Durian

Durian

A world where everyone gets a fair shot at being better.

Treat people well, and build things that make the world better.

The model

How to be an astronaut

100,000 people apply. 10 are selected. Each applicant has a score from 1 to 10 for hard work, talent and luck. Set how much each one counts, and see who gets in.

WeightingAlways sums to 100%
Distribution
Scores

Presets

ApplicantsAs capable as a selected applicantSelectedCut-off

Mean score of the 10 selected

All applicants

Hard work

–

All: –

Talent

–

All: –

Luck

–

All: –

Applied
100,000
As capable
–
Selected
10

01 · Ties

Why the winners are so lucky

With whole-number scores, about 1 in 100 applicants score 10 for both hard work and talent. That is roughly 1,000 people for 10 places.

Any weight on luck, even 1%, decides between them. So the 10 selected have near-perfect luck, as well as near-perfect work and talent.

With a normal distribution, top scores are rare and ties are rare. Luck needs a much larger share before it shows.

02 · Attribution

What it takes

Under almost any weighting, the people selected score near the top on hard work and talent. Luck picks among the capable. It does not replace being capable.

Thousands of equally capable people are not selected. We still tend to explain each outcome by the person alone: success as merit, failure as fault. This is the fundamental attribution error.

Do the work. And judge results, yours and other people's, with care.

We can't make anyone lucky. We can build tools that help more people become capable, so more of them are ready when the chance comes.