Is there such a thing as luck?

[Yassen]

The concept of luck has been rolling around my mind recently and I'll tell you why.

Last week my parents bought a couple of newsagents to run so we can make some money. One is in a hospital and the other is down the street from it. They were very happy with the purchase but not as happy as they were going to be soon enough. You see my parents had only started running these newsagents for a week and in that time we sold a devision one winning lottery ticket.

What's even more amazing is that the winner was a cancer patient so he needed money desperately to give to his two kids and now he does.

Now at first i just thought, "good for him" but it turns out it's just as good for us. My father told me that when you sell a devision one winner people will flock to your store like you're handing out free money. The fact it was our first week only magnified the hysteria.

People will do this because by their logic the store that sold the winner is 'lucky' but the chances of a store selling another winner so quickly can best be described with the good old phrase "Lightning never strikes twice in the same spot."

This made me think though, is there such a thing as luck?

Personally i think no. You make your own luck in this world and when it comes to the lottery it all comes down to chance. So what do you all think about the concept of luck?

Note: I did a search so if there's a thread like this i apologise.

 

[PAGEToap44]

Luck is an illusion.

 

[poleboy]

I suppose it exists. You can reduce it to numbers and call it chance, but it's all semantics anyway. It's the same thing to me, more or less. Some people have good fortune for random reasons and others do not. Sometimes they can affect it, sometimes not.

 

[The Iron Ninja]

I beleive that luck is subsectible to reverse psychology.
When I used to do 40k and all that I would think "oh I'll so fail this roll"
and every single damn time I passed whatever test it was (much to the annoyance to whomever I was playing against)

 

[Xvito]

Luck has not been proven...

 

[Jamanticus]

I'm not entirely sure about luck.... I often think it must be good results based off of good practice or other factors created by the "lucky" person...
But I still have times when I'm sure that there must be something at least resembling luck...Hmmm....

 

[HSIAMetalKing]

The only "luck" that exists is the stat in Fallout. In real life, there is no such thing as luck, chance, or random[ness].

 

[Frybird]

Since, for me, luck is just the definition of positive coincidence, i think it exists in a way.

It cannot be altered in anyway (except in a psychological, "self-fulfilling prophecy" way), and is not bound in a certain way to a person, but some people just have "luck" because chance and coincidence are swinging more to their favor than it does to other persons.

 

[DoomBunny]

I think luck exists, considering I rely on it like, all the time.
Though I also believe is has to do with yourself. The more positive you are, the more lucky you seem.

I noticed this because when I was depressed, everything just kinda turned to shit. But now that I'm happy, everything just seems to work for me.

 

[Ares Tyr]

I don't believe in luck, I believe in Karma. You get what you deserve.

 

[DoomBunny]

I don't believe in luck, I believe in Karma. You get what you deserve.

I see them as kinda the same thing. Karma generating luck...or something

 

[Yassen]

I think luck exists, considering I rely on it like, all the time.
Though I also believe is has to do with yourself. The more positive you are, the more lucky you seem.

I noticed this because when I was depressed, everything just kinda turned to shit. But now that I'm happy, everything just seems to work for me.

There are actually people who try to make a living out of that. Ever heard of a self-help book called 'The Secret'? Well the secret is the law of attraction. If you think hard about something it'll happen because the universe is attracted to those brainwave patterns.

If that's true then there is no luck, it just comes down to what you think. Also luck might have something to do with quantum physics. I don't have a source but i read in New Scientist magazine that with quantum physics its actually possible for a working, living brain to just pop into existence out of nowhere.

 

[Ares Tyr]

I don't believe in luck, I believe in Karma. You get what you deserve.

I see them as kinda the same thing. Karma generating luck...or something

Not luck, you just receive your just desserts for the actions you have take in life (or past lives). I mean, I suppose you could interprit that as luck if you don't believe in karma or know what it is, but to me its all karma.

 

[scarbunny]

Luck is all in your mind, same with number paterns

I had a motorbike accident on the 13th day of owning my bike, I was admitted on to ward 13, bed 13, and discharged after 13 days? True story unfourtunatly.

 

[RetiarySword]

I think it does. I think of it as a low chance of sucsess with a preferable outcomee. When you are doing something and you know that you will probly fail, maybe trying to kill a few people in a game, you then prevail! Maybe they threw a grenade and they fucked it up? Maybe you accidently pressing crouch makes you dodge a bullet? That isn't skill, you didn't mean to do it, so it would have to be luck.

 

[StartRunning]

It depends on how you look at things, I guess.
For example, I consider myself to be an extremely lucky person. I've had a lot of hardships growing up, but I overcame them all and now I'm kinda in a place in my life where I really want to be. With still a mountain of new problems to solve and mistakes to make. And every time I succeed or something good happens to me, I'll smile and consider myself a little luckier for it.

And yes, karma. Cause and effect. Action and reaction. It's not luck, because luck isn't in your hands. Karma is.
Everytime you treat someone nice, they would be that more inclined to treat the next person they meet nice. This snowballs and will eventually get back to you (six degrees of seperation). This little example is extremely oversimplified and ignores a lot of factors that may influence the choices someone might make. But there ya go.

 

[Sayvara]

Define "Luck".

If you by luck mean that some people in a retrospecive analysis of events past have turned out to have chance favour them more than what is avergage, then the question is a clear YES because it would be statistically extremely unlikely that no people would be in that top percentile where they have many fortunate events happen to them. Conversely there will also be a those few unfortunate ones in the lower percentile of the luck bell curve. I know a few and I don't envy them.

If however you by "Luck" mean some kind of mystical property that makes it so that some people in the future will have chance fall out in their favour, then the question is a resounding NO! Some people will have chance smiling upon them, but it is impossible to say today who these people will be. Past luck does not cause luck to happen in the future, which means for instance that suckers that rush to stores that sold a winning lottery ticket are just fooling themselves. Luck is not a mystical force that causes good things to happen.

In the end I am a firm believer of the old saying: "Luck favours the prepared". There are many ways of interperting this such as "you make your own luck"... but what I think it means is that a prepared person is more likely to see when a lucky situation has arisen and will be better equipped to harness it. This is also why I refuse to sink myself into cynical whining like most of my fellow human beings tend to do, because being a negative sourpuss means that you are less likely to realize when you have stumbled upon luck.

/S

 

[Copter400]

Probability, but no luck.

 

[BlueMage]

No friend, luck is what we call the culmination of a lot of small influences - localised gravitic shifts, unnoticed muscle tremors, hell, quarks doing what they do. It does not exist per se, but we believe it exists, because it makes this harsh thing called reality that little bit more palatable by convincing us "Hey, we DO have some measure of control over things beyond our control! But only if we perform little rituals," essentially making it just another form of religion, albeit a tad more benign.

 

[Blayze]

There is no such thing as luck. If I roll two dice, one after the other, in *exactly* the same manner, on *exactly* the same surface, with *exactly* the same force... I'd get exactly the same result. Nothing to do with luck, it's all how you roll the dice.