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Luck Survey

Wyrd

10:20 / 20.06.01

Check this out:
http://www.cosmiverse.com/paranormal06180102.html [Link no longer working]

"Bristol University scientists have started a major study to figure out whether or not luck really exists. The scientists will study 14,000 children over the next two years to discover whether we are ruled by fate or create our own luck. The goal is to figure out why some people seem to lead a charmed life while others do not."

grant

14:33 / 20.06.01

This could be quite valuable, psychologically speaking.

If they attack it from that angle.

Unencumbered

16:40 / 20.06.01

But how do you define luck? An unpleasant experience can, in the long run, be beneficial. Losing your job can give you the push you need to get a better one. So is being sacked lucky or unlucky? I won't bore you with more examples, since I'm sure you can supply many more yourselves.

ynh

19:21 / 20.06.01

He says that 'internalists' tend to analyze, act and learn from the outcome of a problem while 'externalists' believe they have no control over what happens to them. "If externalists fall over, they just blame bad fortune instead of trying to work out why they fell over and how to prevent it happening again," he said in an interview with the Sunday Times.

'Externalists' are more likely to drift into crime, poor jobs or bad relationships, so they think they have had more 'bad luck', he says.

Well, I considered ranting about the use of psychological evidence like this to blame people as individuals for not suceeding, but I was completely unable to verify Jean Goulding's existence.

delacroix

02:52 / 20.12.06

Thought I'd see what the oldest thread available to me was--and it's this--cool! Because I noticed in Vegas that probability, whatever it is, is spatial somehow; and I'm no mathematician, so this would be a great time for me to ask you guys: is probability spatial? I mean, in Vegas, there are lucky tables, for sure, and the key to understanding "lucky streaks" might be watching those tables.

And the planet is a lucky table, isn't it? The formation of organic life here, you know, being as unlikely as it was and so forth.

Quantum

19:08 / 20.12.06

in Vegas, there are lucky tables, for sure,

Not sure there are, you know. I bet if you watched them all for long enough it would even out, each of the tables would get a turn as the lucky one. Statistics, innit.

delacroix

21:55 / 20.12.06

Yes, right, but might statistics = space?

grant

22:21 / 20.12.06

What does that mean?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

01:32 / 21.12.06

Might lampshade = rasberry?

Good Intentions

22:06 / 26.12.06

Perhaps I'm just being a curmudgeon, but does it seem to anybody else that the standards of experiments has, umm, taken a turn for the worse? Every day I open to paper and on page whatnot there is a result of a study proving a link between X and Y, as if we've suddenly forgotten something already known by the ancient Greeks (at the latest) that correlation does not mean causation.

I understand that the daily paper is not the best source for science news. That is more or less my point: it seems to me that a lot of scientists, at big universities, are far too eager to do some research which will look good in the press. It doesn't help that noteworthy popular science journals have definitely taken a turn towards the sensational.

I mean, this study is pretty much a disaster.

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