Your parody detector is broken. Michael Lewis didn't go to Yale, either... Seriously, did you read the commencement speech? Makes it pretty clear which school he attended and which bank he worked at.
"parody detector is broken"
No it's not.
See from my above comment:
"Or maybe it was this which they saw as factually incorrect: "Luck may have put Michael Lewis at Goldman Sachs, but luck didn't determine his level of success."
This reminds me of a topic the guys from the TechZing podcast talk about pretty frequently, increasing your luck surface area. Jason Roberts has a short post about it on his blog that sums it up pretty well (http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surf...). This concept has resonated with me and for the past couple of months, I've started to do things with the hopes of increasing my luck surface area.
If you want people to remember what you have to say, make your point, and get off the stage.
Similarly I've long noticed a connection between brevity and stature. In speech, writing and behavior. With sales by the way it's always important to get your ass out of dodge after getting agreement from the customer, lest they change their mind.
Getting out of dodge.
Maybe this is why he was brief: His point is a potentially unpopular one.
It is just a very interesting topic. One that few who are successful would dare to explore in depth.
It would be interesting to hear how his brief remarks were received. Did people like what he had to say?
My success and failures in life have had nothing to do with luck. I've been both lucky and unlucky at various times, but none of them have determined my level of success over the short or long term to any significant degree. At the same time I've had periods where I worked hard and was focused and passionate about what I was doing, and periods where I was not passionate, unmotivated by a crushingly poorly run organiz…
If I'd never applied myself, and thus never had success myself...
You're discounting the possibility of applying yourself and still not having success, which is really the whole point. Your argument is that those who fail will be more likely to blame luck, while Lewis' point is that those like you who succeed are more likely to overly credit their own effort. You're probably both right to some extent, but given that human physiological traits have a Gaussian distribution and wealth is distributed according to a power law, it would seem Lewis' view is closer to the truth.
A quick parable: You sense a random opportunity, work your ass off, and turn it into a great success. False narrative #1: This success is solely due to your hard work! False narrative #2: This success is solely due to luck! I haven't read ML's books (yet) but I think this speech leans too heavily on narrative #2.
It's a superlatively false narrative to image that "sense random opportunity" is the only (or even common) scenario and that "work your ass off" is its only response.
My success and failures in life have had nothing to do with luck. I've been both lucky and unlucky at various times, but none of them have determined my level of success over the short or long term to any significant degree. At the same time I've had periods where I worked hard and was focused and passionate about what I was doing, and periods where I was not passionate, unmotivated by a crushingly poorly run organiz…
I'm always fascinated by downvoting on HN. I'm guessing you expressed what you felt "my success and failure in life had nothing to do with luck" and people are saying by downvoting that you are wrong!!! Why? You didn't say "people's success or failure" you said "my success or failure". In this case the downvoters are being parental and telling you to grow up and have a better understanding of the way the world works.…
Downvoting should be reserved for comments that violate site guidelines, but many people prefer to censor opinions they disagree with rather than address them. If you disagree with a post, write a response or upvote an existing response that already articulates your argument.