… the biggest single reason [these players] were misvalued was that the experts did not pay sufficient attention to the role of luck in baseball success. Players got given credit for things they did that depended on the performance of others: pitchers got paid for winning games, hitters got paid for knocking in runners on base. Players got blamed and credited for events beyond their control. Where balls that got hit happened to land on the field, for example.
Forget baseball, forget sports. Here you had these corporate employees, paid millions of dollars a year. They were doing exactly the same job that people in their business had been doing forever. In front of millions of people, who evaluate their every move. They had statistics attached to everything they did. And yet they were misvalued — because the wider world was blind to their luck.
On Wednesday I’ll be giving a talk here at #eyeo about luck.
It’s a really tough talk to assemble; I’m deep in something that I’m trying to understand myself, never been been this far outside my own experience and expertise. This is a tangent that extends from the thinking about algorithms, but right now it’s difficult to explain just how I got here.
In my research, however, one thing I’ve learned is that part of what makes you lucky is having the widest vision possible, to make yourself — keep yourself —open to everything all the time.
This was made manifest today when three different people sent me this very same talk by Michael Lewis, which is itself about luck. They sent it to me because they know what I’m thinking about, and that’s one way to stay open: be promiscuous with your thinking.
Lewis’ address is wise, and well-delivered, and I hope that my own take on this will contribute something as well.
Princeton University – 2012 Baccalaureate Remarks
(via slavin)