What is "Luck"

[chris p bacon]

I've been thinking about this since I made a post yesterday which seemed to upset some people. here is the post

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/116010-shameful-treatment-of-rough-sleepers/page-2&do=findComment&comment=2474072

 

Now my thinking is that there is no such thing as "luck",  circumstance and opportunity could play a part but I think that there is a reason for things happening and that every "Lucky" thing that happens to someone can easily be explained with facts.

 

Here is an example -  we have a cleaner, a lovely lady who's been with us for 20+ years, she has a friend who she says is "lucky", I ask why and she says she always wins at Bingo, she wins on average twice as many times as her friends and they think she has luck on her side. A bit more questioning and you find that she buys 5 Bingo cards whereas our cleaner only buys 2, I try and explain that she has effectively 2 1/2 times the chance of winning as she has more cards but it falls on deaf ears.

 

Why is it that people prefer to think there is some kind of altrustic force at work.?

 

 

Hopefully so no one mentions it I find that when people say someone is "Lucky" to receive an inheritance it does get under my skin. Quite why the death of a parent is seen by some as luck amazes me.

[Derekstuart]

There are people who will crawl out of aircraft wreckage and declare themselves lucky. There are people who survive multiple aircraft crashes and declare themselves VERY lucky.

 

Would you really call them lucky? I wouldn't. I would call those who flew on aircraft that landed intact to be far more prone to good luck. But their perception is otherwise.

[Horsetan]

.... my thinking is that there is no such thing as "luck",  circumstance and opportunity could play a part but I think that there is a reason for things happening and that every "Lucky" thing that happens to someone can easily be explained with facts.....

 

Aren't you the lucky one.

[Arthur]

 

Life isn't fair and never will be. Luck, or bad luck, are just phrases to explain those events which are, absolutely, beyond your control.

 

 

Anything to do with your birth for example. Born healthy or with some appalling genetic disease, born clever or not, athletic or not, born in some war torn hell hole or Belgravia, rich parents or poor parents, good parents or bad parents etc, etc. All of these things can give you a good start or not. Given the choice I'd choose, born healthy, clever, sporty in Belgravia to loaded parents who doted on me. Didn't have any choice but was fortunate to have three of them.

 

What happens after that is more in your control and you can make, or enhance your 'luck' through the right attitude and choices.

 

As for inheritance. I see what you mean but we all (unless you die first) suffer the loss of our parents. I'd say that if, when they go, they leave you a shedload, that's lucky/fortunate/life. If that inheritance included a house your parents bought for peanuts in an area where prices have since gone crazy that is luck, they could not possibly have foreseen that. From the tragic, but inevitable loss of your parents, an experience which affects everybody, you received something which you didn't earn. Good luck to you I say.

 

Here's an experience of mine.

 

My first wife died in 1999, lymphoma. (Please, no friendly/supportives) We had an endowment mortgage which included life cover so the mortgage was paid off. Bit of luck from tragedy. You might say it wasn't luck because I had the foresight to have an endowment mortgage yet a few years later endowment returns were so poor they were not covering the mortgage principal and were a bad mortgage choice. Just the maelstrom of life.

 

So, yes, many things totally outside your control can have significant effects on your life, call it luck or whatever. How you respond to those challenges is down to you.

 

 

Which reminds me, I must get a Euromillions ticket.....

 

 

.

[Horsetan]

..... many things totally outside your control can have significant effects on your life, call it luck or whatever. How you respond to those challenges is down to you.

 

 

Which reminds me, I must get a Euromillions ticket.....

 

[Coppercap]

There are people who will crawl out of aircraft wreckage and declare themselves lucky. There are people who s,urvive multiple aircraft crashes and declare themselves VERY lucky.

 

Would you really call them lucky? I wouldn't. I would call those who flew on aircraft that landed intact to be far more prone to good luck. But their perception is otherwise.

I'd have said those who survived multiple aircraft crashes were distinctly un-lucky - for being on the aircraft in the first place! Fortunate definitely, for being a survivor each time, if others were not.

[Fat Controller]

It is reported that, when Napoleon was offered a choice of potential candidates for promotion to general, he would ask 'Is he lucky?' about each. This wasn't a question about whether to trust him with the Mess Funds to go to the races, but rather about how he reacted to changes and opportunities.

[Fat Controller]

I'd have said those who survived multiple aircraft crashes were distinctly un-lucky - for being on the aircraft in the first place! Fortunate definitely, for being a survivor each time, if others were not.

An instance from my family history. In 1950, my father's brother-in-laws (from his first marriage) had tickets to see Ireland play Wales in Dublin, and asked dad if he'd like to come along. He said he couldn't come, as he was about to marry my mother, and had to watch the pennies. Thus Gwyn and Handel went without him, and, on the return trip, took the two rearward-facing seats that no-one else wanted. The 'plane crashed just as it was about to land at Llandow; 80 died, largely through being thrown forward (there was no fire). Gwyn and Handel survived, along with someone who was in the toilet on impact. Had dad gone along, they wouldn't have been in those seats, and I wouldn't be typing this now.

http://home.bt.com/news/uk-news/march-12-1950-llandow-air-disaster-80-killed-as-rugby-fans-plane-crashes-in-wales-11363967355517

[Happy Hippo]

Good luck is getting a real bargain on a loco required for the club layout on ebay.

 

Bad luck is finding you were bidding against another club member with similar plans.

[royaloak]

I used to work on the buses and a colleague was telling me about her friend (who is a train driver) had slid through a station, I asked which station and stock was involved so she gave him a call, during the call I shouted out 'have you got any jobs going' to which he replied 'yes, do you want an application form', I replied yes, 8 months later I was a guard and 18 months after that I was driving trains for a living, I call that luck because everything dropped into place for it to work.

[royaloak]

Good luck is getting a real bargain on a loco required for the club layout on ebay.

 

Bad luck is finding you were bidding against another club member with similar plans.

Similarly I was bidding on an item which I eventually won, then found out the seller was a good friend of mine!

[Titan]

My girlfriend is a model, and a film star (and not a figment of my imagination!)

 

 

Met her for the first time on Christmas day.

 

 

I found her on Tinder.

 

 

Make of that what you will....

[Ian J.]

Luck is the randomness inherent in what it is to be a living thing. Good luck and bad luck are just the two different faces of the same coin. There are things we as sentient beings can do to to try and improve the probabilities of good luck happening rather than bad, but there are limits.

 

If I have £1000 spare each week, I can throw that at the lottery and buy lots of tickets. Given time I might 'luck out' and hit one of the higher prizes. But equally I could do that and find out that people who can afford to buy just one ticket a week get to win, while I might've spent £1000s and not won. So just because I have money doesn't mean I can force a win, I can only improve my chances.

 

The same is true of who you are born to, and where. I can do some things to improve my state of being if it's a 'bad' start, and if, as is likely, I'm limited in those things I might 'luck out', but I'll probably not get very far (this is borne out by various life histories I've read and heard about). If I have a 'good' start then I'm likely to have more chances to try things, but that's probably mainly because I'd have more other people to connect to who already have influence somewhere in the world I'm born into. In that sense, having a pre-built network of contacts inherited from their family is probably the best lucky start anyone can have as it opens doors. However, even if such doors are open it still takes the individual to make a choice to go through them, and in that sense they make their own luck, good or bad (something someone who doesn't have that network cannot make happen and has to find a way to make it - which isn't always possible).

[Derekstuart]

Hurrah! There IS a way out of this bl00dy industry then? I thought the only way was retirement or murder, prison, parole, reform.

I used to work on the buses and a colleague was telling me about her friend (who is a train driver) had slid through a station, I asked which station and stock was involved so she gave him a call, during the call I shouted out 'have you got any jobs going' to which he replied 'yes, do you want an application form', I replied yes, 8 months later I was a guard and 18 months after that I was driving trains for a living, I call that luck because everything dropped into place for it to work.

[Rugd1022]

Did somebody say 'Lucky'...?

 

 

Luck or whatever we like to call it certainly has come into play in my experience, more a case of being in the right place at the right time I suppose, when a chum of mine turned down a place on a railway YTS course in 1982 in favour of an apprenticeship with GEC, he offered it to me when I bumped into him in town, two hours later I had my name down with British Rail and rest, as they say, is a mystery...!

 

 

 

 

[Horsetan]

....two hours later I had my name down with British Rail and rest, as they say, is a mystery hysterical...!

 

There.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

... Luck, or bad luck, are just phrases to explain those events which are, absolutely, beyond your control...

 

 

 I believe there are many people uncomfortable with this truth.

 

I landed what was easily my most advantageous career move during a major corporate shake out/reshuffle event, through the guy appointing being careless. Only found out after he had retired, and I had long moved on as well. He had made the correct choice of a deputy, but quite literally as he departed for a foreign assignment had told HR verbally 'I'll have the bearded guy'. What he had failed to recall was that he had interviewed two bearded guys, and guess what; I was the one well known to the HR group handling the appointment, thanks to a very unpleasant assignment which had seen me frequently working with them.

 

The person who should have been appointed was made redundant, and never subsequently managed to find as good a career position as he had previously enjoyed.

[Horsetan]

 ...he had interviewed two bearded guys, and guess what; I was the one well known to the HR group handling the appointment, thanks to a very unpleasant assignment which had seen me frequently working with them....

 

Did you get your revenge in the years following?

[Dunsignalling]

Luck is

 

1. Being in the right place at the right time.

 

2. Spotting and acting on opportunities that arise before it's too late.

 

John

[Coppercap]

My girlfriend is a model, and a film star (and not a figment of my imagination!)

 

 

Met her for the first time on Christmas day.

 

 

I found her on Tinder.

 

 

Make of that what you will....

As we often ask on here: "pictures please!"

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Did you get your revenge in the years following?

 There was nothing to justify anything of the sort, and quite unexpectedly (to me at least) the 'unpleasant assignment' won me something of a reputation among those who were in a position to hand out future favours. Luck again?

[TheSignalEngineer]

I was walking along New Street one afternoon to catch my train from Moor Street when I bumped into a former boss. We chatted about what was going on and the new office he was involved in. He said he was looking for a couple of people to lead projects, the jobs are being advertised next week, make sure you get your application in. Two months later I was back working for him again on a bigger salary for shorter hours..

[Nearholmer]

"Luck" is a hindsight thing, relating to the outcomes of matters over which the individual had no control.

 

Anyone who believes that past luck is a guide to future luck is kidding themselves (or knowingly kidding others).

 

However, past luck (good or bad) can be a heavy determinant of future outcomes.

 

Take a man of 60. If he was lucky enough to be born into a prosperous family, and have a secure upbringing, he is now, at age 60, likely to survive longer than his next door neighbour, also aged 60, who was unlucky enough to be born into poverty, and had to struggle very hard for many years. The luck is in the past, and it is casting a long light or shade.

 

But, the past luck doesn't determine future luck. The man born into prosperity might trip over a runaway dog tomorrow, and quickly perish from his injuries; the day after, the man born into poverty might trip on his shoelace, and fall into the arms of the woman who turns out to be his dream-match, who he would never have met but for the errant lace.

 

Kevin

[royaloak]

As we often ask on here: "pictures please!"

I have probably seen some of her 'films'! 

[ian]

 The man born into prosperity might trip over a runaway dog tomorrow, and quickly perish from his injuries; the day after, the man born into poverty might trip on his shoelace, and fall into the arms of the woman who turns out to be his dream-match, who he would never have met but for the errant lace.

Would that be the widow of the chap who tripped over the dog?