I do public introspection on my website (amirbolous.com) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/amirbolous)!
Amir Bolous(Amir Bolous)
Karma: 22
Aim to get rejected often
I agree with your definition that it’s the result of a random event outside your control (up to an extent) but why are you thinking about this in terms of the negation? Why does doing X or Y reduce the likelihood of being unlucky as opposed to increase the likelihood of being lucky? And if so, why and how are these mutually exclusive?
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.)
Yep I definitely see that, thanks for sharing!
What it means to be lucky
I think the reason situations of problem 2 arise is because of misaligned incentives. When you care more about pleasing some other party, the best action is not necessarily the one that does the most good, but the one that best pleases the other person.
The cost incurred from doing so is then payed by either you (i.e. I pay the price in choosing a restaurant I hate) or society (in the factory example, the water is poisoned because of your choice)
Super awesome that your parenting style actually gives your children agency! Not that I’m a parent, but not belittling or not respecting that children can make informed, rational decisions is something we as a society do all the time and we need to strive to do better:)
Hey Tristan, thanks for the feedback! What you’re saying is right of course, to clarify, I meant minimize the time spent on chores constrained by each person’s time being equally valuable. I’ll clarify this in the post but I’m not trying to present comparative advantage from an optimization standpoint as far as trying to draw an allegory between the [comparative vs. absolute] dichotomy and the [learned skill vs. innate advantage]. Hope that makes sense!
This is a great point. I think my takeaway isn’t to seek out rejection, especially if that’s at an expensive cost of your mental health. It’s to not let your fear of rejection stop you in cases where there is an asymmetric upside.