[HN Gopher] Be more lucky
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Be more lucky
Author : przem8k
Score : 84 points
Date : 2024-03-24 15:43 UTC (7 hours ago)
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| limaoscarjuliet wrote:
| Successful people are keen on telling their success story while
| people who did not win are busy trying agian or have depression
| in quiet corner, hopefully short term. Any characteristics
| derived from self-reported or externally observed data that
| successful group shares is always askewed due to selection or
| surviorship bias because of this.
|
| The only true thing here is: people who analyze the data more and
| reason based on this, can draw better outcome. It is not luck,
| but yes, might look like one.
|
| Cheers!
| DougN7 wrote:
| I wonder if those who believe they are lucky work harder and
| take more chances than those who don't.
| starbugs wrote:
| > take more chances
|
| That seems to be the key here.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| You can work harder at tossing coins and toss them more often
| but previous outcomes do not affect current or future
| outcomes in any way. No matter how many times in a row a coin
| lands tails up, there is still only a 50% chance that it will
| land heads up on the next flip.
|
| Working harder/smarter than someone else at something for
| which each try increases your capability to influence the
| next try should give you an edge in a competition but now
| it's not about luck.
|
| > I wonder if those who believe they are lucky work harder
| and take more chances than those who don't.
|
| Now, if anything, you can also postulate that people who
| believe they are lucky don't work harder and take less
| chances (hey, they are lucky, they don't need to try as much
| as others).
|
| So the question would be: why do some people who think they
| are lucky try their luck more than some who don't think they
| are lucky and why do some people who think they are lucky try
| their luck less than some who don't think they are lucky ?
| It's two opposite behaviour but they have the same belief.
| Why ?
| mike-the-mikado wrote:
| If price of failure on a coin toss is less than the value
| of success, then flipping the coins as rapidly as possible
| is a winning strategy. (I've worked on failure after
| failure, but the occasional success has more than
| compensated for these).
| karmakaze wrote:
| Many successes are unintended outcomes while trying to do
| something else. Without awareness of the opportunity and
| pivoting, there would be no success to write about _(or
| possibly a different one if lightning struck twice)_.
| Tade0 wrote:
| My personal experience is that quite often "luck" is just someone
| winning via statistics.
|
| After all, when you try something that has a 1% probability of
| success seventy times, it becomes a coin toss whether you succeed
| at least once.
|
| I was "lucky" with the apartment I bought because I've become
| obsessed with checking listings and at one point was doing it
| several times a day.
|
| Took eight months to find the right property and now when I talk
| with people looking for a place everyone swears that there's
| nothing for sale in my area.
|
| The truth is that there is - 3-4 times a year and you have to
| call the same day, because it gets bought immediately.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Can you help me understand those types of real estate markets?
| If they are sold immediately doesn't that mean the sellers are
| giving up substantial gains by not asking enough?
| Tade0 wrote:
| I don't understand them either to be honest.
|
| What I do know is that most of the apartments I've seen which
| were offered at a good price went for sale as part of a
| divorce settlement. My significant other has an uncanny
| talent in getting such information from people.
|
| This neighbourhood was planned with families in mind and
| people hold on to their properties here, so I suspect it's
| mostly divorcees wanting to deal with the matter as soon as
| possible.
|
| Normally investors scoop it all up, but at the third attempt
| in this area I managed to get ahead of them.
| pjerem wrote:
| Divorce makes the fastest sales but the thing is people
| always sell for a reason anyway and every seller have
| somehow a deadline depending on what's next.
| pjerem wrote:
| Most of the time, sellers are in the process of buying
| another place (or other life reasons like divorce or
| whatever) so they are incentivized to sell at a good price
| but also pretty quick.
| wnc3141 wrote:
| you see that with very high dollar listings. They sit on the
| market longer
| wdh505 wrote:
| Luck has been associated with "happiness" in many cultures across
| the last few thousand years. There is a concept of management
| accounting of "rewarding for b while hoping for a". I think the
| soft focus that allows for creativity helps "luck", but everyone
| who "knows better than you" wants to proud out good behavior by
| rewarding for b.
| tropdrop wrote:
| In support of this: in Russian, the adjective for "lucky" and
| "happy" is the same - _schastlivyi_.
|
| Though a more precise variant that specifically means "lucky"
| exists ( _udachlivyi_ , meaning possessing greater chances),
| _schastlivyi_ is more often used to describe a person, with the
| semantic content being that they are both happy and lucky.
|
| For example, the famous Tolstoy quote about unhappy families
| being different and happy families all looking alike uses
| _schastlivyi_.
| diputsmonro wrote:
| Reminds me of the old phrase, "luck is when preparation meets
| opportunity". The strategies discussed in this article seem to
| maximize the "opportunity" side of that equation.
| wiz21c wrote:
| which makes you an opportunist.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Not necessarily. Just because one increases the chance that
| opportunities arise, does not imply that they are immoral or
| selfish.
|
| Just as an obvious example, if you were looking for career
| opportunities to improve the lives of people, and you spent
| your time volunteering part-time in order to improve your
| chances of doing so full time, then accepting an opportunity
| in the space would hardly be opportunist.
| keybored wrote:
| Interesting juxtaposition.
|
| A proper opportunist (what the word means) grabs
| opportunities for the sake of and in spite of being morally
| obligated to take other things into consideration.
| quadcore wrote:
| Robert Greene explains in a video his 48th law of power.
|
| The rule is there is no rule. Life is fluid he says. You've got
| to pickup the little clues, use your intuition and your gut
| feelings.
|
| This perfectly matches my experience of life. When you arrives in
| a situation with a premade plan and execute blindly, it often
| fails dramatically, even if on paper you did exactly what you
| were supposed to. Especially with people of course. You've got to
| go with the "flow", read the room, feel the air. Sometimes it
| almost feels magical. Even the light a particular day will be
| different and somehow, things are different - the people in the
| street, the mood of your boss, everything.
|
| The great leaders are masters at that. I often think about the
| current China leader for example. It's just an example.
|
| Do you picture what a person must pull off to get that seat? It's
| unimaginable. You've got to smell the "bullets" coming miles away
| before they're even shot, from a shooter you dont even know. Just
| on a hunch because that day, the light was different.
| jdeaton wrote:
| I would be interested to know exactly which video of Robert
| Greene's this is. Just finished reading Mastery this morning.
| Great author and thinker. He is very in tune with human nature
| and instinct.
| quadcore wrote:
| It's on tiktok, where he is active.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| > Do you picture what a person must pull off to get that seat?
| It's unimaginable.
|
| On the other hand there is a seat that must be filled and hence
| there will be somebody taking that place. It's a zero sum game:
| if you win I lose.
|
| I would rate proving Poincare conjecture and that kind of thing
| much higher because its _not_ zero-sum and is a pure
| advancement.
| quadcore wrote:
| Thanks for bringing that up.
|
| More and more for practical purposes I tend to believe that -
| sit tight - everybody is solving or capable of solving the
| Poincare conjecture. Let me explain.
|
| Granted some people are simple, but most are actually very
| gifted at what they do ; it's just that the type of
| engineering they do is different than yours (or mine,
| whatever). Besos says "there is a million types of
| inteligence".
|
| Some are good at making dramas for example - and they'd beat
| you at that game every single day. Some others are good at, I
| dont know, working out.
|
| Many people are very very good at playing dumb is actually my
| very point. And they love that. If you are observant, you'll
| see little clues that they are geniuses in some ways. It's
| just that they dont care about advancement. In itself it's a
| form of dumbness but beside that, they freaking good.
|
| You can easily do x2 on your percieved intelligence and
| engineering capabilities of people. They way way better at
| what they do than meet the eye. Especially nowdays as they
| are educated.
|
| It's very practical to think that way Ive found.
| n4r9 wrote:
| I'm not sure what point you're making. Chess is zero-sum
| (modulo draws), but being world #1 is impressive.
| snowpid wrote:
| " The great leaders are masters at that. I often think about
| the current China leader for example. It's just an example. "
| You mean that guy who brings Chinese economy into troubles and
| just does one genocide (or two, if you count Tibet).
| quadcore wrote:
| See my other comment. Some (most?) people dont care about
| advancement. Or rather, their position on that is complicated
| for practical purposes.
| keybored wrote:
| I love how grand parent used that as an example instead of
| some boring "business luminary". Now people are gonna politi-
| rage in a third of the replies.
| ghaff wrote:
| Luck favors the prepared and all that.
|
| But leaving aside starting points, etc. I can still think of two
| specific points in my career that had a pretty much seamless
| transition that could have gone very badly (and did for a number
| of co-workers). Yes, I had the network, but they were generally
| fairly precarious times and things came together very quickly.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Great article and I very much agree with the message, but I feel
| the need to point out that you are misspelling the name of
| Richard Wiseman as "Wiesemen" throughout!
| IshanMi wrote:
| I remember someone telling me that they thought of luck as being
| as one of four kinds:
|
| - blind luck (which is what people usually mean by "luck")
|
| - stirring the pot (if you apply to 100 jobs you might get more
| "luck" than if you applied for just 10)
|
| - domain expertise (the more knowledge you have, the more
| opportunities you can spot that others might miss)
|
| - reputation (if you're the world's best painter then when people
| want a painting they'll immediately think of you)
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| A couple studies have shown that people who believe they are
| lucky get better outcomes. Something about looking at most
| positive outcomes -
| https://www.frameofmindcoaching.com/blog/why-are-some-people...
| antisthenes wrote:
| So they just didn't know what luck was and invented their own
| definition to sound smart?
|
| 2 and 3 are definitely not luck, because it's affected by your
| actions. 4 can have partial luck, because people sometimes view
| you better or worse than you expect, and you can't predict your
| complete reputational outreach.
|
| 1 is the only definite piece of luck here, like being born to
| the right parents, or a stranger that you held the door for
| being the CEO that offers you a job.
| akamoonknight wrote:
| It's funny because in that last sentence I think you're
| describing something like in the article. "Holding the door
| open" might not be something that people do to strictly have
| the potential to hold the door open for a CEO, but they
| definitely hit on that possibility more often than those who
| don't hold the door open at all. So is that "blind luck", or
| in the parent example (and i think sort of the articles) is
| that more along the lines of "stirring the pot"?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| If the stranger you held the door for being the CEO that
| offers you a job that is luck, but you would be stirring the
| pot if you were always super polite and held the door for
| everybody. This assumes that holding the door somehow led to
| the job offer which I think the original description assumes,
| based on how the English language generally works.
|
| Aside from that in the stirring the pot scenario you apply to
| 10 jobs, two of them offer you jobs, one below market rate,
| one at market rate.
|
| You stir the pot and apply to 100 jobs, 2 of which offer you
| jobs signficantly above market rate.
|
| Stirring the pot is not strictly luck, but it is precursory
| to what is often described as luck and as such can often be
| described as a form of luck that you make yourself by
| adopting behaviors more likely to lead to lucky outcomes.
|
| on edit: I see akamoonknight had the same thought I did, but
| didn't take as long to write the comment. Lucky.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Right. Stirring the pot is creating opportunities for luck
| to happen.
| d--b wrote:
| My mum just finds 4-leaf clovers everywhere. It's not
| serendipity, she looks for them, but she has the uncanniest
| ability to find them. Similarly my wife can spot animals in the
| wild like a drone, it's insane. She'd be the woman on the boat
| saying "look! Dolphins!". We go diving together and she sees 10
| times the amount of stuff I can see.
|
| I dont think this has anything to do with focusing or not, and
| letting things happen, or what not. Both my wife and my mom are
| extremely focused. This is something else entirely that's hard-
| wired in the brain.
| sandspar wrote:
| I think of Charlie Munger's "good investment is knowing when it's
| wise to not diversify". The luckiest people I know tend to have a
| soft, scattered approach as advocated in the article, followed by
| striking hard and quadrupling down when they find something that
| works. Arnold Schwarzenegger is very lucky and he uses that
| strategy. "My genetics and frame are perfect for body building?
| Guess I'll quadruple down on it."
| keybored wrote:
| I think my focus is hardening as I get older. This might also be
| why I find myself in situations now where I just can't make sense
| of whatever hot garbage UI that tool X rearranged for no apparent
| reason. I have a lot of pattern recognition from using computers
| so much but my focus is sometimes so narrow that I will not see
| something that I might have if I softened my focus.
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