Why Being Delusional is a Superpower

Discussions on the role of luck in success pop up here on HN from time to time, and one pattern that stands out to me is that, for a good chunk of people, it seems really important to their sense of identity that luck is at best a minor factor in their success. Your post is one of the more direct renderings of that point of view: you don't really argue that the parent post is wrong, merely that it's not a healthy way to frame it. Which makes me curious: why do you believe that it is bad for someone to believe that their success is largely caused by luck? As an aside, personally I subscribe to this view on the interaction of luck and success: [this video]

Hi guys! I was talking with a friend the other day [1] and he shared this idea, I think it comes from a Veritasium video [2], that if you took 1.000 random people and ranked them by their overall success, the top ones would almost always be extremely lucky (i.e.: you get to the top by being lucky, not by hard work alone) Although the math behind it is extremely simple (just a weighted sum), as well as the code [3], I think the idea that hard work alone doesn't guarantee success is a powerful one. Plus, I think the app is fun to play with. Hope this thought experiment helps reflect about the whole idea of randomness in life, and maybe help spark a few interesting conversations with friends! It'd be great to hear your feedback. [1] [link] [2] [this video] [3] [link]

I saw a video explaining where if you attribute just 5% of outcomes to luck, then the people who have the best outcomes are among the luckiest people. It's hard to define just how much luck would matter in any given situation, but if you consider every aspect of our lives as part of luck, which I think is what people mean when they debate luck vs hard work, then I think it's a lot higher than 5% actually. That is, things like place/time of birth, parents, family, socioeconomic status at birth, schools, friends, teachers, health, timing of things, chance encounters - these things are all mostly outside of your control. Someone on hacker news might be thinking how they worked hard for years to learn software engineering, spent time networking, practiced interview questions, applied to several places, performed well in the interviews, and landed a lucrative job. And that's all part of hard work and it's often a necessary part of success. It doesn't feel like you lucked into anything. But the lucky part was mostly all the stuff I mentioned before - things that happened at birth, or things that happened because of others' actions. If you're born an affluent white American, for example, your luck meter is highly filled from the start. Then maybe at some point you had a teacher that helped you in a meaningful way, or you met a friend that influenced your decision making. And let's not forget there are people who are just as qualified, who study hard, practice, do all the same things

It's a trend that's well supported afaik [1]. Whether or not that trend manifests inside you as a defeatist attitude is a personal choice. But at the same time, whatever attitude you have isn't going to magically get rid of whatever disadvantages you were born into, so simply dismissing it a defeatist attitude is counterproductive. The danger is ignoring the tendency of egocentric bias in these articles[2]. Successful people assume that their values and ethics are what led them to success, when that may not be true. Though that then bears the question: who do we listen to for advice on success? Rich people? Scientific studies [3]? A thread I read on a previous hackernews post (coincidentally about Paul Graham, another founder of ycombinator) perhaps puts these ideas in better words than I [4] [1]: [link] [2]: [this video] [3]: [link] [4]: [link]

Agreed! Been on a one-man team for many years, and have felt exactly the same. As others stated you are definitely not a loser. I know it because I'm not. :P - Almost every one of us is working on boring CRUD web apps, and that's fine - Work is not the only part of life that is supposed to make you happy (on the contrary) - Try to spend all of your free time off screen. Exercise, meditate, read some books (not coding ones ..) - XP >> LeetCode. A college graduate will definitely beat me at LeetCode, but I have been integrating online payment/banking systems in production web apps which have handled millions of $$ payments. Learn to promote those skills when job hunting, and don't worry about DS and Algos so much. - We all need a bit of luck too : [this video]

I am willing to provide a short communication some times providing information but the reality is usually a lot less interesting than people think. Reality: I want to hire 1 person, we get say 5 past all the stuff before me, we interview all 5, and then we choose the one that we think fits the best culturally, personality wise, skill wise, etc. So our reply is usually "hey you were great, we wouldn't interview you if you weren't, we just found someone we liked a little bit more". Which isn't very satisfying but you have to think about it from my perspective too. How do you choose between 5 great candidates? Ultimately, luck is playing a massive role here [this video]