Luck

[rktpro]

I would love to have your views on how luck plays a part in someone's success.

Please put forward point with apt proof. Also, if you can support a point with evidence from scriptures, then go for it.

This thread is not to debate whether scriptures are right or wrong. What I want to learn is how the role of luck has been described in them.

Any interesting anecdote of someone becoming rich without an effort can be put forward (though it can't be a proof)

[iNow]

I would love to have your views on how luck plays a part in someone's success.

Please put forward point with apt proof. Also, if you can support a point with evidence from scriptures, then go for it.

When someone experiences good luck, their success tends to be magnified.

When someone experiences bad luck, their success tends to be diminished.

 

Also, if you're seeking proof, then you should recognize that Scripture [math]\ne[/math] Evidence, no matter how many citations one makes from those mostly fictional accounts.

[ewmon]

Diligence is the mother of good luck.

~ Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

 

The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

~ Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

 

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.

~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

 

Chance favors the prepared mind.

~ Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) Edited December 3, 2011 by ewmon

[michel123456]

_Luck is also the fact to be born here or there, in the U.S., Europe or Africa, in Mr the Senator's family or under a tree in the savannah.

[lightburst]

When you think about it, even being lucky is luck. It's luck all the way down!

 

There's only so few people, I think, that are successful purely from luck. I could argue that even professional gamblers, although technically luck, play under some controlled environment. As for everything else, I think there is a threshold wherein luck can help. Ultimately, success is built upon effort. Luck is sort of just the topping.

[rktpro]

What if you see people with a little knowledge getting high posts which require knowledge and experience? What would it be called? Luck?

[TonyMcC]

God helps those who help themselves is a well known saying which I feel implies that to a large extent you make your own luck.

[iNow]

What if you see people with a little knowledge getting high posts which require knowledge and experience? What would it be called? Luck?

No, there's a word for what happens in most of those situations. It's not called luck. It's generally called nepotism or favoritism.

[drewmillar]

I dont see luck as something that can affect anything in one sense. By this i mean that luck does not actually exist but is used as a comforting tool by people to explain the successes and failures of themselves and others in life. For example if a person is successful but you have not been in a particular endeavour many people would rather blame it on some feat of luck ahead their own flaws or the other persons adeptness.

[rktpro]

No, there's a word for what happens in most of those situations. It's not called luck. It's generally called nepotism or favoritism.

 

No, I didn't mean that. Let me take one more example. What if a beggar gets a notice that all the property of a rich has been named after him because the rich wanted to get the poorest of the town to be his heir? Then?

[mississippichem]

No, I didn't mean that. Let me take one more example. What if a beggar gets a notice that all the property of a rich has been named after him because the rich wanted to get the poorest of the town to be his heir? Then?

 

An amazing act of philanthropy followed by an angry spoiled nephew.

Edited December 4, 2011 by mississippichem

[rktpro]

An amazing act of philanthropy followed by an angry spoiled nephew.

 

That is what we term as luck for the beggar!

[iNow]

I disagree. I still see it as a form of favoritism. If you want to focus solely on "luck" or on "chance," then perhaps you should stick with examples involving something like dice games.

 

Perhaps something like a person goes to Vegas poor and destitute, then puts their entire life savings on a game of chance.

You then ask what do you call this, and the obvious answer is "stupid." You then ask what do you call it in those rare instances where one time out of a million the person actually wins something? Then, the answer could be luck.

 

At which point, we return to my very first reply in response to your OP question.

 

When someone experiences good luck, their success tends to be magnified.

When someone experiences bad luck, their success tends to be diminished.

[tar]

Lucky for you... I have nothing to say on the matter.

[GammaTheGreat]

I would love to have your views on how luck plays a part in someone's success.

Please put forward point with apt proof. Also, if you can support a point with evidence from scriptures, then go for it.

This thread is not to debate whether scriptures are right or wrong. What I want to learn is how the role of luck has been described in them.

Any interesting anecdote of someone becoming rich without an effort can be put forward (though it can't be a proof)

 

 

If you're interested in other aspects of this topic, you should look into Thomas Nagel's inquiry into Moral Luck. His inquiry delves more into how to judge a person's actions morally, but, in my opinion, it applies, in-part, to this discussion.

 

It would seem that when people accuse the successful of enjoying success purely due to luck, they assume that the successful merely inherited success (whether by bequest, nepotism, cronyism, geographic location etc.), were lucky in how a choice (perhaps a gamble) turned out, or maybe even were "lucky" to have been born with certain innate talents.

 

The reply I would give is that, granting that ALL successful benefit from one or more of the above scenarios, these people took advantage (no negative connotation implied) of what opportunities were given them. Perhaps one must accept that not all people enjoy the same circumstances (luck), but that it is the natural way of the world that some are born more "lucky" than others.

 

If we accept this, we must then ask, does anyone who is successful deserve their success? Yes, it is the case that many successful people were very lucky, but they, then, took advantage, and became successful; similarly, there must be people that were lucky but did not take advantage, and as a result, were not successful.

 

To indict the successful as undeserving is basically to say that no one should take advantage of a favorable circumstance. If you accept that the world is, in fact, unfair, and realize that not everyone enjoys the same "luck," then you must furthermore accept that one has no choice as to whether they receive luck, good or bad. If you accept that grim truth, then you cannot indict those who take advantage of that precious luck. Would not everyone take advantage of favorable circumstances (luck) if they arose? And if the answer is 'no,' then the answer to the whole question is that those who are successful not only enjoyed luck, but capitalized on it, rendering them deserving of such luck in the first place.

 

PS - I did my best to explore the question, but it is my first post. I imagine I'm not as well-read as some, so if you have differing opinions, I don't discredit them =]. Please respond!

 

Nagel_Moral Luck-2.pdf here is the file for Nagel's moral luck!

[Joatmon]

Whether you are going to be lucky or not tomorrow nobody can know. Whether you were lucky or not yesterday everyone can know!

[ecoli]

Perhaps something like a person goes to Vegas poor and destitute, then puts their entire life savings on a game of chance.

You then ask what do you call this, and the obvious answer is "stupid." You then ask what do you call it in those rare instances where one time out of a million the person actually wins something? Then, the answer could be luck.

 

This seems to be a huge problem in financial markets, as I see it. Day trading has been shown, statistically, to come down to random chance for most buys (as in, people who have reason x, y or z to buy stock tend not to do better than random chance would expect). But of course since you have a large number of people playing the markets, there's a distribution of successes. The winners are seen to be geniuses or have special insight and the losers are ignored. This is a pretty strong observational filter, where winners are viewed as especially smart and knowledgeable, even though its purely observation bias.

 

Of course, this doesn't hold for all financial decisions, but enough to be worrisome.