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Lumifer comments on Luck I: Finding White Swans - LessWrong
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Well, not to me. Luck for me means a favorable outcome of something over which I had no control. Not that many people consider themselves persistently lucky or unlucky -- for most luck varies.
You can rule out what? Given random variables, in hindsight some people will have been lucky and some will have been unlucky.
So which word will you use for winning the lottery, having your vacation end one day before the tsunami hit, or having been born a citizen of the sole remaining superpower?
I actually gave some thought to distinguishing between 'cosmic luck' - which would be what your describing - and 'local luck', but at the end of the day it didn't seem worth belaboring the point. Clearly, if a meteorite crashes through your car windshield and kills you, there just isn't much you can do about that. But given the vast uncertainty each of us faces, it seems reasonable to assume that there are better and worse ways of interacting with it. I would argue that Dr. Wiseman's work has gone part of the way toward verifying that this is the case. From what I can tell, the traits and habits characterizing both the lucky and unlucky groups were remarkably stable within-group. Seems unlikely to be a coincidence.
Let me suggest an experiment.
Replace all "lucky person" with "winner" and all "unlucky person" with "loser". As far as I can see, this is much closer to what is meant here. "Lucky" people don't get better random rolls, they just deal with life better -- and "unlucky" people suck at life, that's all.
Serendipitous ;)