[boffinism]

"But it dawns on me that luck is just the product of all these other qualities"

This, to me, highlights the flaw in the whole article. They nearly died. They were saved by a chance encounter with a friendly boat. This encounter was SO OBVIOUSLY not a product of their own motivation, boldness or any of the rest of that guff.

This is the worst form of survivor bias.

[ookdatnog]

There seem to be quite a lot of people who really need to believe that luck plays at best a minor role in (their) success for their sense of identity to remain intact, and who get incredibly defensive when this notion is challenged.

I guess in daily life it's a useful self-delusion. A mostly harmless belief that gets them through the day while being obviously false: if you're born in the middle class in a developed economy in the modern day, you're likely to be vastly more lucky than, say, 99% of all people who have ever existed so far.

[Arisaka1]

People always want to ascribe the smallest slice of pie in luck, so that they get praise for what they achieve. I broke friendships with people who insisted that it wasn't their country's job market that had more opportunities for self-taughts to start their career, but it was their hard work and free will that made them chase the opportunities, which is akin to saying it wasn't the door that was unlocked it was my legs that helped me walk to the door.

Also, I cannot get myself to imagine that the captain of the ship had a plan to have 40 people drifting in the chance that they find someone else to approach them for restocking, and if that's the kind of captain we want more of I'm out.

[moffkalast]

Yeah, even from his perspective it's survivorship bias. The sailboat captains that got jumped by a dinghy full of AK47 wielding pirates aren't around to write deluded articles.

[Satam]

Luck can present you an opportunity but it is still up to the individual to make most of it.