FOUR FACES OF LUCK

 

Four usages of Luck

1. Luck as superstition

This is typified by the belief that future good or bad luck can be influenced by such things as: actions that one might do deliberately (blowing out all the candles of a birthday cake) or accidentally (breaking a mirror) or that happen near you (black cat) or even by abstract associations (the number 13); or possession of talismanic objects. Here I have used American examples but all cultures have their own superstitions. What makes such beliefs be superstition, of course, is that one can't point to any causal connection. I mentioned "future events", but believing that past bad luck was caused by a hex would be another superstition.

2. Retrospective luck

A short definition of (good) luck is

• when the outcome of a chance event is favorable to the individual under consideration.

Most of us, looking at our individual past experiences, would find instances where we consider we were lucky or unlucky, and this is what I mean by "retrospective luck". The link goes to my analysis (which enlarges upon the comments below) of a discussion of luck in everyday life by the philosopher Nicholas Rescher. In particular, Rescher suggests the following taxonomy.

• Windfalls or wind thefts
• Unforeseeable lost or gained opportunities
• Accidents
• Narrow escapes or flukish victimizations
• Coincidences (e.g. "being in the wrong place at the wrong time")
• Consequence-laden mistakes in identification or classification
• Fortuitous encounters
• Welcome or unwelcome anomalies (in generally predictable matters).

On first reading this list I was skeptical -- the categories are somewhat vague and overlapping, and were based on hypothetical examples -- but they actually do well on real examples, at least after adding two more categories:

• Other people's actions (when you have little influence on them) having (un)favorable consequences for you
• Once-in-a-lifetime deliberate risk-taking that works out well or badly.

All this refers to memorable instances of luck, rather than day-to-day instances of minor good or bad luck that we quickly forget.

3. Luck as seizing future opportunity

One of my favorite quotes is

• Chance favors the prepared mind. Louis Pasteur

This reminds us that the word chance is often used to mean opportunity, But looking for discussion of the idea of maximizing your future opportunity leads one into a morass of "how to succeed in business" and pop-psych self-help books. One book that mostly avoids the morass is The Luck Factor by the psychologist Richard Wiseman. The book is based in part upon interviews with several hundred people who self-describe as being extremely lucky or unlucky. He expresses his conclusions as four principles with twelve sub-principles: the link goes to a complete list and my further analysis.

• Lucky people create, notice and act upon the chance opportunities in their lives,
• Lucky people make successful decisions by using their intuition and gut feelings.
• Lucky people's expectations about the future help them fulfill their dreams and ambitions.
• Lucky people are able to transform their bad luck into good fortune.

My basic critique is that this (as implicit advice) isn't really about luck at all; any set of maxims on the topic "how adopting a positive attitude towards life will help lead to success" would include such advice. Anyway, it is interesting to contrast this psychologist's advice with the more "philosophical" advice by Rescher:

• Be realistic in judgments (evaluate the probabilities and utilities as objectively as you can)
• Be realistic in expectations (there is only so much one can do)
• Be prudently adventuresome (don't be so risk-averse as to lose out on opportunities)
• Be cautiously optimistic.

4. Separating skill from luck as contributors to success

So what is luck, anyway?

The discussion above indicates the difficulty is saying what luck is; the word really is used with different meanings. But let us return to the context of "retrospective luck" and first repeat the earlier short definition of (good) luck:

• (*) when the outcome of a chance event is favorable to the individual under consideration.

This reminds us that, in contrast to other words associated with chance, luck is almost always used in reference to an individual person. Everything we would call (good) luck fits (*), but not everything fitting (*) would be counted as luck, so can we refine (*)? Consider the following 4 characteristics of an event.

1. it involves chance, in the particular senses of unpredictable and outside the control of the individual;
2. it is unlikely;
3. it has a substantial impact on the individual;
4. it is an event that happens at a particular time (rather than an ongoing "state of affairs").

By: Oluwapelumi Atanseiye (@pearlumie_)

cc: berkeley