> I think this is a case where people confuse correlation and causation. Hard work correlates with success, but it doesn't cause success.

Not true, hard work is a cause of success, just not the only cause. Luck (opportunity) is a factor, but a much more unreliable one at that. Genetics is also a factor (intelligence, passion, curiosity, playfulness).

I like to see this problem from the point of view of Reinforcement Learning - an agent playing a game in an environment, having to maximise rewards - which is the definition of success. The degree of success depends on many things, including:

- the environment (how complex it is, how many potential rewards it has for the agent)

- the internal structure of the agent (its ability to learn and perceive)

- bodily affordances (what the body can do)

- the exploration/exploitation strategy (will it try something new when it already has a strategy that is sort of ok)

- the amount of time it has to learn (life experience)

- if the agent exists as part of a multi-agent environment, then the strategies of the other agents count (cooperation/betrayal, tit for tat, forgiveness).

So there are many causes of success.

In the effort of simple counter proof: you can dig a hole with a spoon.

That requires a substantial amount of hard work but unlikely results in a measurable amount of success. Certainly one less than would be if the proper tools were used.

And I do agree with you that it is not the only factor. But this is why I differentiate cause and correlation. And the disagreement is likely to how we are using those terms. I am using "cause" in the colloquial sense (because context from above) of how most people do not see multivariate equations, but single factor (which is an unfortunate thing) ie. "cause and effect" (but we both know better). I am using "correlation" in the more rigorous manner meaning "related to; a statistical variable; or to be in association with".

And going back to your RL example, I think you mention one part which proves my point as well.

> the exploration/exploitation strategy

You may notice that many learning algorithms have a substantial amount of failure. After all, it is the failure that leads to success. BUT a key point is that it is not the effort put into the attempt that led to success, it is the adaptation of a new strategy after recognizing the failure. You could just as easily never visited that attempt method and thus your efforts would lead to a higher success/work factor. You could also never change strategies and your efforts would result in a substantially lower success/work factor. More explicitly "hard work" is a variable that is coupled with "strategy", and the value of "hard work" can be astronomically high but the value for success can be zero. And for this reason we say it is not "the cause" but rather "a factor" or "correlates with".

Also, as mentioned in a grandchild to my post, this is a saying which I gladly will admit does not cover the entire scope of what factors lead to success. Even the unpacking of implicit information cannot do that, as a full description of the path to success is rather cumbersome.

"Hard work" makes no sense as a cause of success. "Hard work" doesn't cause anything, rather, it is a means to an end.

We could contrive an example whereby "working hard" allowed you to "create more widgets in less time than anyone else" and so you receive a promotion (success). But even then we know that your success isn't from just "working hard", but is instead from the result of doing so. Given the context of this thread, I think we can agree that "creating the most widgets in the least time" can be done without "working hard".

I would argue pointing to "hard work" as a cause of success is confusing how a causal factor was reached with the factor itself.

It depends on what you work hard on, as you say in your other comment. You can work very hard on things that never advance you in life (many people do!) or you can work less hard on things that lead to opportunities and advancement.

> Hard work correlates with success, but it doesn't cause success.

Absolutely, that's a key part, I think.

There is hard work and smart work, if you simply work hard you may or may not advance the way you want, based on luck. If you work smart you will advance the way you want, but not as fast as someone who works smart and a tad harder ;)

I propose an alternative lens:

What if "luck" was actually just an individual's ability to perceive an opportunity... intersected with their own feeling that they have permission to act upon it?

> What if "luck" was actually just an individual's ability to perceive an opportunity.

>>Hard work results in being able to take advantage of more opportunities. But you still have to have those opportunities.

That's what is meant by "being able to take advantage of more opportunities. You are better able to see that they exist. You are also primed to look for them. You also believe that you can succeed at that opportunity. BUT a key thing is that they actually have to exist. There are situations where you can work really hard and there be no opportunities to be successful (financially. Because we can redefine what successful means but that doesn't consider context). As illustrated above you can work really hard in jail and that can result in no gained success.

But we're talking about sayings. Sayings are never exact but rather hold a generalization in a nice and easy to remember package. Sayings always include a lot of implicit information. We could quibble about finer details but whether you should or shouldn't depends on the context of the conversation and whether the context the saying is provided in contextualizes that implicit information.

What this saying packages is:

Though work highly correlated with success it does not necessitate it. There are opportunities for success frequently around us and frequently unseen. Hard work will not result in seeing or being able to take advantage of said opportunities, but rather it correlates with the ability to. Furthermore, hard work often correlates with improvements in skill, which grant access to new opportunities that previously were not obtainable. While there are a lot of things that lead to success that correlate with hard work and while success itself in turn correlates with hard work, success itself is not granted to all those that work hard.

What if you were born in Puntland, Somalia and you were shit out "luck".

I bought a lottery ticket, and I have permission to win, yet I didn't.

I suspect luck is, in fact, simply the event of uncertainities crystallising favourably (or unfavourably if the luck is "bad"). Like it says in the dictionary.

Yes, to me luck is exactly that: the impact/outcome of uncertain or unpredictable circumstances. If they work out positively, then we say it was good luck, if negatively, then we say its bad luck. So luck is just a name for something that happens to us that we feel we didn't have any control over.

Which is also why many people believe we make our own luck: because in many situations that people attribute to luck, we can influence the outcome, consciously or otherwise.