[todaysAI]

I don't know how we can even consider that luck doesn't play the biggest role in life. We are influenced by a trillion of decisions made by people that directly pass through our lives everyday. To your competitors in business to the people that decide they are sober enough to drive at the same time you are driving.

Not to mention the physical world which plays no favourites.

I look at Bezos/Musk/etc and they are on top of wealth pyramid solely because someone has to. Next year it will be someone else.

All we can do is try to make clear rational decisions and then let the universe unfold as it will.

[callesgg]

Luck = All the things that that are too complex for us to understand bunched up in to one.

Luck is a narrative concept that is not useful in reasoning.

For example in the article:

> As many people pointed out, Jenner’s success would have been impossible if she hadn’t been born white, healthy, rich, and famous

She could not have been born as anything but those things. Those things are what she is and removing them would not simply make her "unlucky", it would make her in to another person. Luck as used here in the article is just a way to differentiate and classify people, it does not have causal power.

[ge96]

Yeah I am not a confrontation person but luck is a hard thing to talk about for me. To me it seems lazy to just say "oh you're successful because you got lucky". But that seems to be the consensus.

...I mean I suppose it all is right... It was luck that we exist goldilocks

[notinfuriated]

> I look at Bezos/Musk/etc and they are on top of wealth pyramid solely because someone has to.

By this logic, it could have been anyone. How do you account for the fact that people at the top of this list all started their own businesses (or inherited one)?

[AstralStorm]

Both of those people are to some degree con artists. They take both credit and money as middlemen for running companies. In Musk's case, it's even more visible as every venture he directly managed (and was not managed out of by someone smarter) has failed, yet he has billions of dollars for his quality con. And he used a plenty of unearned means to kickstart his con.

Bezos is a bit harder. I would have to look in detail on his earlier history.

[WalterBright]

> solely

Criminy. Both made choices.