Are you lucky? How do you know?

[ChrisIB]

Does luck exist? or is it just some ego defense mechanism so we can say we are unlucky to justify a lack of success?

 

If it does exist does it even out, so if you've been unlucky for 30 years are you in for a cool 40 years?

 

Is luck of you're own doing, if you feel lucky does that create it or is it just another term for lack of confidence?

 

Are only people who think they are unlucky reading this thread?

[floyd77]

They have done studies on this and it seems it depends on how positive you are.

 

e.g. You have a bad car accident and you car is practically crushed and you break your leg.

 

A person who considers themselves lucky will think 'wow look at my car how lucky I was to only break my leg'

 

A person who considers themselves unlucky will think 'typical I'm so unlucky to have a car accident and break my leg'

 

I definitely believe you make your own luck - my actions will influence how 'lucky' I am. But then I have an internal locus of control. People with an external locus of control probably believe they can't affect how lucky they are. See here: http://www.psych.uncc.edu/pagoolka/LocusofControl-intro.html

[minnime]

lol if there is such word as luck please throw some my way and not bad got too much of that:hihi:

[ChrisIB]

They have done studies on this and it seems it depends on how positive you are.

So a person is not a reliable judge of whether they are lucky or not but I guess that means luck may still exist?

I think there was a book, Ringworld, where an alien race bred humans for luck then picked the luckiest for a mission (but they forgot the really lucky ones wouldn't show on their charts).

[Gerry]

I'm just lucky I guess. In the past three days I have had phone calls advising me that I have won considerable amounts of money. The first one told me I had won $1.5m, the second one told me that I had won $250,000 and the third one advised me that I had again won $1.5m. I think the first one and the third one were the same so maybe I'm not as lucky as I thought. In each case the people that I spoke to required some kind of payment up front, the first one wanted $1,900.00 which was later reduced to $200.00 by the third call. Needless to say, to my wifes dismay, I had a lot of fun with these calls and managed to keep them talking for about 20 minutes each call explaining to them that I really needed the money for a new car, a boat and a couple of new shotguns. I asked them to send the check rightaway by UPS promising to pay them up to $25,000.00 out of the winnings. Sorry to say they didn't fall for that one. In the end I told them that I didn't want the money after all but if they could get me a job with their company that would be great.

[eca06bcw]

Hiya, i'm a journalism student at the university of Sheffield and i'm doing a Radio piece on the philisophy of luck, if anyone would be willing to let me interview them on their ideas about luck it would be a massive help.

[Location114]

To be honest i believe some people are lucky and some people arent.

 

I realised i had no luck when at christmas i played bingo with the OHs family and everyone won BUT me.

 

Also when i was about 15 we were in a big group of about 20 people we all had a go on the raffle and again everyone won except me so that showed me i had no luck.

 

But then in balance ive been in a few situation where anyone who wasnt blessed with some sort of luck would have been dead so to be honest i think really it depends on things not sure what things like.