That’s a good point but it’s hard to think about in practice. How do we define the opposite of luck? Is it being unlucky—as in bad things happen more regularly to you than others? That’s probably not a definition we would care about too much. Is the opposite of luck the absence of luck? What does that mean?
The problem with all of this is that in hindsight, no one can say why things turned out the way they did. Sometimes luck and optionality are on your side (your interview was in a good mood when they were interviewing you, or the traffic light malfunctioned and it saved your car crashing into the truck etc. etc.) and sometimes they’re not. The only thing we can really do is IMO a. be humble about this i.e. recognize the importance of luck b. put ourselves in positions where this is more likely to happen than otherwise (by working hard etc.)
That’s a good point but it’s hard to think about in practice. How do we define the opposite of luck? Is it being unlucky—as in bad things happen more regularly to you than others? That’s probably not a definition we would care about too much. Is the opposite of luck the absence of luck? What does that mean?
The problem with all of this is that in hindsight, no one can say why things turned out the way they did. Sometimes luck and optionality are on your side (your interview was in a good mood when they were interviewing you, or the traffic light malfunctioned and it saved your car crashing into the truck etc. etc.) and sometimes they’re not. The only thing we can really do is IMO a. be humble about this i.e. recognize the importance of luck b. put ourselves in positions where this is more likely to happen than otherwise (by working hard etc.)