"I've personally found that life is what you make it, no matter where you come from or your background"
No, it really isn't. Statistics show this very clearly, and this shouldn't require statistics for us to know it.
"Many of us have been extraordinarily lucky—and we did not earn it. Many good people have been extraordinarily unlucky—and they did not deserve it. And yet I get the distinct sense that if I asked some of my readers why they weren’t born with club feet, or orphaned before the age of five, they would not hesitate to take credit for these accomplishments. There is a stunning lack of insight into the unfolding of human events that passes for moral and economic wisdom in some circles. And it is pernicious." http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/how-to-lose-readers-witho...
Yay, another HN post that seeks to denigrate the idea that individuals have any control over the outcomes in their lives, and tries to attribute everything to luck and uncontrollable external factors.
The reality is, we all live in a cold, uncaring, unsympathetic world, and are subject to multiple random and unpredictable (and uncontrollable) forces. Pointing this out is no great insight, and this notion does little or nothing to change how one should approach the world. In the end you can only play the cards you are dealt, whatever they may be. But what you do with those cards is what matters.
People are born into disadvantageous situations all the time, and yet they manage to escape that environment and go on to have great success. Is is really all just "luck" or is it the case that your choices and actions affect your ability to even take advantage of what "good luck" happens to come your way?
"Luck = preparation + opportunity" might sound like just a silly slogan for Nike t-shirts or something, but there's a lot of merit to that. Maybe using pedantic definitions you can't literally "make your own luck" but in an effective sense, that's exactly what you do. You make your own luck by putting yourself in a position to have good things happen to you. You make your own luck by preparing yourself to take advantage of opportunities that come along. You make your own luck by acting to change your circumstances.
And, yes, "black swan" events (of the "bad luck" variety) can come along and destroy you. It can happen to all of us, but that's just another tautology that isn't a very insightful observation.
"seeks to denigrate the idea that individuals have any control over the outcomes in their lives"
Nice strawman. I certainly don't believe that.
"You make your own luck by putting yourself in a position to have good things happen to you. You make your own luck by preparing yourself to take advantage of opportunities that come along."
This is true, but it is only half the story. Different environments have different amounts of opportunity. America has far more opportunity than Afghanistan, making your own luck will get you a lot farther in America and you can't "make" which country you were born into. Environment plays a huge role, even within America. Health plays a huge role, even in America. Anyone that is successful has been very fortunate, and a lot of smart hard workers have not been fortunate. It's important to recognize that.
That's good to know. And I'm not saying that you specifically do believe that... it's more that your earlier post just seems to fit into a meme that seems to be becoming more and more prevalent around here, in which everything becomes attributable to "luck". Perhaps I over-reached in lumping your post into that category. Probably I'm just overly sensitive on this topic. :-)
Environment plays a huge role, even within America. Health plays a huge role, even in America. Anyone that is successful has been very fortunate, and a lot of smart hard workers have not been fortunate. It's important to recognize that.
I mean, yeah, in a sense... but you can work backwards from any success and find ways to attribute that success to luck. I mean, we're all "lucky" that a huge asteroid didn't strike the Earth yesterday and cause a worldwide cataclysm that might have killed us all. But focusing on that isn't, IMO, terribly useful, exactly because those things are out of our control.
OTOH, unless one rejects the idea of "free will" (which is certainly a valid point of debate), then you can control your own choices and actions - and I tend to believe that it's more important to focus on those things which are subject to (at least a degree of) control by us as individuals.
" But focusing on that isn't, IMO, terribly useful"
I agree when we're talking about making decisions in our own lives, but we should think about it at the level of society and government. We want policies that increase opportunity,and we need to know when we are failing. Social mobility is decreasing in America, and we should do something about it.
No, it really isn't. Statistics show this very clearly, and this shouldn't require statistics for us to know it.
"Many of us have been extraordinarily lucky—and we did not earn it. Many good people have been extraordinarily unlucky—and they did not deserve it. And yet I get the distinct sense that if I asked some of my readers why they weren’t born with club feet, or orphaned before the age of five, they would not hesitate to take credit for these accomplishments. There is a stunning lack of insight into the unfolding of human events that passes for moral and economic wisdom in some circles. And it is pernicious." http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/how-to-lose-readers-witho...