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Michael Lewis: Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

princeton.edu

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Re: Michael Lewis: Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

#81

Post by Cushman »

nirvana wrote: post #4

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 you're trying to avoid anti-intellectualism, I'd avoid using the term "politically [in]correct"; in the discourse of modern American politics, these words are little more than a red herring used by conservatives to snidely insinuate that a progressive opponent cares more about controlling language than about real-world oppression and bigotry.

People don't downvote you because what you're saying is "politically incorrect", whatever you take that to mean, they do it because they disagree with what you're saying[0]. Don't confuse those.

[0] Which is a practice I don't support, for the record.

Re: Michael Lewis: Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

#82

Post by akeefer »

liber8 wrote: post #33

I think part of the problem with realistically viewing one's life through this prism is the impossibility of determining what percentage of one's success is due to luck. In a sense, literally everyone who is alive today is lucky. They are the product of an unbroken line of genetic material passed down for millions of years. Can you imagine? Not one of their thousands and thousands of ancestors managed to be killed be…

I'm not sure that's the right question to ask.

More important, in my view, is the reverse side of that luck equation: if you assume that input A leads deterministically to outcome B, then if you didn't get outcome B, obviously you didn't put in input A. Replace "A" with "hard work" and B with "economic success" and you have a nice justification for killing the social safety net, for example: obviously people who aren't successful must not be working hard enough.

So accepting that luck plays a role in success doesn't just affect your view of someone's success, it affects your view of other people's potential lack of success, which is an even more important thing to have if you want to have empathy for your fellow human beings.

Unfortunately, cognitive dissonance being what it is, a desire to attribute your own personal success to hard work rather than to luck makes it harder to attribute other people's failures to bad luck, and inclines you to assume that they must "deserve" their situation in life.

So I think it's less important to play the "what if" game there with specific situations, and more important to realize that people who haven't been successful might have been unlucky (or less lucky), rather than to try to decide whether someone successful was lucky or not.

Re: Michael Lewis: Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

#83

Post by geekam »

nostromo wrote: post #9

I've enjoyed two great books that discuss this: "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives" ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/books/review/Johnson-G-t.h... ) and "Fooled by Randomness" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fooled_by_Randomness ) I think people dislike talking about luck's role in our successes (but not failures) because it hints at a deterministic world view where our free will is less important…

A question: I want to read those books. Which one should I start first?

Re: Michael Lewis: Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

#84

Post by graeme »

geekam wrote: post #83
nostromo wrote: post #9

I've enjoyed two great books that discuss this: "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives" ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/books/review/Johnson-G-t.h... ) and "Fooled by Randomness" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fooled_by_Randomness ) I think people dislike talking about luck's role in our successes (but not failures) because it hints at a deterministic world view where our free will is less important…

A question: I want to read those books. Which one should I start first?

Fooled By Randomness leads nicely into the Black Swan, Taleb's even better follow up book.

Re: Michael Lewis: Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

#85

Post by scubaguy »

nirvana wrote: post #4

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…

.. All of you have been faced with the extra cookie. All of you will be faced with many more of them. In time you will find it easy to assume that you deserve the extra cookie. For all I know, you may. But you'll be happier, and the world will be better off, if you at least pretend that you don't.

Re: Michael Lewis: Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

#86

Post by wpietri »

_delirium wrote: post #32
nostromo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but I'm talking about retrospection here, not prospection. People, even when talking about past successes, are very unlikely to admit their good fortune. In other words you're more likely to hear, "I worked very hard" than "I worked very hard and was very lucky." There are notable exceptions. Warren Buffet has openly talked about the role of luck in his success.

I don't know whether it's statistically more likely, but I do think I find the latter sentiment more often among scientists. Plenty of famous people in science will also refuse to admit luck had much to do with their success, of course, but many others will do so. A total guess as to why is that there's a recognition that "good science" is something you can control, but "science that gets famous" has much more of a s…

That's really interesting.

One other factor is that I think science encourages a certain humility and honesty. When you're trying novel things and checking against real data, you inevitably get your ass handed to you from time to time. I think that makes it harder to treat "because I am awesome" as a 100% reliable explanation.

Re: Michael Lewis: Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

#87

Post by jonny_eh »

jharding wrote: post #54

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 are…

I came here to say this. It's important to realize the size of luck's effect on our lives, but the next step isn't just to shrug and say "oh well, I guess I wasn't lucky."

There are in fact scientifically proven ways to increase one's chance for getting lucky. I highly recommend Richard Wiseman's book "The Luck Factor" which goes into this research: http://www.richardwiseman.com/books/luckfactor.html

Re: Michael Lewis: Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

#88

Post by wpietri »

sliverstorm wrote: post #21
hjkl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then do people overestimate the impact of their own influence? Would it benefit themselves/the world to come to grips with randomness?

Now you're just getting into life philosophies. Fatalism vs. free will is not an argument I am equipped to engage.

I don't think that's his point. To me, coming to grips with randomness is much more about humility and tenacity, which are character traits rather than philosophical issues.

Re: Michael Lewis: Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

#89

Post by MartinCron »

kylebrown wrote: post #63

Its amazing how self-defensive some successful people can become about their socioeconomic status. An implication that luck had any more than a very minor contribution is blasphemous. Some can become outraged at the suggestion that they might own one penny that wasn't earned fair and square. Completely on their own, with no help from anybody. Not even scholarships count as help (they're earned). And for some reason,…

Not even scholarships count as help (they're earned)

And heaven forbid you count student loans as getting help, even though they are taxpayer subsidized to keep the interest rates artificially low.

Re: Michael Lewis: Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

#90

Post by MartinCron »

larrys wrote: post #27
nirvana wrote: post #4

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.…

the downvoters are being parental and telling you to grow up and have a better understanding of the way the world works

Anyone who insists that luck has no role whatsoever in their short or long term success or failure either needs to grow up, or share their secret for how they chose the circumstances of their birth.

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