Are you feeling lucky, punk?

subotic's luck has run out says:

12:49pm | 26/09/12

So SAm, what do you call so-called “good luck” when you have it?

A fortuitous set of preferred circumstances? Sweet baby Elvis smiling down upon me? The will of Allah? Karma?

Good grief….

SAm says:

01:09pm | 26/09/12

hehe well yes ‘luck’ is the word us humans have given to something that happens statistically more than usual. I dont think theres anything to it, purely chance

Al says:

01:18pm | 26/09/12

subotic - how about ‘chance’? Can refer to the variations that occur and what people describe as ‘good luck’ or ‘bad luck’ and does not try to imbue any particular quality to it.

Can’t realy use the term probability though.

marley says:

06:44pm | 26/09/12

Nah, even the sane and rational need to have a bit of fantasy in their lives.  Doesn’t mean they believe it, but they (we) can dream.

Scotchfinger says:

03:03pm | 26/09/12

just remember to croon ‘take on meeee…. take me oooooonnnn!’

Tim the Toolman says:

03:10pm | 26/09/12

“It isn’t always perception, there are times when the universe is more favorable than others.”

Evidence?  Perhaps you somehow got hold of some albino body parts on those lucky days?  Belief in the irrational is NOT harmless, no matter how small the belief.  It fosters a lack of critical thinking that leads to things like this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1215949/The-albino-tribe-butchered-feed-gruesome-trade-magical-body-parts.html

“Branded a ‘ghost’ on account of her striking white skin, Mariam Emmanuel had been chased through her African village, in a remote corner of Tanzania, by a bloodthirsty mob.

Exhausted and terrified, the five-year-old slumped in the dust at the end of an alley. She whimpered and cowered while the adults surrounded her and sharpened their knives and machetes.

Then they set to work, butchering her and dividing up her remains between themselves.”

Sam says:

03:55pm | 26/09/12

“Belief in the irrational is NOT harmless”

Whatever, you believe what you want, I have lucky runs.

Did you want to post about bunny-rabbits without feet or shoeless horses next?

St. Michael says:

04:03pm | 26/09/12

““Thermodynamic miracles… events with odds against so astronomical they’re effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing.  And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter… Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold… that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.

But…if me, my birth, if that’s a thermodynamic miracle… I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!.

Yes. Anybody in the world. ..But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget… I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another’s vantage point. As if new, it may still take our breath away. Come…dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes… and let’s go home.”

—Dr. Manhattan and the Silk Spectre, Watchmen, Alan Moore.

Scotchfinger says:

04:36pm | 26/09/12

Tim, there is a bit of a gulf between black africans slaughtering albinos for money, and a child searching for a four-leaf clover. Your story, horrific as it is, has nothing to do with the sort of issues discussed in this post. But well done for not bringing medieval Christian persecution into the equation, must have been a struggle for you.

Tim the Toolman says:

04:48pm | 26/09/12

“Did you want to post about bunny-rabbits without feet or shoeless horses next?”

Do you have links indicating incidents of people deliberately butchering rabbits in order to abscond with their feet? 

“I have lucky runs.”

You have subjectively connected events to which you ascribe a non-existent connection in order to write an internal narrative.

“so crowded with these miracles”

It is immeasurably more crowded with the unrealised possibilities.  I’ve little doubt you’re more than familiar with the anthropic principle, Scotch

Scotchfinger says:

04:54pm | 26/09/12

@St Michael, sounds like Dr Manhattan is ignorant of basic evolutionary and genetic science, also he is conflating his physics with his metaphysics. What does he have a doctorate in? American Literature?

St. Michael says:

07:18pm | 26/09/12

Scotchfinger, when you’re sufficiently cultured to have read “Watchmen”, come back and talk to me.

Dman says:

05:00pm | 26/09/12

^ Was a response to Sam’s comment above.

Sam says:

05:06pm | 26/09/12

” You have periods where things go your way, and periods where things don’t.”

People call that luck.

Dman says:

05:54pm | 26/09/12

“People call that luck”.

Ignorant people call that luck. I call it normal life. Calling it luck implies that there is some form of outside force influencing the outcomes of events. Rational people recognise that there will always be times when good things happen to you, and times when bad things happen to you. Luck has nothing to do with it.