How can you think luck effects success when you say that success is measured by how much you can achieve in spite of luck.

Disagree I dont think you can just put Bill gates in the desert and expect billions to roll in.


Fair enough I personally think that they would be successful more than not.Its kinda lol to me its seems like your saying a winning poker player can never lose a hand but whatever.

I work in a very corporate setting, and I've worked in probably the most corporate of corporate settings (a Wall Street firm, I wasn't in NY though).

There is a difference between someone appearing sloppy and someone being attractive. I'm assuming people know how to dress correctly in a corporate environment.

I've worked in very stuffy/conservative/corporate enviroments. Attractiveness doesn't help you much, especially the higher up you go. I could maybe see some bias at the lower levels, but it sure doesn't help as you move up.

Also there may be other factors involved in theses studies. People who ARE attractive may have a tendency to have a higher self-confidence, which can translate into a positive personality trait.

I'm not sure where you guys worked, but where I worked, being attractive doesn't help much. People who got promoted were smart/communicated well/high performers. In fact, the higher level people I've seen tend to be on the unattractive side much more often than the attractive side.

I know. I'll stop saying zero.

I never said that. Factoring for the natural lottery of being born into a certain family is not the same as eliminating all luck. I natural disaster can hit, a bunch of punk kids can play with matches and set business on fire, I can get sick though no fault of my own, etc.

Find me a Wall Street firm staff picture where the distribution of physical attractiveness is even close to the distribution in society.

ok natural disaster hits 5 people, 3 cant recover 2 do, the 2 more successful ones correct.
There success is measured on how they can recover.
I don't see how this differs from the successful people you know that "if stripped of everything would be able to restart from nothing and establish themselves in a matter of years."

You're not paying attention.


Luck plays its major role when you are born. Where you are born, into what family you were born, the kind of brain you were born with, the kind of environment you grow up in.


After that, anything goes.

This is so heinous. So luck only exists in the womb. After that there is no luck? gmafb. Such an arbitrary and ridiculous application.

Think of it like the surfer and the wave.


The surfer doesn't have to be there at the right "time" to catch that lucky wave that takes him across the golden rainbow to successes.


The surfer merely has to grit his teeth, put himself out there and wait for as long as it takes UNTIL the right wave comes along. If this takes years / decades, so be it.


Just because you missed one golden opportunity to strike your riches doesn't mean there aren't other oppurtunities coming your way.


Lots of experts will descredit a current person's success on "luck" as if it was the determining factor to their success. Little do these experts know this person persisted through years of missed opportunities and failed attempts, all wandering when the hell luck would finally come his way.


This is the NORM among ALL successful entrepreneurs. An entire laundry list of missed opportunities, unlucky circumstances, and failed shots.

No one is discussing entrepreneurs. Its also a silly way to use hand waving to wash away rampant selection bias.

i feel like i have heard of studies that show if you are male, tall, and better than average looking you have a significantly higher average income than someone who is not all of those things. i can't remember the specifics so i don't want to say for sure, but i'll buy that being all four of things, which are completely out of your control (save for diet/exercise), give you a significant advantage in life.

my biggest "what if" in my life is always what would life be like if i had run hot whenever i took shots at nosebleed games. i don't think cardrunners would be what it is today, but i'd probably have a lot more money than i do now. did i get lucky or unlucky to lose every freaking time i played 200/400+ in 2006-2008?

i guess the way i see it is that even though it takes some luck to be successful, since you can't control it, there's no sense worrying about it and you're better off just doing your best to make good decisions and see what happens. i don't think luck is near the top of the most important factors of achieving financial freedom, but it definitely plays a role.

Success principles are the same with entrepreneurs as they are with nearly everyone.

I was a fringe applicant for some ****ty Ivy League schools. If I ran hot and got in, and got an ibanking job. Would I be unemployed and 100k in debt?

Am I running good or bad?

rofl. Straight up. This is absurd.

All successful people share very similar characteristics.

And what are these.

dumb successful people believe their success had nothing to do with luck.

dumb people who failed believe it was all bad luck.

both are wrong

The trappings of success, obv

All of this is true only if you believe in free will.

You don't think being intelligent involves luck? The right genetic/environmental factors culminating in such a way that evolved someone into being intelligent? Also, being motivated/ambitious/driven is a product of some correct psychological things going on in ones brain... there's no variance related to this? Even if we assume that motivation and drive are in everyone's control and there's no luck involved with that, it still doesn't address intelligence, which I think pretty clearly involves luck. Plenty of people who simply don't have the potential to do certain things because they aren't smart enough even though they try like crazy.

A taste for cognac and velvet robes.

can't imagine you'd trade what you have built now for the opportunity to go back in time and run good at 200-400 for a minute.

I've gambled for a living and started/sold businesses basically my whole life and you are always looking for someone to beat when you are gambling for a living. Owning a business is no different but you can find a lot of people and "beat" them out of a little bit each when you own a business but gambling for a living you generally need a constant supply of rich people makng -EV decisions in your presence.

I know world-class golf hustlers, sports bettors and advantage machine/VP players and they all spend a lot of time and resources looking for "customers". I think owning a successful non-gambling business beats this any day, or in your case - selling shovels to the gold rushers instead of looking for the gold yourself.

Fair enough, good point. I'm definately not as right as I thought I was. I still think I have a decent argument, but I'm being too biased due to my own experiences/perception and applying that across the spectrum, which can't be right.

If you don't believe in free will then there is nothing to talk about. Neither your failures nor you success are yours to enjoy or be responsible for. Determinism though is a pretty sad way to live -- I'm not even sure I'd say live since to subscribe to determinism is to cede a core element of actually being alive.

Intelligence has a genetic component but it is insignificant compared to what we choose to do to develop our intelligence. Someone born with a genetic disadvantage is still well in the game if they choose to work at it.

While this is mostly true at some point in an individual's life the reason then end up there is because of ****ty decisions they made in adolescence so not luck has nothing to do with it.

- you dont have a decent argument. you have a sample of 1 from your own experience.
- if by "not as right as you thought you were" you mean "not even remotely close to right" then yes, I agree.

having been on both sides of the hiring process, i can promise you what you look like has a definite impact. this is most demonstrable at the extremes. you'll see effectively 0 unattractive upper management personnel and it will be rare to see extremely attractive mail sorters or postal employees.

of course there will be a few outliers here and there but your initial point is so far from 'right' that its laughable.

Barron