[jacobr1]

It matters where you set the achievement bar. Sure, if the goal is "internationally recognized expert," perhaps luck is a stronger factor.

But if the goal is, "strong enough programmer to write a spell-check algorithm from first principles," then work-effort might very well compensate for a lack of advantages in upbringing or other "luck-factors."

[rxhernandez]

Yeah, if you completely ignore people who are born in destitute and corrupt countries. How is someone supposed to gain access to a computer when they can't even feed themselves?

[l33t233372]

And that’s not even to mention how lucky he is to not have been born 100 years ago!

The point here is that going to such extremes isn’t really interesting.

[rxhernandez]

They are pretty interesting because it establishes limits from which you can work to understand the validity of your model (idk about you but that's how I was trained to create models in my physics degree).

I mean, from there you can move on to similar cases where bad luck trumps any amount of ability. For example, what sucks about being impoverished? Not having good access to a computer, right? From there it's not hard to draw on other things (e.g. abuse, bad culture, poverty) that make having good computer access a huge challenge. It becomes pretty apparent that luck plays a huge factor in success.

Pretty interesting to me.

[l33t233372]

It’s obvious, but uninteresting to consider the extent to which luck factors into success.

[rxhernandez]

So obvious that a lot of successful people here think they did it all on their own with very little luck involved. So obvious that there is an entire political party whose foundation is built around, "if I could do it, so can you."

[Oxidation]

As Stephen Jay Gould said: "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."