^In this month’s Atlantic. Did anyone else read it yet? Thoughts?
Hadn’t read it before but agree with many of the points raised by the author. Personally, I feel that I and my loved ones have been blessed with abundant mostly good luck and we do try to pay it forward.
I heard the author on Michael Krasny’s radio show. The author was smart. He was great. I can see why this is a thread, @alh. 
Of course luck matters.
The author said people were interviewed and they said they didn’t have any luck. They were self made. Then when the same people were asked to describe lucky breaks they may have had, they all had lucky breaks.
Luck follows the prepared mind.
dstark: when I read the article, I thought of you 
dietz:
I guess that is how I was created. My parent’s were using their minds at the exact second necessary for me to come into existence.
Malcom Gladwell made the same argument in “Outliers”. Leaving out the 10,000 hour stuff, he talks about those issues with real examples. If Bill Gates hadn’t been born when he was, if he hadn’t of gone to the private school he did that had timesharing and gotten exposed to computers and programming at a young age, he wouldn’t have been the one to invent Microsoft; he may have gone on to do other things, but he was born at the right time and place to be in the opening of the microcomputer revolution (the PC age). Being in the right time and place can be a matter of luck, there are plenty examples of people in history who were failures, who because of circumstances had greatness thrust upon them. Another example of luck is happening to be around people who see the potential in you, and mentor you, David McCollough talked about that, and said that the myth of the self made man was just that, that show him any person who succeeded and he will show you 10 people who helped that person,and having that can be a matter of luck. There is also the luck of the genes, being born to tall parents makes it a lot easier to play basketball…
That doesn’t mean that everything can be attributed to luck, that is just as false as those who claim there is no such thing as luck, because someone could be given what Bill Gates was, for example, and end up getting the private school education, going to Harvard as Gates did, and end up a non descript corporate drone.
Sounds to me like God’s plan…luck or no luck. Just say’n.
@alh - thanks for the link…great food for thought!
One of the co-founders of Reddit spoke at S1’s graduation. He commented on how luck played a major role in his success. When filling out his college housing app, he had to select between the older and more traditional dorm or the new modern one. As luck would have his choice led him to having his future co-founder right across the hall.
Being born in America is one of the luckiest things that can happen to someone. IMO.
I’ve been lucky to avoid worse, at many points. Awareness and gratitude help define what we accomplish.
definition of luck–success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one’s own actions
I wasn’t born in the USA because of luck. My ancestors made the decision that Ireland sucked without potatoes so they headed out somewhere more promising. They took the actions to make a better life for their children. They were correct.
Did your family sail directly to the United States or to Canada first?
My relatives also made the choice to emigrate – so glad they chose Hawaii! It has been a great place for us, warts and all.
I think there are quite a few of us who had relatives who chose to emigrate.
The communists in China took most of my family’s assets. What was left was sold for gold. My dad and his brother carried the gold out of the country in plastic bags up their rear ends.
So…they were smart enough to go to America and lucky they weren’t caught.
Sort of related: In a study of a rigged game of Monopoly, the favored (lucky) players attribute their success to their own skill – even though they knew the game was rigged in their favor. Also, subjects who were given more money; i.e., who were more lucky, were more likely to cheat, and to literally steal candy from children.
This thread is very appropriate today.
Steph Curry has been diagnosed with a strained mcl after slipping on the basketball court.
Chris Paul broke his hand.
I am going to side with bad luck on these two incidences.
Maybe good luck for the Spurs or Thunder.
“I wasn’t born in the USA because of luck. My ancestors made the decision that Ireland sucked without potatoes so they headed out somewhere more promising. They took the actions to make a better life for their children. They were correct.”
I am sure many of us are aware of when our ancestors came to America. It is still LUCK that we were born into those families. It’s still luck that they didn’t die on the crossing, or get murdered in a pogrom for those for whom that is applicable. Don’t pat yourself on the back too hard for having immigrant ancestors. BTW, I had some who left Ireland, too. My grandfather came here at age 17 from Poland because both of his parents had died. Wow, what good luck!