Luck

[Grim]

One new thread before I turn in for the night, inspired by this Telegraph news post from 2003.

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

A decade ago, I set out to investigate luck. I wanted to examine the impact on people's lives of chance opportunities, lucky breaks and being in the right place at the right time. After many experiments, I believe that I now understand why some people are luckier than others and that it is possible to become luckier.

To launch my study, I placed advertisements in national newspapers and magazines, asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me. Over the years, 400 extraordinary men and women volunteered for my research from all walks of life: the youngest is an 18-year-old student, the oldest an 84-year-old retired accountant.

...

Over the years, I interviewed these volunteers, asked them to complete diaries, questionnaires and intelligence tests, and invited them to participate in experiments. The findings have revealed that although unlucky people have almost no insight into the real causes of their good and bad luck, their thoughts and behaviour are responsible for much of their fortune.

Take the case of chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities, whereas unlucky people do not. I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their ability to spot such opportunities.

...

Personality tests revealed that unlucky people are generally much more tense than lucky people, and research has shown that anxiety disrupts people's ability to notice the unexpected. In one experiment, people were asked to watch a moving dot in the centre of a computer screen. Without warning, large dots would occasionally be flashed at the edges of the screen. Nearly all participants noticed these large dots.

...

And so it is with luck - unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and as a result miss other types of jobs. Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for.

My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

Who here thinks they're lucky? Who thinks they're unlucky? Who doesn't believe in luck at all?

I think I've been pretty lucky most of the time.

[Nargrakhan]

Who doesn't believe in luck at all?

Within the context of mathematics and science, luck is probability - it being good or bad, depending on the individual's interpretation of what occurred. I know it sounds rather far fetched, but this sort of stuff happens all the time in computer science: shifting variables to increase the outcome of a result, so that it happens so often, it's considered certainty.

Of course life isn't as simple as computer science.

[Goat]

I don't believe in luck, but I always feel like I'm one of the lucky people living in a world mostly filled with human stupidity and lack of common sense.

[Hempire]

Luck for me randomly fluctuates. However, this vid.....after playing Heavy Rain, this vid just mindblown me again...


Terence McKenna ~ Life Is A Novel Story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EVrrwIrRpI

What i do is i put myself in good vibes situations where luck fluctuates but is at a level of good....so far luck is at good statusl.

[Twin-Skies]

I don't believe in luck. I do however, believe in variables for specific situations I am simply unable to account for. And when they play in my favor, then that's perceived as luck.

In short, the more I learn about these variables and how to manipulate them to my advantage, I increase my chance of success

[Lord_Leperman]

Like Nargrakhan, I also think luck is a set of probabilities. The thing is, they only come out after you've analyzed and dissected the phenomena after it has occurred. But during the moment where the "luck" factor seems to play in, some might attribute it to divine intervention when in reality its just a lot of small things coming together.

EDIT: Like TS' idea as well.

Nice article though, I would start keeping my eye open for unexpected opportunities as well. :p

[Fox]

I don't really believe in luck. Okay, scratch that. I do believe in luck but i don't want to depend on it. Lady Luck might stick with you at times but she can be a pretty temperamental bitch who doesn't like being asked for favors and can leave you up shit creek without a paddle when you least expect it.

So there. For me, luck does exist but i won't count on it.

[Serene]

Who doesn't believe in luck at all?

Within the context of mathematics and science, luck is probability - it being good or bad, depending on the individual's interpretation of what occurred. I know it sounds rather far fetched, but this sort of stuff happens all the time in computer science: shifting variables to increase the outcome of a result, so that it happens so often, it's considered certainty.

Of course life isn't as simple as computer science.

True true, whole post is true.

But for me, luck is more like a clash of multiple events.

[Cugami]

Luck is the 1% that everybody needs to make a break but it's 99% effort and, yes, the "awareness" that opportunity finally knocked.

I don't believe in luck in the sense of sitting around waiting for things to happen. You may be there at the "right time and right place" but it's still a matter of what you're going to DO right there and then. Unlucky people will stare and gawk and maybe squeal in glee and go "I'm so lucky!" for the next ten minutes and lose it in the blink of an eye. Lucky people will have the instinct to step forward and run with it, with a possibility of building an empire along the way

*meanders off*

[J.E_Magog]

I have big ears. Swerte daw yun sabi ni mama. Noong nanalo kami ng BINGO, sabi nya dahil daw sa tenga ko

[RoninFang]

....
"luck" very subjective indeed

http://roninfang.blogspot.com/

[azuriel07]

I believe in luck.. lol..

[Grim]

Somewhat related.

Why crossing your fingers works … if you're lucky

As someone who strives – sanctimoniously – to be right, I'm a masochistic fan of research showing that people who are wrong have better lives than I do. This is why I particularly enjoyed a study from Psychological Science showing that being superstitious improves performance in a whole string of different tasks.

Now, I'm always a bit conflicted about this kind of psychology research. On my left shoulder is an angel who points out it's risky to extrapolate from laboratory conditions to the real world; that publication bias in this field (the phenomenon where uninteresting findings get left in a desk drawer unpublished forever) is probably considerable; and that it's uncommon to see a genuinely systematic review of the literature on these kinds of topics, bringing together all the conflicting research in one place. I am not Malcolm Gladwell, if that helps to frame the issue more clearly, and I think his books are a bit silly and overstated. On my right shoulder is a devil who thinks this stuff is all really cool and fun. He is typing right now.

The researchers did four miniature experiments. In the first, they took 28 students, more than 80% of whom said they believed in good luck, and randomly assigned them to either a superstition-activated or a control condition. Then they put them on a putting green. To activate a superstition, for half of them, when handing over the ball the experimenter said: "Here is your ball. So far it has turned out to be a lucky ball." For the other half, the experimenter just said: "This is the ball everyone has used so far." Each participant had 10 goes at trying to get a hole in one from a distance of 100cm (39in). And lo, the students playing with a "lucky ball" did significantly better than the others, with a mean score of 6.42, against 4.75 for the others.

[zantblade]

luck is always a 1 in a million chances of good vibes haha =3

[Pinkitteee]

I feel "luck" when "kutob" attacks. like, when "kutob" ko is that I passed the exam or will get a bonus on the recitation when i was in HS. laging ganun, ) happy go lucky ako xDDDD baaah D: