The big idea: should we be thinking about luck differently?
- We tend to focus on good or bad fortune, successes and failures. But what about the fact you’re here at all?
David Spiegelhalter
Mon 7 Oct 2024 07.30 EDT
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Luck has been called “the operation of chance, taken personally”.
Luck comes in three main flavours. Philosophers have identified “circumstantial luck”, meaning being in the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time – such as Stephen’s family taking that particular flight. Then there’s “resultant or outcome luck”, where in a particular situation some people have good and some have bad outcomes due to factors beyond their control. Stephen had the good resultant luck of surviving.
But perhaps the most important is “constitutive luck”, which covers all the fortunate or unfortunate circumstances of your very existence; the period of history in which you were born, your parents, background, genes and character traits. So where was Stephen’s constitutive luck? He told me that his father’s experiences in the RAF led him to insist that the family sat at the back of the plane – and the only survivors were seated at the back. He had the right parents.
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A very philosophical view of luck.
How does that jibe with my experience?
My sainted passed wife of 40 years was always “lucky”. Especially in things with wheels or balls. I, otoh, was always “unlucky”. She used to tell me to “Go away and take your bad luck with you”! And, I did. She’d hit more often than not.
I always felt she had “precognition”. She would get upset before bad things happened (i.e., father’s death; car accident; my trip ’n’ fall).
So, I’m not sure how to define “luck” but I know I don’t have that “magic touch”
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