Do you believe in luck?

luck as a concept no, but the psychological aspect of luck and bringing positive thinking I think can for fills it’s own prophesies more often.

I believe in synchronicity.

Yes, good and bad.

Nope

Luck only counts if you are ready for it. I think life has a lot of randomness to it, but at times we are presented with opportunities, if we are prepared we can take advantage of them, that is good luck. Like being seated next to a top executive on a plane flight who works for a company you have always wanted to work for. The chance meeting is lucky, but the opportunity only plays out if you have the education and experience the company is looking for. I think we can help bring luck to ourselves by always working hard towards out goals and keeping ourselves open to opportunity.

Bad luck happens also, out of our control, again I believe there is some randomness to life, how you cope is what determines how much these bad events influence you.

I think it best not to rely on luck, and be greatful when good luck happens. Mostly, I ignore bad luck.

Do you think winning at one of the crane machines is luck?

Yes, lady luck is a real energy. Good luck finding yours.

Yeah not really but it sure is a nice way to exlain things – we make up lots of those ways

i believe you make your own luck

I once saw this show on tv that was evaluating lucky people. It was a very unscientific experiment, but what they did was take people who called themselves, or saw themselves as unlucky or lucky. One study purposely placed money on the ground as they would walk by. Almost all of the self-claimed lucky people noticed the money and picked it up, almost all of the self-claimed unlucky people missed it. They did several other tests that suggested that people who feel unlucky in some ways bring it on themselves; like a self fulfilling prophecy.

No, but we do make our own luck.

Or, should I say, good fortune.

No. I think that good and bad fortune happen to everyone (like ‘the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike’), but people who consider themselves to be lucky (if they choose to) think that “we really needed that rain, or at least somebody did” and move the picnic indoors, and those who consider themselves unlucky curse the fact that their picnic was rained out.

Sort of a “life is what you make of it”, I guess.

I do. But I guess in a different sense than most, from what I’ve read. I think something can only be lucky after the fact. Like, if you were five minutes late for a meeting, and then pass an accident in the road that was five minutes earlier (could’ve been you if you weren’t late) then you were very lucky. Not that you “have luck” like it’s a substance you can hold, just wow! Lucky you!
Or if you win the lottery—one out of how many?? Yes, I would say that person is lucky.
For me, luck is all about the randomness of the world. It’s so random, that sometimes things completely out of your control go brilliantly well, or horribly awful. And that’s just life. That’s luck.
As for the horsehoes and the four leaf clovers? For me, not so much. I don’t think those do much except give you a little boost of confidence. But, a little confidence is never a bad thing!

Chance is a stochastic process. It becomes luck in hindsight.

Of course I believe in luck. Luck is when something happens for no apparent reason. The real question is, who doesn’t and if they don’t then what do they believe in?

No i don’t it’s just chance that something good will happen. All life is 50/50.

I believe that we can make our own “luck” based upon the choices we make in life. Sometimes opportunities might appear as “luck”, but if you look at things more closely, you might just find that something we did or didn’t do had more to do with it than just being lucky or unlucky.

@Stargater
” All life is 50/50.” So the chances that an asteroid will hit you on the head tomorrow what I would call bad luck is 50/50? I think probability it slightly trickier than that.

@Timebomb it will either hit or miss me .If it’s gonna happen then it’s gonna happen you can’t change the laws of physics. And saying wasnt ‘it lucky it missed me wasn’t so lucky for the one it did hit so no i still don’t believe in luck.Sorry

i believe in luck only because it keeps me from having a gloated ego =P. its much easier to say than something like being good at everything. haha especially because I’m not (I’m just lucky).

Does dumb luck count? As opposed to good and bad luck.

@iRemy_y Now that is interesting. My husband’s family calls my husband lucky all of the time, because I think they hate the idea that he worked hard to get where he is.

@JLeslie it’s much nicer than saying that most things come naturally. And then luck is the only way to explain the phenomenon of randomness

yea and no depends on if it does or doesn’t happen. :)

@iRemy_y What do you mean comes naturally?

♠♣♥♦.......mmmmmmm….YUP!

I do believe in luck and I quote:
“The man who said “I’d rather be lucky than good” saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It’s scary to think so much is out of one’s control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn’t, and you lose.”
Chris Wilton
Matchpoint (2005)

Luck doesn’t and cannot exist in a rational universe.

As someone who plays Poker, I have to understand a lot about “luck” in order to beat players routinely. Along with poker tracking software, and loads of combined theories all poker amounts to is a game of expectation (though many would deem it to be luck mixed with skill).

What I am trying to say is that, all luck is is variance from normality. For example if you find some money on the floor, that is varying from the norm of not finding it. Because it is not something that happens often you call it “lucky”. However if someone dropped money on the floor someone somewhere is going to find it. That is a PROBABILITY. This means you have a % chance of finding money on the floor. You may still think that its lucky if its a very small percent, but in reality its just variance. If you regularly visited a place where there was a 0.5% chance of someone dropping money and only 2 people go there a day then you have 0.25% of finding money each day. When you visit enough the chance of you finding it becomes relatively high. However can you really say you are lucky when it happens?

It is all a game of semantics. Luck is actual a descent from probability. When there is a low statistical outcome, people tend to attribute it to unknown factor “luck” but in reality its just a long list of variables (like in poker) that manipulate outcomes and probability chances.

/END.

Also see coincidence. Coincidence is just your brain linking two mostly non-related events together in order to bridge a connection between the two. Usually it is a fallacy to link these events which is why you feel the strangeness of the “coincidence” because they do not follow logically (unless you happen to a crazy person who believes in psychic energy or utter crap like that). However it is natural for your brain to link events together in order to create understanding in the universe around it.

Luck covers so many interpretations of these so called random events it may be worth breaking them down. Just as Eskimos have 20 some odd names for snow depending on the type, luck also could be similarly characterized as plain luck, dumb luck, lucky break, that was lucky, what luck, I’m so lucky etc. Each one of these is the recipients or witnesses to said events characterization of that event. So in reality maybe there is no such thing as luck and all we have is a series of random events with fortunate outcomes as acknowledged by the participants?

But what about those inexplicable turn of events that change an otherwise insurmountable obstacle into a positive outcome?? Me personally, I faced situations 5 times this past year where I had something I had to do with little to no way at all to make it happen. Then WHAM at the 11th hour a seeming miracle happened and dropped the solution into my lap. Each time I said “what LUCK!” I honestly have no other way to describe it than luck!? OR did my desire and will to want the desired result influence essentially random events to occur to allow me to achieve these goals??

I would defer to extensive theories and debate in the realm of Quantum Mechanics that posits that mere observation of objects or events can alter the random nature of the physics of our universe! So could I have created my own “luck”??

@Ame_Evil remind me not to play poker with you.

@Cruiser Eskimos don’t have 20 names for snow. They have no more than 4.

@CyanoticWasp It is one thing to understand the “theory of poker”, but another one to operate it perfectly. I am an imperfect human who is still learning to beat the game, however I am doing pretty good to start with.

If anyone wanted the poker similarity explained better I am more than willing to do so in more detail.

@JLeslie well in my case i feel like everything i do i’ve done before, even on my first time. i guess i can just relate every aspect of whatever im doing to something i’ve done before

@Ame_Evil Thanks so much for your observation Ame…but I’m sticking to my 20 and you can’t make me change it either!!! PM me and we can then debate the actual number of different Eskimo languages and the additional number of possible snow words when you count lexemes rather than words when talking about Eskimo languages. Hmm my guess is we would be outwards of a 1,000 or more!! <<powder snow, snow bank, snow ball, blizzard, deep snow, falling snow, blowing snow, fallen snow…spoken in a Benjamin “Bubba” Bufford-Blue drawl>>

I believe in parking karma.

I’m from the South so I believe in luck, fate, superstitions and the boogyman. It’s just how we roll. Yo.

@iRemy_y I see. I was talking previosuly about my husband working hard and acquiring skills, so I was confused. Both are true you can be good at something because you are gifted, or because you worked hard at it, or both. I guess you are sayign that you are lucky to begifted with your ability, I was focusing more on being lucky with outcomes.

The old blues line – “If it weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all” is a great line, but I don’t really believe in luck. Having said that, I have had some fortuitous events in my life and am very grateful they occurred.

I don’t really believe in luck. I believe if it’s meant to be, then it’s meant to be if not get over it.

I misread that last word in the question at first and had to do a double take.

I believe in the normal distribution, and by statistical necessity some people will fall in the top of it, and some will fall in the bottom but most will be in the middle… If you mean being lucky means having ended up in the top of a normal distribution (of whatever, test scores, jobs, stock market earnings, gambling) then yes, i would believe in it.

I am also hardened by the variance of online poker (no better way to get an appreciation of what “luck” means practically and mathematically imho), but the fact that variance goes to zero in the long run does not mean that there are not lucky and unlucky people, life is just too short compared to “the long run”.

No not really, what happens in life is our own doing or someone else’s, luck doesn’t come into it!

@Dabria Again poker has taught me that you are half-right (and half-wrong). You may work really hard and shift your normal distribution so that the expected returns of whatever you are doing (for example your salary, or your happiness) is higher than your neighbour. But there always a remaining non-zero probability that you will do worse than him, and indeed some “unlucky” people do poorly, despite hard work, and some people do well, despite doing no work at all.

Life is just one big normal distribution. What you can change is your expected value, and the way to change it is to work hard at getting better at life. Statistically you could get screwed over anyway, but the chances are slimmer.

I think I may have misstated my feelings on this earlier: “Luck” is nothing more than how you interpret your life.

So if you lose your paycheck at the Friday night poker game, leave early… and run into the future Mrs. Right, then perhaps your luck was better than you could have imagined. And if you stopped looking for possibilities in your life after that last hand of poker, you might have thought, “I’m just unlucky.” (On the other hand, the winner of the poker game maybe could have been in the same position you were when you met the girl, and other things being equal, she may have been right for him, too.)

If your wife leaves you… and then you find someone better, then weren’t you lucky that the old battle-axe is out of the picture? (I can tell you for certain that I’m luckier than anyone she hooks up with in the future.)

If you don’t get the job promotion, but don’t get the stress and headaches and long nights that come with it, maybe you sidestepped a heart attack… and never even knew it. (That lucky guy who got your promotion went down in a job-related plane crash a couple of years later.)

Luck is how you interpret your life, I think. In that sense, I’m a very lucky guy. All the time, including when I lose, when I get sick, whatever. I just don’t always know how my luck is going to pan out. So far, so good.

On the other hand, since we all die eventually, anyway, maybe we’re all unlucky. So what do I know?

@CyanoticWasp you reminded me of the story of the farmer..

There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically. “May be,” the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed. “May be,” replied the old man. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. “May be,” answered the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. The farmer smiled and said..

@nisse, thanks for the reminder. I had heard that many years ago (I’m an old guy, too), and forgotten it entirely. I must have had it in mind, though…

Of course!.......

I just don’t believe in the good luck fairy…..

well mine is not great.

I don’t know if I “believe in luck.” I do know though, that sometimes things work out a whole hell of a lot better than they really should have, considering the circumstances. I guess that’s what luck is. I don’t really see it as some kind of independent force at work in the universe.

When a run of favourable outcomes from a relatively small set of observations exceeds the number expected for that kind of observation, then I smile and take my winnings and leave.

I don’t believe in Luck. Some people are better at influencing some of the important outcomes that affect their lives. Some might call them lucky. I see them as proactive, hard working and persistent. They make their own “good luck.” It all come down to probabilities and the observed difference between “observed” and “expected” outcomes!

i dont believe in luck, there is no such thing and never will be.

Although I don’t believe in what most think of as “luck,” I do believe that our mental attitude has great impact in the world around us.

I believe that for the most part we make our luck but I don’t know enough about the universe to discount it. Also a lot of it has to do with our perception of our life and the lives of others.

No such thing as luck. when you receive a good fortune, its a blessing, not luck.

@john65pennington luck isn’t like an all powerful force that brings good… like a blessing… it’s the word used to describe a blessing that was the result of randomness. you seem to have the two confused

I believe that I do not have good luck . If I won Lotto tonight I would change my mind.
I do not know if it is all in our heads or real.
I ‘d like to know why I never win anything . Some people win things all the time.

If there wasn’t such a thing as luck, then no one would ever win the lottery, no one would ever get struck by lightening, no one would ever find a bag of money alongside the road or get hit by a stray bullet in their apartment. These things are going to happen anyway, you say? Yes, but what are the chances! That is what luck is.

I’m gonna quote an old Rod Stewart song: “luck is just believing you’re lucky”.