[negamax]

Sorry, I have to counter you. Because someone close to me has always been about countering survivorship bias. And they have absolutely ruined their life. It's an easy out that people who are sharing their successes with you and the world have a survivorship bias. This is a fairly recent idea and quite a poison in itself.

What it actually preaches is don't look and emulate the successful people in your environment and society as this is all based on luck. Can't disagree more

[JohnFen]

It's not all luck at all, but luck is critical.

Skill and hard work are what buy you the lottery ticket. Luck is what determines if the ticket pays or not. That's why almost all successful people have a string of failures behind them, and why the truism "you've only really failed when you stop trying" exists.

However, you can have skill and put in hard work and still never have the success you're seeking. It happens all the time.

Although much of this depends on how you define "success". I'm assuming here that it means monetary gain, but most people don't have "get rich" as their measure of success. In reality, success is being able to live a life that provides satisfaction and happiness. That's an easier thing to achieve.

[tomhoward]

I think the luck factor is over-interpreted in this comment.

The reason most successful people have a string of failures behind them is because they learn from past experience and build networks and profile over the course of their career.

Luck applies most at the starting line - your location, your family and their wealth/status/connections [1], the traits and health you inherit, your education and the people you know who can mentor you, invest in you and work with you.

Over time the role of luck recedes and the role of experience becomes more significant (which is why, a few 20-something tech billionaires notwithstanding, most high-growth companies are founded when the founder is in their mid 40s [2]).

Also, “skill and hard work” are not the most important factors; in my experience the most important factor is the ability to self-improve, which takes humility and patience.

[1] It’s certainly not a given that being born into vast wealth equals luck in this context: plenty of heirs to vast fortunes turn out to be deadbeats. They may still be able to become successful in their own career but in a fairly pathetic, unearned kind of way. The right kind of luck for entrepreneurial success is a moderate degree of privilege (just enough not to spoil you) with a moderate degree of hardship (just enough not to break you). This certainly applied to Steve Jobs. Bill Gates too if you include the bullying at school.

[2] https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...

[tomhoward]

There are ways that your comment and the parent are both right.

I’m very much on board with the idea of eschewing victimhood thinking, and I generally see the invocation of survivorship bias as a pretty sad indicator of someone’s attachment to victimhood.

However I also recognize that the world isn’t great at empowering people to get out of difficult situations in life. Once you’re down, the world has all kinds of ways of keeping you down. “Just work hard and save money” seems like simple stuff that anyone can do but it doesn’t get you very far if you’re at the bottom of the heap, especially if you’re dealing with illness, family problems, or other burdens.

I do believe there are things that almost anyone (without irrevocable health problems) can do to go from a bad situation to a very good one over the long term (I’ve done them), but these things are not widely known or accepted by mainstream society.

So I sympathize with the sense of futility that many people hold.