How to increase your surface area for luck

Are you up for a chat, for fun and for career?

I started with AI six months ago at work and am feeling kind of lost where to take my career.

My email is in my profile.

Good for you, man!

I think there are also some good general lessons to learn for the tons of cases like yours.

First, I want to say that I don't think it was all luck. You put in hard work and you made it. I like the saying "the harder I work, the luckier I get." Luck gets you opportunities, work lets you take advantage of them. I say this first because I don't want anyone to read things as saying "you don't deserve it, you just got lucky". Luck doesn't detract.

  > getting in at an AI-related SF startup before AI really took off

We spend so much time and effort for finding the best candidates. I think if we look at the history of things, this surprisingly doesn't matter as much as we might think. Huge companies have been built by people who on paper don't look the best. Some of these companies also take off by luck, or what we might call "timing." A lot of what matters is how a team or group works together. A lot of what matters is a candidate's potential, rather than where they are right now.[0]

I want to point this out not to say we should just roll the dice on every person that applies for a job. Rather I say this because like most things in life, there's noise. If we forget about the noise, we're going to be less accurate. Randomness is literally a measurement of uncertainty. While we should try to optimize certainty, we are unable to be absolutely certain. So it requires recognizing the noise if you want to be accurate.

I think we often make a mistake by ignoring noise. Or worse, thinking we've removed it. We don't talk about this as computer engineers, but if you talk to any physical engineer (like a mechanical engineer), or even a machinist, all measurements will include tolerances. That's uncertainty, noise. Without tolerances, designs are not good enough to physically make something. And, the machinists will just make some assumption for you, which you gotta roll the dice if they're going to have too small of tolerances, making your part worthless or overdo your tolerances, making you pay far more than the part should cost. I think it applies to us when programming too.

  > My luck surface area is certainly larger now

And I think this is another important part (that can connect to what's been said above). Success gives us more opportunities. Importantly, these compound. Unfortunately, this means luck matters far more earlier on. I think we should recognize this as it plays a huge role when talking about juniors, high schoolers, college graduates, and so on. The difference between two random people starts small, but grows as they progress. If you took the same student and sent them to Standford they'd probably do better than if you sent them to some Cal State. The former is much more likely to give connections and internships while the latter might lead to none, even if the education was exactly the same.

Lastly, I just want to note that Veritasium has a video on luck and success. I think it is worth watching[1]. It's worth pausing the video at points, trying to make predictions about what he will say, and then continuing. Good way to challenge your own biases (or discover them!)

[0] It can be funny when people will spend so much looking for candidates but also say that degrees are worthless. There's probably a lot of these contradicting mindsets we all have (me included).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I

> A better way is to observe the people who failed and failed miserably, and learn from their failures

I've always wondered about this for startups: failure porn just feels so useful but my suspicion is that it is useless.

There's just too many different ways to fail.

Focusing time and energy on how to avoid failure just seems so wrong. Getting sidetracked. Unmotivated. However I do think one needs the right amount of fear, and one needs to avoid the failure modes for your particular startup and your particular personality.

Surely the right idea is to focus on competing to win.

   > for ordinary people, you are going to be exposed to some opportunities to succeed from time to time, but in a random fashion

There's a saying I really love

  The harder I work, the luckier I get

The way I interpret this is that by working harder you make yourself able to take advantage of more opportunities that come along. It "increases your surface area of luck", effectively. The opportunities still come at random, but work helps you capitalize on that luck. As a dumb trivial example, let's say you're a recent college graduate just having a drink at a bar. You just happen to talk to the person next to you and they tell you they're working in the space you studied and are hiring. If you didn't go to school, you wouldn't have been able to take advantage of that lucky situation.

I definitely agree that it is important to look at failures and learn from them. There's a large bias for ignoring luck's role in our (or others') success. Sometimes to the point of becoming superstitious, like replicating patterns of successful people that have nothing to do with their success (e.g. their daily routine). But when looking at failure, it is also important to remember Picard[0]

  It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is a weakness, that is life.

Sometimes people fail because they got unlucky. They did all the right things, but at the wrong time. This isn't the answer to all failures, but it is to some. It can be difficult to determine the difference, but just because it didn't work for someone before doesn't mean it won't work this time.

If luck plays a role for success, lack of luck plays a role in failure. With success, we tend to underestimate the role of luck. With failure we tend to overestimate it. In neither case can it be ignored.

[0] https://youtu.be/mr2Jdp4fdD0?t=38

You might like FailCon. https://thefailcon.com/

It’s better not to lose than to win. Life is non-Ergodic.

I suppose part of the issue is that a lot of people don't really know how they got where they are. You can point to this or that traumatic incident as the watershed moment that made the difference in the wrong direction, but who's to say if that's really it? Maybe it was a completely different missed (or withheld) opportunity that they've completely forgotten, or can't confront because of what it would mean about their behavior or identity or the world we live in.

A conference that could cut through that and get to some real answers would be very valuable. I would call it a "burnout conference" though. It really seems like the terminology has changed recently; people say "loser" less and "burnout" more, perhaps in light of some recognition of:

(1) the seriousness of the circumstances (it's not a game)

(2) the personal nature of everyone's journey (it's not a competition)

(3) the degree to which a lot of this stuff is out of our control

(4) the toll the rat race takes on even the most strident

Suceess always seems random, but it really isn't. It involves about as much luck as anything in life.

As an example, if you studied for an exam and did well, was it because you didn't get into a car accident on the way or overslept or got sick when you needed to study? Or because you studied?

I have found that many people want to attribute all success as 'luck' due to their own insecurities.

If everyone is hosting events, who will attend them?

> https://swyx.io/create-luck

Thanks, really enjoyed this.

  >  the exploration–exploitation tradeoff ... for which no universally optimal solution is known

I want to nitpick a bit. It may be nuanced, but I think it makes a significant difference.

Exploration-exploitation is about a class of algorithms[0], and I would not say that means "there is no optimal solution." Rather, it is often applied to problems where there is no optimal solution. You can apply it to problems with known optimal solutions and it should still get you to the optima.

What problems don't have global optima? Most. Most problems we simplify in ways that will contain an optima, but it is best to remember the assumptions made and if they appropriately apply. This is part of why always maintaining at least some exploration can be a highly successful strategy. Extremely useful in the real world too as the environment is always changing. You cannot generate globally optimal solutions for dynamic problems where the future states are unknown.

[0] Examples include Q-Learning, Bandits, or sampling algorithms. Multiarmed bandits and Thompson Sampling are mentioned in the wiki but note that there are more bandit algorithms and more sampling algorithms.

I learned about "explore vs exploit" in a fantastic book titled "Algorithms to Live By - What computer science can teach is about human decision-making" [subtitle from memory]

Highly recommended!

Liver King doesn't seem to offer a lot of usable and positive lessons. Being weird and toxic is a well trodden path.

Or being born to a King with great riches.

Being lucky once does not make you lucky later

Oh my gosh, I have spent HOURS trying track down the original source of the term, thanks so much for sharing it.

If it has a high chance of success and not much downside to failure, it wasn't much of a risk then, was it.

Curiosity is the opposite of fear, so this probably played a big part in you feeling comfortable enough to seize your opportunities when you saw them.

This is my struggle. I'm intensely curious but have no prior super successes in my lineage so I still feel like I've only gotten so far and feel like I'm kind of stuck because I can't leave the job that pays my bills. I also wish I naturally wanted to broadly share my curious deep-dives but I can't find a format that wouldn't take away from the enjoyment of pursuing them.

Goes good with https://perell.com/essay/serendipity/

> Actively seek diverse social, intellectual, and professional interactions

The word is yes (Yes Man 2008)

> Don't go into interactions with an agenda. Real interest opens doors unexpected.

Expectations are premeditated resentments. (from a 12-step friend)

For those that are flinching at this, there's a technique where you pretend you're someone else (extrovert persona) while going to network events.

e.g. pretend you're Tony Stark, a form of role playing (like how actors operate).

Not being interested in communicating with other humans has never helped with success.

It's like saying you want to swim, but refuse to touch water.

Last week I entered the elevator in my apartment building and there were two women who started laughing and proclaimed “whoops we didn’t hit L”. I immediately replied “if that’s the worst thing that happens to you today you’re doing alright”. Followed by them replying “or it’s the beginning of a Dateline tragedy”.

We all had a good laugh then she introduced herself as the mother of the other woman who happened to be very attractive. We continued chatting and exchanged contact info.

I’m not sure anything will come of it but I do know that I had a much more pleasant and serendipitous elevator experience because instead of just smiling after they admitted their mistake, I threw out a silly reply which turned into what it did.

Yeah I have always wondered about the success rate for self help books. Seems like the people who need it have an inherent problem using it.

It is a fair point.

But I found this article landed different than most self-help. It spoke in terms of mindsets one can adopt to do the things you mentioned.

And it made those mindsets compact/memorable so I'm more likely to use them.

This should just boil down to "say yes" to invites

hosting events (people come to you on your terms) > going to events (others)

> This reads like every single self-help book ever.

And every "business success" book ever. They're all just Survivor Bias. Have 1,024 people flip a coin 10 times, find the guy who flipped heads 10 times in a row, and have him write a book about what it takes to be a master coin flipper.

     >>> import random
     >>> ["H" if random.random() < 0.5 else "T" for _ in range(100)]
     ['H', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'T', 'T', 'T', 'T', 'H', 'T', 'T', 'H', 'T', 'T', 'T', 'T', 'H', 'T', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'T', 'T', 'H', 'H', 'T', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'T', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'T', 'T', 'T', 'T', 'T', 'H', 'T', 'H', 'H', 'T', 'H', 'T', 'T', 'H', 'T', 'H', 'T', 'H', 'T', 'H', 'T', 'H', 'T', 'H', 'H', 'T', 'T', 'T', 'T', 'T', 'H', 'H', 'T', 'H', 'T', 'H', 'T', 'H', 'T', 'T', 'T', 'T', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'T', 'H', 'H', 'T', 'T', 'T', 'T', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'H']

Fermats last theorem was notoriously proved by going to parties, socializing and making smalltalk /s

Luck isn’t real anyways. It’s actually all about getting yourself in front of opportunities as often as possible, learning to recognize when they show up, and acting on them ASAP. That’s all it is. I consider myself extremely lucky, but that’s just another way of saying I’ve seen a lot of the opportunities in my life and consciously decided which to chase, rather than floating through the river of fate aimlessly.

As supplemental reading see "bulk positive randomness" as discussed here [0]. It is tempting, but fallacious, to imagine "luck" as a zero-sum, EV=0 (or worse) process across every domain of life, where all upside or alpha has long been arbitraged away. Yes, there are some domains where you want to minimize variance, like the distribution of transit times to the airport when you have a flight to catch, or the odds of being robbed in a bad neighborhood. But there are also many situations where meeting new people, trying new things, etc. have many upsides and few drawbacks, and for most people these are (1) common and (2) recognizable.