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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

#91

Post by wpietri »

bradleyland wrote: post #67
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…

And if you recursively click the first link in Wikipedia articles, you end up at philosophy :) My point is that if you dedicate a lot of time thinking about any particular aspect of life, you end up back at the "Getting to Philosophy" problem. Your luck comes in shades of grey. At some point, the line between black and white is drawn rather arbitrarily. Would I consider myself "lucky" to be born in the US? To be born…

I think it really does matter, in at least two ways. As a person, and as a citizen.

As a person, I find it useful to consider how I've been lucky in that a) I'm better able to take advantage of the luck I've had, and b) it makes me more careful about downside risk. It also helps keep me from a certain fat-headed overconfidence. As the line goes, "Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple." I think that stunts people's growth.

As a citizen it's especially important for me in figuring out how to vote and what to advocate. I'm a big believer in the veil-of-ignorance approach: [1] In helping design a society, I should do it so that I would think it fair no matter which role I played. You can look at that as a way to subtract luck from the equation.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance

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

#92

Post by tptacek »

nirvana wrote: post #31
CUR10US wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Lewis work at Goldman? Have you read Liar's Poker? How are you qualified to comment on his career?

Did you read the article? He talks about how he got his goldman job as a result of a series of events that started with him happening to be sat next to the wife of a goldman employee. Yes, I did read Liars Poker. I think its kinda funny that you question whether I am qualified to comment on his career, but a little bit of research shows he worked at goldman for awhile, wrote the book and has been a writer ever since.…

It's really hard to avoid the perception that you haven't read the article, or the book, or done the little bit of research you're referring to, since Michael Lewis never worked at Goldman; not only did he never work at Goldman, but the whole last part of Liar's Poker is about the famous and epic collapse of the firm he did work for, and about him leaving finance after the collapse occurred.

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

#93

Post by nostromo »

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?

The Drunkard's Walk was the better of the two in my view. I'd start there and follow up with Taleb's book if you want to read more.

However, if you're really into Wall Street trading, flip the order.

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

#94

Post by wpietri »

paulhauggis wrote: post #39
hjkl wrote: post #14

I'm surprised by how defensive people can get about their own success. It seems to me that you can never know if your success was due to your own hard work or some lucky breaks (or, more probably, a combination of both to which you'll never know the balance). It reminds me of the story about thousands of people flipping coins. Out of those thousands of people, some of them are going to flip a long string of heads. Do…

Using this logic, pretty much everything is due to luck. finish your PHD? You were lucky that you were accepted and that you had a good enough education to get into the program. "It seems to me that you can never know if your success was due to your own hard work or some lucky breaks" You may have a point. But, I'm really tried of people attributing all success to luck (and using this as an excuse as to why they aren…

My idea of luck is broader.

The position I was born into in the society definitely gave me some advantages in starting businesses. I would happily call that luck; it's not like I carefully picked my parents.

There are all sorts of odd contingencies that I didn't plan that have helped me in business. The first company I started came about only because I ended up subbing for a friend who wanted to take a quick vacation; by the time he was back his bosses said, "Hey, why don't we start a company?" Pure luck. I could have easily gone a decade longer before starting out on my own.

For me the comparative baseline isn't people who don't do a thing. It's all the people who work just as hard but have differing levels of success. Compared with a Cambodian rice farmer, I'm pretty lucky. Compared with somebody from my social class who was fucked up by abusive parents, I'm lucky.

Heck, I'm lucky just to be born into this era. 50 years ago I would have ended up a car mechanic. 500 years ago I'd have been an underfed monk. I'm freakishly lucky to be living in the Age of Nerds.

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

#95

Post by RobAtticus »

stickfigure wrote: post #45

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.

I think he's intentionally focusing on the luck aspect because I think his audience (Princeton undergrads) is used to the first narrative. As sort of an outsider (I'm a graduate student here), I sometimes get the sense that a fair amount of undergrads here are a bit too self-important. Certainly there are many awesome, down-to-earth people here too, but there are also a lot of people who are caught up in the fact that they are Princeton students and that by itself perhaps makes them better than students of "lesser" schools. I think in particular, Lewis' last full paragraph should be the take away for these students. Yes, they are very gifted and they may deserve every bit of benefit that comes their way, but they should also remember that there is at least some part of that they didn't/can't control. Acknowledging and being humbled by that will go a long way in life.

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

#96

Post by potatolicious »

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 fatalism vs. free will was what he was getting at.

We see a lot of moralizing about this, particularly in the USA where individualism and the self-made-man is practically a national religion, more pervasive and deeper-rooted than even Christianity.

We see this every day on television - politicians foaming at the mouth about lazy good-for-nothings who failed to provide for themselves and now reach their hand out to their fellow taxpayers. We see it every time the word "Entitlement" appears in yet another headline.

We see it every time when we treat the poor as people who are lazier, dumber, or just plain lesser.

If we are going to moralize about the merits of achievement, and if we're going to continue throwing people under the bus for being unsuccessful, we should come to grips with the randomness factor.

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

#97

Post by roopeshv »

_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…

because science focuses on repeatability and control. personal successes do not. Any thing that passes as science has been proven to a degree of certainity, by definition. Any science is good science because it's been proven, and then there is science that got famous.

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

#98

Post by paulhauggis »

hjkl wrote: post #46
paulhauggis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using this logic, pretty much everything is due to luck. finish your PHD? You were lucky that you were accepted and that you had a good enough education to get into the program. "It seems to me that you can never know if your success was due to your own hard work or some lucky breaks" You may have a point. But, I'm really tried of people attributing all success to luck (and using this as an excuse as to why they aren…

The argument isn't that success is due entirely to luck. It's that you'll never know how much of that success is due to luck. It may be a lot or it may be a little.

But you do. If you make an iphone app and it's an overnight success, you got lucky (the non-luck part is the years of experience that it took to make the app). However, if you slowly build your user base and continue to add new features for years through many failures/successes, beyond the normal 10% or less luck in every-day life, I wouldn't consider it lucky.

Again, it seems there is this trend on HN to make it seem like anyone remotely successful got "lucky". Even worse is blurring the line between luck and hard-work so you can make it seem like their accomplishments aren't as important.

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

#100

Post by [deleted] »

_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…

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