How much of your success has come from luck?
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aelf
Ashen One
What does that mean?
It's a concept in statistics. Suppose you are tossing a coin. You have 50% chance to get head, and 50% chance for tail. Each flip, individually, is quite random. But if you toss the coin for 1,000 times, it's very likely that you get close to 500 heads and 500 tails - the randomness in either way cancells each out. If you get $1 for each head and $0 for each tail, you'd won $500, as if you won a certain $0.5 from each bet. We say the mathematical expectation of this bet is $0.5.
Now suppose you have a 100-face dice, you won $100 when you throws a 100, but each throw costs you $2. You make 100,000 throws. If chances are fair, you'd win 1000 times, or $100,000 in total. The tickets cost you $200,000. So the mathematical expectation would be ($100,000 - $200,000)/1000 = $-0.5. Numbers vary, but it's a rule that the expectation for the average player is negative. That is where bookmaker's profit comes from.
Now suppose you have a 100-face dice, you won $100 when you throws a 100, but each throw costs you $2. You make 100,000 throws. If chances are fair, you'd win 1000 times, or $100,000 in total. The tickets cost you $200,000. So the mathematical expectation would be ($100,000 - $200,000)/1000 = $-0.5. Numbers vary, but it's a rule that the expectation for the average player is negative. That is where bookmaker's profit comes from.
All luck. Honestly, I'm not sure how it could be otherwise. I'm obviously not responsible for my genes or most of the events that affect me. I do control some of the things that happen to me through the decisions I make, but my decisions flow from circumstances--which I obviously don't control--and character. My character is formed by the interaction of genes and circumstances with upbringing, which I didn't control either.
aelf
Ashen One
Ah, okay, I understand that.
But the criteria posited was if something happens for any reason, it's not luck. You can't win if you don't buy tickets. Hence, if you win, it has to be at least because you bought a ticket, whether or not it is within the mathematical expectation of winning.
Frankly, I don't care to discuss randomness. There's just no way of meaningfully calculating probability in most things in life. What's the probability of the boss liking you? What's the probability of having good looks? I've already said that luck represents the lack of subjective explanations, and I think that's the correct understanding of what luck typically means to people. It means that if you can't satisfactorily explain why you achieved something through your own effort or ability, then you're going to put it down to luck.
My successes have been almost entirely defined by my birth and upbringing (both nature and nurture). I didn't have control over either. Sure, I put work in for some successes, but what would that work have achieved if I hadn't been born as I was, in the circumstances I was? Success coming from my energy inputs don't necessarily mean luck hasn't been the determining factor.
Gustave5436
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Pretty much everything in life is a matter of "luck" imo. Though as a determinist, I'd specify that by "luck" I mean things outside individual control, like the social status of the family one is born into, the personal characteristics of one's childhood caretakers, one's genetics, the cultural expectations society forces upon the individual, etc.
Most importantly, really whether you're rich or poor is just luck of the draw. And since there's a lot more poor people than rich people, most people are going to end up poor. Through no other fault of their own than chancing upon the "wrong" parents. Someone made the argument once that if people chose the society they would live in before they were born (or something like that), that it would tend towards one with even resource distribution, to maximize the expected resources a person would have access to upon being randomly born into that society.
Hell, the hardcore determinist position is that the individual doesn't really exist, that our concept of self is just an illusion, a product of the brain's subjective perception of reality. That it is, in reality, a mere machine, entirely predictable, and with no independent "will" of its own. But that's probably beyond the scope of what the OP was asking.
Most importantly, really whether you're rich or poor is just luck of the draw. And since there's a lot more poor people than rich people, most people are going to end up poor. Through no other fault of their own than chancing upon the "wrong" parents. Someone made the argument once that if people chose the society they would live in before they were born (or something like that), that it would tend towards one with even resource distribution, to maximize the expected resources a person would have access to upon being randomly born into that society.
Hell, the hardcore determinist position is that the individual doesn't really exist, that our concept of self is just an illusion, a product of the brain's subjective perception of reality. That it is, in reality, a mere machine, entirely predictable, and with no independent "will" of its own. But that's probably beyond the scope of what the OP was asking.
The law of large numbers stipulates that if you buy lottery for, well, a large number of times, it becomes less likely that your average return would deviate from the mathematical expectation. Suppose you win $10,000 on the first bet. Obviously you are very lucky. This is the same degree of luck if you win $10,000 on your 10,000th bet. However, you could have lost a cumulative $20,000 by the time you made your 10,000th bet even with the smaller winnings you've had, as the expected value is negative. To have the same net winning as if you won it on the first bet, you will need considerably bigger luck, to win $30,000 this time. Persistence actually makes it harder for you to win the same amount of money overall. The causal relations here is more like: "You are supposed to lose if you buy lottery. If you win, you win because of your luck, and despite of your persistence."
So I suspect there is indeed a difference between luck and some other things you can't control. You don't get to change mathematical laws or bookmakers' odds, but you can't complain you are unlucky that the odds are set in such a way to make you lose. That said, for the purpose of this thread, I think we should attribute where and who you were born to, or your innate abilities such as intelligence or appearance, to luck.
Speaking of the probability of your boss liking you, one of my former line managers was fairly difficult: rigid, cynical, unforgiving, and never seemed to be happy about anything. But we got along well. Why? Because I knew that most "jerks" do not enjoy making your life harder. They simply look at things differently, or have a different way of doing things. And they get upset when nobody understand them. If they appear aggressive, it's their way to defend themselves. On the other hand, if you can see things in their way, if you don't mind to let them have their way, if you can make them realise that you get them, that you respect them, their attitude can change literally overnight. This is kind of what successful people mean when they say things like "chance favours the prepared". Who you meet is obviously random, but you can have some control over how these chances affect you: it's rather less likely you will meet the genuinely impossible or sadistic, than people who are difficult, but possible to work with with a bit of effort on your part. Do you do that bit of extra work, or do you put it down to luck?
Bosses hate whiny employees as much as employees hate pushy bosses. I'm not going to say people don't deserve to complain. Quite possibly they do. But as a tactics at least, don't do it. My parents are entrepreneurs who could afford to send me to a good English university. They also gave me a good brain. Other than these, I haven't been particularly more lucky than the average aborigines of this island, I have my handicaps such as language, and I took my scenic route when I was younger. Yet I'm here earning a salary close to the 90th percentile of all tax payers, before I hit my 30's. I've been at this new job for about six months, and my line manager just told me I'm already the guy he relies on the most. The other guys in the team are not less clever than I am. But they are either less experienced, or don't like doing anything they don't like doing. I get things done. I don't complain. This attitude can get you very far in your career, when the right chances come along.
I don't think I would be where I am now if it wasn't for my own drive, initiative, and skills. For one, my family can't afford to send me to college, so I've been working since my early teens to pay for it. I've worked really hard at different times in my life to get to where I am now, and I'm glad I did. But that's not to say I'm responsible entirely for where I am. I know it's because of my birth and general avoidance of any major accident that I'm here today.
I have to say though that I credit any success I have not to luck, but blessing. Wherever I am is where God means me to be.
I have to say though that I credit any success I have not to luck, but blessing. Wherever I am is where God means me to be.
dIZZyBlIZZy
Batteries not included
That's a good portion of it. If someone is raised to believe it's all you, they claim they had done it all themselves. And vice versa. Not an absolute, but a tendency. I was raised in such a manner. My warden had to decide to hire me, but she hired me because of me. Same when I promoted to case management. In February, the facility will be choosing a new unit manager, and most of facility thinks it'll be me. If it is, I know it will be because of my own work history, but the warden has to choose me for me to get promoted. So probably I'd say 99.999% work ethic, 0.001% luck, with variables in different industries.
aelf
Ashen One
But my point isn't that those things are all down to luck. My point was that it's hard to know where your efforts end and where luck begins. You're not really saying anything that proves that I was wrong when I said that people tend to attribute to luck what they can't satisfactorily attribute to their own efforts. It's a subjective claim, and its subjectivity (or, rather, lack of objectivity) is reinforced by the empirical difficulty of determining at which point exactly you stop having complete control over a given outcome.
Pretty good advice. Indeed, the model of leadership that I used to try to impart into baby army officers - and now do with embryonic officers - while instructing at RMAS was that of Bill Slim: his men loved him and called him 'Uncle Bill', but when he was around it was most definitely 'sir and a salute', and he could terrify the hell out of them when he was angry. People respect leaders in general who insist on high standards but are always fair and are always, when it comes down to it, looking out for their people first.
Richard Cribb
He does monologues
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Being so unlucky as to be born, I had the luck of being so in a prosperous country in the golden era of social democracy. Because of this, I was able to be the first in my family to escape toiling on the factory and getting a fairly good academic education. Other circumstances though seems to indicate that this is indeed the amount of "success" I'll ever attain.
I suppose one can say that in my case luck is indeed the dominant factor.
I suppose one can say that in my case luck is indeed the dominant factor.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
And how has that been going for you?
Isn't the quote:
"The harder I work the luckier I seem to get."
I pretty much agree with that. Certainly fate or luck puts us in favorable or unfavorable situations but we still have to know what to do in those situations and work hard to make the best of those situations.
"The harder I work the luckier I seem to get."
I pretty much agree with that. Certainly fate or luck puts us in favorable or unfavorable situations but we still have to know what to do in those situations and work hard to make the best of those situations.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
"Luck is opportunity meets preparation"
I'm not proving you wrong. I'm saying what we get is not as random as people would like to believe. Think of it as a bell curve, where you probably would get something average rather than something extremely lucky or unlucky. For most people good efforts can overcome their not-very-extreme bad luck. If one haven't made the efforts, life will remain hard on him. He can blame it on luck. He might have been unlucky. It's subjective, as you said. Or he can stop complaining and do more to make his life better. Where exactly his efforts ended and his bad luck began is a moot point. He doesn't need to know that before doing something.
And how has that been going for you?
Alright so far! I'm all set for graduating college this May. If I hadn't focused my own initiative and hard work on my goals in life, I would be nowhere near that. Left to luck, I'd be lost.
Wow. That is a great quote.
Mise
isle of lucy
That's a great quote.
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