OT: Does luck exist?
If it does, I'm one hell of an unlucky person.
Would this make it hereditary? My father has welcomed me into his world of gambling over the weekend. Specifically, poker.
Last night, we traveled to Talking Stick, a casino/resort of sorts located in Scottsdale, Arizona. He won some money, lost some money, but ended last night in "the green".
He thinks he is just a straight boss when it comes to both Hold Em' and Omaha High/Low, claiming that he would make upwards of $50k a year from poker alone if he were just MORE LUCKY.
Luck, to me, is intangible. It's happenstance. Probability. IMO, no one person could consistently remain luckier than another. It would be lucky to flip a coin and land heads ten times in a row, but I guarantee you it will happen eventually if you flip that coin long enough.
My father, on the other hand, cites a time when my grandfather was in Ohio stadium with a friend. They announced that someone's vehicle was on fire in the parking lot (for some reason) and my grandpa's friend turned to him and said: "You know that's my car".
So, he's unluckier than the tens of thousands of others in attendance? How many other people turned to someone and said THAT'S MY CAR ARRRRRGGG WHERE'S A POOP COOLER?!?!
To me man, it's just a hunch. Maybe his car was susceptible to explosion given it's condition. For the record, it was in fact his car that was on fire.
Nonetheless, what say you on luck?
Luck is humans creating a narrative to explain series of random happenstance.
Seems like an arrogant belief. There is far more to the universe than we'll ever come close to understanding. It probably doesn't fit our simplistic and blunt luck/unluck categories, but there's more to things than the alternate simplistic and blunt paradigm of raw deterministic probability. There does appear to be truth in the observation that "chance favors the prepared mind."
On an unrelated note: no, luck doesn't exist.
All hail statistics and probability!
Standard Deviation is as close as it gets
Well that's a bunch of bullshit.
I try to stay positive which is why I refuse to watch the news anymore.
Edit: My dad is not a Jedi.
Yayyyyy
Oh right, because the Fugitive Slave Act was just such a peach. Racist!
and so does/do flaming cars at OSU games. beautiful!
This was my go-to. However, in my dad's eyes, it's sort of a useless tautology.
Reminds of the old joke from R.E. Shay:
"Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember, it didn't work for the rabbit."
You are wise. I like this.
I invested all my wife's money into a Canadian railroad company that went bankrupt. I'm not that wise.
It could have been your money, and if you were lucky enough to get rid of the wife in the process, than you are the luckiest s.o.b. on the planet. I mean who wants a broke old-lady?
Yeah. He played for Stanford.
Luck is with the Colts.
Nah. If I make a 3/4 court shot in basketball, it's not luck; that's just what I'm capable of. Same with sinking a 50 foot putt.
If I wake up as Superman, it's what the universe wanted.
for your sake, I hope not. that would just be...what you're capable of
A philosophical debate on a sports message board could ONLY happen with Michigan fans. And I mean that as a high compliment.
#TheMichiganDifference
Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, Luck does exist!!!
Interesting. Would like to know why.
I am one of those lucky enough to know exactly why.
So I would use the word 'blessed'.
I have always held the view that luck is simply "probability taken personally", as it was once put to me. It always seems like there are a fair number of people that claim there is a predictability to the unpredictable, an error in reasoning which is sort of central to the gambler's fallacy.
I have also observed people who seem to believe in "luck" also erroneously try to causally connect events which occur in sequence, something which may or may not be true but when dealing with random events - like rolling dice in craps - your roll of a six did not cause your roll of the eight on your next turn.
I've also seen people attribute "luck" simply to things which are beyond their control, like a condition or place of birth, which always makes me wonder why one would use the word at all then except for its accepted literary value in such descriptions.
Luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation.
Perfectly put, BiSB, couldn't improve on it.
OP: in the case of your dad, I feel compelled to point out that in poker, even though it is certainly predominantly a game of skill, it is possible for negative (or positive) variance to play a profound role in your results. If everyone played an infinite number of hands skill would be the only thing separating them, but it has been shown that people can run below expectation for hundreds of thousands of hands at a time. Especially if your dad mostly plays live poker, where a person would be lucky (heh) to play a few hundred thousand hands in their entire lives, that can certainly be a factor.
However, such downswings are (obviously) very rare, striking only a few unfortunate souls far from the center of the bell curve. Taking the prior probabilities into account, it's much more likely that your dad is simply not as good as he thinks he is. In fact, taking into account the prior probabilities about what sorts of people complain about how much money they could be making at poker if they were luckier, I'd hazard to guess that he's actually a losing player, or perhaps breakeven at best.
How else do you explain a small Indiana catholic university developing into a college football power?
Rudy?
Michigan taught them how to play. That's why.
with ruthlessness than luck.
Good branding and historical anti-Catholic bigotry making American Catholics band together, which increased their available talent pool. If you're the #1 destination for like a fifth of a nation for 40 or so years, you're going to get most of the good Catholic players.
Dr. Susan Murphy's statistic class(es). Luck is another word for randomness.
Ask yourself one question. Did Notre Dame go to the 2012-2013 BCS National Championship game? There's your answer.