
Are You Downplaying Luck’s Role in Your Life? - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/are-you-downplaying-lucks-role-in-your-life
======
rublev
My entire life is luck. Sometimes I have a moment of appreciation where I
realize it fully and laugh to myself maniacally wondering when and how the
streak will end. I've never attributed much of my success to anything but
right place right time. Honestly most people could do my job if they tried, I
just happened to meet the right people. I got into my career accidentally.
Accidentally met my fiancee. Accidentally met all of my best friends, just on
the bus, or at a park or something. Sometimes I think about if I just tweaked
any one of those happenstances how it would all fall apart. The thought
tickles me greatly.

For example, I heard about crypto because some guy in WoW wanted to buy my
character off of me painlessly. He told me to register on btc-e, then I got a
bunch of BTC and that was it. 5 years later I hear about crypto again,
remembered those coins, and boom, life changed. All because I was in some
virtual world at 3am on a Thursday trying to sell off my WoW character for
beer money for the next day.

~~~
senatorobama
What's your net worth?

~~~
rublev
Enough to not work and day trade (lose) shit coins all day. On the other hand
life is sort of pointless now. Trying to avoid the hedonic treadmill.

I'm not rich, I can just pay my rent for a decade and a half before really
having to dip into savings.

~~~
mirimir
That's a _great_ story :)

Mine is the opposite :( I mined about 500 Bitcoin in mid 2010. But I got
paranoid about the lack of anonymity, so I sold them, for maybe $0.06 each. So
it goes.

~~~
rublev
Does the thought sometimes hit you like a pile of bricks when you're sitting
at work? Damn.

~~~
mirimir
No, not really. Stuff happens. And I've been pretty lucky about finding ways
to get paid for doing stuff that I might otherwise have done for fun. And
mostly as a consultant, with very little structure. Now I just work
anonymously for Bitcoin.

But anyway, I would have probably have sold it at the ~$1K peak, and the money
would all be gone by now ;)

------
throwawayAB1F
I owe my life to luck.

Two years ago I suffered an extreme bout of depression and hung myself. I'd
apparently called 911 beforehand so that someone prepared would find my body.
The police got there first and cut me down, but I was not breathing and had
aspirated (vomited into my lungs). The ambulance arrived and took me to a
nearby hospital where they performed an endotracheal intubation (tube through
the mouth, down the esophagus) and hooked me up to a ventilator. I was sedated
for 10 days, put on longer-term life support (tracheotomy and PEG feeding
tube, etc. It was expected that I would almost certainly have brain damage if
I survived. The aspiration had lead to substantial pneumonia, further
complicating treatment. When I awoke I was hallucinating from the sedatives
and had lost all memory of the week leading up to the suicide attempt. After a
few days they were able to take me off the ventilator and just use oxygen, and
eventually the tracheotomy tube was removed from my throat. Luckily the
opening healed, and I could speak and breath on my own. I was transferred to
an inpatient mental health facility and learned to better cope with
depression. There was no brain damage. Hanging has a higher rate of completed
suicides than shooting. Almost all of the incomplete (survival) hangings
result in permanent brain damage. I am ridiculously lucky. My survival is due
to the hard work of a large number of people, for which I will always be
grateful. But there's still a lot of luck involved.

~~~
pakaibuang
Welcome back.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I am extremely lucky:

1\. I did not end up as a spontaneous abortion (if you include fertilized eggs
that don't implant, 70-75% of conceptions end in a spontaneous abortion.

2\. I did not have any severe genetic abnormalities

3\. I was born healthy and full term

4\. I was born to parents that loved me and took good care of me and did not
abuse or neglect me.

5\. I was born in a developed country

6\. I was born at a time in history with generally low levels of violence

7\. I was born in a time in history when they had treatments for common
infections and other childhood conditions

8\. I was born in a time in history and a place that encouraged individual
freedom.

9\. I learned English as my first language

10\. My parents had enough money to buy me a computer

11\. My parents had enough money to buy me programming books

12\. My parents believed in children going to college

13\. I had good friends that did not get me in trouble.

~~~
solomatov
Not all of these events can be considered random. Spontaneous abortion is
definitely stochastic process. But you don't have a distribution of being born
at a particular time, i.e. you can't talk about probability of being born
nowadays vs 100 years ago.

------
ntrepid8
I think being born white, male, and good at math at this particular time in
history is the very definition of luck. I'm definitely playing the game of
life on "easy" mode.

That being said I think there is a minimum level of effort, intelligence, and
resilience required to take advantage of certain lucky opportunities if they
present themselves. When I look at how much some of my peers had to endure and
overcome to reach those minimums compared to what I had to do, it's easy to
see how lucky I've been.

~~~
steveeq1
> I think being born white, male, and good at math at this particular time in
> history is the very definition of luck.

And being an asian, male, and good at math isn't?

~~~
valesco
Being white means that you have a higher probability to be born in a developed
country too.

~~~
KekDemaga
White people descended from Europeans are the seventh most successful ethic
group in this country. The "luckiest" are Indian Americans, they beat Jewish
Americans nearly 10k a year.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income#By_ancestry)

------
natecavanaugh
A lot of these posts, while I appreciate the gratitude and they're great,
don't seem to show the gratitude for the seemingly bad circumstances or those
less than ideal.

I am insanely lucky for my strait, white male privilege. But I'm lucky for
every disadvantage that taught me empathy and patience with those not so
lucky. It taught me that manifest destiny may be present in our lives, but
it's value is to help connect and help those whose life didn't go the same
path. I think gratitude is a truly differentiating factor when interacting
with others.

My merit means nothing if it only exists to serve me. Meaning is found by
leveraging those strengths for others :)

------
ams6110
Chance favors the prepared. Everyone has countless opportunities, but only
some recognize and act upon them.

~~~
0xbear
Chance also favors those who expose themselves to it. It is very easy to sit
on ones ass for a decade, with a narrow and constant social circle, without
trying anything new.

~~~
AstralStorm
Misfavors too. We have limited time and mental resources to manage social
circles. Someone falls off the list.

Ann's whether a new circle will be beneficial is not obvious.

------
flukus
We got a home computer in the very early 90's (Amiga 500) and dad bought me
programming books for it. I was afforded the time to use those. I came out
quite good in the brain department of the genetic lottery.

Those three bits of luck make up a huge part of where I am today.

------
brandonmenc
I was born in America in the latter part of the 20th century. That alone makes
me luckier than just about every human who has ever lived.

------
ocdtrekkie
Nope. I got into the career I got into on... mostly luck. It's one of the
reasons I don't understand the cultural taboo of speaking about salary... it's
not really a valid measure of self-worth, it's just drawing the right card
from the deck.

------
turc1656
I'm so sick of seeing articles like this. And it seems like a cop out or
excuse people can tell themselves if they don't get what they want.

I think the old adage that luck is when preparedness meets opportunity is much
closer to being the truth. Look at the example they give with Bryan Cranston.
That's an opportunity that happened to open up for him through a series of
events outside of his control. But he wouldn't have been offered that part if
he wasn't of a certain caliber in the first place. Successful people generally
work hard and usually that pays off in the long term for them by being able to
seize opportunities when they arise. No one is going to run after you to say
"hey I have this great thing that you need to be involved in" if you are
mediocre.

I can smell the privilege and white guilt ideology that underpins articles
like this. I've seen it before in much lengthier pieces. This one is no
different.

~~~
boomboomsubban
>That's an opportunity that happened to open up for him through a series of
events outside of his control. But he wouldn't have been offered that part if
he wasn't of a certain caliber in the first place.

How many actors were of that quality and didn't get a series of events leading
to that opportunity? Opportunities arising are luck, no one is saying hard
work isn't necessary to take advantage of the opportunities.

>I can smell the privilege and white guilt ideology that underpins articles
like this. I've seen it before in much lengthier pieces. This one is no
different.

This one is different as it does not take the further step of showing how rich
white men tend to get far more opportunities than other groups. If you start
from the question "what makes people successful," you will see luck playing a
role before you look to see which people are luckier. Saying that a "white
guilt ideology" drives this is looking at it backwards.

------
rootusrootus
It is okay to think about luck's influence on your life, but I would say it is
a mistake to cite luck as a justification for everyone else's success or your
own lack thereof. While it absolutely helps a lot to be at the right place at
the right time, you also have to have enough talent to capitalize on the
opportunity.

~~~
RachelF
Luck is a huge factor, but mostly blamed for failure, few of us have the
insight to attribute much of our success to luck.

~~~
projektir
I think luck is mostly blamed for failure because no energy is expended on it
in that direction.

I.e., if you are lucky enough to be able to work on something that earns you
lots of money, you may still end up having to spend energy/effort/time on
something to earn that money. Even if the situation is lucky, there's effort
being expended, and in a relative sense, the amount of luck is irrelevant to
the amount of effort.

I.e., "you're lucky to be able to be a software engineer" != "you did no work
and got everything for free".

On the other hand, bad luck can hit out of nowhere in the form of random
medical expenses.

I think that's generally what's happening. When people work for something and
then get it, they generally aren't going to consider that the availability of
the situation itself is luck, because they're more focused on the work they
put in. When bad things happen to them, or when good things don't happen, the
individual often has nothing to do with it, hence it looking like pure luck.

------
dvdhnt
I'm not downplaying luck's role in my life so much as I'm downplaying my role
as my own worst enemy.

~~~
lhuser123
Me too.

------
gexla
Luck is a short term fluctuation in Texas Hold'em. Over the long term, the
fluctuations of luck smooth out. A given action could win or lose on one hand,
but over the long term, the return (or loss) will reflect the strength of the
decision.

In real life, lottery wins happen, but not often enough to bank on.

~~~
xapata
Texas Hold'em is IID -- events are independent and identically distributed.
Life is non-stationary, with autoregressive conditional variance. Heck, for
some aspects of life, the mean and variance are undefined.

It doesn't always smooth out in the long term, except for that in the long run
we're all dead.

~~~
AstralStorm
So far. Technically immortality is not out of question but a really long shot.

------
sbov
I chose to major in CS the same year the dotcom bubble burst. Nevermind the
specter of outsourcing at the time. Due to those and many other factors, I am
completely where I am by luck - at the time for all I knew I was basically
majoring in candle making.

~~~
yen223
Back in the mid-2000's I chose _not_ to major in CS despite having a strong
interest in the area, largely due to the doom-and-gloom news surrounding tech
in the wake of the dotcom bubble burst.

To a certain extent, I'm still paying for that mistake.

~~~
Density
Don't get too upset. Unemployment rates for new grads are pretty atrocious
tyool 2017.

------
weddpros
I wouldn't be where I am today, living the dream life on a sunny island, if I
didn't have a stroke at 33 at lost my dad at 36. Lucky me!

That's exactly the same bias as in this article. "Luck" is only a _post-hoc_
interpretation of stochastic events. Explaining these events by "luck" is like
explaining them by "good angels" or "aliens influence": pointless.

That not science, and making any conclusion based on this "research" is a bad
idea.

Are you really surprised if people tend to downplay luck, angels or aliens?

Luck is like religions, trying to find meaning in something supernatural...

------
nradov
As a child I won a free computer in a drug store drawing and that got me into
programming. If I hadn't won I might have ended up in a totally different
career. Luck plays a huge role.

------
eli_gottlieb
No, actually. I know that I've started from way behind most people in my
demographic cohort, made incredibly mediocre choices, and lucked out in a lot
of ways... to still end up mediocre.

Fuck luck.

~~~
tertius
> to still end up mediocre.

It's not the end my friend.

~~~
AstralStorm
Over time, number of opportunities rarely increases. (But sometimes their
quality does.)

------
mnm1
Most people do. The luck isn't that, like many here, I got into computers at
an early age, had the free time to teach myself, and was smart enough to. I
would likely be programming anyway and so would many here. The luck is that
there are good paying jobs in computers. It doesn't have to be this way and in
fact, in most of the world, it's not. Programming jobs could be paying a
median wage. They could be few and far between. That's where I and others like
me got lucky, IMO.

------
amelius
I'm wondering if there are people who actively try to eliminate certain types
of luck from their lives, for example because they think it would make life
too easy.

~~~
lettergram
I personally turned down all the government grant money I was offered for
school. I didn't feel it was right to take peoples tax money. I did take other
grants and loans supported by companies, individuals, or the university.

I did it because of principle. I didn't / don't think it was moral correct for
the government to take tax money and hand it to someone blindly. It should be
a choice of individuals to contribute, not the right of the masses.

Not exactly luck, but most people look at me like I'm insane. I'm sure there
are people out there willing to eliminate luck for a similar reason.

------
norswap
Interesting to see no mention of Fooled by Randomness either in the article on
in the comments. Isn't that the central thesis of that very influential book?

~~~
RachelF
It is one of many topics in "Fooled by Randomness". However, Taleb's views on
luck profoundly influenced how I see the world.

------
lostmsu
Came from low-medium income Russian family ($9k/y household), made it to
multiple $100k/y total comp. in one of the big 4.

But here's a thing: pretty much anyone of my old non-CS schoolmates/university
friends would call that 'luck', but somehow most of them would consider a
suggestion to learn Computer Science to be arrogant.

------
gyardley
Hell, no. I know I've been lucky.

I also know that while I was lucky, I wouldn't have been in a position to be
lucky if I hadn't made some good decisions. I didn't just sit back and wait to
be lucky.

The way to maximize the role of luck in your life is to behave like luck has
no role in your life.

~~~
maroonblazer
Where were you born? Was it in a war-torn or poverty-stricken third world
circumstance? Were your parents emotionally or physically abusive to you? Were
you born with mostly normal cognitive function? Without any significant
physical handicap?

I.e. even though you made some good decisions, you were still lucky to be
born/raised in an environment and with a body that enabled you to make those
good decisions.

I agree with your last sentence.

~~~
basurihn
Thanks for this insight. I think all of these things could easily permanently
handicap anyone.

And I have serious respect for those who manage to overcome these issues, if
luckily.

------
qbit
The reality is, _everything_ comes down to luck. We are all ultimately a
product of our genes plus our conditioning, neither of which we control. And
any decisions we make are a function of those two things, so they are also out
of our control.

~~~
bamurphymac1
I'm always surprised how few people are willing to just come out and say this
(to me very obvious) truth.

It's rare enough that I feel the need to express some kind of solidarity /
comraderie to someone else dated to look at the world the same way.

So well done (not like you had a choice.)

------
bamurphymac1
If you answer this "no I worked hard" it's a good exercise to examine the
prior conditions that led you to hard work.

Keep following that chain back; honestly keep asking yourself how everything
isn't a matter of luck.

------
lettergram
You know, recently my wife and I (25 yo) bought our first house. For the most
part, it's larger and nicer than the rest of my family members. I bought it
because it was a great deal, and I needed a big house if I wanted to invite my
large family over. Given it's about 2 hours away from where most of them live.

The first thing a couple family members said to us was, "you're so lucky!" And
quite honestly just that infurates me. It's one of the most insulting phrases
I think I've ever been told. I know they didn't mean it, and I actually
questioned why I was so mad there for a while. Obviously, I didn't let the
family member know, but later, my wife told me she was just as mad.

A bit of back story, my family was poor. I had to start working at 14 to pay
for my clothes, sports, really anything. Now, I never went hungry and always
had a home - so it wasn't the worst. We all pitched in, and it taught me a lot
and made me tough. I literally pride myself that I kept a Pentium III computer
until I was 19 going (aka 7 years or something).

In high school, I taught myself to program and worked odd jobs to make money.
In college, I did the same. I went to junior college, worked 40 hours a week,
then transferred to UIUC where I continued working 40 hours a week, and took a
full course load. I graduated with a 3.1 GPA - cutting it as close as I could
to keep a 3.0+ average, while still supporting myself. In the end, I still
have $70k loans (In part, because I helped my now wife who was astranged from
her parents, aka no student loans possible).

I've had so much bad luck I can't explain it here. Sure I didn't get cancer,
but I have severe allergies, I have a learning disability [1], my wife and I
had to fight in court with her crazy parents, so on and so forth.

Now, we are both living in a nice house. She's about to start her PhD in
Neuroscience. I have a good job, and we are both starting a company (which
makes some pocket change). Luck right?

The point is, I work hard 80 hours a week; my wife the same.

So fuck luck. We've earned it.

Things fall the way they do, we've had a hundred failures for every success,
but the success is what counts. I'm not going to apologize for getting lucky,
nor am I going to blame luck for failures. All you can do is constantly
position yourself for success.

I've been in positions that benefit me, the best example is actually my
teachers kicking me out of my "regular" course work in high school. They told
me if I wanted to graduate I had to start in the honors courses. Is that luck?
I definitely had teachers who cared, but it was what they saw that made it
count. We (as in people) make our own luck, through our personalities, our
perseverance, our ethic.

That family member who says "your so lucky" implies they don't understand how
tough it can be. They either don't have the ethic, or have given up. Sure
things can fall in your lap, but even then. Keep positioning to do better,
else you increase the potential bad luck.

If for instance, I stopped after my teachers pushed me into honors courses,
then I probably wouldn't have had any future luck, right? It's the
perseverance and drive that keeps us going.

Articles like this, breed whiners and failures. What's the PG quote, "Startups
rarely die in mid keystroke. So keep typing!"[2].

Make your own luck, and don't give up.

\------

[1] [http://austingwalters.com/please-excuse-my-
grammar/](http://austingwalters.com/please-excuse-my-grammar/)

[2] [http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html)

~~~
bandushrew
Truths are not usually exclusive.

Its true you have worked hard all your life, and overcome many obstacles.

Its also true that many people do all of that, and are still unable to attain
the lifestyle you have (whatever it may be).

You have worked hard and overcome many obstacles and been very lucky.

That is pretty cool.

~~~
lettergram
Maybe I'm confused about the term luck, but usually it refers the chance of a
good (or bad) event happening.

I guess my whole point was, you're job is to position luck to fall in your
favor. It's a lot of work, but it's controllable. Making it seem like it's not
(to some extent) controllable, is just doing a disservice to everyone.

------
BatFastard
Luck is being in the right place at the right time, and education and
experience are key in that, or course a little bit of lucky never hurts.

------
twh270
> Cranston got to play Walter White, the school-teacher-turned-meth-dealer in
> Breaking Bad, because two talented actors, John Cusack and Matthew
> Broderick, refused the part.

If you buy into oversimplifications and weak analysis, this article probably
appeals to you.

Success, overwhelmingly, looks a lot like hard work. That hard work might
present in a lot of different ways, but it is almost always there. And mostly
when it's not, the "success" was not truly earned.

~~~
boomboomsubban
>Success, overwhelmingly, looks a lot like hard work.

And if two people do the hard work with one becoming much more of a success?
It's not either or, luck plays a huge factor. Acting is an easy example, how
many thousands of people work hard to become an actor? What evidence is there
that the successes worked harder?

------
madengr
If you want to see how much luck directs your outcomes, just flip a coin for
every decision, instead of calculated choices.

------
nnfy
>I think being born white, male

That is an ABSURDLY racist and sexist thing to say, and it is terrifying to me
that it is becoming not only socially acceptable, but socially required, to
believe and say such things.

What happens to people of all colors/genders if racism/sexism becomes socially
acceptable again?

~~~
dang
This breaks the HN guidelines against flamewars. In fact it's exactly the sort
of thing most of us come here to avoid, so please don't post like this again.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15086798](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15086798)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
nnfy
I'd just like to point out that I was wasn't the one who introduced the
"flamewar topic" of race and success, and so a just application of the rules
would place
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15086798](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15086798)
at the head of this detached subthread.

