Luck and Decisions

My friend wrote me an email one day, raising an interesting point about the extent to which Luck and our Decisions, affected our lives. I thought it was fascinating, and decided to put it up here, followed by my own reply. (I’ve taken out identities of people) With luck, I’ll get some readers to respond = )

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Luck is an interesting word. TF used is when she got injured. She was unlucky. RI used it last night. I believe the lab is lots about luck, he said.

I disagreed, in both instances. TF made a decision to ignore a niggle that lead directly to her potentially needing spinal surgery. RI made a decision to move with his current boss knowing full well that his boss was not a good person to work for (either socially or indeed from a career standing) and that his then fiancee and now wife would be miserable about it and blame him every day.

I have made countless decisions like this. I can think of every event in my life, good bad, coming from a decision I made. I always knew whether the decision was a good one or a bad one. But now that I’m older I feel I have the courage to make the correct decision

And this is what rehab (and life I believe) is about

The Matrix movie talks about two aspects of this. 1) That we have already made the decision and 2) The challenge that we face in growing is to understand these decisions

The vast majority of injuries from which we must rehabilitate are not caused by getting hit by a random vehicle on a random day. They are generally a result of our own poor decision making. I would say the primary decision we make that results in serious injury is to ignore/train through a minor injury or niggle. The second is from a decision to do something that we A) want to do/feel we have to do to progress B) know is not a 100% good/safe idea and C) we convince ourselves will be fine by focusing on the reasons we should do it and ignoring the very large reason we shouldn’t

And this is true of all of life also. Career-making decisions.

This gives me great peace.

It tells me that there is not some other factor in control of my world.

I once heard a person say that an individual can have anything taken away from them except their reaction. That is always yours, perhaps with the exception of extreme torture.

So I am in control of me. Of my world.

There were so many times when I wanted to do something and you didn’t even wonder about yourself, we just went And vice versa

We were in control of our reactions in that sense, We decided well

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Hmmm

I think all of you are correct

If I throw darts by randomly flinging darts at the board without consideration or practice, and i hit the bulls eye, that’s luck.

If I practise everyday, make sure that my technique, my aim, etc are right, and i hit the bulls eye, that’s not luck.

If i practise everyday, etc but when I throw the dart, the wind direction changes or some idiot comes along and moves the board at the last minute, that’s bad luck.

If I practise everyday, make sure I chart the weather to military precision, ensure that there is maximum security between me at the dartboard, that’s not luck.

Apart from the ‘is procreation ethical’ question that I pose to strangers when i run out of things to say, the other question i’ve been fascinated with, is that, are there truly random events in this universe, or are random events just things we haven’t been able to calculate? I’m looking at engineers, rocket scientists, futurists etc, and wondering. I’m looking at the toss of the dice, and how for a lay person its about luck, for an expert gambler its about calculated risks, for a physicist, its about a calculation of force applied in a particular angle setting the dice off at a calculable, predictable trajectory and hence outcome.

There are implications. If there are truly random events in this universe, then chance/luck plays a big role in getting us where we are.
If there are no truly random events, then was everything from Day1 of Time & Space just a matter of course, and that choice is merely an illusion?

Hmmm…… This sort of abstract theory wasn’t exactly what you were looking for was it? heheheheh I’m sorry. You can’t pose a question like that to me and not expect it to go this way!!! That’s what i love about the discussion grps i go to. The speaker talks about a really simple everyday experience, like Decisions. And then the audience takes it and runs away with it. hehhehe.

I think what you’re really trying to get at is not about decisions or luck is it? I mean, you buy lottery…………..

What’ you’re really getting at is how you feel about yourself, how we OUGHT to feel about ourselves, about what happens to us, and consequently what we ought to do.

It really reminds me again about that Alain de Botton’s tedtalk and how we measure success

It’s really all about the cultural context.

In the days of old, when the culture was very religious, everything that happened was not luck, but the will of God. Now that is very distressing. You break your leg, not because of a bad choice, not because you were unlucky, but because God specifically was out to get you. That’s depressing to the max.

In today’s world, because of science, secularism, technology , democracy, we are told that we can determine everything, if we’re good enough at it. That’s good, because you’ll get off your ass to get things done. You use your brain. The bad part is that if anything goes wrong, it’s not about God, anyone else, or luck. It’s you, that’s a failure. You’re either a winner, or a loser . That’s depressing too. Because, on a normal curve, there can only be one winner in the world, and even then, in one particular category only.

What’s a good way to view the world, AND stay sane, and happy and productive?

I don’t know. If we figure out, you realise, we’ll have started a new religion??? hehhehe

I was talking to my friend about this issue. It was a fascinating discussion, because 1.) He’s the most religious person i know; believes in God, will only ever sleep with his wife (hypothetical, cos he’s not married) , and firmly does not believe that evolution took place . And at the same time, he is 2.) A brilliant econometrist. (He explained what an econometrist was this way: The economist tells the govt the economy is fked, and the govt has to spend more, tax less, to get it un-fked. The econometrist tells the govt, in QUANTITATIVE terms, how fked the economy is, and tells the govt they have to spend $X , and tax Y% less, to get in un-fked. Today he does risk analysis for an investment bank)

Despite his religious convictions, he also says that we will never know the truth or anything for certainty. Everything you know, has to be attached to a confidence interval. So, Descartes has to say something like ‘I think, therefore I am, (p value = 0. 00000000001) ‘

Decisions, in his view, are about making predictions and acting on them, to increase that probability your desired outcome happens. Life, in his view, is about manipulating that p value.