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Comment on Should we be thinking about luck differently?parent

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It's hard to say how serious you are, but this is a good example of casual notions of "luck".

Aircraft are often struck by lightning. US airlines (for example) are very safe statistically. Looking at the probabilities, I would suggest that you can optimise your actuarial projection by insisting on sitting in centre-rear position in all passenger vehicles.

From the fine article:

Of course, we wouldn’t be here to muse on our good fortune if this chain of events had not occurred [...] But perhaps the fragility of this chain should induce some humility about our self-importance.

If we hope for humility, maybe we also need to hope for the right kind of humility. We need to understand that the metaphor of a "chain of events" implies some purposeful causation. However we came to be was an accident; where we are going depends on our ingenuity and ability to reason ourselves out of the mud and pathology.

optimise your actuarial projection by insisting on sitting in centre-rear position in all passenger vehicles

As long as your seatbelt's on. Takes quite a low-speed collision to be extremely bad for a seatbeltless middle-seat passenger, whereas those either side might have a nasty bang against the seat in front but be basically fine.

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