Luck is like Magic...

A long time ago, people believed in magic. Heck, people probably still believe in magic nowadays. The thing is is that whenever someone didn't understand something, they considered it a form of magic or something supernatural.

To me, magic is a term humans came up with to quash their supposed fear of the unknown. It's human nature to fear the unknown. What we see is basically a world of chaos and this scares us. In order to bring order to chaos, this is why we look for patterns. Don't believe me? Why do you think we see things like bunnies and hearts and faces in clouds even though they're basically formless anomalies? If you've never seen a cloud before, it would obviously look like a strange and unknown object. Since we don't really like things that seem strange and unknown, this is why we seem to subconsciously associate a familiar object with it.

To me, luck is nothing more than magic, a term we refer to to explain away the supposedly unexplainable.

Let's say you're crossing the street on a crosswalk and a car runs a red light and hits you and you're an invalid for life. Most people would consider you to have been extremely unlucky to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Let's say you're crossing the street on a crosswalk and a car runs a red light but swerves at the last second and narrowly misses you. Most people would consider you to have had luck on your side to not have been hit.

Here's the question, how the hell can luck be a factor in you not getting hit? It's actually really easy to debunk the concept of luck. Unfortunately, based on our own abilities, it's highly unlikely to totally convince people that luck is some bullshit term.

I did an experiment the other day with a friend.

Me: Pick a number between 1 and 3
Friend: Okay.
Me: Lemme guess. The number is 2.
Friend: Right.
Me: Wow, this is so mind-blowing
Friend: What do you mean?
Me: Don't you realize it? The probability of me getting the correct number is 1 outta infinity. There are an infinite amount of possibilities between 1 and 3 and I managed to accurately predict the right number.
Friend: It was just a lucky guess
Me: Wow, I must be the luckiest person to have ever existed then. I couldn't have had more odds stacked against me than one outta infinity.

Considering I was able to accurately predict a number someone would choose out of infinite possibilities, that can lead one to wonder if such thing as Free Will exists but that's not the focus of this rant. Anyway, when you are able to factor in many variables for a situation, the probability of a certain outcome occurring increases. Well, what's to say that that situation isn't a good example of my having taking into consideration several variables to determine a certain outcome where luck had nothing to do with it? Here's another example.

Okay, picture this scenario. There are seven suitcases in front of you. Six of those suitcases carry a bomb that will kill you. You need to choose the one suitcase that doesn't contain the bomb in order to live. Now, assuming that you don't wanna die, I'm pretty sure you don't want to be in such a scenario. The odds of you choosing the right suitcase is one out of seven.

Let's pretend you know someone that won the lottery. Considering the chances of winning the lottery is extremely small, so small that you stand a better chance of getting hit by lightning, it's not unlikely that people would consider a lotto winner very lucky.

Given your current situation, and the general belief that luck isn't fleeting, perhaps you should let the lotto winner choose, right? Afterall, if he has luck on his side, and was able to beat the odds and win the lotto, beating the one in seven odds of picking the right suitcase should be a piece of cake.

Now, picture you having a bomb sniffing dog by your side capable of sniffing out bombs. Which one would your rather have by your side helping you make your decision, the lotto winner or the bomb sniffing dog? The decision should be pretty obvious. However, if you actually analyze the situation, it becomes more apparent.

If you factor in that bombs can usually be sniffed out by a trained dog, you raise your chances of getting the right suitcase astronomically. Do you realize this? If you take into consideration ONE factor to your situation, the fact that bomb sniffing dogs can usually sniff out the trace elements that make up a bomb, you should realize that luck is bullshit factor that should never even be considered.

The problem is that we are human and are very limited in our human capabilities. There is only so much we can calculate and take into consideration before all those factors overwhelm us. Just because we did not bother to analyze the contributing factors that led to a favorable results shouldn't mean we should disregard it as luck.

Here's the question, if you let the lotto winner choose a suitcase for you and you survive, then it's lotto winner's luck that kept you alive. If you use a bomb sniffing dog to choose the right suitcase and your survive, how come it's no longer considered luck? This should put things in perspective.

Here's another example. If I'm asked to pick a side for a coin toss, I usually pick tails. Okay, let's say it lands tails. Do you think I'm lucky? Some might actually say so. However, these people fail to realize that I actually take into consideration other factors in my decision. For instance, the head side of a coin is usually slightly heavier than the tails side, which increases the chances of it landing heads-side down/tails-side up. Granted, the increased chance is so astronomically small that it's basically a non-issue, but it's still there nonetheless. For people to say that luck is what caused the coin to land tails-side up is to deny me the acknowledgment that I took into consideration a factor that they probably never considered.

I'm the same with multiple choice tests. I'm aware of human psychology and the way a professor or teacher usually thinks. For instance, if I have no idea what an answer is, I would usually pick answers that have words like 'usually' or 'probably' in it because I'm aware that most people don't like the use of absolute words like 'always' or 'never'. Heck, look at my rant and you will see that I rarely use absolute words. Another factor is that I'm aware instructors tend to add extra adjectives and phrases to the right answers which, in turn, tend to make the answers actually longer than they need to be word-wise. It's human nature to dwell on what they believe is right than over something they know to be wrong, which usually leads to them adding extra adjectives and phrases to an answer. Those are just two factors that could attribute to my choosing a multiple choice. If I get one of them right based on those factors, that's not luck, that's my using my brain and factoring human psychology and statistics in increasing the probability that I will get the right answer. Saying I was lucky is denying that I took in those factors in my decision making.

It basically applies for the bomb in the suitcase scenario. Let's say we survive the scenario through the means of the lotto winner and the bomb sniffing dog. To say that luck is the main attribute to both results is basically equivalent to denying the consideration that bombs give off trace elements that dogs can detect by smell. If luck really existed, then that means the dogs sniffing ability had NOTHING to do with the result.

Luck is kinda like a lazy-man's explanation of probability. Heck, if you believe in luck as a real entity, explain how I was able to pick out the correct number out of an infinite possibility? To be able to do what I did is almost mathematically impossible. I can also guarantee you that this 'luck' of mine isn't fleeting and is here to stay because I'm pretty sure I can recreate this seemingly impossible 'luck' again by asking someone the same question and picking the number 2 again.

Pretend that maybe, just maybe, it isn't luck. Maybe I was able to take into consideration certain factors that would raise the probability that I would get the right answer. If you ask anyone for a number, they tend to think in whole numbers. Ask a person to count from 1-10 and they'll usually go "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10". Has it occurred to you that I might have taken this general observation into consideration in determining the result? All I did was take into consideration that the first whole number after 1 was the number 2 and the likely result someone, a normal person that tend to think in whole numbers just like everyone else, would most likely choose. That ONE factor I took into consideration seemed to have been enough to indicate that 'luck' had nothing to do with my supposedly impossible odds of getting the right number.

Some might argue that luck is unexplainable. I guess that's a perfectly good enough counter argument. Afterall, if luck can't be explained, be it its intricacy being that complex and our lack of ability to understand it, then there's no need to try and convince me otherwise. I guess I'll have to take your word for it.

To me, referring to luck as the attributing reason behind certain results is the denial of all other factors. To me, there is no such thing as luck. Granted, people might argue that there is some factor of uncertainty in our universe and bring to light the uncertainty principle and that that could be a good attribute to explain luck. However, from my point of view, even though an event is 99.99% likely to happen and there is that .01% chance the outcome will be different, I would much rather bet the farm on the 99.99% that luck doesn't exist than the .01% uncertainity principle that indicates it does.

Granted, if you've met me, you can easily point out my hypocrisy since I actually use the word 'luck' all the time (ie: Yeah, I'm gonna go home with her tonight. I hope I get lucky) However, to me, it's more of a figure of speech than an actually belief. It's like hearing an Atheist say 'Goddamn'. It's still a sense of hypocrisy though, but the only explanation I have against it is that I've been exposed to this concept of 'luck' to such a degree that I'll never be able to remove its notion from my actual way of thinking. It has become such an embedded aspect of my life that it actually requires effort to disregard what I've been taught. I'm sure I'm not the only one like that. Afterall, some of us would cringe at the thought of eating bugs as a snack even though there is plenty of evidence that point out that they're perfectly edible. It's been instilled upon me the notion that eating bugs would be disgusting that I'd probably have to actively tell myself that that is not the case in order to eat a bug.

If you believe in luck, you might as well believe in magic.

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