LUCK - Or lack thereof.

Do you believe in Luck?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 72 41.1%
  • No.

    Votes: 69 39.4%
  • Not sure.

    Votes: 34 19.4%

  • Total voters
    175
Fate. Destiny. Karma. Divine Rule. Chance.
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Isn't 'fortune' interchangeable with the notion of this nonexistent 'force' called luck?

Fortunate . . . unfortunate . . . lucky . . . unlucky.

The same thing, right? It's something uncontrollable. So - random. So - non-existent as a predictable, measurable, determinable force.

Luck. :)
 
Then again . . . can we make our own 'luck'?



Now we can explain this ('scientifically' ;) ) as just a coincidence.
Or just a 'random event'.
Both explanations can be easily accepted as 'reasonable'.

Or is it that faith not only moves mountains but can be profitable?
Or that she managed to collapse that wave probability with what A Course In Miracles would call the 'Holy Instant'?
 
You can increase your chances of "luck". For example if you enter lots of competitions then you are more likely to win than someone who doesn't enter, this isn't luck in the conventional sense however I believe that to those involved it would feel like luck. "Luck" is partially your own making.

I would say that luck does exist also in the conventional sense. It is simply whether things fall your way in life or not. If I flip a coin and guess it correctly 5 times in a row that way lucky considering that my answer was a complete guess, the result may certain (due to physics) however since you didn't know the result then that is almost irrelevant.
 
I guess I do believe in some uncontrollable force. I have friends who seem to have amazing 'luck'. One of my best friends, as a matter of fact. He just keeps winning at life over and over again. Literally everything has been handed to him on a sliver platter - his amazing job he got through an amazing set of circumstances, his amazing wife that pretty much tossed herself into is lap (who does that happen to?) and I could go on for quite a while. Then there's me. Now I will say lately, I have felt pretty blessed, but just a few short months ago the story was quite different. I've even had complete random strangers tell me to my face that I'm bad luck, without even telling them anything about me. My love life is one bad circumstance after the other - a bride who got cold feet, missed opportunities due to insane coincidences, etc. And even on other fronts things were pretty ridiculous; I applied to literally thousands of jobs I was qualified for and never even got an interview for them - who does that happen to?! So you see, sometimes it is a little hard not to believe in some uncontrollable force, whether you call it luck or not. But, like I said, lately things have been going well, so again, you could call it luck, but I feel more blessed than lucky.
 
Then again . . . can we make our own 'luck'?



Now we can explain this ('scientifically' ;) ) as just a coincidence.
Or just a 'random event'.
Both explanations can be easily accepted as 'reasonable'.

Or is it that faith not only moves mountains but can be profitable?
Or that she managed to collapse that wave probability with what A Course In Miracles would call the 'Holy Instant'?

This has to be balanced against the huge number of people who also prayed for a win but didn't get one. The papers don't talk about those.

Also, if 30% (say) of people who buy tickets pray for winning, then there is a 30% probability that the winner will be someone who has prayed for a win. Pretty good odds, I would say (of course, that 30% figure is made up, but whatever the real percentage, it is probably significant).
 
Good explanations. I think. Not really sure. After all, that's why we discuss this stuff, right?
All we have are questions at the moment; after all - if someone out there knows how to 'push their luck' and be successful at it, then we'd all like to know the 'secret'.

The article in the newspaper went on to say that she 'prayed to Jesus' for this win - and that she believes Jesus helped her.
AFAIK - Jesus always called to people to leave their possessions and follow him, that we were actually not of this world, that there was another world beyond the physical divide, that in fact he could sacrifice his life by getting himself killed and coming back to prove it, and so on . . . and so forth . . .

So why would Jesus get involved in making someone rich?

Then . . . if it was not some divine intervention that made her 'dream come true' - what was it?
What separated her from the rest of the people who prayed and bought tickets too?
Luck?

Ah! There we go again. That 'non-existent force' that some believe in and some don't; the poll says so.
The point being . . . is it really a force that exists - and if so - how can we harness it to our benefit?
 
Noting today that the polls stand at exactly 61 votes for and 61 votes against, shows that (at this point anyway) the community is divided equally on whether there exists such a force or not.

Let's look at it another way:
If you were to buy a lottery ticket - would you bet your life on not winning?
To put it another way - if one were to buy only one ticket among 600 million tickets would one be 100% sure of not winning?
Sure enough, in fact, that one could bet their life on it?
 
Why does money make people feel so happy? Are they in luck (winning the lottery) or not?
 
Here is my opinion on it.

For the poll, I chose no. As in luck does not really exist if somebody were to tell you "Good luck in your match tonight."

However there is something called odds, probability and chance.

I would say the word "luck" is often mis-used and could be replaced with one of the 3 above.

Personally, I would define luck as something being randomly chosen out of an infinite pool. Although that would be having odds of 1 : Infinite. But is really possible?
 
Bolded mine.

And I am at a disadvantage, then; I'm doing my best to understand this phenomenon of a concept that doesn't (or logically shouldn't) exist, and yet the label is applied to many circumstances. if 'Luck' doesn't exist - then 'lucky' shouldn't.
You say that your answer depends on the definition of luck. I wholeheartedly agree. That is what we are trying to do here. Define the ineffable. 'Forces of Luck' you say . . . that is infinitly interesting. If such 'forces' exist, how do we harness their power towards a favourable outcome?

AFAIK - everything has a frequency. So can the atoms of this so called luck, when converted to energy, be coerced to radiate fortune? A rabbit's foot may work for some. Others have a locket of their loved one's hair around their necks. And still others fight over whether 13 is lucky or not. (Maybe fortunate for me, since it synchronistically seems to crop up at 'fortunate' moments)

Looks like I left this unresponded-to.

Let's say one person out of 100,000 people is randomly selected to die. That person is unlucky for having been selected. No matter who was selected, they would necessarily be unlucky. There was a 100% chance that someone would be selected, and whoever was selected would have had a 1 in 100,000 chance of being selected. So there is a 100% chance that the person selected will have been unlucky to have been selected.

Did some force in the universe guide a hand to select that person? No. They were selected at random.

Some people randomly get birth defects that kill them, randomly get hit by a bus, or were randomly visiting the trade center on 9/11. These people have had unlucky events occur in their lives. Does that mean that any of them were more likely to have additional unlucky thing happen to them in the past or future? No. But it does mean they were unlucky to have had such a poor outcome in that event.
 
I'd say that luck (good or bad) is just the outcome of a random event that works for or against you. The magnitude of luck depends on the odds.

Imagine a scenario where you play a board game. To win the game you need to roll a 3. If you do roll the three it would be quite a bit of good luck, since the odds were 1:5 against the event. At the same time, if you had rolled anything else it could be considered bad luck, but the magnitude would be far lower, as the odds were 5:1 for that to happen.

If you flip a coin, the odds are 1:1, so the amount of good luck and bad luck is equal.

Playing rock, paper, scissors is also a 1:1 affair, unless you know what the other person or people in general most often pick. In that case you would have an advantage (assuming that the opponent doesn't know what you know) and the odds would perhaps be 2:1 in your favour. Winning such a game would be some good luck, while losing it would be more bad luck.

Being killed at the front in WW1 would be a little bad luck, but not a lot since the odds of surviving the front would be against you. But being killed by that particular bullet or grenade would be a lot of bad luck, since the odds against that particular bullet or grenade killing specifically you would be greatly in your favour. And as with the rock, paper, scissors example there's skill involved here as well. Dancing back and forth between the trenches while wearing a high visibility jacket would massively increase the odds of you getting killed, and would reduce the magnitude of the bad luck to almost none at all (while surviving that would push your luck towards infinity). On the other hand, if you stay hidden in your trench you would have better odds to survive, and getting killed then would be more bad luck and surviving less good luck.

Since they are random events, tokens of luck or certain numbers of bad luck doesn't have anything to do with it. What it can do however is to make you more confident and thus make you perform better, which changes the odds in your favour. But since that's a change in odds, it would reduce the magnitude of good luck - should you win - and increase the magnitude of bad luck - should you lose.
 
I think more consideration needs to be taken when using the word "random" in regards to luck as randomness is really a debatable subject in both human psychology and in nature.

I like to believe in cause and effect. Aldous Huxley wrote a cracking book on it which I had the fortune to stumble across at a young age. Or did I have fortune to stumble across it, did my previous actions lead me to that point?

I think randomness needs defining properly before it's used in conjunction with the concept of luck.
 
This is an excellent show about luck and how it is perceived. Definitely worth a watch.



I watched that whole thing very carefully - and intend to do so again, checking, using a bit of kinesics, for visual cues.
As a 'scientist' I would explain it away as a coincidence. Or I might bring in the old 'placebo effect' (that explains a lot scientifically ;) ) into effect.
As an engineer I would like to know the physics behind the rigging - the final spin spin of the die was questionable.
As a student and researcher of angelic activity I would note the number '4'.
As a psychologist I would start talking about 'positive thinking'.
As a skeptic I would be boggled at how they bypassed all the controls.

As a movie-goer I enjoyed the story.

The force was awoken. ;)
 
I've long related bad "luck" to gambling. Specifically, the drive to make back what's been lost.

I remember retrospectively seeing a risk taking bent in myself at a particular time when a few things had failed to fall my way. Instead of resetting to a neutral position after the misfortune, and accepting that the happenings were either my/others' bad management of situations and/or simply unfortunate outcomes, I appeared to adopt a tendency to act as if attempting to will something to happen that would bring unusual benefit. ie. I pushed my "luck", which for the most part, created bad "luck".

There are two choices for each of the two versions of so called luck - Bad? Try to counter it with a) risk, or b) method. Good? Try to prolong it with a) risk, or b) method. Method is where I'm at in principle if not always in practice, and where possible in life I choose cynical optimism over gullible pessimism, cynical pessimism, or gullible optimism. If there is some yet unseen, yet unknown energy that is inhibited by cynicism I'll just have to accept my (un)just desserts.
 
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