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Politics : Ask Michael Burke
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To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (110060)11/29/2007 8:33:25 AM
From: Travis_Bickle  Read Replies (2) of 132070
 
I think you need to define "luck," it is a pretty nebulous concept as applied to one's personal circumstances.

It is easy to understand in a gambling framework; for example, if at the roulette wheel I bet on black 10 times in a row, and I win 7 times, then I think everyone can agree that my winnings are attributable to luck, given that (assuming it isn't rigged) the wheel is totally random (if we are uncertain about its randomness we could always test it by spinning it 10,000 times).

To apply it to one's personal circumstances you have to assume that the universe operates in a totally random manner, which may in fact be the case but it is certainly incapable of any kind of proof.

In any case the African orphan may indeed be "lucky," but it depends on who you compare him to ... take a thirty-something yuppee living in Manhattan ... he certainly seems to have it over the African kid ... but what if the yuppee jumps off the top of his office building because he has been living in misery that most people can't begin to fathom? What if he hadn't jumped and instead continued to live his life in misery?

It's easy to look at people and declare this person lucky and that person unlucky, but in reality you don't have anywhere near the information to make that call.
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