• Wheatley
    2.3k
    All talent and skill, or any good quality you might possess (I'm going to use the word 'achievement' from now on), comes down to luck. Everyone is born with potentials: potential to be beautiful, talented, intelligent, etc., but not everyone acts on their potential. Some people with plenty of potential sadly don't live up to it. Obviously there are other ingredients to achievement besides potential. If each and every one of those ingredients are acquired by chance, then that would prove that everything ultimately comes down to chance because you do not choose your potentials either. So the question is: are the ingredients for achievements 'won' or chosen?

    Suppose for argument sake that you do choose some of the ingredients for achievement. Let's call it 'putting in the work'. Well even 'putting in the work' breaks down into the decision making process in 'putting in the work'. I'm saying that there is psychology in what we do. There's positive and negative reinforcement and other factors. We don't act in a vacuum. There's always a reason beyond all rational behavior (even though we might not know the exact cause). You are lucky have such brain that makes rational choices. Some people, for example, with mental disorders don't always behave rationally.

    Some people are endowed with gifts and talents. These people have won the lottery. And then there are aspects in life that require putting in work even when the potential is there. Some people do the work. They also have won the lottery. because perseverance is also a gift. Thus luck rules supreme.
  • Txastopher
    187
    Sounds like a bad case of determinism.
  • Hanover
    12k
    Thus luck rules supreme.Purple Pond

    Maybe everything you said was wrong, but you were just predetermined to say it.
  • BC
    13.1k
    Propositions beginning with 'all' and 'never' are always suspect because nothing is ever true in all circumstances. However...

    Luck certainly plays a large role in individual success and failure. Like...

    ...When and where a person was conceived, gestated, and born
    The genes of the ancestors are a matter of luck, as is the manner in which the parents genetic contribution combined at the time of conception.
    ...An unlucky child will be gestated in the womb of a woman who drinks, smokes crack, shoots up heroin, has AIDS and lives downwind from a lead refinery.
    ...If everything else is favorable, it makes a difference where one was born. It's one thing to be a genius born in Manhattan, something else to be a genius born in the middle of the Sahara desert.
    ...An otherwise favored person may lack the psychochemistry that yields a calm, steady, enthusiastic, ambitious worker.

    Time and chance happen. Life sucks. It's not fair. Get used to it.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    Thus luck rules supreme.Purple Pond

    Are you talking about free will or luck? May be both?

    If no free will then luck. Right?

    I do agree that we don't choose our preferences and we all know it's our preferences that drive our behavior. If so then we could say that, and correctly, it all boils down to chance or luck.

    However one interesting thing I'd like to point out is that while physical behavior can be explained in terms of a person's innate unchosen dispositions the mind is quite different.

    I just noticed that the mind is capable of thinking almost everything. Is it our ability to imagine? I don't know but we can and we do think of stuff that are both in line with our dispositions and also against them.

    I like burgers but my mind can choose to consider the possibility of refusing one when offered one. Sometimes this translates into physical form and I do actually refuse a burger.

    This ability to think counter to our innate nature must amount to something, right? We give in to our nature because to do so makes us happy (chemical rewards in the brain). But we possess the ability to negate our nature and do something against it. At a very minimum we can think in opposition to our nature.

    To me, it implies a level of control over our lives that we can't simply blame our luck. Of course not everything is under our control. So, some luck, yes, but all luck, no.

    Think of it like traffic. We all drive our cars on roads but we can and sometimes do drive on the sidewalk or into restaurants or anything else. The road is our innate unchosen dispositions and driving the wrong way or on the sidewalk is a choice we have or, in a weaker sense, our minds are free enough to think of that alternative.
  • Marcus de Brun
    440


    Purple

    Your post is such a rambling jumble of ideas it is difficult to know where to start. Can you summarize in one sentence in plain English what is your precise question, or argument?

    M
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k
    Luck is the residue of design. — Branch Rickey
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