Re: [silk] Luck Matters More Than You Might Think

[Vani Murarka]

Good point John!

On 21 April 2016 at 16:31, John Sundman  wrote:

> I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor
> the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to
> men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance
> happeneth to them all.
>
> Ecclesiastes 9:11
>
> jrs
>
>

Re: [silk] Luck Matters More Than You Might Think

[John Sundman]

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the 
battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of 
understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to 
them all.

Ecclesiastes 9:11

jrs

> On Apr 21, 2016, at 1:34 AM, maia sauren  wrote:
> 
> one of the aspects of luck is being born in environments that contain
> opportunities. get born into the right set of circumstances and what luck
> can do for you takes on a whole different meaning. sure, luck happens
> everywhere - and probably equally - but the sizes of the lucky breaks are
> different.
> 
> On 19 April 2016 at 11:38, Charanya Chidambaram <
> charanya.chidamba...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> True. I think we tend to simplify context,  environment, having met the
>> right people at some time who end up helping later,  knowledge learnt in a
>> continuum to - luck in the moment,  as it feels like it came together
>> without effort.
>> On 19 Apr 2016 10:28 a.m., "Shenoy N"  wrote:
>> 
>>> Acknowledging that most, if not all of your achievements would never have
>>> been possible had it not been for generous doses of luck is a lovely
>>> practical philosophy and it is not difficult to see how it will result in
>>> humbler and more compassionate individuals. 

Re: [silk] Luck Matters More Than You Might Think

[maia sauren]

one of the aspects of luck is being born in environments that contain
opportunities. get born into the right set of circumstances and what luck
can do for you takes on a whole different meaning. sure, luck happens
everywhere - and probably equally - but the sizes of the lucky breaks are
different.

On 19 April 2016 at 11:38, Charanya Chidambaram <
charanya.chidamba...@gmail.com> wrote:

> True. I think we tend to simplify context,  environment, having met the
> right people at some time who end up helping later,  knowledge learnt in a
> continuum to - luck in the moment,  as it feels like it came together
> without effort.
> On 19 Apr 2016 10:28 a.m., "Shenoy N"  wrote:
>
> > Acknowledging that most, if not all of your achievements would never have
> > been possible had it not been for generous doses of luck is a lovely
> > practical philosophy and it is not difficult to see how it will result in
> > humbler and more compassionate individuals. However, there is the danger
> > that it could - and I've seen this in several members of my immediate
> > family - lead to a complacent "what will happen will happen"  view on
> life
> > which tends to dissuade anything in the nature of enterprise. So,
> > double-edged, imo, as most practical philosophies tend to be
> >
> > On 19 April 2016 at 09:41, Charles Haynes 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Strongly agree. I'm smart, but my success, such as it is, is more luck
> > than
> > > skill.
> > >
> > > That said - luck favors the prepared, and "the more I practice, the
> > luckier
> > > I get."
> > >
> > > -- Charles
> > >
> > > On Tue, 19 Apr 2016 at 11:18 Udhay Shankar N  wrote:
> > >
> > > > This strikes a chord. I work with early stage technology
> entrepreneurs,
> > > and
> > > > have done for over 2 decades (this includes the dot.com boom, a
> period
> > > > that
> > > > has special relevance to this topic) I have come across several
> people
> > > who,
> > > > through some confluence of circumstances, have made a lot of money.
> The
> > > > temptation (including for the people involved) is to imagine this is
> > > > because they were smart. This is almost certainly not true, as can
> > easily
> > > > be demonstrated by the fact that there are always many other people
> who
> > > are
> > > > demonstrably at least as smart who have not succeeded.
> > > >
> > > > Thoughts?
> > > >
> > > > Udhay
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/why-luck-matters-more-than-you-might-think/476394/
> > > >
> > > > Why Luck Matters More Than You Might Think
> > > >
> > > > When people see themselves as self-made, they tend to be less
> generous
> > > and
> > > > public-spirited.
> > > >
> > > > ROBERT H. FRANK  MAY 2016 ISSUE   BUSINESS
> > > >
> > > > I’m a lucky man. Perhaps the most extreme example of my considerable
> > good
> > > > fortune occurred one chilly Ithaca morning in November 2007, while I
> > was
> > > > playing tennis with my longtime friend and collaborator, the Cornell
> > > > psychologist Tom Gilovich. He later told me that early in the second
> > > set, I
> > > > complained of feeling nauseated. The next thing he knew, I was lying
> > > > motionless on the court.
> > > >
> > > > He yelled for someone to call 911, and then started pounding on my
> > > > chest—something he’d seen many times in movies but had never been
> > trained
> > > > to do. He got a cough out of me, but seconds later I was again
> > motionless
> > > > with no pulse. Very shortly, an ambulance showed up.
> > > >
> > > > Ithaca’s ambulances are dispatched from the other side of town, more
> > than
> > > > five miles away. How did this one arrive so quickly? By happenstance,
> > > just
> > > > before I collapsed, ambulances had been dispatched to two separate
> auto
> > > > accidents close to the tennis center. Since one of them involved no
> > > serious
> > > > injuries, an ambulance was able to peel off and travel just a few
> > hundred
> > > > yards to me. EMTs put electric paddles on my chest and rushed me to
> our
> > > > local hospital. There, I was loaded onto a helicopter and flown to a
> > > larger
> > > > hospital in Pennsylvania, where I was placed on ice overnight.
> > > >
> > > > Doctors later told me that I’d suffered an episode of sudden cardiac
> > > > arrest. Almost 90 percent of people who experience such episodes
> don’t
> > > > survive, and the few who do are typically left with significant
> > > > impairments. And for three days after the event, my family tells me,
> I
> > > > spoke gibberish. But on day four, I was discharged from the hospital
> > > with a
> > > > clear head. Two weeks later, I was playing tennis with Tom again.
> > > >
> > > > If that ambulance hadn’t happened to have been nearby, I would be
> dead.
> > > >
> > > > Not all random events lead to favorable outcomes, of course. Mike
> > Edwards
> > > > is no longer alive because chance frowned on him. 

Re: [silk] Luck Matters More Than You Might Think

[Charanya Chidambaram]

True. I think we tend to simplify context,  environment, having met the
right people at some time who end up helping later,  knowledge learnt in a
continuum to - luck in the moment,  as it feels like it came together
without effort.
On 19 Apr 2016 10:28 a.m., "Shenoy N"  wrote:

> Acknowledging that most, if not all of your achievements would never have
> been possible had it not been for generous doses of luck is a lovely
> practical philosophy and it is not difficult to see how it will result in
> humbler and more compassionate individuals. However, there is the danger
> that it could - and I've seen this in several members of my immediate
> family - lead to a complacent "what will happen will happen"  view on life
> which tends to dissuade anything in the nature of enterprise. So,
> double-edged, imo, as most practical philosophies tend to be
>
> On 19 April 2016 at 09:41, Charles Haynes 
> wrote:
>
> > Strongly agree. I'm smart, but my success, such as it is, is more luck
> than
> > skill.
> >
> > That said - luck favors the prepared, and "the more I practice, the
> luckier
> > I get."
> >
> > -- Charles
> >
> > On Tue, 19 Apr 2016 at 11:18 Udhay Shankar N  wrote:
> >
> > > This strikes a chord. I work with early stage technology entrepreneurs,
> > and
> > > have done for over 2 decades (this includes the dot.com boom, a period
> > > that
> > > has special relevance to this topic) I have come across several people
> > who,
> > > through some confluence of circumstances, have made a lot of money. The
> > > temptation (including for the people involved) is to imagine this is
> > > because they were smart. This is almost certainly not true, as can
> easily
> > > be demonstrated by the fact that there are always many other people who
> > are
> > > demonstrably at least as smart who have not succeeded.
> > >
> > > Thoughts?
> > >
> > > Udhay
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/why-luck-matters-more-than-you-might-think/476394/
> > >
> > > Why Luck Matters More Than You Might Think
> > >
> > > When people see themselves as self-made, they tend to be less generous
> > and
> > > public-spirited.
> > >
> > > ROBERT H. FRANK  MAY 2016 ISSUE   BUSINESS
> > >
> > > I’m a lucky man. Perhaps the most extreme example of my considerable
> good
> > > fortune occurred one chilly Ithaca morning in November 2007, while I
> was
> > > playing tennis with my longtime friend and collaborator, the Cornell
> > > psychologist Tom Gilovich. He later told me that early in the second
> > set, I
> > > complained of feeling nauseated. The next thing he knew, I was lying
> > > motionless on the court.
> > >
> > > He yelled for someone to call 911, and then started pounding on my
> > > chest—something he’d seen many times in movies but had never been
> trained
> > > to do. He got a cough out of me, but seconds later I was again
> motionless
> > > with no pulse. Very shortly, an ambulance showed up.
> > >
> > > Ithaca’s ambulances are dispatched from the other side of town, more
> than
> > > five miles away. How did this one arrive so quickly? By happenstance,
> > just
> > > before I collapsed, ambulances had been dispatched to two separate auto
> > > accidents close to the tennis center. Since one of them involved no
> > serious
> > > injuries, an ambulance was able to peel off and travel just a few
> hundred
> > > yards to me. EMTs put electric paddles on my chest and rushed me to our
> > > local hospital. There, I was loaded onto a helicopter and flown to a
> > larger
> > > hospital in Pennsylvania, where I was placed on ice overnight.
> > >
> > > Doctors later told me that I’d suffered an episode of sudden cardiac
> > > arrest. Almost 90 percent of people who experience such episodes don’t
> > > survive, and the few who do are typically left with significant
> > > impairments. And for three days after the event, my family tells me, I
> > > spoke gibberish. But on day four, I was discharged from the hospital
> > with a
> > > clear head. Two weeks later, I was playing tennis with Tom again.
> > >
> > > If that ambulance hadn’t happened to have been nearby, I would be dead.
> > >
> > > Not all random events lead to favorable outcomes, of course. Mike
> Edwards
> > > is no longer alive because chance frowned on him. Edwards, formerly a
> > > cellist in the British pop band the Electric Light Orchestra, was
> driving
> > > on a rural road in England in 2010 when a 1,300-pound bale of hay
> rolled
> > > down a steep hillside and landed on his van, crushing him. By all
> > accounts,
> > > he was a decent, peaceful man. That a bale of hay snuffed out his life
> > was
> > > bad luck, pure and simple.
> > >
> > > Most people will concede that I’m fortunate to have survived and that
> > > Edwards was unfortunate to have perished. But in other arenas,
> randomness
> > > can play out in subtler ways, causing us to resist explanations that
> > 

Re: [silk] Luck Matters More Than You Might Think

[Amit Varma]

On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 6:47 AM, Udhay Shankar N  wrote:

> Thoughts?


I'd written a column on just this a few months ago:
http://indiauncut.com/iublog/article/luck-is-all-around/

Luck is All Around

*This is the seventh installment

of Lighthouse
, my
monthly column for BLink
, a supplement of
the* Hindu
Business Line.

You are lucky to be reading this. When your father ejaculated into your
mother, somewhere between 300 to 500 million spermatozoa were released. One
of them held the blueprint for you. That one sperm cell made it through the
acidic furnace of the vagina, the graveyard for most sperms, and then
outlasted the survivors to somehow become a person. Taking into account the
fact that this was almost certainly not the sole sexual encounter between
your parents at the time, your chances of coming into existence were
probably a few billion to one. Given that your parents were born of similar
odds, and somehow managed to meet and hook up and produce you, it is even
more of a miracle that you exist. Indeed, consider that our specific
species should itself evolve and survive through the ages, on this one out
of trillions of planets (yes, trillions), and you get a true idea of how
remarkable your existence is. Don’t be under the illusion, though, that
this makes you special: everything around you is there despite similar odds
against it. However unlikely it is for a specific something to exist, it is
inevitable that some things will, indeed, be there. Congratulations.

While everything else pales into insignificance beyond the spectacular fact
of our existence, we’re still not satisfied. We spend our days striving for
this or that trivial little thing, and stressing out over small matters
like the maid coming late or the scratch on the car or the tax returns or
the in-laws or getting laid. (We are programmed to worry specifically about
that last one, but we are again uniquely fortunate, among species, to be
able to ignore our programming. Be a rebel, don’t fuck today.) Honestly,
just the fact that we are here should keep us in a constant state of
elation and wonder. But we get tripped up by vanity. We believe that we are
special (as a species and as individuals), and that we possess the
intelligence to make sense of the world, and to rule it. This vanity, in
the cosmic scale of things, is either comic or tragic, depending on how
seriously you take yourself. And me, I find it hard to take myself too
seriously when I’m sitting in a dark room in New Bombay playing cards with
a drunk builder who’s snorting cocaine as he asks me, “*Kya laga liya,
sirjee?*”

Four years ago I became a serious poker player. I did it to make money, but
ended up learning how little I knew about life. The most important thing I
learnt from poker was about the role of luck in the world. Poker is
essentially a game of skill, but only in the long run (which can be longer
than you imagine). In the short run, luck dominates. Every action has
associated probabilities, and you try to manouver your way through a poker
game in such a way that the probabilities are on your side. Keep getting
your money in as a 51% favourite, and in the long run, all the money is
yours. In the short run, you could get hammered again and again and again.
For that reason, poker players are constantly told not to be
‘results-oriented’. As Lord Krishna recommended in the Bhagawad Gita, just
keep doing the right thing, and all will be well. Eventually.

While I am an atheist, the Lord was on to something. In life, too, luck
plays a far bigger role than we realise. And as in poker, the management of
that luck is the key skill we need to learn. Let me turn to sports to
illustrate what I mean. In the last installment of Lighthouse
, I had written
about how luck plays a huge role in football, which is also a game of
probabilities. For example, Lionel Messi scores from a direct free kick 1
in 12.5 times. This is the bare number, over a sufficiently significant
sample size of free kicks. And yet, we cheer madly when he curls one in,
and groan and go ‘WTF is he doing’ when he flips one way over – even
though, in the larger scheme of things, *they’re the same shot*. While fans
and even most reporters don’t get this, managers do, working furiously to
maximise the probabilities in their favour. (Every action on a football
field has a probability associated with it.) But fans go by results, and
while those may even out in a league over a season, they never do in
knockout tournaments, much to the bemusement and frustration of the men in
charge. Maradona has won a World Cup, Messi hasn’t, what does that say to
me? Nothing at all. It’s luck.

I was a cricket journalist for a few years, and 

Re: [silk] Luck Matters More Than You Might Think

[Danese Cooper]

Exactly

> On Apr 19, 2016, at 5:11 AM, Charles Haynes  wrote:
> 
> Strongly agree. I'm smart, but my success, such as it is, is more luck than
> skill.
> 
> That said - luck favors the prepared, and "the more I practice, the luckier
> I get."
> 
> -- Charles
> 
>> On Tue, 19 Apr 2016 at 11:18 Udhay Shankar N  wrote:
>> 
>> This strikes a chord. I work with early stage technology entrepreneurs, and
>> have done for over 2 decades (this includes the dot.com boom, a period
>> that
>> has special relevance to this topic) I have come across several people who,
>> through some confluence of circumstances, have made a lot of money. The
>> temptation (including for the people involved) is to imagine this is
>> because they were smart. This is almost certainly not true, as can easily
>> be demonstrated by the fact that there are always many other people who are
>> demonstrably at least as smart who have not succeeded.
>> 
>> Thoughts?
>> 
>> Udhay
>> 
>> 
>> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/why-luck-matters-more-than-you-might-think/476394/
>> 
>> Why Luck Matters More Than You Might Think
>> 
>> When people see themselves as self-made, they tend to be less generous and
>> public-spirited.
>> 
>> ROBERT H. FRANK  MAY 2016 ISSUE   BUSINESS
>> 
>> I’m a lucky man. Perhaps the most extreme example of my considerable good
>> fortune occurred one chilly Ithaca morning in November 2007, while I was
>> playing tennis with my longtime friend and collaborator, the Cornell
>> psychologist Tom Gilovich. He later told me that early in the second set, I
>> complained of feeling nauseated. The next thing he knew, I was lying
>> motionless on the court.
>> 
>> He yelled for someone to call 911, and then started pounding on my
>> chest—something he’d seen many times in movies but had never been trained
>> to do. He got a cough out of me, but seconds later I was again motionless
>> with no pulse. Very shortly, an ambulance showed up.
>> 
>> Ithaca’s ambulances are dispatched from the other side of town, more than
>> five miles away. How did this one arrive so quickly? By happenstance, just
>> before I collapsed, ambulances had been dispatched to two separate auto
>> accidents close to the tennis center. Since one of them involved no serious
>> injuries, an ambulance was able to peel off and travel just a few hundred
>> yards to me. EMTs put electric paddles on my chest and rushed me to our
>> local hospital. There, I was loaded onto a helicopter and flown to a larger
>> hospital in Pennsylvania, where I was placed on ice overnight.
>> 
>> Doctors later told me that I’d suffered an episode of sudden cardiac
>> arrest. Almost 90 percent of people who experience such episodes don’t
>> survive, and the few who do are typically left with significant
>> impairments. And for three days after the event, my family tells me, I
>> spoke gibberish. But on day four, I was discharged from the hospital with a
>> clear head. Two weeks later, I was playing tennis with Tom again.
>> 
>> If that ambulance hadn’t happened to have been nearby, I would be dead.
>> 
>> Not all random events lead to favorable outcomes, of course. Mike Edwards
>> is no longer alive because chance frowned on him. Edwards, formerly a
>> cellist in the British pop band the Electric Light Orchestra, was driving
>> on a rural road in England in 2010 when a 1,300-pound bale of hay rolled
>> down a steep hillside and landed on his van, crushing him. By all accounts,
>> he was a decent, peaceful man. That a bale of hay snuffed out his life was
>> bad luck, pure and simple.
>> 
>> Most people will concede that I’m fortunate to have survived and that
>> Edwards was unfortunate to have perished. But in other arenas, randomness
>> can play out in subtler ways, causing us to resist explanations that
>> involve luck. In particular, many of us seem uncomfortable with the
>> possibility that personal success might depend to any significant extent on
>> chance. As E. B. White once wrote, “Luck is not something you can mention
>> in the presence of self-made men.”
>> 
>> Seeing ourselves as self-made leads us to be less generous and
>> public-spirited.
>> My having cheated death does not make me an authority on luck. But it has
>> motivated me to learn much more about the subject than I otherwise would
>> have. In the process, I have discovered that chance plays a far larger role
>> in life outcomes than most people realize. And yet, the luckiest among us
>> appear especially unlikely to appreciate our good fortune. According to the
>> Pew Research Center, people in higher income brackets are much more likely
>> than those with lower incomes to say that individuals get rich primarily
>> because they work hard. Other surveys bear this out: Wealthy people
>> overwhelmingly attribute their own success to hard work rather than to
>> factors like luck or being in the right place at the right time.
>> 
>> That’s troubling, because a 

Re: [silk] Luck Matters More Than You Might Think

[Shenoy N]

Acknowledging that most, if not all of your achievements would never have
been possible had it not been for generous doses of luck is a lovely
practical philosophy and it is not difficult to see how it will result in
humbler and more compassionate individuals. However, there is the danger
that it could - and I've seen this in several members of my immediate
family - lead to a complacent "what will happen will happen"  view on life
which tends to dissuade anything in the nature of enterprise. So,
double-edged, imo, as most practical philosophies tend to be

On 19 April 2016 at 09:41, Charles Haynes  wrote:

> Strongly agree. I'm smart, but my success, such as it is, is more luck than
> skill.
>
> That said - luck favors the prepared, and "the more I practice, the luckier
> I get."
>
> -- Charles
>
> On Tue, 19 Apr 2016 at 11:18 Udhay Shankar N  wrote:
>
> > This strikes a chord. I work with early stage technology entrepreneurs,
> and
> > have done for over 2 decades (this includes the dot.com boom, a period
> > that
> > has special relevance to this topic) I have come across several people
> who,
> > through some confluence of circumstances, have made a lot of money. The
> > temptation (including for the people involved) is to imagine this is
> > because they were smart. This is almost certainly not true, as can easily
> > be demonstrated by the fact that there are always many other people who
> are
> > demonstrably at least as smart who have not succeeded.
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > Udhay
> >
> >
> >
> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/why-luck-matters-more-than-you-might-think/476394/
> >
> > Why Luck Matters More Than You Might Think
> >
> > When people see themselves as self-made, they tend to be less generous
> and
> > public-spirited.
> >
> > ROBERT H. FRANK  MAY 2016 ISSUE   BUSINESS
> >
> > I’m a lucky man. Perhaps the most extreme example of my considerable good
> > fortune occurred one chilly Ithaca morning in November 2007, while I was
> > playing tennis with my longtime friend and collaborator, the Cornell
> > psychologist Tom Gilovich. He later told me that early in the second
> set, I
> > complained of feeling nauseated. The next thing he knew, I was lying
> > motionless on the court.
> >
> > He yelled for someone to call 911, and then started pounding on my
> > chest—something he’d seen many times in movies but had never been trained
> > to do. He got a cough out of me, but seconds later I was again motionless
> > with no pulse. Very shortly, an ambulance showed up.
> >
> > Ithaca’s ambulances are dispatched from the other side of town, more than
> > five miles away. How did this one arrive so quickly? By happenstance,
> just
> > before I collapsed, ambulances had been dispatched to two separate auto
> > accidents close to the tennis center. Since one of them involved no
> serious
> > injuries, an ambulance was able to peel off and travel just a few hundred
> > yards to me. EMTs put electric paddles on my chest and rushed me to our
> > local hospital. There, I was loaded onto a helicopter and flown to a
> larger
> > hospital in Pennsylvania, where I was placed on ice overnight.
> >
> > Doctors later told me that I’d suffered an episode of sudden cardiac
> > arrest. Almost 90 percent of people who experience such episodes don’t
> > survive, and the few who do are typically left with significant
> > impairments. And for three days after the event, my family tells me, I
> > spoke gibberish. But on day four, I was discharged from the hospital
> with a
> > clear head. Two weeks later, I was playing tennis with Tom again.
> >
> > If that ambulance hadn’t happened to have been nearby, I would be dead.
> >
> > Not all random events lead to favorable outcomes, of course. Mike Edwards
> > is no longer alive because chance frowned on him. Edwards, formerly a
> > cellist in the British pop band the Electric Light Orchestra, was driving
> > on a rural road in England in 2010 when a 1,300-pound bale of hay rolled
> > down a steep hillside and landed on his van, crushing him. By all
> accounts,
> > he was a decent, peaceful man. That a bale of hay snuffed out his life
> was
> > bad luck, pure and simple.
> >
> > Most people will concede that I’m fortunate to have survived and that
> > Edwards was unfortunate to have perished. But in other arenas, randomness
> > can play out in subtler ways, causing us to resist explanations that
> > involve luck. In particular, many of us seem uncomfortable with the
> > possibility that personal success might depend to any significant extent
> on
> > chance. As E. B. White once wrote, “Luck is not something you can mention
> > in the presence of self-made men.”
> >
> > Seeing ourselves as self-made leads us to be less generous and
> > public-spirited.
> > My having cheated death does not make me an authority on luck. But it has
> > motivated me to learn much more about the subject than I otherwise would
> > have. 

Re: [silk] Luck Matters More Than You Might Think

[Charles Haynes]

Strongly agree. I'm smart, but my success, such as it is, is more luck than
skill.

That said - luck favors the prepared, and "the more I practice, the luckier
I get."

-- Charles

On Tue, 19 Apr 2016 at 11:18 Udhay Shankar N  wrote:

> This strikes a chord. I work with early stage technology entrepreneurs, and
> have done for over 2 decades (this includes the dot.com boom, a period
> that
> has special relevance to this topic) I have come across several people who,
> through some confluence of circumstances, have made a lot of money. The
> temptation (including for the people involved) is to imagine this is
> because they were smart. This is almost certainly not true, as can easily
> be demonstrated by the fact that there are always many other people who are
> demonstrably at least as smart who have not succeeded.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Udhay
>
>
> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/why-luck-matters-more-than-you-might-think/476394/
>
> Why Luck Matters More Than You Might Think
>
> When people see themselves as self-made, they tend to be less generous and
> public-spirited.
>
> ROBERT H. FRANK  MAY 2016 ISSUE   BUSINESS
>
> I’m a lucky man. Perhaps the most extreme example of my considerable good
> fortune occurred one chilly Ithaca morning in November 2007, while I was
> playing tennis with my longtime friend and collaborator, the Cornell
> psychologist Tom Gilovich. He later told me that early in the second set, I
> complained of feeling nauseated. The next thing he knew, I was lying
> motionless on the court.
>
> He yelled for someone to call 911, and then started pounding on my
> chest—something he’d seen many times in movies but had never been trained
> to do. He got a cough out of me, but seconds later I was again motionless
> with no pulse. Very shortly, an ambulance showed up.
>
> Ithaca’s ambulances are dispatched from the other side of town, more than
> five miles away. How did this one arrive so quickly? By happenstance, just
> before I collapsed, ambulances had been dispatched to two separate auto
> accidents close to the tennis center. Since one of them involved no serious
> injuries, an ambulance was able to peel off and travel just a few hundred
> yards to me. EMTs put electric paddles on my chest and rushed me to our
> local hospital. There, I was loaded onto a helicopter and flown to a larger
> hospital in Pennsylvania, where I was placed on ice overnight.
>
> Doctors later told me that I’d suffered an episode of sudden cardiac
> arrest. Almost 90 percent of people who experience such episodes don’t
> survive, and the few who do are typically left with significant
> impairments. And for three days after the event, my family tells me, I
> spoke gibberish. But on day four, I was discharged from the hospital with a
> clear head. Two weeks later, I was playing tennis with Tom again.
>
> If that ambulance hadn’t happened to have been nearby, I would be dead.
>
> Not all random events lead to favorable outcomes, of course. Mike Edwards
> is no longer alive because chance frowned on him. Edwards, formerly a
> cellist in the British pop band the Electric Light Orchestra, was driving
> on a rural road in England in 2010 when a 1,300-pound bale of hay rolled
> down a steep hillside and landed on his van, crushing him. By all accounts,
> he was a decent, peaceful man. That a bale of hay snuffed out his life was
> bad luck, pure and simple.
>
> Most people will concede that I’m fortunate to have survived and that
> Edwards was unfortunate to have perished. But in other arenas, randomness
> can play out in subtler ways, causing us to resist explanations that
> involve luck. In particular, many of us seem uncomfortable with the
> possibility that personal success might depend to any significant extent on
> chance. As E. B. White once wrote, “Luck is not something you can mention
> in the presence of self-made men.”
>
> Seeing ourselves as self-made leads us to be less generous and
> public-spirited.
> My having cheated death does not make me an authority on luck. But it has
> motivated me to learn much more about the subject than I otherwise would
> have. In the process, I have discovered that chance plays a far larger role
> in life outcomes than most people realize. And yet, the luckiest among us
> appear especially unlikely to appreciate our good fortune. According to the
> Pew Research Center, people in higher income brackets are much more likely
> than those with lower incomes to say that individuals get rich primarily
> because they work hard. Other surveys bear this out: Wealthy people
> overwhelmingly attribute their own success to hard work rather than to
> factors like luck or being in the right place at the right time.
>
> That’s troubling, because a growing body of evidence suggests that seeing
> ourselves as self-made—rather than as talented, hardworking, and
> lucky—leads us to be less generous and public-spirited. It may even make
> the lucky less likely to 

[silk] Luck Matters More Than You Might Think

[Udhay Shankar N]

This strikes a chord. I work with early stage technology entrepreneurs, and
have done for over 2 decades (this includes the dot.com boom, a period that
has special relevance to this topic) I have come across several people who,
through some confluence of circumstances, have made a lot of money. The
temptation (including for the people involved) is to imagine this is
because they were smart. This is almost certainly not true, as can easily
be demonstrated by the fact that there are always many other people who are
demonstrably at least as smart who have not succeeded.

Thoughts?

Udhay

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/why-luck-matters-more-than-you-might-think/476394/

Why Luck Matters More Than You Might Think

When people see themselves as self-made, they tend to be less generous and
public-spirited.

ROBERT H. FRANK  MAY 2016 ISSUE   BUSINESS

I’m a lucky man. Perhaps the most extreme example of my considerable good
fortune occurred one chilly Ithaca morning in November 2007, while I was
playing tennis with my longtime friend and collaborator, the Cornell
psychologist Tom Gilovich. He later told me that early in the second set, I
complained of feeling nauseated. The next thing he knew, I was lying
motionless on the court.

He yelled for someone to call 911, and then started pounding on my
chest—something he’d seen many times in movies but had never been trained
to do. He got a cough out of me, but seconds later I was again motionless
with no pulse. Very shortly, an ambulance showed up.

Ithaca’s ambulances are dispatched from the other side of town, more than
five miles away. How did this one arrive so quickly? By happenstance, just
before I collapsed, ambulances had been dispatched to two separate auto
accidents close to the tennis center. Since one of them involved no serious
injuries, an ambulance was able to peel off and travel just a few hundred
yards to me. EMTs put electric paddles on my chest and rushed me to our
local hospital. There, I was loaded onto a helicopter and flown to a larger
hospital in Pennsylvania, where I was placed on ice overnight.

Doctors later told me that I’d suffered an episode of sudden cardiac
arrest. Almost 90 percent of people who experience such episodes don’t
survive, and the few who do are typically left with significant
impairments. And for three days after the event, my family tells me, I
spoke gibberish. But on day four, I was discharged from the hospital with a
clear head. Two weeks later, I was playing tennis with Tom again.

If that ambulance hadn’t happened to have been nearby, I would be dead.

Not all random events lead to favorable outcomes, of course. Mike Edwards
is no longer alive because chance frowned on him. Edwards, formerly a
cellist in the British pop band the Electric Light Orchestra, was driving
on a rural road in England in 2010 when a 1,300-pound bale of hay rolled
down a steep hillside and landed on his van, crushing him. By all accounts,
he was a decent, peaceful man. That a bale of hay snuffed out his life was
bad luck, pure and simple.

Most people will concede that I’m fortunate to have survived and that
Edwards was unfortunate to have perished. But in other arenas, randomness
can play out in subtler ways, causing us to resist explanations that
involve luck. In particular, many of us seem uncomfortable with the
possibility that personal success might depend to any significant extent on
chance. As E. B. White once wrote, “Luck is not something you can mention
in the presence of self-made men.”

Seeing ourselves as self-made leads us to be less generous and
public-spirited.
My having cheated death does not make me an authority on luck. But it has
motivated me to learn much more about the subject than I otherwise would
have. In the process, I have discovered that chance plays a far larger role
in life outcomes than most people realize. And yet, the luckiest among us
appear especially unlikely to appreciate our good fortune. According to the
Pew Research Center, people in higher income brackets are much more likely
than those with lower incomes to say that individuals get rich primarily
because they work hard. Other surveys bear this out: Wealthy people
overwhelmingly attribute their own success to hard work rather than to
factors like luck or being in the right place at the right time.

That’s troubling, because a growing body of evidence suggests that seeing
ourselves as self-made—rather than as talented, hardworking, and
lucky—leads us to be less generous and public-spirited. It may even make
the lucky less likely to support the conditions (such as high-quality
public infrastructure and education) that made their own success possible.

Happily, though, when people are prompted to reflect on their good fortune,
they become much more willing to contribute to the common good.

Psychologists use the term hindsight bias to describe our tendency to
think, after the fact, that an event was predictable even when it wasn’t.
This