[abfan1127]

At the risk of more down votes, I'll disagree with you. There are certainly smarter people than me who are less lucky than me. However, its a much smaller subset than many would believe. Many claim unlucky when in reality their luck is a consequence of their past choices. They've taken risks and those risks didn't work out.

[cxr]

I once read some advice that I'll try to repeat, but without knowing whether I can do a great job capturing it, but here it goes. The general idea was that if you're on a date with someone, then you should avoid asking or saying things that subtly insist that something is true if you don't know it to be true. An example is that if you don't know whether your date was molested by their father as a child, you should tread carefully with any questions or comments that carry the presumption that they weren't.

Here's some more sage wisdom: the average human has approximately one testicle. Except not, right? Because that's not how numbers work. So, it doesn't matter if, say, only 4% of the people you interact with are unlucky and 96% aren't. This is not an engineering problem. If you do meet someone who is (or was) unlucky, and you have an interaction with them like this, then even though they're in the 4%, their circumstances are still 100% at odds with your assumption.

[abfan1127]

interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing!

[war1025]

You can only get downvoted on a post to -4, fyi. I stopped caring nearly as much about being agreeable once I learned that.

For what it's worth, congrats on what you did. I'm in a similar position and I completely agree that for the majority of people here it wouldn't take anything beyond stopping making bad choices.

[dkersten]

> I stopped caring nearly as much about being agreeable once I learned that.

The score is just some meaningless internet dick measuring, so why care at all?

[war1025]

Psychological junk, you know.

[imtringued]

If staying in my home country is a bad decision then nothing will change my mind.

[war1025]

I think it's important to make a distinction here that I didn't think to make initially:

I am not saying "everyone can make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year if they stop being dumb."

What I am trying to say is "Most people can avoid being massively in debt by making better spending decisions."