The radical moral implications of luck in human life (2020)
If you dig sufficiently deeply at it, you can attribute everything to luck. Just keep asking &quot;why&quot; and eventually you arrive at something you did not have conscious control over.<p>E.g.<p>Q. Why do you deserve your money?<p>A. I work hard.<p>Q. Why do you work hard?<p>A. I have a good work ethic.<p>Q. Why do you have a good work ethic?<p>A. My parents raised me that way.<p>Q. Why did you choose for your parents to raise you that way?<p>A. I didn&#x27;t.<p>I&#x27;m not suggesting any conclusions here, just stating that if you keeping asking &quot;why&quot;, you will <i>always</i> get to ground at something outside your conscious control.<p>Applying this to my own life, I make good money doing software development. Programming is easy and natural for me. I started programming when I was 12. Why? I thought it was fun. Why did I choose to think it was fun? I didn&#x27;t consciously choose.<p>This applies even for things that seem to arise within your own mind. You can&#x27;t choose which thoughts to have. You might think &quot;sure I can, I&#x27;m going to think about elephants right now&quot;, and that may be, but when did you choose <i>to choose</i> to think about elephants? When did you choose to choose to choose? You can recurse deep, but eventually you arrive at something outside your conscious control.