Michael Lewis: Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

His point is essentially the one developed at length by Malcolm Gladwell in "Outliers." Namely, that great successes are almost always dependent on a uniquely fortunate set of events that the person is able to exploit well, rather than their success being the result of genius.

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 organization and did not work very hard.

The periods where I was focused, passionate and working hard were the more successful ones, and successful enough to carry me thru the down times as well.

Luck may have put Michael Lewis at Goldman Sachs, but luck didn't determine his level of success. After all, his success comes from writing books, not being a goldman boy. Sure he wrote his first book about that period, but that book took a large amount of focus, passion and effort to create.

That said, I certainly find myself occasionally jealous of people who seemingly lucked into great success. If I'd never applied myself, and thus never had success myself, I'd probably think that luck was the actual determinant of success.

Edit to add: In this post I deliberately talked about my personal experiences. I didn't make a broad sweeping statement that luck doesn't determine success or failure for everybody. However, clearly people object to the political incorrectness of not supporting the ideology that argues "luck determines success, therefore the rich should be taxed to pay us! we just weren't lucky!" Note that I did not address that argument, I just talked about my experience. But because my experience is inconsistent with the distorted view of the world, it is "politically incorrect" and thus should be kept from the eyes of others, lest they be influenced, my post has been made visually unreadable. I find this anti-intellectualism distasteful.

Does anyone have a link to the experiment mentioned in this speech?

The point of the speech wasn't that you shouldn't apply yourself.

Your hard work, passion, and focus likely correlate with your successes. But that doesn't mean you weren't also extremely lucky to be in a position where those factors (things that you have more control over) were so able to tip your chances.

Edit: Firstly, we should all be able to voice unpopular opinions without getting silenced by the crowd. I may have disagreed with your analysis, but I voted up your response nonetheless.

Secondly, to respond to your edit. I think you are not quite correct in stating that your down-votes are due to the fact that "people object to the political incorrectness of not supporting the ideology that argues 'luck determines success, therefore the rich should be taxed to pay us! we just weren't lucky!'"

There is a difference between those who do not apply themselves and believe success is entirely down to luck, and those who work hard and dedicate their lives to the pursuit of something more, never to achieve the kind of successes that others take for granted. It is the latter group that you are failing to acknowledge, which is perhaps why you are seeing so many down-votes. I wouldn't simply attribute it to "anti-intellectualism."

Would realizing they are lucky benefit the lucky? In the cookie experiment Lewis wrote about, the randomly appointed leader would then not take the cookie so effortlessly.