@freemo For example, I was born into a lower-middle class family, and I worked my way up to becoming a highly-paid consultant, but I also know damn well that I never would have found my calling were it not for the privilege of going to a school that had the resources for a computer program in the late 90s.

@louis

I dropped out of school because they refused goblet me skip ahead to college level courses which in was already doing by middle school.. so for me school was certainly not a privilage

@freemo Then you could also consider the privilege of absence. During this time when you were pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, did you have additional mouths to feed? Debilitating and uncontrollable medical expenses? Inherited debt? PTSD?

The older I get, the more I notice that people always want to see themselves as the underdog. We accentuate our meager origins while remaining blind to our advantages. I'm as guilty of this as anyone.

@louis again all those things could make getting out of it harder for sure. There is no doubt some people may need to put in more effort than others. But again all are capable.

At 15 my 100k job was my first job. So prior to reaching that point of success my mom was the only one creating income through welfare mostly, that had to support the whole household as no one else worked.

Yes we had huge medical expenses as my mom was in no way encouraging me, I had to fight her instruction as a parent so she was constantly trying to get me treated by psychologists or doctors to "get me under control". She has parkinsons and the crippling anxiety that goes with it, my grandparents had multiple strokes and heart attacks, we had huge debt, and likely some undiagnosed PTSD on my grandfathers side.

And I do agree people always are the hero of their own story. I won't claim to be an exception here, but i think my story speaks for itself.

@freemo Okay, let's drill into that first bit. How was your first job $100K? Mine was $5.50 an hour.

@louis

I devoted myself to learning advanced math, coding and electronics. My plan was tonlearnbit, build something very impressive put it out there for free and use that to get my first job.

After years from a very young age studying around 14 in reached the point that was possible. I the developed a p2p algorithm with my own compression algorithm that was 100x faster than the best commercial options on the market. Beibgnonly 15 this made for an interesting news story so as a result I was getting a lot of news attention. Due to my abilities and the attention I got as a result of that I had about 20 different companies offering me jobs at that price range.

So very much as the result of hard work id say.

@freemo Learning coding and electronics is one thing, but you need money and hardware to practice them to any reasonable degree, especially for building new technology. Where did that come from?

@louis@ingenthron.social

The library for the computer. The electronics was from going into trash bins to harvest parts and equipment. I had very little equipment, a soldering iron and some found components. Ibremeber just getting the solar for the solder was very hard, had to cut lawns to even afford that much.

@louis

The library for the computer. The electronics was from going into trash bins to harvest parts and equipment. I had very little equipment, a soldering iron and some found components. Ibremeber just getting the solar for the solder was very hard, had to cut lawns to even afford that much.

@freemo Okay, so I'll grant that you met your opportunity with determination and hard work and that paid off.

But let me ask you this: How much of your overall success do you attribute to the good luck of having the right skills at the right time when there was a specific identifiable need that you could fill? In other words, if someone else released your algorithm a month before you did, how would your life now be different?

@louis The algorithm and most of my algorithms are probably a bad example of luck. My career has largely been a constant aeries of new algorithms I have invented.

The aspects of luck in my mind are more things like this:

* genetic lottery for intelligence
* birth lottery as I wasn't born to a remote tribe or something
* genetic lottery for not having depression or something else that could have crippled my motivation (drug addiction too)

There is always some element of luck that i could have not overcome otherwise. But my point is just that something that can truly stop you is quite rare.

@freemo Isn't it luck, though, even if purely through timing? If you were unlucky enough to be born a year or two later than you were, do you not think that head start would give your competitors enough time to make your same discovery before you did?

My point is that, as I believe it to work, success is nearly always equal parts luck of being presented with an opportunity, and hard work/preparation of being able to seize that opportunity.

@louis If i had been born 2 year layers they wouldn't have beat me to the algorithm. While the app was free and Mich code released I never released the compression algorithm. To this day 30 years later no one has built a faster p2p system with better compression.

That said lets say someone had beat me Tobit.. then in would have invented a different algorithm. I invent dozens of algorithms every year that are able to outperform the best in the industry. So no reason to think I wouldn't have just choosen something else to invent.

The thing about lucknia, a smart person knows their odds and plays the game so they win. Look at my crypto and stock investments. It is almost pure luck in the sense that it is a statistical system. Yet in have never had a single year I've lost money on the market. Why? Because even luck can be mastered when you know math ;) That said you can't really invest like that without massive diversifications so that Kant accessible to the poor for sure obviously. But in didnt do that till later in life too.

@louis

Maybe a few small ones... my family was physically abusive. Within my own home where mybubcle, grandparents, and mom and me all lived together my uncle was a very abusive heroin addict and my mom was mildly physically abusive and always allowed my uncle to beat me.

My mom loved me though as did even my uncle in his own very broken way. So that is a bit of a privilage I suppose.

The biggest privilage was access to a library. Ibwas studying advanced maths and science by 12 years old and spent a lot of time in the library so by the tine in was 15 i was famous and making 100k (about 200k in forays money). But all of that happened because it was my plan from a young age and I busted my ass to make it happen. Most of the privilages were pretty minor.

Compared to moat Americans id say I was probably one of the least privilaged.