DividedQuantum said:

Emerson once said that shallow men believe in luck or circumstance, while strong men believe in “cause and effect.” Me, I believe that there’s plenty of luck out there. Look at Julius Caesar, or Napoleon, or George Washington, to name three examples. Those three were all monumentally lucky. If they hadn’t been, we’d simply be talking about someone else. Some humans have to enter history as miracles, simply by the law of averages. Those who did benefitted not as much from destiny as from fortune and timing, even though they were indeed excellent individuals. Destiny only happens in hindsight.

Do you believe in luck? Or does everything unfold to some more or less rigid plan? Or are there elements of both? I believe that some things are not simply a roll of the dice, but I think fortune and luck are real phenomena, and that some of us seem clearly to be luckier than others, on numerous levels. What do you think?

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laughingdog said:

DividedQuantum said:

Emerson once said that shallow men believe in luck or circumstance, while strong men believe in “cause and effect.” Me, I believe that there’s plenty of luck out there. Look at Julius Caesar, or Napoleon, or George Washington, to name three examples. Those three were all monumentally lucky. If they hadn’t been, we’d simply be talking about someone else. Some humans have to enter history as miracles, simply by the law of averages. Those who did benefitted not as much from destiny as from fortune and timing, even though they were indeed excellent individuals. Destiny only happens in hindsight.

Do you believe in luck? Or does everything unfold to some more or less rigid plan? Or are there elements of both? I believe that some things are not simply a roll of the dice, but I think fortune and luck are real phenomena, and that some of us seem clearly to be luckier than others, on numerous levels. What do you think?

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I think you misinterpret the value of the message, by trying to prove something about how the cosmos or genetics work.

Many books on success are filled with examples of those who had much talent but did little with it, vs those who had little talent and worked hard, & were committed, and as a result had more successful and happier lives.

I suspect that was Emerson's point also. And I think the message is also that to believe the contrary leads to making excuses for failure, which of course leads to even more failure. Seems to me it's a message about developing character. Also I suspect this view is not unique to Emerson or success books, but goes back for thousands of years.

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PocketLady said:

Personally I think a lot of it has to do with the beliefs the subconscious/unconscious mind holds. You can probably look at it on a small scale, with individual events, and the prevailing energy at person is giving off at that time. I'm sure most of us here have experienced that feeling of being in 'the zone' with something, like we can't go wrong, and whilst we maintain that feeling, we don't. We continue to be fortunate and get 'lucky'. Years ago I used to play poker. I remember this one big tournament where I had made it down to the final three. I was doing really well, flying, but started to lose a few hands here and there. I got into a hand where I was the overwhelming favourite to win, but I just had this feeling like I was going to lose. Sure enough, I did and got knocked out, because my mind believed that was what was going happen. It's often not something that we can override consciously. My subconscious believed I was going to lose, and my conscious mind couldn't overrule it.

This can also be viewed on a larger scale when you look a person's general tendency to be lucky or unlucky. They have an overriding program built into the subconscious mind that says they will be lucky (or not). It's pretty much another way of looking at karma. It's not just that, 'you did x and now y is going to happen.' It's general tendencies, karmic imprints which determine the overall patterns in a person's life.

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Tulipslave said:

i think "luck" is a conjured concept to help explain things outside of ourselves/control that we can't really explain otherwise.  i don't think it's something that is either "real" or "not-real"


this post probably doesn't help

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Morel Guy said:

The human brain is the smartest thing ever discovered. Yet also the dumbest.

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Tulipslave said:

define smart.  scientists are now inclined to believe that octopi are more intelligent than humans.  mycelial networks also are ranking among the highest intellect species on earth.

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According to what? Sorry, but that's just plain silly.

Morel Guy said:

Maybe he's judging nature as smart not as an individual.

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laughingdog said:

Not just casinos, also insurance companies, use the mathematics of probability, to outfox, luck or randomness, and obtain a predictable result: profit, form what seems to be inscrutable.

Computerized stock trading is another example, of applying math, to what is too complex for humans to fathom.

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DividedQuantum said:

Another example would be, for basketball fans, the final shot by Kawhi Leonard in the Eastern Conference Finals of the NBA this year. Long story short, his team won when his shot, which bounced up high, then all around the rim, finally teetered in as time expired. This had nothing to do with cause and effect, or connections, or divine providence, or anything.

It was luck.

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DividedQuantum said:

Another example would be, for basketball fans, the final shot by Kawhi Leonard in the Eastern Conference Finals of the NBA this year. Long story short, his team won when his shot, which bounced up high, then all around the rim, finally teetered in as time expired. This had nothing to do with cause and effect, or connections, or divine providence, or anything.

It was luck.

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PocketLady said:

DividedQuantum said:

Another example would be, for basketball fans, the final shot by Kawhi Leonard in the Eastern Conference Finals of the NBA this year. Long story short, his team won when his shot, which bounced up high, then all around the rim, finally teetered in as time expired. This had nothing to do with cause and effect, or connections, or divine providence, or anything.

It was luck.

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Why must it be luck rather than cause and effect?

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Quote:

This had nothing to do with cause and effect, or connections, or divine providence, or anything.

It was luck.

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PocketLady said:

What I'm asking is why, in this particular example you gave, you believe it had to be luck?

Quote:

This had nothing to do with cause and effect, or connections, or divine providence, or anything.

It was luck.

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DividedQuantum said:

PocketLady said:

What I'm asking is why, in this particular example you gave, you believe it had to be luck?

Quote:

This had nothing to do with cause and effect, or connections, or divine providence, or anything.

It was luck.

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If you aim for a hoop with a basketball, and it doesn't go in cleanly but bounces all around randomly and then goes in, that's luck. I cannot imagine why you wouldn't see it that way.

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DividedQuantum said:

If you aim for a hoop with a basketball, and it doesn't go in cleanly but bounces all around randomly and then goes in, that's luck. I cannot imagine why you wouldn't see it that way.

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I'm sure there were plenty of Raptors fans who thought it was divine providence

Well, what if luck, and cause and effect are not mutually exclusive? Maybe they are actually the same thing viewed from a different perspective? If you take a snapshot of that moment, it looks like luck. But if you zoom out a little and look at the wider context, maybe from there it can be viewed as cause and effect. The issue is just whether we can see that context or not from our current vantage point.

PocketLady said:

The idea of cause and effect doesn't necessarily require a conscious intention on the part of the subject. Like I said, when we are dreaming, we have no idea that our subconscious minds are making up everything we see and experience around us. There is no conscious intention/action creating that dream and everything in it, but there is something much deeper causing it that we cannot perceive from that perspective. That is cause and effect.

Imagine that same shot being taken by someone in a dream, with the same result. Whilst they are in the dream, they would think, "Oh, I got lucky." But once that person wakes up, it would be easy for them to accept that there was some underlying cause to that experience, that the sub/unconscious aspects of the mind were somehow creating that particular dream experience the whole time (maybe for a particular purpose, if you are open to dreams having some meaning or purpose to them) and that cause and effect was indeed present, even though that person could not perceive that connection as the dream was happening.

What if our waking reality is like that too? How easy would it be to recognise it if it were?

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Tulipslave said:

okay, i thought of another angle to view "luck" from.


let's say you're playing Texas Hold'em at a table with other people.  from here, everyone folds the current hand except for you and another player.  let's say you have a terrible hand, pre-flop, but for whatever reason decide to play it.  let's say A-A-K comes on the flop, and you're holding 2-7 offsuit, none of which match suit to the flop.  for whatever reason, you don't buy that the opponent has an ace or a king, but for shits-and-giggles, let's say they have a pair of nines, with three suited to the flop.  They make a bet to test the waters, but you are feeling ballsy.  You re-raise, going all-in, bluffing to steal the pot (a stupid thing to do here, but we're almost to the end).  Your opponent stops and thinks for a minute, decides it's not worth the risk to call, and folds.  With 99% chance of being beaten, you win the hand.

would it be fair to say you "got lucky" by the opponent folding and you winning?

probably so, as almost all factors were out of your control.

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DividedQuantum said:

I sympathize with everything you've said. Everything is connected. However, you're not giving any room for contingency, only necessity. Contingency is every bit as much a part of Nature as necessity is. I don't think Kawhi Leonard's shot was ordained from the beginning. Even if it were, it can still be lucky. Contingency is real and necessary, just as necessity can be contingent.

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I'm not saying that absolutely everything is deterministic.  There are a whole host of factors which go into an event like that happening, all of which constitute a cause. Free will still exists to a certain extent. But to say it's pure luck, completely free of influence, which is basically what you stated previously...I guess that's the bit that doesn't make sense to me I agree that they can both exist together though.

DividedQuantum said:

Well, maybe I haven't been clear. I'm not trying to make sweeping ontological statements when I address the subject of luck. There can be clear causes for something happening, for anything and everything, but it doesn't mean the factors involved have to be strictly orderly or meaningfully destined to happen. Nature is not a bunch of billiard-balls banging around, anyway.

I don't think lucky events are free of influence at all. The laws of physics are perfectly adequate influences. And I think events that were unintended (by an individual, a group, a system or a universe) but beneficial can crop up, and do all the time, even though of course this doesn't happen in a vacuum.

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DividedQuantum said:

Do you intuitively feel that chance is not a real phenomenon? Attributing luck to chance would be an easy solution. On the other hand, I can see a scenario in which, if we treat luck as a purely emergent conceptual phenomenon, even in a chance-free universe you could describe certain events as "lucky."

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PocketLady said:

DividedQuantum said:

Do you intuitively feel that chance is not a real phenomenon? Attributing luck to chance would be an easy solution. On the other hand, I can see a scenario in which, if we treat luck as a purely emergent conceptual phenomenon, even in a chance-free universe you could describe certain events as "lucky."

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In its purest form, yes I guess I do feel that chance is not what it appears to be on the surface. I don't think everything is predetermined, but I do think that perhaps there are hidden factors such as the subconscious and unconscious mind which influence reality as we perceive it, and prevent anything from being truly random. I also think that if we can gain access to the hidden parts of the mind that are influencing our lives, then maybe we have the ability to change what we perceive to be luck.

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DividedQuantum said:

I agree with everything you have said. Imo, even if nature is inherently orderly, Leonard's make was still lucky. Why not? Let me ask you this: In what way was it not lucky? What coherent force would you posit that would determine one way or the other how that shot went? And if there was no coherent force that made the shot go in... how was it not lucky?

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Sure, it was lucky. Like I said, I don’t think luck and cause and effect are mutually exclusive. They both exist at the same time, one being a facet of the other. When you search in the physical world for some kind of coherent force and can’t find one, it appears as luck. When you expand that perspective to go beyond the purely physical/rational/conscious world, causal connections can be seen. They are both ultimately the same thing. It’s just a matter of perspective.

Anyway I feel like I may just be repeating myself now. This is why I don’t post in PS&P much these days. It makes my brain hurt

pineninja said:

Quad post.its good to be back

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pineninja said:

Or maybe instead of being upset everytime he hit the rim and it bounced out he had small micro learnings that lead to an improved accuracy...no matter how many variables involved.

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PocketLady said:

DividedQuantum said:

I agree with everything you have said. Imo, even if nature is inherently orderly, Leonard's make was still lucky. Why not? Let me ask you this: In what way was it not lucky? What coherent force would you posit that would determine one way or the other how that shot went? And if there was no coherent force that made the shot go in... how was it not lucky?

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Sure, it was lucky. Like I said, I don’t think luck and cause and effect are mutually exclusive. They both exist at the same time, one being a facet of the other. When you search in the physical world for some kind of coherent force and can’t find one, it appears as luck. When you expand that perspective to go beyond the purely physical/rational/conscious world, causal connections can be seen. They are both ultimately the same thing. It’s just a matter of perspective.

Anyway I feel like I may just be repeating myself now. This is why I don’t post in PS&P much these days. It makes my brain hurt

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DividedQuantum said:

laughingdog said:

Not just casinos, also insurance companies, use the mathematics of probability, to outfox, luck or randomness, and obtain a predictable result: profit, form what seems to be inscrutable.

Computerized stock trading is another example, of applying math, to what is too complex for humans to fathom.

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Of course, it would be very bad luck for an insurance company if someone required a rare cancer treatment, that is covered, that ends up costing millions of  dollars. It all depends on how one frames it.

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DividedQuantum said:

I think we are using different definitions of luck. You are addressing points I never made and positions I don't take. Every example you listed is deterministic, and therefore everything is accounted for. In a golf shot, while in some sense everything may be deterministic, but possibly not, ultimately, we still do not have any idea about all the different variables, and therefore, if the ball bounces off of a rock, fifty feet into the air, and then lands in the hole, we can safely say that this was luck. I'm having trouble seeing why this is an unacceptable position to take.

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laughingdog said:

Like wise the universe is following the laws of physics at levels beyond our understanding, but also beyond our ability to influence. This is what makes science possible. If we could influence the laws that would be 'magic', not science. So I think 'luck' is just a term for a result we happen to like, but don't understand fully how & why it happened, with the result that we can't use such events to gain data we can use to control future events.

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