[kazinator]

Suppose you have an identical twin (not separated form you at birth: same environment, same opportunities) who does much better than you due to some external events. Like being at the right place at the right time without you.

The difference in success between you and that identical twin could be attributed to what we might call "situational luck".

All else (those things that give you initial equal footing, making you better or less off than other members of society) would be "inherited luck" or "background/baseline luck".

I think this article is more about this "situational luck" whereby someone does much better than someone else, even though neither is from a disadvantaged background relative to the other (both have similar "baseline luck").

[alok-g]

Beautiful. I had never heard of baseline and situational luck before. I am going to read more on the topic. :-)

I'm wondering what would be the formal definitions of these two. Is birth separating them? From a mathematical standpoint, could there be continuity between these two?

Thanks.

[kazinator]

It's just "conditional probability", explained for simpletons.

This lets us reason about the probability of new events separately from the probability of having arrived at that situation.

[alok-g]

Ok. In that case, I have just learned simpleton terminology for this. :-) (Conditional probability, I already understand, of course.)