ainrun.com/articles/ ====== markessien I think I read the entire article, but I am not sure. I have lost the ability to think by this. I can read things that sound right and yet have no sense of what is actually happening in the article. I thought there was a way to get this type of thing into the public view, but I think it is really impossible - even if you are a native speaker and can express an idea clearly in English, you will be misunderstood by 99% of your audience because they are all so confused about where the truth lies in everyday life. I mean, I found myself reading this article with disbelief. Why on earth would some man say that there is no such thing as luck, and at the same time claim to be a believer in the concept of luck. To my mind, you either believe that luck exists, or you don't. But this confused, messy mishmash of thoughts is not rational thought. ~~~ wallflower I agree. I've read it twice and I'm still not sure about his take on luck. Fascinating, though. I feel the opposite. I am a strong believer in luck. EDIT: I guess it could have been argued that he's talking about "luck" in a more general way - the "right place at the right time" kind of luck. And you can be so unlucky as to have no opportunities at all. Or be so lucky that you can be "picked" every time for something. And that by being picked, you are lucky. And that if you are picked, you also have the opportunity to be lucky (i.e., good) in the picking and thus lucky in the opportunity. Just playing around with examples of luck in the broad sense. Thoughts? Is this article even possible to try to read without having some kind of reading comprehension aid? ~~~ markessien I think he's using the word luck in a way that is at odds with how it is used in everyday language. Luck in that context is not used to mean "having no chance at all", or "randomness". People use the term luck to describe chance events that may or may not happen in the future, but are likely to happen. If the odds for any given event are 1/10,000, and the event occurs, it is an extreme case of luck. On the other hand, if there is a lot of evidence that suggests that the event is likely to occur, and yet the event does not happen, then luck is not at play. Again, there is no such thing as pure chance. Probability is not the same as randomness. ------ MaysonL "Flying into a tree, falling down a well and finding a winning ticket in a draw... these are all events that happened to you and other people you know that would be unremarkable if they were happening to people they knew instead." Is the author just trying to show that if a given person really didn't experience any luck in their life, the experience wouldn't really be all that unremarkable? Or is the author really saying that it's all just about the luck of the draw? ~~~ wallflower It is not about the luck of the draw. You didn't know that person and never met them before. The experience just didn't make the news so you know about it only because you saw it on Yahoo News or other news site. ~~~ MaysonL Well, true. But what's in that article is that it doesn't even make the news. What's interesting is whether he's actually right, i.e. if that experience was actually unremarkable, given that you didn't know the person it happened to and met them for the first time. ~~~ wallflower Ah. I think in my post I took the "unremarkable" too literally. ------ gruseom This post contains many of the things that interest me about the field. Reading is hard for me but my gut feeling is that it's a pretty cool article. I'd love to know his sources. ------ jwecker "A single event that strikes without warning and leaves devastation in its path." I'm not convinced by that description. I've got two little girls, they're about to turn 5-ish this week. I know the world is going to send things at them that are unexpected and potentially devastating (to us, anyway). I don't find them unpredictable - we've learned to plan for those things - but I also don't see them as "events" that happen. Yes, in the sense that it's not something I can control (because I'm too small to be a threat), but it's not out of control or mysterious in any way. I guess my point is - in the same way as with probability or just even classical physics (Newton and the apple on the tree) - I'd much rather view life as predictable with random numbers (and not really random at all) than as anything else. And the "unpredictable" part of the article doesn't really ring true for me. ------ jodrellblank What do you call the part where you just can't understand why you think the same thing? ~~~ wallflower I'd like to say I have no desire to know what other people think or if I'm thinking the same thing but I do. I can't see myself trying to figure it out. This might not be a great analogy, but I'll give you what I believe to be a useful example of how I think this manifests itself in me: I once asked a woman on a date. I got the impression that she was actually interested, but then we kissed (we were in a hotel room at the time). My first thought was "Oh she's probably not interested at all, she just wanted to finish the beer". But, the reality is she wasn't interested in the first place and wouldn't have been. She was someone who was just comfortable with me being friends with my ex because it was easier that way (for me, at least). If I had not gotten in the car that day, I would not be speaking to her. How am I different from that person? I have a good reason to believe that she would have ended up dating me if I was not in the car that day. She may have ended up _not_ dating me even if I wasn't in the car that day (she might not be attracted to me, I might be not attractive to her, she might have no interest in dating someone from her church because I was not from the church). All are possible and yet, she would not be the kind of person who you'd meet and think "I would want to date this person". Yet, we both know that it was our little bit of misfortune that led us down this path of each other. All it takes is someone's misfortune or bad luck or luck on the same day. If not that day, then it was next day. And it just happened to be me. Not that she was looking for a long term relationship but it doesn't hurt to dream about being in love. Sometimes it is just the right timing that you miss. The odds against something happening like that just being random are pretty high. I have to thank her as well as my cousin (the kid in the background) for being there for me that day (although she was not responsible for my finding out my ex was sleeping around with two other people). But, maybe without the car trip I wouldn't have met a woman who was the love of my life. ------ biohacker42 _No idea if any of that makes any sense to anyone but myself._ That's so meta I can't handle it. ------ blader "a single event that strikes without warning and leaves devastation in its path." Seems to me that if you can see the devastation coming that you have anticipated what is about to happen, so this could be more properly described as unanticipated. My experience has been that random events are generally very unpredictable. I agree with him, though, that some events are less unknowable than others. ------ andreyf Am I the only one who's having trouble understanding this? The only thing I'm struggling to grasp is the idea of "luck".