Who is an unlucky fool?

 A lot of people will associate the words unlucky and fool as derogatory. It sounds like statement of a looser who has lost something or failed at something while it means exactly opposite.

The idea is borrowed from the term coined by  millionaire author and options trader Nassim Taleb's book Fooled by Randomness, 

A lucky fool is  a person who benefited from disproportionate share of luck but attributes his or her success to some other generally very precise reason. 

Consider the example of a janitor Jamie who works at a a gas station and a dentist John who drills old ladies' teeth and earns his living. Jamie keeps buying lottery tickets and hits the jack pot, he moves to a wealthier locality and lives a lavish life while John continue to live his life as usual.

Who is more successful in terms of wealth and well being?

A lot of people will agree that Jamie having hit the jack pot is living a life way better than John who continue to live his life the same way. But let us consider an alternative history, where Jamie does not win the lottery in fact he continues to waste his money on lottery tickets , as we know although someone definitely wins the lottery, but chance of you winning the lottery is very low, so we know that this alternative history is far more likely than  the Jamie's current reality, Now the way I see it , even in alternative histories, John would still have been a dentist maybe a bit more popular maybe a bit less, but his profession and success is not dependent on randomness, if you were to teach your kids you would like them to be like John rather than Jamie because even though Jamie is better off his success can be attributed to extreme luck in his favor.

I know the example of winning a lottery ticket sounds out of ordinary but while taking our decisions we need to understand the range of outcomes and ensure that your success is not completely dependent on randomness, while lottery is an bit extreme example, randomness and lucky play their roles in all walks of life, in getting jobs,getting promoted, choosing careers, being successful, choosing your life partners.

I believe that if we acknowledge that the world is not entirely predictable , where our actions don't entirely control the outcomes we can learn to be less arrogant, because our success does not completely rest on our shoulders, we can also learn to be more compassionate towards others and ourselves, accepting that sometimes you do everything you can and you can still fail.

Being an unlucky fool , is taking the pledge that you shall not depend on luck for events of your life, and you will not be pompous about your accolades , because you know that there is more to know than you do and even then you will still stay a fool.

"Luck favors the prepared, but sometimes it favors unprepared too."