Originally Written: 8/11/16

Introduction:

Whether you’re walking down the street and come across a penny on the ground, counting on your favorite team to succeed in seemingly impossible odds, or hoping that you get that new job that you’re unsure that you’re going to get. Most of us seem to have some sort of intuition about luck. Some of us believe that luck is the determining factor for nearly all decisions and outcomes in our lives; while others use it describe both fortunate and unfortunate events that occur in our daily lives. And still, others believe that there is no role for luck in the world. Whatever the outlook, all of us can agree to have an idea of what it is. However, it seems that not many can seem to answer the question of “what is luck?”

There’s no doubt that many others have tried to answer this question before. Most, if not all religions carry a more deterministic sense of luck due to their tendency to attribute uncommon events in one’s life towards divine intervention, or a sense of predetermination. This outlook is common to both the western and eastern religions throughout the world. The more secular people of the world have attempted to explain the phenomenon of luck, its origin, and its meaning through the use of philosophical and scientific reasoning. Many philosophers and scientists have attempted to explain luck as an essence found in the world or a construct of the mind. Here I present a novel perspective and philosophy of what luck is, and how it varies throughout time and space.

What Luck is:

Religion may stress a philosophy that includes an absence of luck, but it can be said that the formation of the absence of luck and the attribution of seemingly lucky or unlucky events requires them to be seen and recognized as such in order to place the source of these fortunate or misfortunate events into the hands of a deity. And so, it seems that regardless of human opinion on the existence of luck, such an essence exists that delivers fortunate or misfortunate events onto the feet of people. Thus, it can be reasonably concluded that luck is not just an essence found in nature. It is a force of both society and nature, it exists regardless of human existence or animal existence, but it can be assumed that it would not exist in the absence of all matter. Thus, to reiterate:

Luck is a social and natural force, and like other social and natural forces, they can be observed and measured in a rational fashion.

Second, when you think of luck, you tend to think of it as something good or bad. Something that affects you negatively or positively. However, this is a common attribution error given to luck based on our egocentric worldview. Because luck is both a social and natural source; this assignment of morality to luck is a problem to its study as a force. We don’t refer to gravity as good or bad even though it can both benefit us in the form of tools, but can also harm us in the form of falls. We don’t refer to friction as good when it provides heat, and we don’t refer to it as bad when we get burned from it. So why should a reasonable study of luck be any different? In short:

As a force, luck has no moral character. It cannot be good or bad; it simply is.

So what is luck then? If luck is no essence, and is a social and natural force. How is it manifested in a way that we can observe? To answer this question, we should think of how we observe luck in everyday life. For example, you are traveling back home from work on a busy subway in a large metropolitan area. On the way, you leave a subway train and discover five dollars lying on the ground in front of you. At this point, you pick it up, and think to yourself, “It must be my lucky day.” In another case, you’re traveling back home from work on the same subway in the same large metropolitan area. However, you left your job incredibly late, and you start your travel during off-peak hours. On the way, you leave a subway train and look around to see that nobody is around. You keep walking and make your way home. The obvious difference in between these two stories is that they are both different scenarios, and it is these scenarios that make the observable units of luck. Each scenario has a given location, but more importantly it has a certain amount of actors in each one. We have a central actor, or ego actor, and we have non-central actors, or other actors. In each scenario, we can choose to select different actors to examine, but can only examine one at a time to determine the outcome of the actor in a scenario. The outcome of an actor in a given scenario is where luck resides. Using scenarios we can examine the actions of the actors and draw reasonable and expected outcomes based off of simulations or naturalistic observations. Thus, using these scenarios, we can say that:

Luck is an outcome of a scenario that is not expected to reached within the context of a scenario.

So if everyday luck is nothing more than an outcome out of place, how can it come into existence? In other words, what does it depend on? Here we refer back to scenarios; recall that a scenario is made of two components. First, a scenario is made by its location. And second, a scenario is made by the actors within them. Since the physical location of a scenario limits the possibilities of outcomes. The principle variation of a scenario is the amount of actors within a given scenario. This in turn, points to the study of others, as the study of luck and abandons the notion that luck is a mental construct. By examining others in this scenario-based context, we can draw conclusions on the chances of a uncommon outcome to occur in a scenario.

Luck and the Rule of Six:

There lies a saying in the modern world, “everyone is connected by six degrees,” that everyone can be connected to anyone by six connections at the latest. But why would this matter in respect to luck? If it was previously mentioned that the presence of luck is determined by the amount of others in a given scenario. Then we must face the reality that each actor in a scenario can be connected to anyone in the world, even the other others in the same scenario. However, this meaning amounts to a simple principle, every other actor in a given scenario is a point between the six connections between unspecified strangers. Still, in what use can this principle apply to? Well, they say that luck is random and cannot be predicted. I will not disagree with this statement, however, chaos theory combined with the aforementioned principle provides the best possible explanation for why luck is perceived to be random. In chaos theory, any system is considered to be chaotic when it cannot be followed and predicted using an algorithm. However, what chaos theory does suggest is that even in chaotic systems there are small but dense repetitions that can be found. Typically, they are the initial conditions that begin a set of events. In respect to luck, the small and dense repetitions can be defined as interactions that happen between the unspecified strangers not in a given scenario. These of what I call “background interactions” can be the difference between a normal outcome and a “lucky” outcome in a scenario. However, since we cannot map, track, or predict interactions that happen outside of an observed scenario. Thus all we are left with is the knowledge that background interactions in any given region of the world can affect the outcome of a scenario were it to influence the action of an other in the scenario. This also gives the luck a susceptibility to the “butterfly effect,” or the notion that a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa makes a hurricane in Florida. Or in our case, a chit-chat in Africa leads to a job promotion/layoff in Florida. In sum:

Luck is affected by the effects of background interactions and their effects on an other’s actions.

Luck establishes itself as a dark area of human investigation. It’s a myth, a superstition, a mystery. A force from the gods, a force from the mind, a force from the universe. Here I proposed a rational and novel perspective on the origins and correlations of luck. A true advancement in how humans think about luck, and a way to eliminate the myth, and embrace a more reasonable approach that provides a more truthful insight based on scientific observation and established phenomenon in the global society. Instead of fate, the gods, and the unexplained; we have an imaging of a vast network of people and the scenarios they are in. A web of binary actions or non-actions delivered by billions of people, and each action affecting the action of another, and so on and so forth, until the culmination of those actions results in an unexpected outcome. However, still capable of being imagined appearing through the labors of individuals one may never meet, see, or hear, but still influencing what you call “fortune.” The myth is gone, we have left the dark ages of modern superstition, and have abandoned the futile notion of never understanding what luck may be in everyday life, and in a way that doesn’t intrude in classical probability. But otherwise left to those who study the nature of society and its inner workings.

2021 Additions:

I never finished this. In fact, I had originally intended this writing to turn into a full book at some point. I don't know if I'll ever get around to it only because I haven't thought about the topic in a very long time. Since writing this, I've had other philosophical and religious changes that makes me doubt the validity of what I'm writing about here. I think it's the last paragraph that really sticks out to me as being much more hyperbolic than anything else in the draft and probably where I've done the most change in my personal philosophy. I may write an extension, or revise this concept later down the blogging line.