
Your success isn’t down to free will – luck determines everything - yarapavan
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/apr/27/success-isnt-free-will-luck-determines-everything-oliver-burkeman
======
csallen
People seem to be wondering what the takeaways can be from this point of view.
Even if every decision we make can ultimately be traced back to some quirk of
our genes or environment that we didn't choose… so what? We still have to
live, don't we? We still have to assign blame and responsibility, punish
criminals, reward the successful, etc.

Sure, but we can do more than that. We can increase our compassion for our
fellow humans.

I met someone recently who had a very tough childhood. Her mother didn't want
her. She was physically and psychologically abused. Her parents discouraged
everything she ever tried. She was neglected and abandoned and had to raise
her younger siblings by herself. This is stuff you don't just "get over," and
yet she's doing very well for herself.

All I could think was gosh, what a different upbringing than mine. The adults
in my life kept me safe, made me feel loved, supported me, and inspired my
confidence in myself. And while I can still be proud of many of the things
I've done in life, it's grounding to put them in perspective and accept that
the playing field is not level. It never will be. Having more compassion for
others and more skepticism toward (and thus gratitude for) our own
accomplishments is, in my opinion, a healthier and more fulfilling way to
live.

~~~
imgabe
Can we increase compassion? Maybe a few people are lucky enough to be
compassionate. The rest of us are doomed to be misanthropic jerks.

~~~
csallen
Certainly! There is a biological element to compassion, but there's a
knowledge component as well. Simply knowing that someone may actually be
worthy of your compassion is half the battle.

------
jacquesm
Luck favors the prepared. When luck and preparation intersect good stuff
happens, but if you're 'just' lucky and are not in a position to capitalize on
that luck then you will appear unlucky.

Obviously the writer and the person referenced have taken the 'luck' angle to
an extreme, there is an element of truth in there: you need a good sized dose
of luck to get anywhere in life, whether it is an accident of birth or
genetics.

Where free will enters the picture is that not everybody that was lucky at
some point in their life ends up making it: you can easily annihilate your
luck by working against yourself or by having other factors that negate your
luck.

So it's an interesting viewpoint but a bit of a cop-out.

~~~
minor3rd
> Where free will enters the picture is that not everybody that was lucky at
> some point in their life ends up making it: you can easily annihilate your
> luck by working against yourself.

What do you think determines this? At what point can you say this magical
thing called free will pops into existence? I don't understand how the laws of
physics determine how the universe behaves but then those laws decide to step
aside while someone is making decisions about their life.

~~~
TheCoreh
These are two separate discussions, really:

\- Is the universe fully deterministic? We don't know the answer to that, and
it's possible we might never know

\- Are the life decisions that I make correlated with my success? That one is
easier to work out: Even if the "decisions" turn out to be "pseudo-random" due
to the properties of the underlying universe, they could still be correlated
with success, therefore it's useful to devote resources into deliberately
moving closer to that "success" (even if there are external/random factors) at
play

~~~
harshreality
> \- Are the life decisions that I make correlated with my success? That one
> is easier to work out: Even if the "decisions" turn out to be "pseudo-
> random" due to the properties of the underlying universe, they could still
> be correlated with success, therefore it's useful to devote resources into
> deliberately moving closer to that "success" (even if there are
> external/random factors) at play

But " _devoting resources to deliberately moving closer to that 'success_'" is
just as much not-determined-by-you as everything else, whether it's fully
deterministic in a classical physics sense, or partly deterministic, and part
randomly quantum-influenced. The notion that you can influence yourself is
true... your thoughts a second ago influence your thoughts now. So, through
introspection, you can see that you're influencing yourself. But it's a
mirage, because you're not at the root of the chain of causation going back to
the first thought you had, so you don't control the thought you had a second
ago, and you don't control any external factors (senses) that influenced you
between your last thought and your current thought, so you don't control your
thought now.

The reason you devote resources to moving closer to success isn't that you're
"deciding" (from no prior state) to do that. Rather, your psychology is
already such that you want to actively improve yourself, you don't have other
psychological issues that would sabotage that desire, and you see a path to
improve yourself. What better to do, then, than to move yourself along that
path toward future success?

~~~
TheCoreh
Yeah, that's a good point.

I guess the ideal way to put it is that I didn't mean "decision" necessarily
in a "free-will, non-deterministic" way but rather in a more computational
sense (like branches of an "if").

If ultimately free will turns out to not exist, that will affect us very
little in how we live: perhaps morally we should be more forgiving towards
other people's shortcomings

~~~
minor3rd
Yep I don't believe in free will and agree whole-heartedly with everything you
said.

I still believe people make decisions and that those decisions have
consequences, I just think the decisions can likely be traced back to the
state of the universe and physical processes rather than poofing out of
nowhere. Of course, even if quantum mechanics means that there are some random
processes at play, that doesn't change much since it is still quantum
mechanics at the root of those "poofs".

------
thejudge
Nobody can blame me for disagreeing with the article because, following their
own reasoning, if you trace back all the faculties that lead me to develop
critical thought then you reach a point in which I am blameless and happened
apparently through chance: my birth.

Since I'm not responsible for my birth, I am not responsible for anything I do
after I was born, no matter how noble or horrendous.

So their reasoning goes, and if upheld in the courts nobody could be blamed
for anything, but as the popular saying goes, "tell that to the judge."

~~~
bonniemuffin
Even if free will is a myth and people aren't responsible for any of their
actions, prison still makes sense for two purposes:

(1) deterrence is still possible even without free will, and

(2) it's important to remove potential repeat offenders from society so they
don't have the opportunity to offend again.

The only aspect of the criminal justice system that it removes is the
vindictive element-- it no longer makes sense to send people to prison to
punish them and 'get back at' them, because they may not have been truly in
control of their actions.

~~~
vorotato
Rehabilitation has been shown to be more effective than punitive deterrence
though.

~~~
bonniemuffin
Absolutely, totally agree. Prison should only be used when someone absolutely
must be removed from society in order to keep the rest of the population safe;
I think many people currently in prison should be in some sort of
rehabilitation program instead.

------
maym86
The point is to have some awareness of the luck involved in getting to where
you are and to provide empathy and support to the people who haven't been so
lucky. You can share that luck.

~~~
wang_li
Just because a person was dealt a crap hand doesn’t mean they can’t make good
choices. And their decisions can legitimately be judged and used as the factor
in choosing to help them or not.

There is no moral or ethical failing in refusing to give to those who will
waste what is given.

~~~
ddingus
Waste from whose point of view?

Yours? Mine?

When they get help, that buys time. May not buy it as efficiently as it could,
but that's a nit.

Given time, their luck can change. Help can get them there.

~~~
wang_li
Society wide utility. Every time resources are diverted to someone who uses
them unproductively we lose the opportunity to use them productively.

~~~
ddingus
No. That assumes perfect information and perfect availability. We do not, nor
cannot actualize those things. We don't even need to.

People, society are not machines.

There are costs, risks, balances to be made.

And of course, productive from whose point of view? I value helping people far
more than I do actualizing peak efficiency, and I do that because the human
costs are generally undesirable.

------
minor3rd
I stopped believing in free will since diving into physics in high
school/college. Everything we've ever observed appears to follow laws of
universe over which we have no control. Feeling like you have free will does
not mean you have it, and many studies have found your "decisions" happen
before you are even conscious of them.

~~~
mr_spothawk
This is an existential dilemma that has always bugged me, but I found a work
through that's satisfactory for now:

there seems to be a distinction between Free Will (the ability to act in the
moment, I don't believe it exists) and Self Awareness (the ability to consider
your-self & your actions in the past or future, which apparently does exist
for me).

To me, it seems we have no choice about what to do in the moment. But the
moment afterward, we begin to reflect on our experience, replay those sensory
signals & imagine our different responses or outcomes, and rewire our brain
for the next opportunity to automatically respond in a "free-will" scenario.

~~~
analreceiver
What and how you reflect is conditioned by all your life experiences which are
in turn caused by "luck".

~~~
mr_spothawk
oh, please.

if luck causes everything, we might as well call it circumstance.

as luck would have it, I thought the article was total garbage... it raises no
questions and offers no valuable insights beyond: historic circumstances
exist.

------
firmgently
So many comments pointing out the difference between luck and hard work, or
saying it's all about taking opportunities when they arise etc. I can't
compute.

The entire point of the article was to say if you work harder, your propensity
for hard work is the result of luck (or 'the sum of external circumstance and
genetics that led to your being a hard worker'). If you are good at taking
opportunities when they arise, the thing that makes you be that kind of person
can be described as 'luck' (because if not, what is it? Where does it come
from? Intuitively people put it down to some kind of magical inner 'you-ness'
but that's ill-defined and wishy-washy).

If you're using the idea that your success in life is due to your personal
flavour of 'free will' being 'better', you're arguing for something
supernatural, causeless and which originated somewhere other than The Big
Bang. I'm not saying you're wrong but you've got quite a lot of arguing to do
as philosophers have been trying to prove free will exists for centuries. The
best argument for it that I've read is from Daniel Dennett in 'Freedom
Evolves' where he suggests free will is a kind of emergent behaviour which
while not being real is 'real enough'. Obviously I'm nowhere near doing it
justice as it's an entire book by a proper philosopher but it's a great read
if you're interested in this stuff.

I'm not saying I like the idea that free will doesn't exist (I don't!) but I
can't come up with an argument for it being non-deterministic (and if it's
pre-determined then it's not free will). It's essential to our sense of self.
It seems like an obvious thing when you think about it in floppy ways but as
soon as you start trying to define it properly as anything other than a 'ghost
in the machine', emergent behaviour of a deterministic system, it moves
further and further away from you. Hence the long-standing philosophical
musings!

------
vpmpaul
Most people on HN are very quick to dismiss the role luck plays in their life.

I realize many are very accomplished so they don't want to devalue/dismiss
their own efforts.

~~~
deadmetheny
In that same vein though, many people are willing to insist that hard work
plays zero role and everything is completely luck.

Success is the intersection of luck, and being prepared to embrace the
opportunities that arise as a result of that luck. If you aren't prepared to
take advantage of a good opportunity, nothing happens. There's not a lot of
cases where people find success without expending any effort at all.

------
menacingly
We should have taken it more seriously when post-modernism was slowly
replacing the building blocks of organized thought, because now points are
made not by expressing anything, but by subtly rotating the definitions of the
terms.

~~~
Diederich
> but by subtly rotating the definitions of the terms.

Can you expand on that?

------
kristianc
> The philosopher Galen Strawson has a knack for translating big, abstract
> questions – the kind of things you might assume were of little interest
> outside philosophy lecture halls – into puzzles so personally troubling I
> can’t continue with my day until I’ve figured out where I stand on them, or
> at least been distracted by a sleepless baby or enticing cheeseburger.

Must have just got lucky. If luck is an explanation for everything, it
explains nothing.

~~~
refurb
_Must have just got lucky. If luck is an explanation for everything, it
explains nothing._

That's my problem with this explanation as well.

It could be reduced down to "you could have been hit by a car this morning,
just the fact you're alive means you're lucky".

Great, so everyone's lucky. Now what?

~~~
mr_spothawk
Some of us are clearly more lucky than others. I remember an article on HN a
few weeks ago about how to get +1 to Luck.

~~~
wang_li
It matters little how much luck you have if you don’t work to improve your lot
in life. If I slip on the curb and fall into a puddle I am unlucky. If I
remain in the puddle I’m an idiot.

~~~
maym86
If the puddle is the sea and no one throws you a line and lets you drown what
are you then?

~~~
mr_spothawk
drowned in pointless metaphor.

~~~
maym86
Exactly

------
gadders
I think the thing with this article is not "Is it true?" bit "Is it helpful?"
i.e. if you believed your situation in life was down to luck or your own
efforts, which would be likely to make you feel happier or be more successful?

Some research has been done on this in terms of whether people have an
internal or external locus of control - i.e. do they have control over their
life, or is it random chance? There is an article that explains the
differences here: [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/moments-
matter/20170...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/moments-
matter/201708/locus-control)

------
quantumofmalice
I expected an account of how luck is a necessary condition in unusual success.
I had a faint hope that the author would be intelligent enough to recognize
that it was not a sufficient condition.

However, the article doesn't even rise to my low expectations: it boils down
to a freshman-year philosophy major's denial of free will, smeared across
various aspects of life. Fine, whatever.

But we have NO OPTION but to treat people as if they have free will, since we
have no free will in the matter. And, furthermore, talking and writing is
pointless, since we have NO ABILITY to control what we think.

Unfortunately, the author can't choose not to write. I must say, I have no
option but to wish sincerely that he could.

------
dabbledash
I think “free will” might just not be a useful concept. If free will means
“the choices people make are not determined by causes” then free will would
just look like people acting entirely at random.

ETA: The more interesting question (to me) is how this changes how we judge
people, if at all. If a person is an asshole, obviously that’s because of
genetic and environmental influences. Do we excuse it either way? (In which
case you literally can’t ever hold anyone morally accountable for anything).
Do you excuse people only when the causes are environmental? Only when the
environment is extreme or the genetic difference is considered a “disease”?
But what justifies the difference?

------
ThrowAway1453
I have been working well over 40 hours per week on startups for several years
with nothing to show for it at all.

But 5 years ago, I also bought a bit of fake Internet money, and it somehow
became 10x more valuable last December with zero effort involved whatsoever.

~~~
ap3
But you still bought it, it didn’t magically appear

I on the other hand read about it and didn’t even pick up a single bit

Lucky bastard

~~~
ThrowAway1453
Was it free will or was it luck then?

------
johngalt
In the southwest we have a species of cactus known as jumping cactus. The
common belief is that if you get close enough, it will reach out and stab you
with its needles. Scienfically we know this doesn't happen. Cacti do not jump.
Yet if you asked me 'who is less likely to be injured?' I would bet on the
person who is staying 10ft away from the 'jumping' cactus because of their
erroneous beliefs about the cactus.

Luck certainly plays an outsized role in life. That said, it may not be a
productive belief even if it is true.

------
solarkraft
I have intensely followed this idea before and while I still agree that it's
theoretically true, thinking of it too much can be depressing (even more if
you believe the universe to be deterministic).

Whether you go do a thing is still your choice (within universal limits, of
course). Your success in it will partly be luck - but if you don't go do the
thing you will definitely not succeed. And if you prepared for it your odds
will be better.

------
imgabe
Regardless of whether you can actually affect an outcome, _believing_ you can
affect the outcome is crucial. Maybe you're just "lucky" to have that belief,
but of course you can choose to believe something or not, can't you?

What's the point of this article? Give up and accept whatever comes your way?
That any influence you could possibly exert on the world is just pure chance?
What a load of crap.

~~~
Nokinside
You don't see the point because you are looking it from individual point of
view. How individual should change their actions based on this news is not the
point.

The point of article affect policy level. If the correlation between effort
and outcome is probably weaker than what people assume, it has effects to the
society.

~~~
ddingus
Bingo.

This gets right at "blame yourself" type policy.

We all could need help. Thinking of it as such, understanding luck plays a
bigger role than we would like will boil down to more humane policy.

That will raise standards of living and improve society, all of which will
improve your personal luck.

------
squozzer
Free will may well be an illusion. I prefer to think of the Universe as
deterministic but unpredictable. Because we can't see everything behind the
events that happen around us. People with more comprehensive knowledge of
quantum mechanics, feel free to chime in.

In the end, though, even the most entitled and pampered aristo-plutocrat has
to get out of bed or at least eat food and drink liquids to stay alive.

~~~
wang_li
>I prefer to think of the Universe as deterministic but unpredictable.

If the universe is deterministic you can’t have a preference.

------
bassman9000
This article is absolute bullshit. Read Sowell on economic mobility. When
focusing on individuals, there's still migration from the poorest classes to
mid/high.

Luck determines everything, but the author still writes a paid article, just
in case the check doesn't magically fall from the sky.

------
throwawayaway12
I recall that the first episode of very bad wizards addressed this aspect of
free will well.[0]

0
-[https://verybadwizards.fireside.fm/1](https://verybadwizards.fireside.fm/1)

------
toblender
Luck is important, but luck doesn't come to those that sit on their ass.

~~~
vpmpaul
Not true at all.

The main reason that people get off their ass is to improve their life. People
that have everything are constantly offered amazing opportunities just for
existing. You may not have ever seen this because you don't fall in the
category but it happens all the time.

~~~
mantas
Who "has everything"? Today's poor would "have everything" by 100-year-ago
standards.

------
hyperpallium
I'm a great believer in luck, the harder I work, the luckier I am.

------
Talyen42
yeah, man, and because the universe is deterministic, like, nothing really
matters, dude

(struggles in handcuffs as police arrest him)

------
ap3
Have we been, uh, fooled by randomness?

------
toss1
This is just one silly tautology.

TFA simply redefines everything such that the root cause must always be some
kind of random allocation of resources/capabilities, or "luck". Then
essentially concludes that there is effectively no free will.

Sophistry. With zero useful explanatory value or application in the real
world.

I want my 2min back

