
The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood - jbtca
http://joshuaballoch.github.io/luck-in-life-still-misunderstood
======
sebastos
Absolute junk science. A negative contribution to net human insight.

>The simulations show that although talent has a Gaussian distribution among
agents, the resulting distribution of success/capital after a working life of
40 years, follows a power law which respects the ”80-20” Pareto law for the
distribution of wealth found in the real world.

As opposed to what? What kind of distribution might you expect? Based on the
insanely simple model that was presented, what other possible outcome could
have been drawn?

>In this paper, starting from very simple assumptions, we have presented an
agent-based model which is able to quantify the role of talent and luck in the
success of people’s careers.

No, you have not. You have presented an agent-based model which is able to
quantify the role of talent and luck in a 2D roulette game with a completely
contrived, non-empirical bias parameter you've named "talent". It bears
literally no relationship to reality, where random massive doublings of wealth
are the exception, not the rule.

It really bothers me that people write news articles about the impact of this
"research".

~~~
js8
I'd love to see your model. Criticizing a model is relatively easy, coming up
with something that describes the reality (in this case, Pareto distribution
of wealth) yet better is much harder.

> As opposed to what? What kind of distribution might you expect?

For one thing, they might have expected the result not to be dominated by
luck.

> It bears literally no relationship to reality, where random massive
> doublings of wealth are the exception, not the rule.

I don't think this will help to control the luck as opposed to talent. I
suspect the problem is in the "leverage". Having more wealth makes it easier
to accrue more wealth in the future, however, the same is not true for talent.
Having more talent doesn't help you get much more talent.

So eventually, regardless how big your talent can be, the accrued wealth will
dominate the end of the distribution. The rate at which the wealth is accrued
doesn't matter, it will only reduce social mobility.

Addendum: Interestingly, the model actually shows what we would expect for low
to middle end of income distribution, that talent there is more important than
wealth. Which is in line with my explanation.

~~~
b4lancesh33t
I don't think that's how it works. A model doesn't become a good model simply
because it's hard to or nobody has bothered to make a better one.

~~~
js8
> A model doesn't become a good model simply because

I agree, and

> nobody has bothered to make a better one

So bother! I have made 4 comments here and all of them ask the same question.
What would you improve and how do you think it would affect the outcome?

Sometimes the simple model is (almost) as good as any in answering a simple
question. For example, some people do not accept climate models (and probably
never will), ostensibly for reasons that they are not good. I see the opposite
- the models have gotten much better and much more realistic in the past 60
years. Yet, the same basic outcome (Earth will warm roughly 3 degrees by
doubling CO2) was foretold by very crude models that even don't have the
circulation.

------
thanatropism
I still think the focus on wealth/income inequality rather than on absolute
poverty is irrational. I've seen people justify it to me on the grounds that
people care about relative poverty, which to me reads "people are jealous".
But then the result is:

1) A focus on inequality is irrational. 2) People focus on inequality for
irrational reasons.

This means that if policy-makers and intellectuals fully give in to the
people's wishes, we'll accept decreases in wealth in exchange for more
equality indefinitely. If this sounds like a strawman, it's because we have
"backstops" to inequality-decreasing wealth-destruction. But why should we
tolerate any wealth destruction at all?

And if reducing inequality is possible without wealth destruction, why focus
on inequality?

(This is besides the "Oxfam problem" \-- there never is a coherent definition
of "wealth" and Oxfam never seems to fully value people's homes and work
animals and suchlike in poor countries.)

~~~
pron
The reason we care so much about inequality has nothing to do with jealousy
and everything to do with power[1]. As resources are a major source of power
(and often vice-versa), and because power is relative, inequality of resources
means inequality of power. And as power means influence (and so the ability to
reduce another's freedom), inequality reduces overall freedom.

As freedom can never be total[2], the question is do we prefer to reduce the
freedom of the powerful few (whose freedom is already large) in order to
increase that of the many, or vice-versa?

So while absolute income is certainly very important, ignoring inequality is
simply irrational for someone who values freedom.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_\(social_and_political\))

[2]: One person can be totally free; two cannot. X would either be free to
infringe on Y's freedom or not -- in either case, freedom is no longer total.

~~~
aje403
This is a distortion.

Young men see rich men with beautiful women flying to anywhere they want on
the planet. Only a few of them will get that when they're older, and it oftens
boils down to intelligence, work ethic, cleverness, other abilities like
athletics and looks, and a few lucky breaks that they take advantage of.
Exceptions being inherited wealth. Law of averages, those who do make it are
hard working and intelligent. Law of averages, those who do not are often less
so. However, everyone still wants the hot girl and the jet. So what's the
right thing to do? Take "power" from [Hard working and intelligent]U[Scott
Disick, Donald JR] to normalize influence across everyone? Should the group,
who by and large, has contributed more to the society not have proportionally
more say? And then the issue becomes more nuanced when you take into account
inheritance and things of that nature.

~~~
hfdgiutdryg
_However, everyone still wants the hot girl and the jet._

I'd settle for decent healthcare and enough stable income to raise a family.

 _Should the group, who by and large, has contributed more to the society not
have proportionally more say?_

1) They haven't and 2) no. You appear to be advocating plutocracy.

~~~
aje403
I'm not sure what to tell you, people who have built organizations that
employee thousands of people have contributed more to society than average. If
that needs further justification then I'm not even sure how to respond to
that.

You're reading things into what I'm saying - if Elon Musk raises a campaign
fundraiser for his favorite candidate, do I mind that? Do I mind him having
more "power" in that people listen to his twitter account over joe schmo? Not
at all. Is he colluding with other executives to fix automative prices and
then pressuring his candidate to change regulations as a favor when they're
elected? Yes. That makes me a "plutocracy supporter"?

~~~
KozmoNau7
> _I 'm not sure what to tell you, people who have built organizations that
> employee thousands of people have contributed more to society than average.
> If that needs further justification then I'm not even sure how to respond to
> that._

A very large portion of those people have contributed more _suffering_ to the
world, and continue to do so through the continued exploitation of the worker
class and lower classes.

~~~
aje403
Should probably bow out after this one; I don't think there is much room for
rational discussion for my viewpoints here.

I agree that walmart is a piece of crap, but you don't really know what
suffering is. Please ask your grandparents what options their grandparents had
in life.

If you have some notion that corporations that try to profit are a blight on
society and that their abolition will lead to some dream world, then by all
means. Please knock over all the establishments, nationalize all corporations
and divy profits amongst the workers, redivide the wealth of every
millionaire, publish a list of banned words like 'wealth', and so on, and then
point me to the nearest democracy.

~~~
darpa_escapee
> I don't think there is much room for rational discussion for my viewpoints
> here.

I agree, you refuse to address the arguments people bring up in favor of
attacking straw men and relying on sarcastic hyperbole.

~~~
aje403
Funny, your comment is self referencing

------
spicymaki
America's aversion to the role of luck is based on the Protestant work ethic.
There is no chance and everything is predetermined by God's grace. God's grace
is demonstrated by hard work, frugality, and discipline. There is a concept of
double predetermination where you already need to be saved to be saved. Which
means the poor is poor not because of chance, but because they lack God's
grace.

~~~
sdhgaiojfsa
Be that as it may, this blog is about a specific paper and the strength of its
claims. I don't really think puritanism has anything to do with whether this
paper's model or inferences are sound.

~~~
giardini
But puritanism's remains are responsible for many of the opinions critical of
the paper's conclusions. Just ask a few wealthy persons about this paper or
others like it: they are usually fiercely critical and have bought completely
into ideas that support their "blessed" position in society.

------
naasking
> It could be that the results were built into the model’s design.

Every true mathematical proposition is a tautology. I don't find this point
particularly convincing. As long as the model's predictions match reality in
interesting ways, it can lend possible insights on why reality might have
certain characteristics.

> Like getting an improbable series of heads when flipping a coin long enough,
> improbable clusters of events are bound to occur for at least some agents in
> a large enough set.

Yes, but what's alarming is how _most_ agents' capital fell from bad luck
alone, and how good luck only seemed to benefit a very small subset of the
population, and talent was not any kind of guarantee. These characteristics of
life are denied by many people, so to see it reflected in such a simple model
is, I hope, instructive.

> Why should capital growth only occur on chance events, when most workers are
> paid wages in exchange for their work?

The way I see it, chance events that exponentially increase wealth drown out
one's piddling wages. Wages don't seem particularly relevant to why Warren
Buffet and Bill Gates have billions, and many people live paycheck to
paycheck.

~~~
guiscreenshots
>> It could be that the results were built into the model’s design.

>Every true mathematical proposition is a tautology. I don't find this point
particularly convincing. As long as the model's predictions match reality in
interesting ways, it can lend possible insights on why reality might have
certain characteristics.

I think the problem is that nothing about the model lines up with reality. For
example:

\- Each agent begins with an identical amount of capital. -- nothing like the
real world.

\- Every 6 months you have the possibility of doubling or halving your
capital. -- nothing like the real world.

\- Chance of doubling capital is proportional to talent. -- nothing like the
real world.

As an argument for such a simple model they provide:

> The previous agents’ rules are intentionally simple and can be considered
> widely shareable, since they are based on the common sense evidence that
> success, in everyone life, has the property to both grow or decrease very
> rapidly.

Sure, success/failure _can_ increase or decrease rapidly, but is it the rule?
Arguing the basis of your entire model on "common sense" seems weak. It would
be better if they had provided at least some real world data where this
pattern emerges. In my experience people seem to move a little bit up or down
from their baseline, but I have never personally seen a swing from rags to
riches or the other way around.

If they had begun by drawing parallels to the ways in which we see the real
world and letting the model simulate it into the future it would be more
compelling. As it stands, it seems like a set of arbitrary rules designed to
reach their desired conclusion, albeit weakly through "it looks pretty
similar".

~~~
naasking
> \- Each agent begins with an identical amount of capital. -- nothing like
> the real world.

Not relevant. Part of the main point was that _even in the case of equal
opportunity /equal starting points_, bad luck readily overcomes talent, good
luck rewards even the less talented, and so talent isn't any kind of
guarantee, contra many people's claims.

> \- Every 6 months you have the possibility of doubling or halving your
> capital. -- nothing like the real world.

I don't think this is relevant either. You can pick any progression you want
and it won't affect the final results. The point is to simulate regular
opportunities of dramatically increasing one's wealth. So again, even when
faced with _equal opportunity_ , dramatic wealth inequality just due to luck
seems inevitable.

> \- Chance of doubling capital is proportional to talent. -- nothing like the
> real world.

The claim that wealth is proportional to "talent" is widely believed. This
paper puts it to the test and refutes it. That's one of the main points.

> In my experience people seem to move a little bit up or down from their
> baseline, but I have never personally seen a swing from rags to riches or
> the other way around.

I addressed this in the post you replied to: small swings up and down are
probably wage-driven. This doesn't explain wealth disparity, because dramatic
swings in wealth will largely not be wage-driven. These events thus aren't of
interest.

> If they had begun by drawing parallels to the ways in which we see the real
> world and letting the model simulate it into the future it would be more
> compelling.

Not as easy as you think. We have no idea what factors are involved. That's
why we study models, and see how closely the results match with reality. That
then gives us insight into how some parts of reality might work.

~~~
pdubbs90
In their model the only benefit of talent is it makes you more likely to
double your wealth given luck. This means that they assume luck is _needed_
for advancement while talent is not. Hence they assume that luck is more
important than talent, and it's unsurprising that they see the result.

Likewise the power distribution is built in. Power distributions are created
by multiplicative laws and the only ways wealth changes in this model are
multiplication and division. This means they also assume the power
distribution they claim to discover.

It's definitely very hard to build models that match reality, but this one
doesn't really seem to try and it's outcomes are so predictable they don't
offer meaningful insight. Luck surely plays a _huge_ role in success, but
something like longitudinal studies where we measure the abilities of children
and then follow their outcomes are likely far more insightful.

~~~
naasking
> This means that they assume luck is needed for advancement while talent is
> not.

Which is clearly true. You can be as talented as you like, but talent without
a corresponding opportunity to use that talent for monetary gain obviously
yields no wealth. There's nothing objectionable here.

It's also widely believed that greater talent makes one more successful at
exploiting opportunities, and the paper accepts this premise in order to test
it.

Now you can quibble that perhaps the random variable governing opportunities
is _not independent of talent_ , in that, those with more talent are simply
presented with more opportunities. Perhaps that's true.

But the paper actually shows that our world is also consistent with the
hypothesis that opportunities are completely random.

> Power distributions are created by multiplicative laws and the only ways
> wealth changes in this model are multiplication and division. This means
> they also assume the power distribution they claim to discover.

I think you're looking at this wrong. The power distribution is not the
discovery, the discovery is that what we see in real life is consistent with
such a simple formulation based on a small number of factors where wealth
disparity is largely dominated by luck.

Perhaps that's not actually the case in reality, but we now know that it's
absolutely not _impossible_ , which some previously believed.

> Luck surely plays a huge role in success, but something like longitudinal
> studies where we measure the abilities of children and then follow their
> outcomes are likely far more insightful.

These aren't mutually exclusive. Modelling and empirical studies both yield
insights.

------
Quarrelsome
I think generally modelling life in 2d grid with simplifications such as
talent = 0.0 - 1.0 and events doubling or halving capital with a deterministic
number of "good/bad" events isn't going to give you anything real as output. I
don't like this sort of science, it stinks of foregone conclusion. Running the
model itself is irrelevant as the outcome is pretty obvious by the maths put
into it.

How far is it really from just writing console.out("my hunches are correct!");

Maybe in a future world of modelling where we feed real-world data into the
model then maybe we can get somewhere?

~~~
BlackFly
They introduced talent as a bias in capitalizing on doubling events (the less
talent, the less doubling events in proportion). A priori you would consider
that this should lead to the talented being overrepresented in the higher
percentiles of capital, yet they discover this bias does not dominate over the
underlying uniform randomness of merely encountering a doubling event.

So no, I wouldn't say the conclusion is foregone. It shows an example where
something that can reasonably be called talent (the ability to capitalize) is
not as important as luck (the chance encountering of an event where you can
capitalize).

~~~
Quarrelsome
> So no, I wouldn't say the conclusion is foregone.

With the distribution of people and events over space and the distribution of
talent the end result was a given because its more likely for an arbitrary
person to trigger multiple good events than for very specific "talented"
people to trigger multiple good events even if their factor means they don't
need as many good events to be "even". Same way that if you had more events
then people then the outcome would completely change because then "talent"
would become a bigger factor than "finding an event".

Its just about what they decided to make scarce (events) in the model.

------
mapcars
I'm not quite getting how can you put talent vs luck, when talent is based on
luck you got from your genes, parents, environment etc.

I see it as the same thing.

~~~
amelius
Yes. Therefore, ultimately, in a society without work, wealth should be
distributed according to the happiness it delivers. If one person loves
reading books and another person loves driving expensive cars, then it's clear
how the money should be distributed.

On the other hand, this might take the fun out of driving expensive cars,
because in a society with such wealth-distribution, having an expensive car
doesn't mean "I'm more successful than you", but rather something like "I have
a pathetic need to show off".

~~~
KozmoNau7
It could also mean "I simply enjoy driving cars with a lot of power and/or
comfort, because the sensations are inherently pleasurable to me".

I love driving cars. Not to show off or because of prestige, I just really
like driving, for some reason. I don't care if it's a 300hp grand tourer or a
60hp supermini, it's the act of driving that's enjoyable to me personally.

Not everything is a matter of "keeping up with the Joneses".

~~~
amelius
Yes, I stand corrected. It's difficult to predict how people would think/live
in a Utopian society.

Perhaps cars wouldn't be owned, but borrowed/rented whenever people would want
to have an experience like you described.

~~~
KozmoNau7
We could certainly do that today (and we are, on a limited scale), and I think
it may happen with electric cars surprisingly soon.

Certainly for those of us living in larger cities, a subscription service
would make sense, so you would have to worry a lot less about parking.
Especially with self-driving cars that could deliver themselves when needed.

------
giardini
Instead of wasting time on a (rather biased) critique, read the original
paper:

"Talent vs Luck: the role of randomness in success and failure" by A.
Pluchino. A. E. Biondo, A. Rapisarda

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068)

Are the rich wealthy because they somehow _earned_ it? Examination reveals
that this is not true and that the most extreme cases of wealth accumulation
(which show a surprisingly consistent pattern across cultures) are
attributable more to luck than to skill. Mark Buchanan examines this in his
excellent book "The Social Atom" (pp.172-174):

[https://www.amazon.com/Social-Atom-Cheaters-Neighbor-
Usually...](https://www.amazon.com/Social-Atom-Cheaters-Neighbor-
Usually/dp/1596910135/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521127098&sr=8-1&keywords=the+social+atom)

A reference from that book:

Jean-Philippe Bouchaud and Marc Mezard, "Wealth Condensation in a simple model
of economy":

[https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0002374](https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-
mat/0002374)

See also Christopher Jencks, Inequality (New York: Basic Books, 1972) which
focuses more on the effect (or non-effect) of education on income:

[https://www.amazon.com/Inequality-Reassessment-Effect-
School...](https://www.amazon.com/Inequality-Reassessment-Effect-Schooling-
America/dp/0061319600/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521126691&sr=8-1&keywords=Christopher+Jencks%2C+Inequality)

If extreme wealth is largely due to luck then I see no reason why government
should not lop the "lucky" portion off for its purposes. Of course there will
always be argument as to precisely where the line is drawn between luck and
skill.

Finally we must not forget bad luck, which makes fools of us all. Just as
there are those who are super-wealthy due to luck, there are those whose
livelihood has been destroyed by luck. I do feel an obligation to help them
back onto their feet.

~~~
FabHK
Robert Frank's book _Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of
Meritocracy_ is another enjoyable book about this (and supports your argument
for some form of government redistribution).

------
xer
From my experience you can increase your luck in life by exposing yourself to
more choices. This can be something as simple as having saved up money so you
can quit your job whenever you want to. That in turn gives you the "luck" to
get a better job if the opportunity presents itself.

~~~
dclowd9901
I do 100% agree with this, recognizing, of course, that merely being in a
position to have choices to begin with is _also_ a factor of luck. (Parents’
socioeconomic status; your own intelligence; if you had someone around to have
taught you this, etc)

------
amelius
Some time ago there was a post on HN where they had an even simpler model (not
based on talent). Everybody was given an equal amount of capital at the start.
Then at every tick of the clock, everybody would give 1 dollar to a random
person (if they had the money). After many iterations, an exponential wealth
distribution resulted.

------
zzzeek
> There’s a serious risk of this runaway momentum building an ever-growing
> chain of misguided agreement.

to think we might alter our society to redistribute wealth to those who are
most lacking, lifting people out of poverty and improving the world, when we
DIDNT EVEN HAVE TO, turns out those losers _were_ talentless and therefore
deserve nothing. Horrifying.

~~~
monktastic1
In that sentence he's talking about the risk of propagating flawed research. A
few paragraphs up he makes it clear that he doesn't hold the view you ascribe
to him:

> I care deeply about the issue of growing wealth inequality, and would love
> for research to be done that finds concrete evidence of how luck and
> privilege play a role in it.

~~~
zzzeek
yeah I don't buy that. Someone looking to identify flawed research can choose
from a vast amount of subject areas to focus upon. The research that this
person chooses to attempt to debunk is IMO telling.

------
Bodhisattya
But aren't the exceptionally talented(2%) people supposed to win way more than
3%, if we assume talent plays a larger role. It is not a bad output, but not
good enough either considering they are exceptional. The paper probably
indicates that talent stops becoming the limiting factor somewhere pretty
close to average talent, and environmental influences/luck take precedence.

We could argue as to what constitutes luck but I think the core of the paper
suggests that talent's importance in success is overestimated, which is rather
believable (MY ANECDOTAL OPINION).

Haven't read the paper, just assuming from the articles.

------
fsiefken
Long ago I stumbled upon bound copies of the Journal of Parapsychology in the
basement of the university library, when looking for written lectures on
Nietzsche.

One of the articles was about finding people who attract more good luck and
people who attract more bad luck while ruling all kinds of psychological,
behavioural or environmental factors. The relevance the authors argued was
that persons with bad luck could be screened for to not work for nuclear
facilities. I really wanted to find that article again, but the library has
been rebuilt and I don't come there often.

------
wmsiler
This is not directly related to this article (which I liked), but instead to
the topic in general.

I heard of a study a few years ago where researchers divided a bunch of
teenagers into a few groups (each of which was quite large), and each teen was
allowed to go to a website and hear a collection of songs (same songs for
everyone). Each person could then vote on which was their favorite and,
importantly, they could see how many votes that song had already gotten just
within their group. The researchers wanted to see if the same songs were
picked as the favorite across different, isolated groups. The result was that
each group had chosen completely different songs as their favorite. These
groups were large enough that they were probably all statistically similar.
Once people in a group saw that some song already had a lot of votes, they
were more likely to pick it as their favorite as well. This suggests that in
the world of pop music, success may have more to do with luck and social
influence than with talent.

Ah, I found a link to a description of the study:
[https://www.npr.org/2014/02/27/282939233/good-art-is-
popular...](https://www.npr.org/2014/02/27/282939233/good-art-is-popular-
because-its-good-right)

~~~
tokai
Sounds like the good old Matthew Effect.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect)

------
jonbarker
This is all interesting to me. Probably around 40 years ago someone in
management decided that certain people were winning the economic game because
they were better (meritocracy) and then when we went through a series of
technological disruptions we came upon a funny variant which I will attempt to
paraphrase "those who are successful are the best at increasing their at-bats
and therefore their opportunity to have 'lucky' events." This system seems OK,
it selects on people who aren't afraid of failure, and that can't be bad.
However, the new problem we have is a situation where there are basically
monopolies whose heads still have the 'fail fast' mantra stuck in their
heads....

------
drieddust
Where Warren Buffet would have landed if he was born in Afghanistan?

I have thought about this question a lot recently without any satisfaction.

~~~
giardini
My tendency is to say "Well, but that didn't happen, so discussing it isn't
fruitful."

But counterfactuals seem to be part of our reasoning processes ("If i had
turned left at the last light I would be closer to the restaurant.") and they
do often capture the imagination (alternative histories, etc.):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_conditional](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_conditional)

~~~
antisthenes
That tendency is valid when you're plotting your own future strategy, because
you can't go back in time.

However when you're looking at society in aggregate, you have to consider what
will happen, so the conversation is still useful when planning for the future
(since people will be at different points in their lives) of the group as a
whole.

------
beersigns
I generally agree we are products of the environment/circumstance we are born
into but it's left to your free-will and choice as to how to best persevere in
that environment. I've always viewed talent as the tool that enables you to
make the best of the environment you are placed in. Chance/opportunity is not
a equally distributed resource but by working hard/efficiently you prepare
yourself to make the best of the opportunities you are presented with in life.
No one is immune to sheer bad luck but if you did everything you could to set
yourself up for success, you shouldn't be derided for it.

------
ryeguy_24
I wonder if this type of analysis if even worth our time as individual people
and as society. Will the information it uncovers lead to a better life for us?
We all know success is some combination of luck, skill, and hard work. Luck is
probably partially dependent upon the other two components (skill and hard
work). But by how much, who cares?

If success and well-being is fully determined by luck, then what should I do
today?. If it's not, then I'll continue reaching for the stars. I don't think
you will ever prove 100% dependence so anything less means you have to try.

------
AndrewSChapman
Let's face it - how intelligent you are, what if anything you're gifted at,
how tenatious you are, where you were born, who your parents are, who you
know, what opportunities life presents you, what you enjoy doing, how much you
are driven to win... ALL of these things are out of your control. The real
falacy is that rich and successful people think they somehow "deserve" their
status and that other people just didn't try hard enough. The reality is that
life is a random shitshow and the rich / successful have been extremely lucky.

------
captainbland
> Indeed, based on the way its rules are set, the high concentrations of
> capital seem like they were a foregone conclusion.

You could say much the same about modern market economies.

------
jrs235
Read Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers for a mind opening perspective on how
much "luck" and timing plays into individual "success".

------
jps359
My favorite novel on the topic is Fooled by Randomness

------
thisisit
Was there a particular reason to post the same link within an hour?

Two discussions posted by the new account:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16591908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16591908)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16591878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16591878)

------
jnordwick
R/economics went over this a bit too. There are other issues with the model
that and to make it very poor:

\- fixed rate of return (doubled or halved) make luck play an oversized role.
One of talents greatest contributions is knowing how to let your winners run
and cut your losses. The setup is close to a random walk by definition.

\- risk reduction is hugely important. High earners especially when speaking
of finance tend to know how to reduce risk. Only fools always bet half they
capital in every decision.

\- talent would understand what events are more likely to succeed than just
every event having the same probability.

\- talent and preparation generate events. The more you prepare the more
chances you'll have available. Most successful people have failed multiple
times but keep trying.

\- no learning. One of talents great benefits is learning from mistakes. And
when combined with increased number of chances that talent provides, this is a
critical feedback cycle the model misses.

Basically the model made everybody similar and then had an exponential random
function. With such small tails in the talent pool, there is no other decision
it could have reached.

------
creep
As an anecdote, my friend's dad was once camping with a friend and lightning
hit. His friend died, he did not although he, too, was struck by lightning.
Years later he won a $5M home lottery.

I consider him to be the luckiest person I know. He has bad luck and good luck
quite often, for no reason.

~~~
FabHK
That reminds me of the Japanese fellow who was in Hiroshima when the bomb hit,
survived, returned to work in his home town Nagasaki when the second bomb hit,
survived, and lived until 2010. Talk about bad luck and good luck.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi)

------
jungletime
Seems like this is just measuring a natural effect. The bigger the star, the
more mass it has, the more it pulls towards it self. Or the bible version "to
those that have more shall be given" The richer you become, the more
opportunities you attract to make money.

------
victor106
A book I recently read on this topic

[https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Bets-Making-Smarter-
Decision...](https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Bets-Making-Smarter-
Decisions/dp/0735216355)

Really insightful and highly recommended

------
mtreis86
I am the luckiest. I make my luck. Every bad event brought me here and formed
me. Every good thing is mine to enjoy. Whatever happens I will own it. Luck is
a lie you tell yourself. But it is a useful lie.

------
melancholique
Why authors of article assume that talent is distributed according to Gaussian
function? Am i mistaken or authors didn't give any references to researches on
this assumption?

~~~
FabHK
They don't assume that real world talent is normally distributed. It's just a
property of the agents in their model that makes it more likely that they can
take advantage of good luck, "talent" here is just an evocative name.

------
wvlia5
I stopped reading the paper, thinking it was amateurish garbage, when I saw
the graph containing tiny people

------
soVeryTired
See also, like, every economic model ever.

------
matte_black
The original model was so abstracted that it was absurd.

There is no such thing as “luck”, it is only a name for what we call the
intersection of preparation and opportunity. Both can be controlled. People
tend to think opportunities are random and based on chance – they aren’t. They
are the result of smaller intersections of preparations and opportunities that
happened previously.

~~~
pron
For the purpose of this discussion, the precise definition of luck doesn't
matter, and can be taken to be anything that isn't talent.

~~~
matte_black
There is no such thing as talent either.

No one is born with a natural skill to do something unnatural. Genetic traits
are not talents, they are traits. To be born with a talent would be to be able
to do whatever it is you do from the moment you are born, if you had the
physical capacity for it. Otherwise, any “talent” you display later is really
just the result of effective learning and practice, but that is just what you
would call a skill, there is no need to build it up with all the mythology of
“talent”. Just another form of ladder kicking to discourage others from
thinking they could achieve that same level of skill.

So if neither definition matters, then in essence this discussion is about
nothing.

~~~
noelwelsh
Luck is anything the individual cannot control. You don't get to choose your
parents, for example. I don't see what your point is.

~~~
wavefunction
@matte_black

There's a big component in American culture at least, that assumes that the
success in life is due to talent. It provides an excuse for inequitable
distributions of resources, for example, by justifying the distribution as a
natural consequence of individual talent, skill, and hard work.

This study shows that this cultural assumption is not true, that talent or
hard-work alone are not enough to achieve success, and much of success is down
to random events.

I think talent and hard-work along with ambition better prepare an individual
to take advantage of these random events but without fortuitous providence,
they aren't enough to provide success.

~~~
zip1234
Well, as an American, I can say that it isn't an assumption that success in
life is solely due to talent. However, there is a belief that one can be
successful with an entrepreneurial, hard-working attitude. Everyone knows that
ultimate level of success is influenced by things out of one's control, but
the American work ethic is more about making the most of what one has. People
choose to control what they can, which is effort and attitude, and not worry
about that which they can't.

~~~
projektir
The problem is people mix personal motto with social policy. Social policy
isn't about personal comfort with the concept, it's about what actually works,
and if luck matters to social policy, then it needs to be taken into account,
regardless of how much you pay attention to luck on a personal level.

> People choose to control what they can

Don't worry, everyone already does that. The difference is do you look down on
other people (or even yourself) who are not doing as well?

