Talk:Luck

Perhaps we need the Enrico Fermi lucky-horseshoe story:

"of course, it's all rubbish. But the person who sold it to me told me it works even if you don't believe in it".

and I don't believe in horoscopes, like a typical Cancerian! -- Tarquin 00:04 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

Neil Peart of Rush didn't come up with the phrase "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." It was Seneca the Roman dramatist. This article needs some heavy researching.

I think Oprah presented a similar formula: Luck = Preparation + Opportunity (L = P + O)

But opportunities come by luck, in fact I would say Opportunity is Luck. (L = P + L, P = zero, makes no sense). Therefore Oprah and all these other people who (along with hardwork, intelligence, etc.) got extremely lucky and became super successive are now using this "there is no luck" message to portray themselves as ultimate victors in a seemingly merit based life game, where everyone has the same opportunities/luck. Someone has to address the huge "random" component in someone's ability to succeed in life within this article, because this is what most people consider to be "luck" (bad or good). Someone has to address the facts that "luck" can cause a perfectly nice, hardworking, intelligent, honest individual to FALL THROUGH THE CRACKS of society and end up in extreme hardship (and the other extreme can occur too).

This article also seems to forget about the non-West. China, Japan, and presumably other cultures have a whole slew of other traditions associated with luck.

Social section is useless

The Society viewpoint is useless and fuzzy. I know very hardworking, nice people who have terrible lives and seem never to get luck. On the other spectrum, we all know lazy crooked bums who are living high and well. The social viewpoint, as it is now, seems to portray societies as meritocracies, and this can not be farther from the truth. So much of life depends on the "randomness" in live, and this can also be called "luck."

Sayings

"Luck doesn't exist." There are more variations on this phrase than can be listed here, but not enough to make believers care. It seems to me that end of this could be rephrased, as "not enough to make believers care" seems a bit insulting.

Article is Biased and needs serious rewriting

This article is more about "Why rationalists want you to feel foolish for believing in luck" than it is about luck per se. It does not express a neutral point of view. It is programmatic rather than informative. It is condescending. It is inaccurate. Nouns contained within it are not propperly linked to their base-pages in the WP. It is not properly linked in to articles on amulets, talismans, or other aspects of luck. It is, in short, a mess and a half. I am sure that the contributors brought to it the best they had to bring and certainly had the best of intentions, but the tone throughout is an "opposing view" tone, and that alone makes the article useless for someone trying to study the subject. When i have time, i shall return. Look for great changes at that time. Catherineyronwode 20:52, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is bugging me so much, i have taken time from my work day to add more comments:

The fact that the arcticle BEGINS with a "rationaist" viewpoint is evidence of serious bias. Even the section "Spiritual viewpoint" is anything but accurate to that viewpoint.

For instance, within the Spiritual viewpoint section, the statement "In their original forms, the folk religions view mind, spirit and body as one" is condescending, colonialist, and, above all ot privileges outsider-rationalist viewpoints above both outsider-anthropological viewpoints and participant-aderhent viewpoints.

The following sections of the article do not -- repeat, DO NOT -- deal with the subject matter of luck, but present only a series of shifting-ground oppposing views to and arguments against the belief in luck:

Rational viewpoint
Spiritual viewpoint
Effects of viewpoint and beliefs

Risky lifestyles
Positive outlook
Effects
The gambler's fallacy

In dealing with folk magic and folk belief, ask yourself these questions:

If this article were about an organized religion instead of a folk belief, would you say that it accurately represented an adherent's POV -- or would you say that it attempted to mock, derogate, ridicule, dispute, or rationalize away tan adherent's POV?
Why is a person with an opposing POV tackling this topic in the first place and what is their agenda in writing the lead paragraphs of a supposedly descriptive page from an opposing viewpoint?
Is there a graceful way to relegate opposing viewpoints to the end of the article or to an opposing viewpoints page?

My response, when submitting this page to that series of questions, is as follows:

In no way does the first half of this article accurately represent an adherent's POV, rather, it attempts to mock, derogate, ridicule, dispute, or rationalize away the adherent's POV.
A person would write lengthy content filling a total of 6 sub-heads that dispute the material and place these paragraphs *before* the material that actually defines the subject if they had an agenda of promoting the opposing viewpoint. This violates the NPOV. Would WP wish to begin the article about the Catholic Church with 6 subheads' worth of content explaining that Jesus did not exist, that the Catholic Church is filled with pederast priests, and that science has disporved the existence of God? I think not.
Opposing viewpoints, if retained on a page, should be clearly labelled as such, should be relegated to the bottom of he page, and should occupy less than 25% of the total wordage; anything more must go on an opposing viewpoints page or run the risk of demonstrating editorial bias against the topic. In this case, the total opposing viewpoint wordage is suffiently lengthy that i do not believe it can remain on the page as-is. It is not badly written -- it is simply too long. A link to a new page should be created and the opposing viewpoint material moved there. The only question remains what to name it...

As i said, i will return; this is too important a topic and touches on too many people's sincere beliefs to be left in the state of disrespectful dismissiveness it is in now.

Catherineyronwode 22:45, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"rational" is the wrong word!

The "Rational viewpoint" section should be perhaps be renamed to "skeptical viewpoint," as it essentially expresses the naive argument that probabilistic phenomena such as coincidences simply don't exist. Not only is this viewpoint irrational, it is unscientific and insulting to scholars such as Chaos theorists, who work at developing theories to explain such things as luck.

Isn't the broken mirror bad luck avoided if you don't look in the mirror (and even those who didn't break it get bad luck by looking at it).

Also, perhaps the idea that bad luck can be arbitrarily assigned to objects (e.g. the "spirit stick" in the movie "Bring it on") should also be included.

Finally, when I was growing up, whistling was bad (meant you weren't gonna have money) as was sitting at a corner of a table (meant you weren't gonna get married for some number of years). But that could've been local.