How to Create Luck - Response to @veritasium 'Is Success Luck or Hard Work?'

This video is to give an alternate perspective (not to say he's wrong - sorry for the thumbnail :)), mention the potential dangers of his video, & give practical ways on how to increase one's luck.

Since uploading this I've actually changed my mind on a ton of the points thanks to you guys' comments, & I apologize for rushing this video to get it out right after @veritasium, should've thought harder & added a lot more nuance! Anyways, keep writing 'em comments & let's all get to a more objective view of the world!

Also, I apologize for the clickbait thumbnail... Full disclosure - the original one didn't say "he's wrong" but after I changed it it had 2x higher click through rate so had to use it to maximize luck :)

& also... make sure to subscribe if you enjoyed this video, to increase your luck & chance of success :)

Watch this to STOP Procrastination WITHOUT WILLPOWER!:

Why SkillShare SUCKS!:

0:00 - Intro
00:41 - Why Luck vs Hard work is not a fair comparison
2:50 - How Luck can be Generated (through science)
4:20 - REVERSE Egocentric Bias (DANGER of His Video)
5:53 - How to WIN the Game of Luck
7:58 - How our videos converge

==================================================
SUBSCRIBE:
==================================================
Music:
if you see this that means I forgot to put the music up... comment down below and remind me to put the music here

Video description:
You can ALWAYS get "lucky" if you understand this... watch till the end to find out

==================================================
DISCLAIMER: This video is NOT meant to be against Veritasium (sorry for the clickbait thumbnail), in fact, he is one of my favorite YouTubers.
This video is to...
1. Why comparing Luck vs Hardwork is problematic
2. The danger of the common interpretation for his video
3. How to win the game of luck

#veritasium #luck #hardwork

[mentalmodels]

Disclaimer: I agree with a ton of counter-arguments in the comments - this video is to give an alternate perspective (not to say he's wrong - sorry for the thumbnail :)), mention the potential dangers of his video, & give practical ways on how to increase one's luck.

Since uploading this I've actually changed my mind on a ton of the points thanks to you guys' comments, & I apologize for rushing this video to get it out right after veritasium, should've thought harder & added a lot more nuance! Anyways, keep writing 'em comments & let's all get to a more objective view of the world!

Also, I apologize for the clickbait thumbnail... Full disclosure - the original one didn't say "he's wrong" but after I changed it it had 2x higher click through rate so had to use it to maximize luck :)

& also... make sure to subscribe if you enjoyed this video, to increase your luck & chance of success :)

[AnkitSharma-lrxx]

you are "lucky" because he made that video, so you could make a reaction video on it and get views. acknowledged your "luck".

[AlvaroQuezadaTh]

I think you are wrong because you are ignoring some pre-conditions that nothing have to do with hard work, like where you born... And the other problem is the definition of success.. or the scope... If you born in Denmark you have 95% chance to be successful in the global scale... and even your capabilities for hard work as your determination, or your willpower are determined by random factors or at least factors outside your control, as your genetics, your family and your education inside and outside the school.
So at the end be grateful with what you have and try to do good with it... that's is in my view the key.

[AljRest]

As inmigrant in the US, I believe luck is a huge factor for many people, hard work without opportunities will only take you so far as the opportunities around you, here the same hard work i used to do is taking me to another levels, without those opportunities i wouldn't get so much, I'm lucky to be here.

[gentlemandemon]

yo I don't think you got Veritasium's video. Take his astronaut analogy: luck was only weighted 5% of the total applicant quality, the other 95% was skill. What happened was that higher luck scores were more likely to be selected in the end by the combined criteria. He emphasized a couple times that you still need to work hard.

[anomienormie]

I clicked this vid because it came up when I searched up veritaserum's vid to copy the link. I love how you deliver the content.

Verita's still right but I didn't know how easy it was for people to make the wrong interpretation. I mean, in the statistics example, the luck factor was 5%, and the "hard work" gauge was high for both luck groups and none luck groups. That hard work is a requisite should be obvious.

But speaking of dangers, your video can be dangerous too. Not only are there more cases of rich or even just better off people blaming the poor for "not working hard enough" without realising just how impossible it is to escape poverty, it's possibly a more dangerous statement than "success is all about luck". Yours is from a perspective of individual success, and from that pov it's much more satisfying than verita's conclusion. But that might make people downplay the need for social reform.

I guess since it's easy to be biased or to misinterperate/generalise, it's important to show things in various perspectives and scenarios. This was a nice complimentary video to watch. I'mma subscribe and check out more of your content.

[mheshd]

Not trying to bandwagon, but I can't put into words how wrong you are.

[christianandjesse]

But what you're missing about the original video is the whole part about "lots of hardworking people never get lucky and die in poverty or struggling for survival."

You claim its dangerous to say hardwork doesn't pay off, but its more dangerous to say it does. When you're in a country where almost a quarter of people live below or at the poverty line, its dangerous to say hardwork pays off because its telling the poorest people to work harder.

This whole video is just "don't hate on wealthy people, they worked hard".

The other video was saying "don't get cocky, most people fucking work hard. Most people never see success."

[josephmathew]

According to me, what versatium said was that in competitive fields were there is only limited number who gets a chance to be on top you need luck.That is if you want to pass an entrance exam and be one of the very few handful who are selected then atleast 100 might be on the same level but only 10 gets selected to the top 10.In that case luck plays a major role because all of the 100 are on the same level when it comes to hard work.I dont think he was wrong and people born in developed countries are better off than the 3.2billion people you just mentioned.Elon Musk was born with lots of ideas exploding in his brain.He said this in an interview and said he was quite different from the rest.That would be an inherent talent that he mistook for a curse during his earlier life because he said he could not shut it down.Take the case of Kendall Jenner who chose fashion as a career and she was lucky because she was a natural beauty with long legs and beautiful face and she being famous at the age of 10 and her mom having connections in that industry would have helped her to get off to a good start.If Bill Gates was born in an oppressing and poor country, I do think he would have become a rich guy in his neighbourhood but nowhere close to becoming the richest man on earth.So I think Versatium is right about it when he talks about being lucky to become the top 1 per cent.Towards the end what versatium was telling was that you should do what you feel like doing and try to reach the sun but if you do not reach it, it's not your fault entirely.Luck does play a role in reaching the top.There is a limitation to changing your surroundings and your genetics.

[jinjunliu]

My view on this is that hard work isn't necessarily a prerequisite for succes. Without hard work you can definitely get successful by luck, but *maintaining* succes definitely requires hard work, otherwise you'll fall back down.

(Edit: this does kinda depend on your definition of being successful)

[pedrohdalla]

"the process of writing a book is pretty hard"
Yes that's why ghost writers exist, so rich people can keep living in minimum effort

[knotwilg]

1. when you say "hard work is not on the same level as luck, it's a prerequisite" because "hard work is necessary to achieve success", you are logically equating luck and success, which voids the whole argument.
2. when you say "name one successful youtuber who did not put in a lot of work", you are repeating that hard work is a necessary condition. That doesn't logically oppose that luck is also a necessary condition and a fortiori doesn't oppose the idea that luck is a bigger factor than hard work.

It seems to me your semantics and logic need some hard work. Nevertheless you have 3, 5K followers already. Lucky you!

[SachinMour]

Dude, your video quality is really nice. just change the font, it looks super weird with the quality of video. Hit me up if you need feedback.

[Xamy-]

Disagree about part 1 mate plenty of people encounter luck before hard work. Think about it: surviving birth, country of birth, your parents etc. I can appreciate you might not like the take of “hard work is less than luck”

[AnimatedLessons]

I think you really missed the point of Derek's video.

The video isn't about whether success is a product of luck or hardwork. He already acknowledged it's a combination of the two things. In fact his simulation weighted hardwork and luck at a 95:5 ratio and you saw that in extremely competitive tasks, people succeed mostly because of luck.And his examples of luck were completely out of ones control - i.e. birthday of hockey players, tail winds during world record races.

You actually doubled down on the exact thing he was talking about with the ego-centric bias. "Create your own luck" mindset just absorbs the role of luck (things you can't control) into the hardwork/skill category. You can reflect back at your most luckiest moments and piece together all the decisions you made to get "lucky", but in reality this is just a form of hindsight bias.

Anyway, the point of his video was the success paradox is a tricky thing. If you're self aware of the odds of success, you'll never try/put in the work, therefore never be successful. In order to succeed, you need to be delusional about the odds of your success because merely attempting something could lead to success.

The problem comes with this paradox when successful people gain power -like presidents, senators, CEOs, they will become policy makers and this can have dramatic effects. If you succeed in life and you don't acknowledge the role of luck, you might not create a society that is at least sympathetic to the less fortunate because you believe your place in society is due to hard work, and therefore others can also achieve success with hard work.

Derek obviously made this video whilst reflecting on what's happened in the world during the Pandemic. Millions of people are in an unlucky situation, things are completely out of their control.

[JakeMyerz]

The decision to do “hard work” boils down to genetic and deterministic factors. So really the decision to do “hard work” to create luck, is really just more luck. I would suggest watching Michael Sandel’s podcast with Sam Harris on Meritocracy. It may answer some of your questions regarding this issue.

[siraaron]

I think you are confusing luck with randomness.
Luck means events beyond your controll working for or against you. (As opposed to true randomness which is a spontanious anomoly in the laws of physics) It's Literally impossible to be perfectly prepared for EVERY eventuality. Even if you did nothing but plan failsafes that means you succeded at nothing but avoiding failure.

And even then, you have no controll over how old you are or the income of the family that raised you.

Veritassium's point was working hard is important but if taking out good fortian for granted humans tend to Neglect the people who work just as hard but aren't as sucessfull.

[edvindenbeste]

My main problem with what you're saying is that hard work is a pre-requisite to become the most successful, but not everyone who puts in that work is successful, and in the examples in the veritasium video it is shown that the correlation between putting in the *most* hard work to being the successful one just doesn't exist there. And on top of that, your ability to do the best possible work is also due to luck. Not all people are born in rich countries, and of the ones that are not all are born to rich parents, and of those not all are the smartest, the strongest or whatever. All those factors *are literally luck*

[Abbaddonna]

Veritasium’s video is not misleading in any way. I guess, some people just don’t do hard enough work at interpretation and are out of luck too 😄

[MasterG]

8:45 I contradict myself and acknowledge there's luck that comes first.