When you say "determinist" do you mean in the physical sense or some abstract social sense? Because if you mean in the physical sense, that has no bearing whatsoever on the role of hard work.
Shouldn't the arrow that connects psychology to ability also pass through factors like effort, hard work and skill, if you expand that connection? Doesn't that imply the opposite of what you said? That effort, hard work and skill do cause success, but they just aren't the "ultimate" cause, whatever that means?
Yeah, that's completely irrelevant. Even if the universe is deterministic, having a particular brain configuration (which we call "work ethic") correlates with being successful later. Determinism or stochasticism has no effective bearing at this high of a level of abstraction.
Yeah, I don't think the article is trying to make a claim about the existence of physical causality, it's about what attitude we ought to take to take.
Maybe. The article is talking about luck, without talking about what exactly "luck" is. If luck is defined as favorable circumstances, then the article really is talking about initial conditions cascading into good opportunities. I believe talking about the good opportunities without talking about the conditions that gave rise to them is harmful. It creates the illusion that you can just create the good opportunities without the appropriate conditions.
