We understand variance, we understand distributions - normal, binomial, poisson, t-distribution, chi-squared, and so on - and we can model with some confidence how to take action to select where we sit in some distributions. For example, not smoking and having an active and healthy lifestyle moves you in the distribution of people likely to get lung cancer by a certain age. You are "choosing your own luck" to some degree. It's probabilistic, not certain, but it fits a known model.
And then there are those situations where the distributions - and therefore the variance, i.e. the luck - is less knowable. The best tool we have for this right now is Bayesian statistics: here's what I know right now, and I will update my understanding of the probabilities as new information becomes available to me.
So, yes, we should think about luck a little differently. It's not fate, it is expression of variance within a known or unknown distribution, and we can do more to understand it. This is more than most people do, and it feels more actionable and of higher utility than the examples given in the article.
For example, not smoking and having an active and healthy lifestyle moves you in the distribution of people likely to get lung cancer by a certain age. You are "choosing your own luck" to some degree. It's probabilistic, not certain, but it fits a known model.
I forget where I read it but some time back I came across this idea of measuring “luck” as something akin to radiation doses. I think the author used the term “mililucks”. Their argument was that if it takes X amount of luck to get married/get a promotion/have a healthy life/etc, then one should examine which of those things they want, and then examine how many “mililucks” any given choice you have will give you towards that goal. There’s still no guarantee, just like a given dose of radiation isn’t a guarantee of getting sick, but a house party might contribute 200 mililucks towards your goal of finding a romantic partner, but since the party also has lots of alcohol and greasy food, maybe only 1-2 mililucks towards your healthy life.
You don’t get to decide the ultimate outcome and you don’t get to even know for sure whether you’re really doing to right thing, but you can reasonably see how going to a lot of house parties increases the chances of you lucking into a romantic partnership, while doing little to increase your chances of a healthy life style. In this way you “make your own luck”, simply by increasing the number of chances you have to “get lucky” in any given direction.
The caveat of course is that not everyone is starting from the same baseline of luck. If you grow up in a safe area you are much more likely to not get mugged than in you grow up in a crime ridden area. But in both areas “nothing good happens after midnight” is probably a worthwhile approach to increasing your “luck” with regards to being mugged, and probably has the same number of “mililucks” regardless
I think this matches to a parabola that tracks with age. Early on you can't do much because you don't know shit. As you gain wisdom and experience you can influence it significantly but as your age increases it falls off because it is what it is at that point.
It's a cute model to write or read about, but I strongly encourage people not go do this to themselves -- at least not on this scale.
A life lived lived through such brainy analysis of small things is a recipe for anxiety and depression. For all the millilucks towards this or that you might attribute to your house party, you've already allotted decilucks to your chances of a life mired in your own head and its imaginings.
As much as you can, just trust yourself, talk to people, trust that you can roll with consquences as they come, and save the deep analysis for things of much greater consequences and much lesser frequency.
As much as you can, just trust yourself, talk to people, trust that you can roll with consquences as they come, and save the deep analysis for things of much greater consequences and much lesser frequency.
If I implied this was supposed to be a "deep analysis" sort of thing, that was a failing on my part. The original that I read (and what I mean to convey) was less about building some deep pursuit of perfection, but more putting some thought and weight behind the "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take" aphorism. It's wasn't about analyzing the min maxed path to your romantic partner, or huge masses of muscle. Instead it's about (to couch it in the language of pop-psychology) being mindful about the choices you make with respect to what you actually want. If you also want to be "lucky", well you can't control the starting luck, but you can certainly "make" some of your own luck by engaging in activities that have higher "mililuck" values for those goals. If you imagine that it takes 300 "lucks" to achieve a given goal and you are "unlucky", the question you have to ask yourself is whether you believe that you're unlucky, but at 299 "lucks" so it doesn't really matter what you do, you'll cross that line soon, or if you're unlucky and you have 50 lucks and it's going to take you a long while to get there. Since you can't know, and you can't know how many "mililucks" any given action/event actually gave you, the best thing you can do is make choices that are more likely to put you in a place where you can be lucky.
This is what made me finally accept soccer as a viable sport. Even though there isn’t a defined set of moves you can execute well that will lead to a goal regularly, their is a wave of probability of scoring that the better team capitalizes on… I still don’t appreciate all the soccer in my TikTok feed. but oh well…
"It's not fate, it is expression of variance within a known or unknown distribution, and we can do more to understand it" --
In the end, you have fate within a certain variance. Generally speaking, it is better to know that you have 1 chance in 10 than 1 in I don't know how many chances, but still getting one outcome or the other is what we call “fate” or unexplainable/unpredictable/unforeseeable circumstances.
A probabilistic/statistical view of life that goes beyond the simpler but tremendously wrong dichotomous view is one of the best tools one can use to make life better for oneself and more readable in general.
Comments
A mathematical model for luck is variance.
We understand variance, we understand distributions - normal, binomial, poisson, t-distribution, chi-squared, and so on - and we can model with some confidence how to take action to select where we sit in some distributions. For example, not smoking and having an active and healthy lifestyle moves you in the distribution of people likely to get lung cancer by a certain age. You are "choosing your own luck" to some degree. It's probabilistic, not certain, but it fits a known model.
And then there are those situations where the distributions - and therefore the variance, i.e. the luck - is less knowable. The best tool we have for this right now is Bayesian statistics: here's what I know right now, and I will update my understanding of the probabilities as new information becomes available to me.
So, yes, we should think about luck a little differently. It's not fate, it is expression of variance within a known or unknown distribution, and we can do more to understand it. This is more than most people do, and it feels more actionable and of higher utility than the examples given in the article.
I forget where I read it but some time back I came across this idea of measuring “luck” as something akin to radiation doses. I think the author used the term “mililucks”. Their argument was that if it takes X amount of luck to get married/get a promotion/have a healthy life/etc, then one should examine which of those things they want, and then examine how many “mililucks” any given choice you have will give you towards that goal. There’s still no guarantee, just like a given dose of radiation isn’t a guarantee of getting sick, but a house party might contribute 200 mililucks towards your goal of finding a romantic partner, but since the party also has lots of alcohol and greasy food, maybe only 1-2 mililucks towards your healthy life.
You don’t get to decide the ultimate outcome and you don’t get to even know for sure whether you’re really doing to right thing, but you can reasonably see how going to a lot of house parties increases the chances of you lucking into a romantic partnership, while doing little to increase your chances of a healthy life style. In this way you “make your own luck”, simply by increasing the number of chances you have to “get lucky” in any given direction.
The caveat of course is that not everyone is starting from the same baseline of luck. If you grow up in a safe area you are much more likely to not get mugged than in you grow up in a crime ridden area. But in both areas “nothing good happens after midnight” is probably a worthwhile approach to increasing your “luck” with regards to being mugged, and probably has the same number of “mililucks” regardless
Maybe you're thinking of "micromarriages"? [0]
[0] https://colah.github.io/personal/micromarriages/
I think this matches to a parabola that tracks with age. Early on you can't do much because you don't know shit. As you gain wisdom and experience you can influence it significantly but as your age increases it falls off because it is what it is at that point.
It's a cute model to write or read about, but I strongly encourage people not go do this to themselves -- at least not on this scale.
A life lived lived through such brainy analysis of small things is a recipe for anxiety and depression. For all the millilucks towards this or that you might attribute to your house party, you've already allotted decilucks to your chances of a life mired in your own head and its imaginings.
As much as you can, just trust yourself, talk to people, trust that you can roll with consquences as they come, and save the deep analysis for things of much greater consequences and much lesser frequency.
If I implied this was supposed to be a "deep analysis" sort of thing, that was a failing on my part. The original that I read (and what I mean to convey) was less about building some deep pursuit of perfection, but more putting some thought and weight behind the "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take" aphorism. It's wasn't about analyzing the min maxed path to your romantic partner, or huge masses of muscle. Instead it's about (to couch it in the language of pop-psychology) being mindful about the choices you make with respect to what you actually want. If you also want to be "lucky", well you can't control the starting luck, but you can certainly "make" some of your own luck by engaging in activities that have higher "mililuck" values for those goals. If you imagine that it takes 300 "lucks" to achieve a given goal and you are "unlucky", the question you have to ask yourself is whether you believe that you're unlucky, but at 299 "lucks" so it doesn't really matter what you do, you'll cross that line soon, or if you're unlucky and you have 50 lucks and it's going to take you a long while to get there. Since you can't know, and you can't know how many "mililucks" any given action/event actually gave you, the best thing you can do is make choices that are more likely to put you in a place where you can be lucky.
This is what made me finally accept soccer as a viable sport. Even though there isn’t a defined set of moves you can execute well that will lead to a goal regularly, their is a wave of probability of scoring that the better team capitalizes on… I still don’t appreciate all the soccer in my TikTok feed. but oh well…
I like this.
"It's not fate, it is expression of variance within a known or unknown distribution, and we can do more to understand it" --
In the end, you have fate within a certain variance. Generally speaking, it is better to know that you have 1 chance in 10 than 1 in I don't know how many chances, but still getting one outcome or the other is what we call “fate” or unexplainable/unpredictable/unforeseeable circumstances.
A probabilistic/statistical view of life that goes beyond the simpler but tremendously wrong dichotomous view is one of the best tools one can use to make life better for oneself and more readable in general.