The World's Luckiest Enterpreneur

The luckiest couple in the world

“A couple in Virginia, in the U.S. managed to win the lottery a staggering three times in two weeks. Described as “the luckiest couple in the world”. (https://www.ageuk.org.uk/get-involved/play/blog/won-lottery-twice/)

The longest streak in roulette:

“This gave them a total of 21 wins in a row, which is the longest streak of one color in roulette history.” (https://www.casinoonline.tf/what-is-the-longest-streak-of-one-color-in-roulette/)

We do not attribute any heroic qualities to the lucky folks involved in the events above. However, as soon as we are talking about enterpreneurs, we start attributing inexisting factors, we start amplifying the role of the 'hero' and dimishing the role of 'circumstance'. This is due to the human nature of looking for idols, for fantasy, for role models that don't exist. But the dry truth is much simpler than that.

As there is the outlier of longest roulette streak, and there MUST be one, there also MUST be outliers in lucky enterpreneurship. By their nature, those will produce people which others see as 'heroes', even though they just had, and are still having, a fluke, the longest streak of luckily highly profitable enterpreneurial steps.

Men make history but not in circumstances of their own choosing

According to Karl Marx, the quote "Men make history but not in circumstances of their own choosing" suggests that while individuals have the capacity to shape historical events through their actions, they do so within the constraints and conditions imposed by the existing social, economic, and political structures. In other words, individuals have agency in shaping history, but they are also bound by the larger forces and systems that shape their opportunities and choices. This quote reflects Marx's emphasis on the importance of understanding historical events in the context of broader social and economic forces.

This is in contrast with the "Great Man Theory" of which there have been countless opponents.

Before the 19th century, Blaise Pascal begins his Three Discourses on the Condition of the Great (written it seems for a young duke) by telling the story of a castaway on an island whose inhabitants take him for their missing king. He defends in his parable of the shipwrecked king, that the legitimacy of the greatness of great men is fundamentally custom and chance. A coincidence that gives birth to him in the right place with noble parents and arbitrary custom deciding, for example, on an unequal distribution of wealth in favor of the nobles

In 1926, William Fielding Ogburn noted that Great Men history was being challenged by newer interpretations that focused on wider social forces. While not seeking to deny that individuals could have a role or show exceptional qualities, he saw Great Men as inevitable products of productive cultures. He noted for example that if Isaac Newton had not lived, calculus would have still been discovered by Gottfried Leibniz, and suspected that if neither man had lived, it would have been discovered by someone else. Among modern critics of the theory, Sidney Hook is supportive of the idea; he gives credit to those who shape events through their actions, and his book The Hero in History is devoted to the role of the hero and in history and influence of the outstanding persons.

The Swiss Cheese Model: anatomy of an outlier event

Studying aviation incidents is very educational. A pattern emerged that was then coined as the 'Swiss Cheese Model'. (See https://www.aviationfile.com/swiss-cheese-model/). For an aviation incident to occur, a not so small number of multiple problems, each of small probability, and each on its own unproblematic, usually occurs in a very unfortunate 'streak', causing an incident.

Here is an example:

The swiss cheese model can also be applied to a roulette streak, or, to the making of a technological 'empire'. For all those outliers, traits and events A, AND, B, AND, C, AND D, AND ... have occured, finding holes in the swiss cheese until the incredible result and status.

Nature versus nurture

We love to ascribe super-human traits to humans. Oh, but Elon Musk never sleeps, what amazing discipline. Here gain, human need for unrealistic role models.

In the last decads, techonolgy has advanced in such a way that we have better insights into what makes one human different from another, in ways that historically used to be attributed to 'nurture', such as being lazy, etc.

The better insights we have, the more we are finding out that nature plays a much larger factor than nurture. Where nurture is hardly self-uncontrollable, mostly lucky, or unlucky, circumstance.

For example: "One could argue that either nature or nurture contributes to mental health development. Some causes of mental illness fall on the nature side of the debate, including changes to or imbalances with chemicals in the brain. Genetics can also contribute to mental illness development, increasing one's risk of a certain disorder or disease."

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-nature-versus-nurture-2795392

The flawed bounce-back argument

Sometimes, the argument is given that if any of these amazing men would suddenly find themselves broke, they could find their way up again, while 'non enterpreneurs' would not, and this is supposed to be taken as a sign of skill. However, this is an oversimplification. It is known that an imporatnt factor is relationships between members of a certain 'club', whose members have access to a network of substantial power that can support them at any time.

https://www.businessinsider.com/100-silicon-valley-ceos-share-secret-whatsapp-group-chat-nyt-2023-12

It is time

It is time to stop idolizing lucky outliers.

"if you really have bad communication skills, would you be able to build such empires? Seems questionable to say the least." (https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/jadnohra_lord-please-give-me-the-lack-of-emotional-activity-7180528792442978304-8Rk0?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop)

The right keyword is not "Questionable", but 'highly unlikely', which hints at the correct answer. Almost by their nature, such empires are outlier flukes. There WILL be flukes, AND the flukes will be the most amazing success stories on earth.

We should not over index on the man in the middle. Mostly, circumstance makes the man in the middle and not the other way round.

Conclusion

But Jad! Writes Dirk Boer :

"So we shouldn't praise your accomplishments because you went through the Swiss Cheese model of AI software developers? ?? Or the Swiss Cheese Model of LinkedIn writers? We shouldn't try to inspire people to become successful in anything because the role models are always outliers? One thing is for sure: if you never try anything, nothing will ever happen and you will be for sure a subject to the whims of fate.I do like your articles, but I don't think this is your most inspirational one".

A first-reflex reaction to such a post is always that it is defeatist, but it is not. It does not say we should not praise accomplishments, nor that we shouldn't try to succeed.

The main point is that we should see the big picture of success, instead of idolizing individuals. We should understand that for any metric being maximized competitively by multiple agents, in a stochastic game, there will be outliers, and they will be the winners (as well as the seldom spoken about amazing loosers). Is entrepreneurial success a competitive game? Yes it is. Is outlierness learnable? No, by definition it is not.

Any learnable patterns obtained from studying the praised accomplishement are either circumstancial, or if learnable, already learned and overused by a large number of accomplishment seekers such that the skills become immediately useless, such is the nature of competitive outlierness.

Any recipe for outlierness defies the definition of outlierness, therefore, there can be no recipe.

For example (bullet points taken from https://www.quora.com/Is-Mark-Zuckerberg-talented-or-lucky):

• Mark Zuckerberg when to Harvard -> Circmustantial
• Mark Zuckerberg was lucky met students at Harvard (Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, as well as Divya Narendra) who chose to associate him with their idea of creating a social network for students -> Circmustantial
• The idea at the time was novel -> Circmustantial
• Mark Zuckerberg was then quite talented to directly create a working prototype of this idea in no time -> learnable but already useless, hordes of folks can do this.
• Mark Zuckerberg was finally Machiavellian, and frankly immoral, when he decided to make his "associates" wait while telling them that he was working on the development of their idea while he was about to launch solo what would become Facebook -> Call this what you like. I will call it both circumstantial and nature influenced personality.

Try to succeed, yes by all means, idolize outliers, no please do not.