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Comment by Podgajski | Hacker News Reader

What’s with all the woo hoo here on HN? The very definition of the word luck goes against your “frame it on the wall” feely good saying.

“success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.”

but I guess you’re also saying that people who get cancer are just letting it happen? Maybe they should’ve investigated the edges. You see there are two types of luck, good luck and bad luck. How do you know if by increasing your good luck in one area you’re not increasing your bad luck in another?

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In these comments your agency is entirely aimed at negativity. In order to justify this you reframe it as realism.

It's kind of like walking outside with your attention constantly focused on the fact that you might step on dog shit.

If you do this, your agency is pulled away from appreciating a beautiful flower, or interchanging smiles with a pretty person, or seeing a hundred dollar bill off to the side.

The fact that it is true that you can step on dog shit doesn't make it more true than the fact that most of the time you don't step on dog shit, and that you have the agency to walk and go around as if you weren't going to step on dog shit today.

Your interpretation of my comments is negative. I’m not saying you can’t change your opportunity in life, I’m saying that if luck has anything to do with your success or failure, then it’s all based on luck, and nothing to do with what opportunities you create.

It may will be that I do everything wrong in life and limit my opportunities, and still win the lottery because I tripped and fell on my face and lo and behold there was a winning lottery ticket that someone misplaced.

What I am saying over and over again is increasing your odds of success. Does not change your luck. Just like you cannot change the fact if a coin lands on heads or tails. You have zero agency in that outcome.

> I’m saying that if luck has anything to do with your success or failure, then it’s all based on luck, and nothing to do with what opportunities you create.

Your statement excessively (because it’s non-predictively useless) reductionist.

Yep, it’s absolute luck that that particular sperm and ovum happened to combine, that the pregnancy successfully proceeded, that you were born in a country not at war (I’m guessing), that that car didn’t run off the road and squash you when you were eight, etc. But acknowledging all that doesn’t provide any guidance.

My “woo woo” statement was literally the case: yes some incredible opportunity could sweep by and be missed because you happened to be looking the other way. And that will definitely happen — tant pis. But if you are willing to consider lucky opportunities when you are looking the other way your odds will improve.

Well I default to the views of Cate Hall, who wrote the article, and she agrees that it’s all about luck and little about agency.

https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/things-you-learn-dating-c...

Cate views her own life through a frame of responsibility: she takes responsibility for what happens to her. At the same time, she is genuinely not proud, and genuinely doesn’t think she’s better than anyone else. She credits luck for her good fortune and unusual attributes more than anything else, and is compassionate and curious toward everyone we meet. This is, I think, what sticks with me most.

The way I frame luck in my mind is that there will always be elements of your success which lie outside of your control. The ability to which you can capitalize on opportunities which come from outside of your of control is contingent on factors of your life which exist within the boundaries of your control.

You may have been lucky because a recruiter has reached out to you for a role which you would fit well in, but that's because you've made a conscious effort in dedicating time your craft and to advertising your capabilities.

Luck (or the lack of) is nearly never the sole factor in your successes or your failures.

It might also be that you find that lottery ticket and don't play it, because you believe you have no agency to do anything with the money anyway.

> Just like you cannot change the fact if a coin lands on heads or tails.

You can, just throw the coin again until it lands the way you want.

> You can, just throw the coin again until it lands the way you want.

Oh, I didn’t realize life is that simple. I can just keep doing things until they turn out the way I want.

There's a glimpse there, beneath the deprecating sarcasm, of beginning to understand the point of the article.

I’m saying you don’t even understand what Cate is talking about because even Cate agrees with me:

https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/things-you-learn-dating-c...

“ Cate views her own life through a frame of responsibility: she takes responsibility for what happens to her. At the same time, she is genuinely not proud, and genuinely doesn’t think she’s better than anyone else. She credits luck for her good fortune and unusual attributes more than anything else, and is compassionate and curious toward everyone we meet. This is, I think, what sticks with me most.”

Cate highlights positive aspects. Again, your posts focus every time on negativity. This is the point that I'm trying to get across. You talked about cancer, about blame and failure, "doing everything wrong in life and still winning the lottery" (winning the lottery isn't inherently positive, because it's what you do with it that matters).

It is not luck that shifts your mind to highlight these negative aspects, that is where agency takes place. Take care.

It is a numbers game. And by increasing the number of chances to "play", you increase the probability of scoring (i.e. "increase your luck surface area").

> How do you know if by increasing your good luck in one area you’re not increasing your bad luck in another?

I think you do know. Eat healthy and move => most likely will increase the probability of be able to be more active at an older age. Build and launch projects => increase the probability of building a profitable business (but if doing that makes you burnout - sure, you could say you increased your "bad luck" from a health perspective)

Respectfully, I find your definition of luck more "woo woo" than everyone else's.

I might be misunderstanding your point, but other people are treating luck as mere chance or odds, while you seem to me to be treating it as something binary that sounds a bit like "destiny" or "predeterminism".

Yes, at any point in time, you can be lucky or unlucky.

By changing the odds of an outcome, you’re not changing your luck, you’re changing the odds. Even having 99.999% certainty you can still be unlucky and land in that percent. Probability is not deterministic. And what determines the outcome? Luck.

> What’s with all the woo hoo here on HN?

It’s mostly pseudo-intellectual posturing. Code monkeys desperately striving for some perceived superiority.

"Apparently" doesn't mean "actually".

so what? That doesn’t change what I’m saying.

So that definition you keep posting doesn't say what you're saying it says. That which is apparently not caused by one's actions might, in fact, be largely caused by one's actions. Yes, there are things that are not in your ability to control and perhaps you could call that "true luck", but even your given definition admits labeling things that can be affected by personal actions as luck.

> The very definition of the word luck

Maybe you can define it for us.

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