[HN Gopher] Should we be thinking about luck differently?
___________________________________________________________________
Should we be thinking about luck differently?
Author : daverol
Score : 63 points
Date : 2024-10-09 15:58 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| roenxi wrote:
| > We can go even further in considering our existential luck.
|
| We can, but it quickly becomes nonsense.
|
| The problem with existential luck is that we don' know the odds.
| Obviously, based on our current understanding of physics, we can
| come up with an estimate. But that understanding has to be wrong,
| because we can't explain why the universe exists at all. Forget
| the cosmological constant having lucky values, what are the odds
| that physical constants exist as opposed to there being a
| matterless void?
|
| I could make an unfalsifiable prediction that there is some sort
| of N-dimensional super-soup where all 3 dimensions of space, time
| and physical constants and maybe some huge number of others to
| determine starting conditions are an axis on a hypercube of
| unimaginable proportions. Then, everything is a certainty. The
| amount of luck involved in any particular space-time-other point
| existing is 1 and there is no luck anywhere. In some sense
| reality has to be of that nature, because the odds of us existing
| by chance is so small it suggests that our model is wrong and our
| existence was in fact guaranteed.
| User23 wrote:
| > Forget the cosmological constant having lucky values, what
| are the odds that physical constants exist as opposed to there
| being a matterless void?
|
| The odds of there being something rather than nothing are
| absolutely zero. This is easily seen because for the odds to be
| anything more than that would require some reason, and that
| reason, whatever it might be, would be something. This is why a
| matterless void isn't actually nothing.
| persnickety wrote:
| And yet, there is something, therefore the odds cannot be
| zero, revealing a flaw in this line of reasoning.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| > for the odds to be anything more than that [zero] would
| require some reason, and that reason, whatever it might be,
| would be something
|
| p=0 and p=1 both satisfy this. Given the probability exists
| (and, you know, we're talking about it) only p=1 satisfies.
| User23 wrote:
| Right, so there is some reason and there always must have
| been.
|
| If you think there is a symmetry, there isn't, because no
| reason would be required if nothing existed.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| > The odds of there being something rather than nothing are
| absolutely zero
|
| And how did you came up with that? Evidence suggests the
| contrary.
| bsbsjsusj wrote:
| You are both right. Dealing with infinities!
| astrobe_ wrote:
| Their "existential luck looks no different from the
| "circumstantial luck" to me - an asteroid hitting the earth is
| indeed in the matter of being "at the wrong place at the wrong
| time".
|
| But as someone said here, it's all about probability
| distributions and trying to minimize/maximize your chances.
|
| I like to believe that there is not such a thing as "chance",
| that it is all about hidden variables, but I've been told right
| here before that the quantum theory says otherwise.
| pistoleer wrote:
| > In some sense reality has to be of that nature, because the
| odds of us existing by chance is so small it suggests that our
| model is wrong and our existence was in fact guaranteed.
|
| Sampling bias: we only exist to perceive the reality in which
| we exist. the countless realities in which we don't exist, we
| don't experience.
| vharuck wrote:
| This is called the Anthropic Principle.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
| loopz wrote:
| You're one out of 8 billion people, the only known humans
| inhabiting an incredible vast cosmos with billions of galaxies
| and billions of years of timespan. That you are sitting here
| reading these typed words is nothing short of incredible, in a
| world that many want to model as a Newtonian marble-universe
| devoid of life and consciousness.
|
| People denounce past lives and future lives, but have no qualms
| about hanging on to their current life, as if that is worth
| anything more in the grander scheme of things. That's not to say
| it's a solution to end it all, but just pointing out the lack of
| logical thinking and grander perspective, that leads many
| thinking minds astray.
|
| Or think of it like a hacker: You're cast out as the solitary
| sentient entity within a huge cosmos with many possibilities and
| experiences. What do you want to do today?
|
| In many spiritual circles, luck has nothing to do with it, but
| inevitability does. Mathematics, if advanced enough, could maybe
| come to the same conclusion. But it's a matter of perspective.
| What perspective do we inhabit today?
|
| One where everything can be explained (away)?
|
| Or one where we cannot even explain what existence and sentience
| is, or why everything seems to become empty but still infinitely
| complex, when we zoom into them?
| persnickety wrote:
| > You're one out of 8 billion people, the only known humans
| inhabiting an incredible vast cosmos with billions of galaxies
| and billions of years of timespan. That you are sitting here
| reading these typed words is nothing short of incredible,
|
| There's nothing incredible about being the only kind of human
| known to humans. Classic anthropic principle, making every kind
| of human special as long as they haven't met any other kind.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| > You're one out of 8 billion people, the only known humans
| inhabiting an incredible vast cosmos with billions of galaxies
| and billions of years of timespan
|
| Sure, but there are also 10^18 insects, and untold other
| critters too. Given the size of the universe there are likely
| also billions of other planets with life out there.
|
| It doesn't make sense to call existing and being alive lucky,
| since that's not a statistical outcome - 100% of humans/etc are
| alive. I suppose you could call temporarily being part of a
| living organism a "lucky" outcome for a carbon molecule, since
| for "them" it's not a guaranteed thing.
|
| As a human, things to consider yourself lucky for, rather than
| existing at all, as we all do, are things like where you were
| born, and who your parents are. Were you born into poverty, or
| some weird religious cult, or lucky to be born into some more
| fortunate circumstance?
| mrangle wrote:
| Most pop science writers and readers don't understand the
| depth of factors involved in creating a habitable planet
| here. If they did, a simple chat with a better LLM would
| reveal that the possibility for life is far more rare than in
| the Universe than is commonly calculated estimating, say,
| only for "goldilocks zone" planets. Even plugging in one
| additional obvious factor other than distance to the star,
| such as planetary tilt, puts the estimation for the nearest
| possible planet at 2.5 million light years away (when
| starting with a reasonable estimation for the number of stars
| in the universe, which you will also need to pare down
| filtering for star type). And the factors involved go far
| beyond, including those involving other characteristics of
| the Star both in isolation and in relationship to those of
| the planet, and possibly additional solar system bodies like
| moons and perhaps more.
|
| Then compare in ratio to the number of planets that don't
| hold life, and in general the vast absence of life in the
| Universe. Which is far more impressive in its commonness than
| the existence of Life.
|
| Not feeling "Lucky" to be here is arguably a spiritual crime
| and, whether or not one is amenable to that type of guilt,
| perhaps also one of intellect. Sincerely, this is fully a
| generalized comment and I'm not trying to insult you.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| The rarity of goldilocks life-friendly plants seems far
| outweighed by the astronomical number of planets that must
| be out there... 100B stars in our own galaxy, and 100B-1T
| galaxies in the observable universe. Even if on average
| each galaxy only has one star/planet with life (i.e. only a
| 1-in-100,000,000,000 chance of a planet having life),
| that'd still mean 1T planets with life out there! In
| reality I'd bet there are tons of planets with life in our
| galaxy.
|
| I'm not sure where you are getting "vast absence of life in
| the Universe" from... Our search for intelligent life has
| been limited to looking for radio transmissions. I wonder
| what the stats are on an intelligent species in our nearest
| neighboring galaxy happening on our own transmissions?
|
| It's good to feel lucky/thankful for ones own fortunate
| circumstances, but merely existing isn't really one of
| them. If you are a drugged-up child soldier in Africa, who
| has just been forced to kill your own parents, then should
| you be feeling lucky to be alive?
| mbivert wrote:
| > In many spiritual circles, luck has nothing to do with it,
| but inevitability does.
|
| What do you mean exactly? Say, the notion of karma in Eastern
| religions is a way to explain at least some amount of what is
| commonly dubbed "luck".
|
| But from the perspective of someone ignorant of karmic ties,
| can't it only be considered luck/random? Furthermore, isn't
| more genuine luck/randomness (free-will?) causing such initial
| ties?
| loopz wrote:
| It depends on perspective. If you look into karma, it only
| holds for the perspective of sequences of lifetimes, or a
| couple of lifetimes being interwoven by karmic ties. What
| karma is is also very mystical, but not unthinkable
| physically speaking. Ie. gene expressions can flip during a
| lifetime, thus our genes hold memories lasting for at least a
| couple of generations. So ancestral karma is also a concept,
| but hard to research of course.
|
| From a holistic and wider perspective of wholeness,
| everything may be said to be predestined. From a spiritual
| perspective, it's about how everything is set up in order to
| have certain experiences and maybe "lessons". Mathematically,
| if you have all the variables, everything that may happen can
| be solved by calculation, however that is done on the cosmic
| scales.
|
| If the idiot is guided by a higher mind, then there's no room
| for "luck" on the grandest scales, but it will look like luck
| to the person, as a unique and individual experience.
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| A mathematical model for luck is variance.
|
| We understand variance, we understand distributions - normal,
| binomial, poisson, t-distribution, chi-squared, and so on - and
| we can model with some confidence how to take action to select
| where we sit in some distributions. For example, not smoking and
| having an active and healthy lifestyle moves you in the
| distribution of people likely to get lung cancer by a certain
| age. You are "choosing your own luck" to some degree. It's
| probabilistic, not certain, but it fits a known model.
|
| And then there are those situations where the distributions - and
| therefore the variance, i.e. the luck - is less knowable. The
| best tool we have for this right now is Bayesian statistics:
| here's what I know right now, and I will update my understanding
| of the probabilities as new information becomes available to me.
|
| So, yes, we should think about luck a little differently. It's
| not fate, it is expression of variance within a known or unknown
| distribution, and we can do more to understand it. This is more
| than most people do, and it feels more actionable and of higher
| utility than the examples given in the article.
| tpmoney wrote:
| > For example, not smoking and having an active and healthy
| lifestyle moves you in the distribution of people likely to get
| lung cancer by a certain age. You are "choosing your own luck"
| to some degree. It's probabilistic, not certain, but it fits a
| known model.
|
| I forget where I read it but some time back I came across this
| idea of measuring "luck" as something akin to radiation doses.
| I think the author used the term "mililucks". Their argument
| was that if it takes X amount of luck to get married/get a
| promotion/have a healthy life/etc, then one should examine
| which of those things they want, and then examine how many
| "mililucks" any given choice you have will give you towards
| that goal. There's still no guarantee, just like a given dose
| of radiation isn't a guarantee of getting sick, but a house
| party might contribute 200 mililucks towards your goal of
| finding a romantic partner, but since the party also has lots
| of alcohol and greasy food, maybe only 1-2 mililucks towards
| your healthy life.
|
| You don't get to decide the ultimate outcome and you don't get
| to even know for sure whether you're really doing to right
| thing, but you can reasonably see how going to a lot of house
| parties increases the chances of you lucking into a romantic
| partnership, while doing little to increase your chances of a
| healthy life style. In this way you "make your own luck",
| simply by increasing the number of chances you have to "get
| lucky" in any given direction.
|
| The caveat of course is that not everyone is starting from the
| same baseline of luck. If you grow up in a safe area you are
| much more likely to not get mugged than in you grow up in a
| crime ridden area. But in both areas "nothing good happens
| after midnight" is probably a worthwhile approach to increasing
| your "luck" with regards to being mugged, and probably has the
| same number of "mililucks" regardless
| chistev wrote:
| I like this.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I think this matches to a parabola that tracks with age.
| Early on you can't do much because you don't know shit. As
| you gain wisdom and experience you can influence it
| significantly but as your age increases it falls off because
| it is what it is at that point.
| savanaly wrote:
| Maybe you're thinking of "micromarriages"? [0]
|
| [0] https://colah.github.io/personal/micromarriages/
| swatcoder wrote:
| It's a cute model to write or read about, but I strongly
| encourage people not go do this to themselves -- at least not
| on this scale.
|
| A life lived lived through such brainy analysis of small
| things is a recipe for anxiety and depression. For all the
| millilucks towards this or that you might attribute to your
| house party, you've already allotted decilucks to your
| chances of a life mired in your own head and its imaginings.
|
| As much as you can, just trust yourself, talk to people,
| trust that you can roll with consquences as they come, and
| save the deep analysis for things of much greater
| consequences and much lesser frequency.
| abhaynayar wrote:
| > He told me that his father's experiences in the RAF led him to
| insist that the family sat at the back of the plane - and the
| only survivors were seated at the back. He had the right parents.
|
| Interesting... will be getting seats at the back from now on!
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| It's hard to say how serious you are, but this is a good
| example of casual notions of "luck".
|
| Aircraft are often struck by lightning. US airlines (for
| example) are very safe statistically. Looking at the
| probabilities, I would suggest that you can optimise your
| actuarial projection by insisting on sitting in centre-rear
| position in all passenger vehicles.
|
| From the fine article:
|
| > Of course, we wouldn't be here to muse on our good fortune if
| this chain of events had not occurred [...] But perhaps the
| fragility of this chain should induce some humility about our
| self-importance.
|
| If we hope for humility, maybe we also need to hope for the
| right kind of humility. We need to understand that the metaphor
| of a "chain of events" implies some purposeful causation.
| However we came to be was an accident; where we are going
| depends on our ingenuity and ability to reason ourselves out of
| the mud and pathology.
| OJFord wrote:
| > optimise your actuarial projection by insisting on sitting
| in centre-rear position in all passenger vehicles
|
| As long as your seatbelt's on. Takes quite a low-speed
| collision to be extremely bad for a seatbeltless middle-seat
| passenger, whereas those either side might have a nasty bang
| against the seat in front but be basically fine.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Classic survivorship bias /s
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I was just thinking yesterday how me and my three brothers
| wouldn't exist if my Mom's father hadn't had a box fall on him in
| the back of a delivery truck, crushing his hip and making him
| have to move his family several states away to convalesce. Later
| my Mom would grow up there and meet my Dad. Nevermind the
| astronomical chances that the single sperm that made you achieved
| success and you aren't some other version of your siblings. Life
| is weird and the chances any of us exist is so remote. Enjoy your
| beyond lotto win and that you were able to pop into existence in
| the universe at all! What a gift.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Kind of puts a brake on the whole notion of time travel. I know
| "just world" is a fallacy, but thinking about ethics of such
| hypothetical temporal interventions, I have this strong sense
| that time travel is not possible in our universe because
| otherwise it would be too abhorrent a place.
| bena wrote:
| It's one of those weird paradoxical things. Yes, the chances
| of all _that_ happening is astronomically small, but the
| chances that _something_ happens is nearly 1. So, while that
| specific person may not have existed, it's likely his mother
| would have had children, etc, etc.
|
| And it kind of ties into the general idea. Luck is favorable
| variance. So put yourself in situations where you can
| experience variance. Eventually, you will have something
| favorable happen to you.
|
| There's a post on this site that gets linked about how
| success is like a carnival game. And it's about how many
| chances you can afford. It's also the mentality behind "fail
| fast and fail often". Increase your exposure to variance and
| you increase your chances of success.
| sigzero wrote:
| You mean that there is no such thing as "luck"?
| xyst wrote:
| what if luck is just proof of the infinite parallel universe
| theory?
|
| Each event, action, or outcome with even a slight variance is in
| each its own reality. Buy a powerball lotto? Lose in 292,201,337
| realities, but win grand prize in 1 reality.
| bugbuddy wrote:
| Infinite parallel universe is nonsensical to me. It is an
| unprovable metaphysical contraption that offers nothing of
| value besides copium for the less fortunate and the gullible
| among us.
|
| Also, it has nothing to do with luck as being discussed here.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| I think you can prove Many Worlds Interpretation correct for
| yourself. You do the Schrodinger's cat thing on yourself. If
| MWI is correct, you'll observe yourself surviving
| indefinitely even if every second there is a 50% chance
| determined by a quantum event that the trap triggers and
| kills you. I'm not sure this would convince anyone else even
| if you open the door after 6 hours and come out alive, and
| regardless the vast, vast majority of total observers would
| conclude the experiment failed since in most universes you'd
| be dead. But you'd either know the theory is true or just be
| dead. Not really worth the risk but I think it is testable.
| fwip wrote:
| Jesus Christ.
|
| No, this is not supported by the MWI. There's no clause in
| there about your consciousness getting magically teleported
| to worlds in which you survive. There's science-fiction
| with that as the premise, but it's fiction.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| A lot of people smarter than me think it is supported by
| MWI. Max Tegmark, for example wrote about this in Our
| Mathematical Universe[1]. No "teleportation" is required,
| you simply aren't observing the universes in which you
| die. So there is a selection bias.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immo
| rtalit...
|
| edit: Note that I do not agree - as some do - that you
| can extrapolate from this that MWI means we are all
| immortal. The "continuous fade" argument made by Tegmark
| is quite convincing, as are other objections to this
| idea.
| qarl wrote:
| > There's no clause in there about your consciousness
| getting magically teleported to worlds in which you
| survive.
|
| You are absolutely correct - there is nothing about the
| MWI that implies such a thing. Such a thing is implied by
| consciousness itself.
|
| Here's a thought experiment. You implement a conscious
| system on a computer. After letting it run for a year,
| you interrupt the software but save all of its state.
| After waiting 20 years, you restart the software from the
| same point on a completely different computer running an
| emulator for the old system.
|
| The consciousness, whose reference of time is entirely
| independent of the real world, does not "feel" the 20
| year pause. It "magically teleports" to the new computer.
| powersnail wrote:
| I'm confused as to how this proves anything. Are you
| suggesting that the only explanation that something with
| small probability has happened, is that there are many
| worlds in which this has not happen?
| jeremyjh wrote:
| No you don't have to observe other worlds, and you
| wouldn't be able to "prove" anything to anyone else for
| all sorts of practical reasons. But you'd know for
| yourself that there is virtually no chance that MWI is
| wrong if you survive for 6 hours (21,600 iterations at
| 50% probably each), and you could go as long as you want
| to further drive that probability down.
| powersnail wrote:
| I'm not sure that answers my confusion. Even if I am just
| proving it to myself, why does the occurrence of a not
| probable event prove the existence of many worlds?
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Community covers this in "Remedial Chaos Theory"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS7eyAg13HM&list=PLzPhBo3i-o...
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| This comparison of different understandings of "luck" really
| resonates with me. I have a personal experience that, when I talk
| about it, I often mention the paradoxical levels of "luck"
| involved. Given this is a lazy Sunday, I am taking the luxury of
| typing it all out. Content warning: badly written self-centred
| personal anecdote involving serious injury and death.
|
| _TL;DR:_ I was almost killed in an accident due to terrible
| circumstantial luck (wrong place, wrong time), I survived with no
| medical sequelae thanks to incredible outcome luck (great
| doctors), and with no psychological trauma thanks to partially-
| learned partially-intrinsic ability to accept circumstances out
| of my control.
|
| _Part 1: TERRIBLE CIRCUMSTANTIAL LUCK_
|
| In late 2019 I was on a long-weekend trip to another city in my
| country, in which me and some old friends who were living
| elsewhere were meeting up. While I was there, I was walking on
| the pavement at around four in the afternoon and I was hit from
| behind by a car at a speed of ~40-50 km/h (the driver had briefly
| lost consciousness, there were no drugs or alcohol involved).
| Last thing I remember was being in the area walking normally
| before the accident; I do not remember anything about the
| accident itself nor the car bursting onto the pavement.
|
| The impact left me with a broken hand and a fractured skull, and
| I was fully unconscious (GCS of 3) when the ambulance that rushed
| me to hospital. According to eyewitnesses I believe I was
| unconscious from impact. A CT scan in hospital showed I had an
| epidural haematoma of 19mm (bleeding inside the skull, pressing
| against the brain) which was pushing my brain midline by 3.7mm to
| the other side. I was taken to the operating theatre and was
| undergoing emergency neurosurgery ~2 hours after the accident.
|
| This bad luck was even worse than that of a plane crash. With a
| plane crash, you were unlucky to fly on that aircraft, but in my
| case literally _anything_ I had done differently that day, to the
| very last minute, could have led me to being at that same spot 1
| minute later or 1 minute sooner and thus could have saved me from
| the accident.
|
| _Part 2: INCREDIBLE OUTCOME LUCK_
|
| If you know anything about TBIs, after reading my description
| above you may already know I'm lucky to be able to type this. And
| if you don't, let's put it this way: after surgery, my parents
| and my partner at the time (who flew in as soon as they heard)
| were warned by the doctors that though surgery had gone well they
| had to be ready that I may be left with severe long-term
| sequelae. The doctors warned them that I may need training to be
| able to walk and talk again, and it was impossible to tell to
| what extent my personality and mental capacities may have been
| damaged. There was a chance I may need some level of special
| support for the rest of my life.
|
| And yet, as soon as I came back from anaesthesia, it seems that I
| was able to recognise everyone and I was trying to escape from my
| hospital bed--needing to be physically restrained by hospital
| staff--and loudly demanding my release. Apparently these are
| common reactions after waking up from a concussion. Post-op I was
| in ICU for 1 week and in normal hospital wing for another week. I
| have no memory of the first half, but it appears that all tests
| of cognitive ability were coming back extremely promising and
| signalling a shockingly good recovery.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I was in a terrible state, with a massively
| swollen skull, clumsy, no sense of smell (before it was cool) due
| to damaged olfactory nerves, and my full recovery would take many
| months of rehab. But the fact remains that, probably in a large
| part to the amazing skill of the neurosurgeons and their team who
| did an emergency craniotomy on me, I had no perceptible brain
| damage. Every doctor who saw me in the followups would say how
| surprised they were after reading my clinical history of the
| event.
|
| _Part 3: GREAT CONSTITUTIVE LUCK_
|
| Some of my first memories of when I was in hospital (at first I
| had no idea why I was there, it felt like a no-context dream
| state) was that, when asked what I wanted for my meals, I would
| intentionally ask for fish because I was aware that omega-3 fatty
| acids are good "brain food"--and apparently I was brain injured?
| In other words, even not knowing why I was there, my mind was
| already focusing on improving my chances.
|
| More important than this was my long-term well-being in the days,
| weeks, and months after the event. I have left out an important
| detail so that it didn't distract from the point I was making,
| but it was not only me who was hit by the car: it was me and one
| of my friends whom I had not seen in years, and she died on the
| spot.
|
| My partner intentionally didn't tell me this detail until after I
| was released from hospital and we were spending a night at a
| hotel. She wanted to tell me only when she was sure I could fully
| understand what had happened (for which I am grateful), and it
| made me terribly sad to head about it. Now, what made the initial
| _circumstantial luck_ even worse, was this: it was _I_ who
| suggested travelling to that specific city to meet up. And guess
| why me and my friend were on that pavement at that specific
| moment? We were walking to pick up the rental car in the rental
| place at which _I_ had chosen to make the reservation.
|
| As you can imagine, all these things are a recipe for disaster
| regarding traumatic memories and needing years of therapy. I had
| suffered an unexplainable severe accident which left me unable to
| work and doing rehab for months ( _" so unfair! Why did this
| happen to me?"_), my friend whom I had not seen in years --and
| mother of two young sons-- had died in the same event ( _" why
| did I survive and not her?"_), and I had made two of the
| arbitrary choices that led us both to be in the wrong place at
| the wrong time ( _" I am ultimately responsible for what
| happened!"_).
|
| And yet, thanks to having internalised ideas of stoic philosophy
| --and to some extent, thanks to my personality-- I never believed
| any of the italicised thoughts in parentheses above. My partner
| and her mother, as well as a friend of ours, all initially
| insisted that I should look for psychotherapy to deal with the
| situation --not in response to any observation of my behaviour or
| feelings, mind you, but just because it is "normal" to need
| therapy after going through a traumatic event. But I didn't need
| therapy, I was fine. I was able to completely accept my radically
| new circumstances that I had to deal with, as well as having no
| feelings of guilt over what was simply a series of fucked up
| coincidences. In the words of Epictetus, "some things are in our
| control and others not". How I ended up in that situation was not
| in my control.
| datavirtue wrote:
| This is why I hate mixing vehicle and pedestrian traffic and
| why I don't feel safe on the sidewalk. I think it's lunacy to
| have vehicles driving over foot paths in front of grocery
| stores. The vehicles have no reason to be there but the
| establishment directs vehicle traffic right through the main
| chokepoint in front of the entry doors. I have witnessed
| workers and shoppers getting assaulted by vehicles numerous
| times at my local Kroger. Still waiting for the lightbulb to
| come on.
| carapace wrote:
| The crazy thing is, and forgive me if you've heard this
| before, this insane situation is the result of a deliberate
| domestic propaganda campaign:
|
| "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins
| Everything) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM
|
| "Street Rivals: Jaywalking and the Invention of the Motor Age
| Street", Peter D. Norton
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/40061474
| mrangle wrote:
| Be careful Spiegelhalter, lest you flirt with religion.
| MailleQuiMaille wrote:
| Fate, Destiny, Logos, God(s), and so on...
|
| It seems that for most of History, we personified luck and lived
| along that knowledge that something someone wanted some things
| out of that collective human experience, and thus was guiding
| events and people to a goal.
|
| I'm wondering what we lost by trying to explain that. For sure,
| religions and mythologies are still here and kicking, but I'm
| curious if "Science" will ever get to a point where stuff like
| this becomes as trivial as "Well, it's God's Plan, I'm just the
| character in their cosmic drama".
|
| WHat happens when the character want to change the story
| themselves ?
| zdragnar wrote:
| It isn't so much religion specifically as philosophy, or a
| mindset.
|
| Looking at the stoics, for example, the message is to not
| despair or be angry at misfortune. Such emotions are a result
| of the world not meeting your expectations, and are a lesson to
| adjust your expectations.
|
| Rather than focusing on what you cannot change, the focus is
| moved to what you can.
|
| The trendy term for this is "resiliency", the emotional quality
| of capability to endure hardship. That it the very first step
| to "changing the story", as you say. There's no use crying over
| split milk, but now you can take steps to avoid spilling it in
| the future.
| bsbsjsusj wrote:
| Religion and science in general are not incompatiable.
| Immutible religions and mutable scienece are incompatible
| though. God didn't create the world in 7 days. As a theory this
| is disprovable. So the bible needs to be edited! But that is
| not allowed but we have an out! We can imterpret it as
| metaphor.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| People hate it when most of their success is actually based on
| luck. Sequence of events that allows them to do what they do.
| This isn't dumb luck but luck that enables. (The downvotes or
| lack of there of will prove it).
| gmuslera wrote:
| Like with the Murphy's Law, you are looking at the wrong side of
| the stick. It's like the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, you paint
| the target after the shots has been made.
|
| I remember some critics on Ringworld's Teela Brown superpower,
| that was basically the author taking care that everything go well
| for her. Because that is what really implies being having luck as
| implicit attribute, that the universe conspires to make
| everything go well for you. Situational awareness to avoid or get
| involved in bad or good events is not luck, truly random events
| won't be biased towards you.
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