No, you cannot compare becoming the world's best self-driving engineer to winning the lottery. This is like becoming Lebron James, it's tremendous talent combined with tremendous commitment.
Lebron James was the exact definition of right place, right skills, right time. Lots of players have "tremendous talent" and "tremendous commitment." Lebron wouldn't be what he is today without a tremendous amount of luck. Would his career have worked out if Carmelo was drafted to Cleveland and Lebron went to the Nuggets? What about if Lebron needed to do a year in college now? How would that have impacted his trajectory?
Nobody is doubting Levandowki is an extremely talented engineer, but literally every person that achieves that level of success also took a considerable amount of luck to get there. Right place, right time, right skills is everything.
Having followed sports my entire life, and played a bit... Lebron is not a good example. He is a freakishly transcendent talent, the exception to the rule.
There is no "right time, right place" factor for Lebron, unless we're simply considering the fact that he lucky enough to be born at a time on Earth when professional basketball is a thing that exists.
Would his career have worked out if Carmelo was drafted
to Cleveland and Lebron went to the Nuggets? What about
if Lebron needed to do a year in college now? How would
that have impacted his trajectory?
Assuming his work ethic and will to succeed aren't somehow impacted there is literally no permutation of events, no alternate universe, in which Lebron James does not become the NBA's greatest talent for roughly a decade. He is/was that good.
Generally though, I do agree with you.
Lebron's championships, as opposed to his individual performance, are definitely somewhat the products of circumstance. He heroically dragged some mediocre supporting casts to the Finals and fell short a few times, which simultaneously proved both his own brilliance and the inability of even the arguably-greatest player of all time to do it all on his own.
A lot of supremely talented athletes have failed to find success in professional sports due to simply never finding a good fit for themselves where they were able to shine.
Similarly, there have been some oddballs who have found great success thanks to being in circumstances in which they were able niche for themselves. James Harden is a modern NBA player who comes to mind. The Rockets play a somewhat bizzarro style that caters to Harden's bizzarro skirting-the-rules game.
My only quibble with your "there is literally no permutation of events, no alternate universe" take is injury and other bad luck. I suspect for every Lebron -- who's been lucky enough not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, injury-wise, for decades -- there are a number of equal/better players (physically and mentally) who get bumped, land wrong, tear an ACL, and their trajectory changes forever. (Or get in a car accident, or... etc, etc.)
The underappreciated part of luck (by the lucky) is not the good luck people have the benefit of, it's the bad luck they avoid.
See this just isn't true. Durability is a physical property and in this area, like many others, LeBron is just on a totally different level than pretty much everyone else. The number of minutes he has played + the low amount of offseason he has (consistent deep playoff runs) + the physicality of his game + the few injuries he has sustained strongly suggests that he has a rare durability.
I really think you are underestimating how special LeBron is, how obvious it has been since he was in middle school, and how much it says about his physical gifts that he has played such heavy minutes for so long. We still talk about high school prospects being the next LeBron James because he was obviously a once in a generation talent (Zion being the only prospect since LeBron that has equalled his hype). Also LeBron has not really had good luck in his life. He had talent that transcended his terrible situation.
Certainly an ACL tear or other catastrophic event would have altered his trajectory.
On a human level, it is worth appreciating such things. Finding new ways to express and experience gratitude is one of the most profoundly powerful things a person can do. A true key to happiness. (I hope this doesn't sound sarcastic: I really believe this)
I think we just generally leave that sort of thing out of "what makes Lebron, Lebron?" type discussions because it's a constant for all athletes. A catastrophic injury would disrupt any player's trajectory. That's not interesting or useful to discuss from an analytic standpoint.
What we're really looking for is, "why is Lebron different from others who've avoided catastrophic events?" or to be more on-topic, "why was Levandowski able to rise to superstardom when other engineers weren't?"
Certainly, yes, some of this can be chalked up to Levandowski's avoidance of catastrophic events. He wasn't eaten by bears! His parents didn't blind him with acid! He wasn't struck by meteors! But, this is also true for a lot of other engineers, so this doesn't tell us anything useful. Everybody already knows that being killed by a bear is detrimental to one's career prospects.
To return to (and hyper-focus on) Lebron for a second...
there are a number of equal/better players (physically and mentally)
who get bumped, land wrong, tear an ACL, and their trajectory changes forever
In his case, the numbers suggest that the number of "better-than-Lebron players who don't make it" is extremely small and likely zero.
1. Every year, millions of people play basketball and do not suffer catastrophic incidents and yet also do not display the sort of generational talents displayed by Lebron.
2. Given the extremely large sums of fame and money involved in collegiate/professional basketball, anybody manifesting his level of talent is unlikely to go undiscovered. There is a lot of incentive for everybody involved to identify and develop such talent. This would be less true for many other pursuits. I suspect there are many "undiscovered Bobby Fischers and Gary Kasparovs" out there in the chess world and many "undiscovered Lewis Hamiltons" in the racing world; I suspect this is not the case for "undiscovered Lebrons."
3. Basketball is also different from other pursuits in that freakish physical height is a great advantage. If you are tall, in most of the world, people will tell you to play basketball. A height of 6'8.5" (Lebron's height) is something like 99.99th percentile and playing basketball is one of the few lucrative things one can do with that height, unlike a 99.99th percentile intelligence or even 99.99th percentile strength.
I think that we agree mostly, but I just don't think Lebron's individual skill is that inherent. If you compare high school lebron to now, obviously there are tremendous differences. The amount of "what ifs" that show up indicate a tremendous amount of luck.
There are plenty of "Most insane athletes we've ever seen" coming up from High School that never turn into anything, or don't turn into the greatest players of all time. You can't just say "Lebron was more talented and worked harder" when things like car accidents, illness and coaching can all ruin a player's career.
I feel you're trying to make a valid point, but you aren't really respecting how much LeBron was an outlier as a prospect. There simply are not plenty of prospects with his size, control, explosiveness, durability and fine motor control. 16 years after LeBron was drafted, we finally saw someone who is as much of an outlier as LeBron in Zion.
> but you aren't really respecting how much LeBron was an outlier as a prospect
This is rewriting history. The thing about signing someone straight from high school is it's tough to know how good they are, given they've mostly spent their whole career stomping normal people. Also I'm not implying Lebron was bad, or even anything less than a top pick. I'm just pointing out that there are quite regularly draft candidates that are touted the same way, that do not end up as a Lebron James.
> There simply are not plenty of prospects with his size, control, explosiveness, durability and fine motor control
Most of which he developed in the league? Which is as much a testament to him as it is his coaching, no? Which is a variable that could've prevented him from ascending as high as he did?
> 16 years after LeBron was drafted, we finally saw someone who is as much of an outlier as LeBron in Zion.
This is flatout not true (and frankly pretty offensive to Lebron). Zion is overweight and duck-footed, the combination of which has already shown issues even in his first season. His team knows it, which is why they're keeping him at 20 minutes a game.
If you can't play a player because of their fragility, you can't really call them great.
I'm just pointing out that there are quite
regularly draft candidates that are touted
the same way, that do not end up as a Lebron
James.
Can you name examples? I don't think that's correct, at all. Not even Michael Jordan garnered that sort of attention in his early teen years.
Lebron had thousands of people and scouts at his games as a high school freshman and sophomore, and was was on the cover of Sports Illustrated before his junior year of high school.
What you're saying about LeBron as a high-school prospect isn't consistent at all with the consensus at the time. 2003 wasn't that long ago - you can find draft prospect reports that show this. You can also compare his reports to the other top prospects and the difference is palpable. For example here is an excerpt from scout.com
"Simply one of the best high school players in the last decade. Whatever you have heard about him is true. He’s so gifted it’s scary. As a scorer, his range extends to 3-point land. He’s a terrific passer and is quite unselfish. Simply put: his talents are on another level. We can list schools with him until we are blue in the face, but in the end this is the best high school-to-NBA prospect since it became chic to make the jump. LeBron James is a special basketball player, good enough to don the cover of Sports Illustrated as a junior in high school."
Fron nbadraft.net
" He has met and surpassed the hype every step of the way. The game just comes so easily to him, he’s the epitome of a hoops prodigy. He has changed the face of highschool athletics with Nationally televised games being carried by ESPN. He has lived up to the hype and then some every step of the way. Carmelo Anthony has a better jumpshot than LeBron, and a NCAA title under his belt. But LeBron has far superior upside.[...] No one has ever had to overcome this kind of hype as a highschool player."
I don't think this is a great example. LeBron James has once in a generation physical gifts. It is not true that lots of players have the physical talent that LeBron has. With those gifts, he is going to go pro in a major sport and probably be a standout in most situations. I think his success is pretty independent of luck and time.
Not to mention that for all I know I could have a once in a generation physical gift, but i never really enjoyed physical sport and never trained to the level where this gift would become apparent
Or maybe I have a hand-eye coordination that means I'd be a gold medalist at Shooting, or some other sport I've never had the inclination or opportunity to train in
Sure, but there is an ocean between the fraction of Lebron James' success that is luck (which is substantial, as you point out, call it 25%) and that of a lottery winner (which is effectively 100%)
You're arguing against a point no one made. I never said said Lebron was all luck. I said that the luck was Lebron having his genetics and mindset combined with the year he was born, the circumstances with which he was drafted and the coaching and teammates he got.
He was the best self-driving engineer at a time when that was worth $120 million to Google. Is the world's best hydrogen fuel cell engineer getting $120 million bonuses? How about the world's best metallurgist? Historical linguist? You have to be the world's best in a field that could unlock dominance in an enormous potential market that is being actively contested and that one of the world's richest corporations thinks might be won in the next decade.
A valid point. Especially as self driving is nowhere close to bringing in revenue for any of the companies involved. Other than engineers working with batteries or metals which lead to actual billion dollar revenues.
You might say what's unusual with Levandowski is that he made so much money while working for someone else; and while not actually achieving any additional revenue.
If a battery or metals (or self-driving) engineer comes up with a material break through and starts a company they could easily eclipse Levandowski's earnings.
Sounds about right. Lance could basically sit down in the rocket and take the fame, while thousands of other people did the work to make the rocket and have it go to the moon and back.
It's not that he's the best self-driving engineer (though no doubt he is excellent). It's that he is the best self-driving engineer who is also a shrewd political operator.
My take on that but by no means I'm knowledgeable in those topics:
As far as I've heard Waymo was considered to be #1[0] when it comes to self-driving cars, thus it's probably someone of Waymoers
So if he was actually doing a lot of work there (basing on experience and how important for Google he was) then I think it's fair to consider him as a pretendent to be industry leader
[0] - Basing on Googling "most advanced autonomous cars"
That's survivor bias though, isn't it? Hard to see the world's best self-driving engineers when they're not getting caught stealing trade secrets and forced to reveal compensation.
No one is saying that talent and commitment weren't involved, but anyone who thinks there's not also a lot of luck involved is kidding themselves. Any number of fantastic and hard working engineers, not being at the right place at the right time could end up nowhere.
Of course, commitment can increase your odds grealy, but it doesn't magically make them 100%.
I think they gave the credit to him about having the skills. But it's the truth that luck is a huge factor. The same goes for Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. They had enormous skill and talent but if they so much as had slightly different childhoods or friends or geographic locations it would have been someone else.
1. Bill Gates had computer access
2. Steve Jobs met Woz
