Is Success Due to Hard Work, Talent, or Luck?

How to survive in a world where luck and randomness play a pivotal role.

Topics covered include:

• What are power laws
• What are the narrative fallacy and hindsight bias
• What are examples of domains where randomness has contributed to success
• What are ways to distinguish investing skill from luck
• How sixth-century philosopher Boethius had an accurate view of chance
• What are ways we can benefit from good luck while protecting ourselves from bad luck

For more information on this episode click here.

Sponsors

Copper

Money For the Rest of Us Plus

Show Notes

Redacted messages to and from Elon Musk—Delaware’s Court of Chancery

Elon Musk’s Texts Shatter the Myth of the Tech Genius by Charlie Warzel—The Atlantic

Talent Versus Luck: The Role of Randomness In Success and Failure by Alessandro Pluchino, Alessio Emanuele Biondo, and Andrea Rapisarda

Susan Alexandra

Welcome to Susan Alexandra’s Dream World by Sophia Herring—Clever, Architectural Digest

The Fashion Set Can’t Get Enough of Susan Alexandra’s Colorful, Kitschy Designs by Noah Lehava—Coveteur

Quantifying the evolution of individual scientific impact by Roberta Sinatra et al.

What's in a Surname? The Effects of Surname Initials on Academic Success by Liran Einav and Leeat Yariv

Middle names make you look smarter—University of Southhampton

Admission to Selective Schools, Alphabetically by Štěpán Jurajda and Daniel Münich

It Pays to Be Herr Kaiser: Germans With Noble-Sounding Surnames More Often Work as Managers Than as Employees by Raphael Silberzahn and Eric Luis Uhlmann

The relative-age effect and career success: Evidence from corporate CEOs by Qianqian Du, Huasheng Gao, Maurice D. Levi

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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