Luck

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Thursday, October 1. 2020

Scott Adams did a piece on the role of luck for making a good life. It seemed as if he were implying that being born with darker skin than his was one item on his "bad luck" list.

I am not convinced of the latter, but most of "good luck" involves genetics in every sense, from appearance to IQ to illnesses to character traits and talents. A non-dysfunctional family and a decent middle-class upbringing are pretty good lucks too.

Do you view life as a series of opportunities knocking, or as a series of back lucks? I do the former.

Like many Americans, I probably could have taken my career further but, at a point, I was content. I enjoy viewing the Matterhorn, but feel no urge to climb it other than the normal macho impulse. I am glad that others do.

Posted by The Barrister in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 14:37 | Comments (15) | Trackbacks (0)

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Everyone's life has thousands of small branches... you pick your branches. Sometimes the best branch is obvious, sometimes not. But if you use good judgement (some intelligent people make very bad choices), in general will you come out ahead.

#1 jay on 2020-10-01 15:10 (Reply)

~80% of the time, your branches pick you. Genetics.

#1.1 Stargazer on 2020-10-01 18:02 (Reply)

Luck favors the well prepared.

#2 Woulde (Link) on 2020-10-01 15:25 (Reply)

I'm 83 and I had a very lucky event that helped me through life.
My girlfriend in high school was very shy.
She wanted to take typing but wanted me to take it with her.
Boys didn't take typing but we talked the teacher into letting me in.
When I joined the Marines they found out I could type and transferred me out of a combat unit into MIS where I learned to operate IBM machines and program computers.
I retired from Hewlett Packard 22 years ago.
All because Cindy wanted to take typing.

#3 oolioo on 2020-10-01 15:28 (Reply)

There are opportunities that people run across. Some people take advantage of them and others don't. The luck part is the opportunities, the rest is up to you.
Something many forget is that every single person has hard knocks--illness, being fired, car accidents, friends dying. Those things can help you mature or make you bitter and crazy. Your choice.

#4 cc (Link) on 2020-10-01 17:34 (Reply)

Gary Player famously said, regarding golf, “Well, the harder I practice, the luckier I get.”

#5 The Distributist (Link) on 2020-10-01 18:42 (Reply)

"Scott Adams did a piece on the role of luck for making a good life. It seemed as if he were implying that being born with darker skin than his was one item on his "bad luck" list."

Mr Barrister -

I'd appreciate a link to the quote/video/etc. where Adam's said this.

I believe I recently watched a video of his that included a section on "Luck" that included a whiteboard diagram, but I have no recollection of Adams correlating Luck with skin color.

Thanks.

#6 B on 2020-10-01 18:43 (Reply)

In America, in most of the West, for the last 70 years or so it is almost 100% based on decisions we make from puberty to retirement. We live in probably the best 70 years in history and in the best country(S) for a happy successful life. But we (most children) really aren't taught to make good life decisions and to the extent that we are taught this, our immediate needs almost always trump our long term needs. The prescription for a good life; a successful life is not hard to put into words but for the youth it is not easy to follow. Most of us between the age of 14-35 or so live our life based on what we want at that moment and then we spend the years from 35-75 regretting our decisions and wishing someone would have told us then what we know now.

#7 OneGuy on 2020-10-01 18:46 (Reply)

At 80 I realized that all those wrong choices had brought me to this place where I'm happy to be here with the love of my life. You never really know where the trail ends. . . .

#8 Charley Hua Chu on 2020-10-01 20:03 (Reply)

Often man plans and God laughs...when people speak of privilege mine was to serve five years in the military. They agreed to provide college funding under the GI bill along with a vet preference for job hiring. I got a job using the preference and stayed with them for 30 years in four different capacities. I earned an unrelated associate degree and worked a second job for 22 years. Here at the end of all things, been married to my wife for 38 years. I told my son and daughter when they complained about not knowing what they wanted to do for a living, you can't know where life will take you, so just try different things.

#9 Robocop3447 on 2020-10-01 21:48 (Reply)

Luck has almost nothing to do with success. If you get out of bed every morning and make phone calls, come up with new ideas, and answer ads, things will turn-up. But we live in a country which has a government that doesn't want people to succeed. First, the schools were destroyed by blacks, then the factories were sent to China, then relationships were destroyed by feminism, and finally white people were vilified so that they won't stop a flood of immigrants from taking over the country.

It's not easy to be happy or successfu,l when your government wants you to be poor and sad.

#10 Ron Liebermann on 2020-10-02 06:36 (Reply)

I don't know who first said it, as it's been attributed to many, but my favorite formulation is "Luck is the result of the meeting of opportunity and preparation."

The other is "A winner credits his good luck when it wasn't good luck. A loser blames his bad luck when it wasn't bad luck."

#11 Another Guy Named Dan on 2020-10-02 07:27 (Reply)

"Play the hand you're dealt" comes to mind. We're lucky to have a seat at the table.

#12 Estoy Listo (Link) on 2020-10-02 11:40 (Reply)

I'm afraid Mr. Adams doesn't know what he believes and is unduly swayed by transient emotions.

#13 Texan99 on 2020-10-02 12:03 (Reply)

Working in a large mfg. plant 30% of the shop floor were inner city Afro-American. Several were my friends and many others were friendly coworkers. I envied these black people in several ways. If they trusted you they would stand by you. They would automatically befriend or defend another black whether they knew him or not. Their families were strongly cohesive in spite of personal differences. There were many things such as these that I wish were 'character traits' in my family.

#14 Dan Tillery on 2020-10-02 12:36 (Reply)

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Thursday, October 1. 2020

Luck