[StevenRayOrr]

> Success is more random than we'd like to believe, and there is a risk when failure leads to victim blaming.

An excellent sentiment, if less common these days than it should be. Reminds me of a quotation from Chapter XXV[0] of Machiavelli's The Prince: "Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less."

[0]: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm#link2H...

[koheripbal]

Over the course of an entire lifetime, the random good vs bad luck tend to wash out and people usually end their lives financially roughly in line with their capabilities. - my personal opinion and experience.

[cvlasdkv]

Demonstrably false considering massive wealth inequality and poverty. It's incredibly harmful and uneducated to hold such a callous opinion. It also goes against the plentiful studies showing that socieconomic status (SES) is more significant predictor of success than almost any other attribute.

Simple scenarios:

- immigrants/refugees moving to a different country

- getting visas in what is largely a lottery system

- injury luck with respect to athleticism

- access to equipment and instruments with respect to musical talent

- slavery and generational poverty

The idea that _capability_ is anywhere close to as important as luck fails so many simple tests (let alone empirical studies) that your statement offends me a little bit.

[wins32767]

Cohorts that graduate into a recession earn less over the course of their lifetimes than cohorts that graduate into normal times. It can take a decade or more to catch back up to their earning potential, meanwhile those who graduated a year earlier or later able to earn compounding interest on their additional income.

I find it hard to believe that birth year is strongly correlated with capabilities.

[cheriot]

That's seriously out of touch with the data. Play around with the animation tool at the bottom of this article: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/27/upshot/make-y...

The article it was created for is at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-c...

[rcfox]

This is one of those things only people who have had way more good luck than bad could say.

[thebluehawk]

I would agree, with the caveat of "all else being equal". There is a danger in ignoring vast socioeconomic divides that can put people at a disadvantage that can make things more difficult for certain demographics.

[dwaltrip]

This seems very wrong.

Looking at life as a massive state machine, I think it’s clear that some parts of the state machine are much more beneficial than others. Luck often pushes people into a bad area or good area, and it can be quite difficult to transition out of that area of the state machine, for better or worse.

Competency and hard work are obviously very important, but luck is an enormous factor as well. And luck, along with its compounding effects, is not uniformly distributed across all individuals.

[Bjartr]

What is it about luck that ensures it averages out over the time-span of a human lifetime? Seems a little anthropocentric of a viewpoint to me.

[quickthrower2]

Our capabilities are also luck: genetics, access to education and compounding that the rich will enjoy more often. The homeless person from a broken home trying to stay alive is less capable of writing distributed software. On average. Yes there will be rags to riches stories that make great reads, and set the standard of the “insert country” dream.