muflax comments on The Strangest Thing An AI Could Tell You - Less Wrong

81 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 July 2009 02:27AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 31 January 2011 08:28:01PM 11 points [-]

I sort of believe the "luck" thing already.

I don't know of anyone who's luckier than average in a strict test (rolling a die), but there is such a thing as the vague ability to have things go well for you no matter what, even when there's no obvious skill or merit driving it. People call that being a "golden boy" or "living a charmed life." I think that this is really a matter of some subtle, unnamed skill or instinct for leaning towards good outcomes and away from bad ones, something so hard to pinpoint that it doesn't even look like a skill. I suspect it's a personal quality, not just a result of arbitrary circumstances; but sometimes people are "lucky" in a way that seems unexplainable by personal characteristics alone.

I am one of those lucky people, to an eerie degree. I once believed in Divine Providence because it seemed so obvious in my own, preternaturally golden, life. (One example of many: I am unusually healthy, immune to injury, and pain-free, to a degree that has astonished people I know. I have recovered fully from a 104-degree fever in four hours. I had my first headache at the age of 22.) If an AI told me there was a systematic explanation for my luck I would believe it. I also have an acquaintance who's lucky in a different way: he has an uncanny record of surviving near death experiences.

Comment author: [deleted] 31 January 2011 10:31:09PM 3 points [-]

Ha! I totally see where you are coming from. I have believed in fate for reasons very similar to this. It was just too eerie how life seemed to provide me exactly with what was best for me at optimal times. Kinda like I'm a player character in this simulation.

I'm currently mostly agnostic about it and accept confirmation bias / being Wrong Genre Savvy as most likely explanations, but if the AI told me I really was lucky or the universe (partially) built around me, I'd shout, "I knew it!".