Is he right?

is he right?

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No, it'd be more accurate if they said successful people flipped the coin 10x, where as some only flip it once and accept the fate.

No

www8.gsb.columbia.edu/articles/columbia-business/superinvestors

"No"
-Me, just now.

you're conflating the existence of good coin flippers with people who used their coin flips to benefit the survival and well-being of the tribe and not just their home theator

Worshiping and fawning over your superiors is one thing. Creating an entire cult of personality, displaying arduous zeal towards the person in question and thereby forever immortalizing said person through the pages of history is not on the account of mere survivorship.

he doesn't even know what heroism is

There is some truth in that, but the analogy fails to account for those skilled in manipulating coin flips for desired outcomes and that not all coins are fair.

obviously, we are all subject to some larger systems of predetermination, but to just figure that's that and give up is pretty bunk

we can strive for a better world but not if nobody has any fight in them.

It sounds like a cliche, but the only thing you should strive to beat is yourself. Worshiping successful people is silly, but you can learn a lot from them. That guy is a tool.
I suppose you need to have a certain mindset to be willing to improve, you need to have at least some masochistic traits to relentlessly hurt and punish yourself on a daily basis chasing a goal. For a lot of people it's enough to tell themselves "it's not me who is weak, it's the strong who had the opportunity".
Will you fight or will you perish like a dog?

Who knows? Obviously it's a thing that happens, but the extent is impossible to say without some way of measuring it.

Yes.

>dude successful people are just lucky
I can smell the jealousy from here

It's a large part of it, to be sure

why is it one thing or the other?

what if there is an infinite distribution of various combinations of luck and skill? what if it's actually a very nuanced and immeasurable?

it ain't just Coin Flipping vs Great Man theory

maybe

>being successful = flipping coins

It's more like working on something for years to get the chance of flipping a coin, especially when it comes to art and literature.

That said, if that guy is talking about businesses then he would be right for most specific cases. You will still find extremely brilliant self-made men, but for the most part is people who got lucky.

Also I'm pretty sure that, although it's technically correct, this line of reasoning is same-defeating: who can muster the discipline and drive necessary to accomplish ANYTHING in this world while thinking what that guy is thinking?

In art it would be virtually impossible, in business-making you would need an actual miracle. Wether luck is involved or not is almost trivial, since the real prerequisite for success is ambition (unless your parents are already loaded, in that case you'll be fine either way, but that's statistically rare enough to be discarded as a scenario).

He is partly right. Say you need 60 percent luck and 40 percent skill

Each time I read this, it makes more and more sense.

A person born in a shitshack in India does not have the same chance at success as a person born into a wealthy family in America.

You can influence a coin flip with enough training

True, but past a certain treshold the differences become meaningless, and ere are enough people competing to start actually valuing said competitivity, without conflating it to mere luck.
Luck plays a part in it, but it's not the only prerequisite.