about something for a long time (not just a couple of hours or weeks) seems to be a rare quality. Too bad for those who lack it, as it seems to be a requirement for success in everything. There are so many posts that try to tell you how to get the most out of your passion, I haven't seen one that explains the origin of passion or whether it is possible to become passionate.

> Being passionate about something for a long time ... seems to be a requirement for success in everything. There’s a book that attempts to debunk this myth by making the case that generalists are typically more successful: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Range

There's a difference between being passionate about a skillset and passionate about a field. For instance, I can be passionate about renewable energy and still be a generalist in terms of my day-to-day work.