Well, "luck" is a phenomenon of perception, not reality. Since it's people who perceive, being anthropocentric makes sense. On the other hand, that also makes it subjective, hence describing it may reveal more about the describer than the effect.
“Luck is probability taken personally.” – Chip Denman
I’m amazed at how many comments piled up insisting that luck is a major or possibly the most significant factor. Even if true, what a self-defeating outlook. Every accusation is a confession.
Perhaps consider that some people are talking about luck as a way of reasoning about how we should organize society (if luck is a factor that may imply stronger safety nets) while others (like you, I'd gather) are talking about how to approach one's own life? That's how I've been reasoning about the discussion and it helps clarify things.
What you wrote is insightful as to the underlying thinking, but I’m not sure I buy the premise. If luck is the dominating factor, how is the outcome of any election legitimate? Aren’t the winners merely the luckiest? Where’s the safety net for the unfortunate also-rans? Who are the rightful representatives to do the organizing? The questions are interesting because the ancient Athenians would reject what we call democracy due to our reliance on popular elections, which they viewed with suspicion as a tool of oligarchy. Although some posts were elected, they largely preferred sortition or luck of the draw.
Current and former gifted students are likely overrepresented on HN. Underachievement (whether real or perceived) is a source of stress or depression for this population[0], and defense mechanisms[1] are a common coping strategy. In [1], the authors define quadrants based on high or low success orientation and fear of failure.
1. Optimists - high success orientation, low fear of failure: low sense of helplessness
2. Overstrivers - high success orientation, high fear of failure: risk of burnout, tend to have high “defensive pessimism”
3. Acceptors - low success orientation, low fear of failure: tend to have low self esteem and high helplessness
4. Self-protectors - low success orientation, high fear of failure: tend to have high defensive pessimism and self-handicapping
They define defensive pessimism as “artificially lowering expectations of performance when a performance will be evaluated in order to lessen the hurt of failure and turn success into an unexpected surprise” and self-handicapping as “generating conditions that will produce an excuse for failure through actions such as procrastination, task avoidance, withholding effort, and other strategies.” They label both harmful.[0]
To this optimist, assigning everything to luck looks like all of helplessness, defensive pessimism, and self-handicapping: “I’m smarter than that bum, so his success must be due to dumb luck.”
> If luck is the dominating factor, how is the outcome of any election legitimate? Aren’t the winners merely the luckiest?
On the one hand, I think this may be conflating different senses of luck. On the other hand, yes, luck played a big role in the winner of the election ending up in that position, but not because the election itself was akin to a coin flip (hyperbole), but because luck has a small impact innumerable times in the goings on of that individual's life leading up to that point.
> Where’s the safety net for the unfortunate also-rans?
Thinking about this, it's actually a good question. If the goal of an election is to select the person most able to perform the role of the elected position most satisfactorily, then providing a mechanism by which those without access to traditional campaigning resources and capital to participate could allow more qualified individuals to participate in the election who otherwise wouldn't have been able to.
And this is, I think, precisely the point of saying that luck is a bigger factor than people acknowledge because in order to be elected today, you need to have the connections and capital necessary to execute a successful campaign while continuing to fulfill any other obligations you have during the time leading up to the election, and you need to have something in place to deal with not being elected, something to fall back on. That's a whole bunch of moving parts that need to align before it makes sense to participate in an election.
