Where Do You Stand On The Luck Curve?

Do you ever think about luck? I used to think about it a lot. I even came up with theories about luck. Back in 2001, I was forced to think about it because for the first time in my life, I realized I didn't have much luck. And by that I mean good luck, as everyone does.

What is luck? That's tricky, but everyone knows it when they see it if they are inclined to think about it. More on that below.

In the most reductive definition I could come up with, luck is simply a long series i ∈ I — this is your life! — of mathematical triplets defined as (T_i, P_i, E_i), where T is a time, P is a place, and E is an event. And we need a valuation function F. From your own point of view, was some triple (T_i, P_i, E_i) a good thing or a bad thing? (= F(T_i, P_i, E_i)). Or was it neutral? It will often be the case that you only know the answer in retrospect. I'm sure you've heard the phrase being at the wrong (or the right) place at the wrong (or the right) time. Well, that's luck!

How did you meet your husband or wife? You boyfriend or girlfriend? Do you even have a spouse or significant other who you love? How did you get your job? How did you lose your job? Have you made a pile of money? Are you poor? And so on. And on and on. As I said, this is your life!

Everything can viewed as luck, including but not restricted to—

• your genetic inheritance
• your birth circumstances
• the quality of your childhood (or lack thereof)
• what happened in early adulthood (and what didn't happen)
• the people you met along the way (and didn't meet)
• where you live and lived (and didn't live)
• the situation of the society you live in

So luck encompasses not only Nature and Nurture, but also everything in-between!

The more I thought about it, the more intuitive it seemed that luck was normally distributed, which means that it has the common bell (or gaussian) shape. This is the luck curve.

The question is: Where do stand on the luck curve? Most people are in the middle. They have average luck. For example, was it fortunate that you were born an American? How about the fact that you were born an American at a time when American society is in radical decline? Have you gotten the short end of the stick? Or maybe by Nature and Nurture, you were born to thrive in a rip-off society because you're a rip-off artist par excellance. These types of questions go on ad infinitum.

I made a few observations over the years about luck and people's relationship to their own good or bad fortune, to wit—

• People with extraordinarily good luck tend to believe that their good fortune is deserved, that they are among the Elect, personally blessed by God, or some other concocted nonsense. However they rationalize it, their good luck wasn't even luck as far as they're concerned; the fortunate events characterizing their lives were entirely due to their own total wonderfulness. They were born to succeed in the human world, although the question of whether they might not have been thus born hardly ever arises for them.

• People with extraordinarily bad luck tend to realize that their luck wasn't very good at some point in their lives. That will be especially obvious to those who get a terminal disease early in their lives, although it will not be obvious at all to those who die prematurely and instantly after getting hit by a bus. Understanding and acknowledging bad luck is foundational in the Blues.

• There is a meta-effect with luck. Good luck tends to engender more good luck. Bad luck tends to engender more bad luck. So your place on the Luck Curve is not fixed in stone. Many people actually move around on the curve. And as I said, if you are on the ascending part of the bell curve, the bad luck side, you tend to fall back further. It is the same with the good (descending) side of the curve. Those people tend to move forward on the curve.

Speaking personally, when my life started unraveling right after New Years Day in the year 2000, and continued to do so for the next six years or so, I started thinking a lot about my luck. And as I looked back, it was easy to see that my life had fallen apart before, as it did in 1990-1991. There was definitely a pattern. And everyday life had never been easy for me. In thinking about luck, I was forced to think about my Nature, my Nurture and the events of my life taken altogether.

Those thoughts finally abated a few years ago, but not before I came up with some of the stuff I've written today. And what did I conclude about myself? I was startled to realize that I had been unsuited for a good, successful human life the whole time I had been trying to live one. I was maladapted, if you prefer. Any way I sliced and diced it, I was born to fail. There was no way in Hell I was going to be one of those successful people you read about in the media. Not ever. No way. This was my Fate. I would have to do the best I could with it, exiled here (as a reader noted) on The Planet of The Apes.

And now? Well, looking around this planet and what's going on here, I wear my unsuitablilty for success like a badge of honor. And it's a Purple Heart, too. I took my licks. Damage was done. For so many people, life sucks! Can't suck enough. Surely somebody has told you that. If not, I'm telling you now. At this point, I'm eternally grateful for a hot shower. I reduced my expectations of life to zero. None. It was hard to do, and even then it wasn't enough. And of course, this journey of tears isn't over yet for me. The best is yet to come!

But what about you? Where do you stand on the luck curve? You may not be able to answer that question right away unless you've already devoted considerable thought to the question. You have to look at your life in its entirety, from birth to now, and try to make an objective assessment. It sounds hard, and it's even harder than it sounds.

Good luck

Bonus Video — Born Under A Bad Sign

 

Comments

[T E Cho]

I judge 'successful' people by their attitude towards their success. Google's Brin or Page, not sure which, when asked what was their single most important reason/cause for their success replied 'luck'. To me that implies some self-honesty and humility. Very rare traits among the 1%.

Bill Gates' mother was on the same school board as a bigwig from IBM, father a banker, grandfather a lawyer and In a high school that gave him access to a computer far earlier than most kids. You can't buy that kind of luck.

Myself, I don't feel very lucky as of late.