People always forget about the flipside of luck.

What about all those other could-be-lucky circumstances that did not happen because of one small minor factor / incident that we aren't even aware of? (obviously because it didn't happen).

If we remove 1 variable from from event x, we must also add another random variable in another random circumstance that almost could have happened and did not. Luck or unlucky?

It's just variance.

the sports reference is certainly wrong. while i do believe certain topstars like federer or nadal if you consider tennis could probably have been somewhat succesful footballers (likely no topstars and btw the other way around it certainly doesnt work at all) it is absurd to think people who succeed do it regardless of their field. if you dont start playing tennis at under 10 and probably at under 7 you will never be great. same goes for almost any sport basicly. also whatever people tell you the talent factor is huge, almost all the guys outside the top 10 can do whatever they want they will never be on the same level as the best are.
it is said that 20% of the football pros would live in the gutter without football and this is probably true.

Athletic talent specificity is ******edly huge.

I'm sorry, but this is just lol.

What, right now, is on the cusp of going big the way personal computers were on the cusp of going big in Gates' time? And keep in mind you have to be very very sure of what that one "thing" is because it will take a considerable amount of time and effort to put yourself in a position to really capitalize on it.

And virtually every extremely successful person ever actually has a passion, probably an obsession, for what they are working on. Do you really think Gates could just pick up something else and be equally as good as he was with PCs? What makes you think he'd be even remotely interested in whatever else was about to become big in a different time period? People don't just say "oh, I think if I work on this I'll become a billionare... I don't really like doing it but I think I'll obsess over it anyway."

And the Gretzky comment is the biggest wtf of them all. What on earth makes you think Gretzky would even be a marginally decent football player? What if he was born in an area where everyone played basketball? Do you honestly think he'd be an extremely successful basketball player? This comment reminded of a post I read on here some time back where someone claimed that Lebron James would be better than Michael Phelps if he just focused on swimming instead, and his reasoning was that Lebron James was simply the superior athlete. No, I'm not making that up. Sadly I think your arguments are about on the same level.

Cult of success ITT imo.

As big as computers probably nothing but we don't need something as big as computers to accomplish this. The internet fueled tech boom ten years ago was not as big as the personal computer but it still gave us a small army of Mark Cubans.

People like him are interested in what is new. It is the inquisitive nature of wanting to understand it. Born now Gates would likely start having an interest in quantum computing or robotics.

Exceptional peripheral vision. It is actually a characteristic common among star players in both sports as well as a few others.

Gets the benefit of peripheral vision here as well but likely not sufficient to overcome the other skills that would be lacking.

What if he's into string theory? Or some other field that can't make him rich? What if he's into string theory but can't understand it because his brain doesn't function like that (and he's only extremely talented at computer science)? And what if he takes an obsessive interest in quantum computing yet this field never pans out (in his lifetime or ever) or if he never catches a break doing robotics because he never finds some aspect that's really profitable or someone beats him to it, because after all, tons of smart people are working in robotics.


Right. But without knowing a ton about the physical characteristics common in top hockey players I doubt they are exactly the same in hockey vs. football. I doubt a great skater + stick handler (or whatever you call it) would translate to a great runner + dribbler. You need the physical skills too, and I have a hard time seeing how it's a sure thing the physical skill set for someone like Gretzky would automatically translate to football.

And what about Michael Phelps? What if he never learned how to swim. What other sport is he going to be exceptional at, exactly?

The bottom line is it often takes a very specific natural set of abilities to be exceptional at some things, and if you happen to not be given the opportunity to do such a thing you're kind of SOL unless you have a talent AND extreme interest in something else. Yeah, extremely successful people often have a mind where they can be good at a lot of things because they are smart and driven. But it's pretty clear Gates was "lucky" to be put in the position he was (sure, he could do very well in other areas but that's a far cry from where he's at now because he was born right when microcomputers were about to take off and had tons of access to them) and Phelps was lucky to be introduced to competitive swimming at a young age.

Excelling at string theory would still make him money. One of my QM profs was pouched by the University of Pittsburgh and the salary was sufficient that when combined with the prestige of being a top academic is enough to consider it success. I never claimed that he would be super-rich at the top of the Forbes list but only that no matter what he would always be successful.

I don't really believe people who are intelligent have this problem but since that is a rather controversial statement to make I'll just go with the much simpler people rarely spend much time on stuff they don't get. Unable to understand he would simply move on. We are naturally drawn to what we are good at.

My claim was not that he would found U.S. Robotics but only that he would still be successful. One of my friends has managed to build and sell two companies that do something I don't understand with e-mail and he is now on his third. I didn't know him during the first start-up but knowing what he sold the second one for it clearly puts him in the definition of successful. E-mail has been around for some time and a lot of smart people have worked on it and yet there is still opportunity.

I know nothing about swimming so it is hard for me to say. I also know nothing about Phelps but I believe it is safe to assume that to get his level of athletic success requires the ability to work insanely hard. With that ability to motivate oneself you will always be successful -- it might not be at sport but in something.

Unfortunately some people just cannot realize that there is more than one way to happiness.

Some people will never have enough, and always need that next expensive thing to be happy, yet once they have that they still do not have enough and still are not happy, and then need that next thing...... and remain trapped by the golden handcuffs.

Yet others get it, and realize true happiness does not come from material things.

You cannot truly be happy until you can learn to be content with what you have.

It almost sounds like you're trolling now.

Do you know how many Olympic gold medalists turn out to be total nobodies after their athletic careers end?

Don't say this.

This is classic survivorship bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias You said the same thing about Bill Gates. For each one of them there are 1000s who worked just as hard as them turned out perfectly average/below average. Do you really believe that no one in the world worked as hard as Phelps/Gates and that they are really just not the result of getting lucky to have the parents/coaches/genes right spot/right time luck.

Being happy with what you have is a great way to never achieve anything.

We are not talking about any gold medalist but someone who managed to dominate a sport in such a way that even people who don't care about sports felt it was newsworthy.

Your reasoning is also flawed in that you are presenting a situation about what happens after rather than instead of. Having devoted an incredible amount of time and effort to develop a sport displaced the development of other skills so when that sport ends they are left at a great disadvantage.

It is very simple -- most people are lazy and despite a high percentage of them self-report that they work hard they don't. If you have the ability to actually motivate yourself to work hard you can crush the majority of people since they don't. This doesn't mean you'll become a household name worth billions but it does mean that you'll end up successful.

I'm talking about people who adopt this attitude early. The older you are the harder it becomes. Someone who waste his teens is going to have a harder time just kicking it into gear in his early-twenties and someone who wasted his early-twenties is going to be running up a very steep hill if he decided to start working hard in his late-twenties -- by then for most people it is too late.

I think a lot of people worked harder than them and achieved less but those people didn't end unsuccessful. I thought I made this point a few times already that I am talking about success as a binary concept -- how you rank within the successful class has a luck component but whether or not you are a member of that class has nothing to do with luck.

Perhaps he was virtuous in a previous life

As for the well off family / connections and the computer at school thing, isnt it likely that almost everyone else at his school had the same advantages.....what happened to them?

As for buying the OS...i dont know how much of that is down to luck...a small element perhaps.

was it Gary Player who said," the harder you work, the luckier you get?".

1. DETERMINATION - an inner drive which surpasses the ordinary person
2. INTELLIGENCE - smart enough to learn
3. RISK TOLERANCE - lack of fear

Are you arguing that almost everyone regardless of physicality can play professional sports provided that they work hard enough at it?

Appreciate an even more awesome follow-up to Gretsky would be a good football player because of peripheral vision.

Of course not. By the time you get to professional sports your competition is other non-lazy people -- in fact way before then on the way up skill levels you'll have weeded out the people who are not willing to bust their ass. My point was that anyone who isn't lazy can be successful financially (top 20%) if we measuring financial success relative to their society.

Most ppl dont wanna admit, or are too dumb to admit, that they arent very smart. A guy that takes 2 years understanding a lineair equation will not get to any top % (finance/math w/e) no matter how hard he tries.
Your vision is probably "Everyone is good at something", how do you know you're correct though?

Not so much that everyone is good at something but that despite genetic difference the range in intellectual ability is such that if you don't waste your formative years on crap you can develop yourself intellectually so as to be more than competitive. You might not be a genius but you'll be more than capable given your competition. You won't be in a position where it takes you two years to understand something. Granted you have to start this quite early as with age it becomes a lot harder and eventually impossible.

I think many of the skills that are useful for success on one path are useful in another. (Even perhaps ruthlessness... just instead of killing people by hand, you roflpwn noobs at starcraft or something, or drive their companies into receivership or whatever). Though the idea that skills are equally valuable in all situations is silly.

I don't disagree -- skills are not equally valuable. My point was more that anyone can develop the skills required if instead of TV, internet, and video games they actually choose to develop skills that are valuable when they are young.

Yeah you qualified your statement from a bold assertion to an axiom.

And its not really pervasive laziness, its that most ppl would rather not try than try and fail.

pro-footballers are about as lazy as it can get, training like 10 hours a week only.

you will see lazy, out of shape people often close to the top of the world in certain sports (boxing, even tennis). do you think mike tyson could have succeeded in anything different than boxing?

The lazy comment had nothing to do with sport. It was simply about making money.