Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn • Hacker News Board

Re: Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

#51

Post by Eliezer » Tue, Oct 13, 2009, 3:49 PM UTC

donaq wrote: post #25

Dammit, where's Eliezer Yudkowsky when you need him. I'm pretty sure he'll have an interesting take on this.

BEHOLD, I AM HERE!

MBlume posted the article to LW here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1b9/do_the_unlucky_systematically_un...

If you want me to say something stunningly intelligent about it, um... ah... okay, how about this:

Since we know at the start of the problem that luck in the supernatural sense doesn't really exist, we would expect people experiencing systematic exogenous runs of genuine good or bad luck to be rare in the population. But people who claim to be lucky or unlucky are much more common than that.

The next question you'd have to address is whether the people who claim to be "lucky" or "unlucky" actually seem to be experiencing more-than-chance proportions of good or bad life events, of a sort we would otherwise think of as exogenous (like falling down stairs) or partially randomness-based (like meeting a new girlfriend in a crowd). There would be a large problem of biased reporting at this point.

If so, then because we know luck doesn't really exist, we should indeed look for hidden internal characteristics to explain these runs of good or bad luck. As the saying goes, "YOU are the only common denominator in all your failed relationships."

Trying to train people to be lucky was an interesting attempt at experimental manipulation, but it's hard to untangle from the "biased reporting" hypothesis - you may just be making people think they're lucky. Still a good thing to test, though. (Possible stronger test: Train people to be "lucky in love" (that's what you tell them you're doing) and see if they become luckier in other areas too.)

Re: Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

#52

Post by Eliezer » Tue, Oct 13, 2009, 3:53 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #42

Parcel this up as a message about making your own luck or being determined, taking advantage of opportunities or consciously priming your selection bias in your favour, and some kinds of people are all over it. Parcel up the same message as positive thinking, cosmic ordering, the law of attraction or subjective reality, and the same types trip over themselves to be the first to ridicule it. And it does seem to be the…

Yeah? Let's train people in the law of attraction and compare them to people trained to be non-supernaturally lucky, and see who gets luckier.

Re: Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

#53

Post by nollidge » Tue, Oct 13, 2009, 4:10 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #42

Parcel this up as a message about making your own luck or being determined, taking advantage of opportunities or consciously priming your selection bias in your favour, and some kinds of people are all over it. Parcel up the same message as positive thinking, cosmic ordering, the law of attraction or subjective reality, and the same types trip over themselves to be the first to ridicule it. And it does seem to be the…

Arriving at a conclusion via fallacious reasoning ought to be discouraged, no matter the truth value of that conclusion. If I ask you what 2+2 is, and you roll a die and it happens to show four dots, I'm not going to praise your arithmetic skills.

Re: Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

#54

Post by wallflower » Tue, Oct 13, 2009, 4:25 PM UTC

If you ever want an interesting look into the psyche of a person / have them reveal themselves, ask them to describe to you situations in which they were 'lucky' (from a book "On Flirting")

Re: Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

#55

Post by Psyonic » Tue, Oct 13, 2009, 4:58 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #42

Parcel this up as a message about making your own luck or being determined, taking advantage of opportunities or consciously priming your selection bias in your favour, and some kinds of people are all over it. Parcel up the same message as positive thinking, cosmic ordering, the law of attraction or subjective reality, and the same types trip over themselves to be the first to ridicule it. And it does seem to be the…

Makes perfect sense. Knowing why is often as important (if not more important) than knowing what. That way you can avoid blaming the Holocaust on the Jews' bad attitudes.

Re: Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

#56

Post by Psyonic » Tue, Oct 13, 2009, 5:01 PM UTC

maneesh wrote: post #39

raju wrote: post #38

They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety This may…

Do what I did to make it happen---just do it. Do it everyday. Talk to random strangers. Go live in a hostel in a foreign country (by far the easiest way ever to meet people). Make it natural

Agreed on hostels being the easiest way to meet people. You don't even need to try, which is why it actually might not improve your skills at home all that much.

Re: Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

#57

Post by Psyonic » Tue, Oct 13, 2009, 5:05 PM UTC

orionlogic wrote: post #32

luck, by its meaning of definition, cannot be determined or manupilated.You can either define the situation as your luck or your willingness, it just depends on how you see the context. Luck, fate and willingness.How all those are related to each other is best examined in the Kieslowski's movie Blind Chance. I was just thinking about this issue today because the house that i wanted to rent was just rented to someone…

Yes, but if you take that attitude too far you'll never learn from your mistakes. It's quite possible that if you had stopped procrastinating and called earlier, you really would have had the chance the rent the house.

Re: Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

#58

Post by codexon » Tue, Oct 13, 2009, 6:46 PM UTC

cojadate wrote: post #28

codexon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is easily an artifact of verification bias. There was no effort in trying to introduce events that would be negative if aggressively pursued such as a Nigerian 411 or lottery scam. You certainly aren't lucky if you noticed one of these and decided it was a nice opportunity.

You conflate two separate things there – 'noticing' and 'deciding it was a nice opportunity'. The article claimed that noticing opportunities was a characteristic of lucky people. It did not say that lucky people were any more likely to be more risk-taking or credulous than other people.

> The article claimed that noticing opportunities was a characteristic of lucky people. It did not say that lucky people were any more likely to be more risk-taking or credulous than other people.

No I did not conflate them. The author only presented "good" opportunities, so it is obvious that the people who noticed them would always benefit from being more observant of things they deem good.

In fact this attitude made them more expectant that good things happen to them, as evidenced by the lottery test where they expected to win twice as much as the people who were "unlucky".

If you naturally expect to benefit more from any such activity, isn't this naturally more risk-taking and credulous?

Re: Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

#59

Post by codexon » Tue, Oct 13, 2009, 6:50 PM UTC

cojadate wrote: post #27

codexon wrote: post #7

He has convolved luck with happiness. If someone believes he is happy, he is happy. If someone believes he is the lucky, he is not necessarily lucky. Seeing the world rose colored glasses does not make you any luckier, it makes you happier. By only asking for those that self-identified as lucky or unlucky, he has failed to isolate the variable of happiness. Here is an excerpt from the book which points out the author…

The article was saying that luck was down to mindset, not psychic ability! Richard Wiseman's claims are in no way affected by the experiment you just mentioned, because games of pure chance are not affected by mindset. Most of life is affected by mindset.

Again you and the author are twisting the definition of luck.

I will use this example again. If I learn how to prospect for gold, does this count as increasing my luck since chances are higher that I will be able to find gold? The answer is a resounding no.

Getting a better life from a positive mindset cannot be attributed to luck anymore than learning any other skill (say a MD) is making me any luckier.

Re: Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

#60

Post by biohacker42 » Tue, Oct 13, 2009, 7:56 PM UTC

req2 wrote: post #49

biohacker42 wrote: post #46

This reminds me of a recent study in bird personalities. It turns out there are very big differences from bird to bird in terms of curiosity and risk taking and other things. And there is a huge body of scientific work about bird behavior EXCEPT that now it turns out the birds studied, trapped, tagged, etc, would have been a self selecting group of atypical super curious risk takers. And all of this science is now su…

I think in your search for a contrary example, you're looking at it in the wrong way. The focus of the unlucky pessimist will lead them unerringly to the stairs, whether or not that's the best option. The lucky optimist won't foolishly do what no one should ever do, but instead notice that the open elevator shaft has a ladder that someone else just safely used to escape. Being lucky doesn't mean you have to be stupid…

Take this thought experiment to its extreme and the unlucky should have gone extinct. The fact that both lucky and unlucky personality types persist, suggest both have advantages.