Luck is Bullshit

Halley summarizes Richard Wiseman on luck. My take? Luck is bullshit.

Lucky people are skilled at creating, noticing, and acting upon chance opportunities. They do this in various ways, which include building and maintaining a strong network, adopting a relaxed attitude to life, and being open to new experiences.

This is backwards: it's by increasing and strengthening one's network that one enhances one's chances (or probabilities) at success. The casinos in Nevada and elsewhere make a killing on people who think that luck has something to do with their winnings, when it's a setup: the house always wins. Might as well flush your money down the toilet. (Same goes for the lottery, but even more so.)

Lucky people make effective decisions by listening to their intuition and gut feelings. They also take steps to actively boost their intuitive abilities -- for example, by meditating and clearing their mind of other thoughts.

Uh huh, and while you're at it, ignore outside evidence, because that has nothing to do with reality. Focus on unscientific feelings and random guesses, and you'll do fine. Right.

Lucky people are certain that the future will be bright. Over time, that expectation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because it helps lucky people persist in the face of failure and positively shapes their interactions with other people.

No, that's describing optimism. That's just a fancy way of saying that you're optimism is contagious. No shit. Really?

Lucky people employ various psychological techniques to cope with, and even thrive upon, the ill fortune that comes their way. For example, they spontaneously imagine how things could have been worse, they don't dwell on the ill fortune, and they take control of the situation.

I do that too: I haven't kissed a girl in 7+ years (!), and how do I cope? I look at people who have it worse off than me. Innumerable are the times that I've told someone of my woe, and they say, as if they think it helps, "well, if it makes you feel any better, I'm worse off." The same problem affects both strategies, though. Both actually make me feel worse about myself! It tells me that as bad as my situation is at any given moment, there's still room to sink further.

If the above quoted passage is accurate in anyway, I thrive in a sense that some people visit this weblog solely because of the "despair", as one friend put it. So the lower I sink, the higher my hitcount. As Pinder puts it, "almost as bad as when good bloggers get puppies is when sad bloggers become happy."