You didn't confront my core assertion.

Yes, both parties use motivated reasoning to protect their ego.

But there's 100X more of the worker bees than there is of the uber-successful.

Therefore any discussion like this one will over-index on the luck explanation.

We're obviously not at risk of assigning too much agency to successful people here on HN, an internet forum filled with frustrated leftist upper middle class last men: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_man