It's 1931, and a boy and girl, both about seven years old, are playing on a swing set on N. 41st St. in Omaha. A stray dog appears and, without warning, charges. The children try to fight the dog off. Somehow, the boy is unscathed, but the dog bites the girl.

She contracts rabies and, not long after, dies. The boy lives.

His name? Charles Thomas Munger.

Charlie Munger told me that story when I asked the vice chairman of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, "what do you think of people who attribute their success solely to their own brilliance and hard work?"

“I think that's nonsense,”Munger snapped, then told his story.“That damn dog wasn't 3 inches from me,”he said. “All my life I've wondered: Why did it bite her instead of me? It was sheer luck that I lived and she died.”

He added:“The records of people and companies that are outliers are always a mix of a reasonable amount of intelligence, hard work and a lot of luck.”

Written by Jason Zweig, <The Intelligent Inventor> column, WSJ, 30th November 2023