Veritasium has a nice video about that:

"Is Success Luck or Hard Work?"

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

yes, thats where I learned about this, forgot it concretely though. Thanks for the reference!

> Being aware of this is healthy in so many ways, especially socially.

On the flip side, ascribing success entirely to luck is not at all healthy. I see lots of people who complain about their lot in life but then do nothing to change the trajectory.

Yet it is factually almost correct. Obviously its unhealthy to drop everything on circumstances and I understand what you are trying to say, however research shows: a person's home country explains two-thirds of the variation of income differences between all people in the world. This means where you are born is more important for how poor or rich you are than everything else put together.

This is another variation on the privilege discussion. It is okay to observe that some parts of the population are more privileged than others based purely on circumstance, but it is inappropriate to level the accusation of being privileged at individuals. And along the same lines, it is inappropriate for individuals who are disadvantaged to dwell on their circumstances and use that as an excuse to give up. Everyone can improve with effort, and I'd wager that the vast majority of people can improve enough to have a perfectly happy life if they try.

true, meant "most successful people work hard", to be more precise

There are many other things you need other then hard work or luck. For example if you work very hard as an elementary school teacher no amount of luck will make you a millionaire. I think there is a lot of skill involved in getting into spots where you are even exposed to the opportunity and then you need luck but maybe less then you think as there are so many opportunities around it would be just very unlucky to not stumble into one after a while (that is assuming you're born in reasonably not poor country, healthy and to parents that care about you).

Interestingly, Ramsey Solutions' study of 10,000 millionaires found that teacher is actually one of the top 5 careers for millionaires: https://www.ramseysolutions.com/retirement/the-national-stud...

(Disclaimer: there may be confounding variables the study didn't account for)

That is very interesting but I hard time believing that includes many elementary school teachers who didn't switch careers at some point. It would be interesting to see some details on it.

"Hard working elementary school teacher inherits millions from inspired student who became a billionaire and dies young."

Maybe some amount of good luck could do the trick...

His luck was that his set of dna and experiences made him land a rich tech job and made him smart enough to live in a Low Cost of Living location.

Sure, if his parents divorced and had he joined a street gang, it would have been harder for him to get where he is.

Everything is luck.

Luck and hard work aren't exclusive attributes for success.

What other attributes are there for success?

Being intelligent.

Didnt say so, did I? Hard work is necessary but not sufficient, thats my statement.