Come again?
You are asking two questions and most are answering the one in the thread title - “Luck - what is it?”
To the other question, the one posed in the OP, “Is the absence of ‘bad luck’ the same as ‘good luck’?” I would answer “no”. And the absence of good luck isn’t the same as bad luck either. The way I look at it (given the question) you have three stages:
Good Luck
No Luck
Bad Luck
The absence of luck in one form or the other does not necessarily translate into the existence of the opposite form of luck. It just means “no luck”.
I think Penn said it best with something along the lines of “Luck is taking probability personally.” Randomness will inherently result in some unexpected results at times, like the aforementioned example of a person winning the lottery more than once, or even something as mundane as flipping a coin and getting a long string of heads in a row. They may have low probabilities, but over a sufficient number of trials, even the lowest probability events eventually become likely to have happened.
The problem is when people see these patterns arise and assign the cause to providence. But there could be other explanations. Using the coin example, I could expect that over a sufficiently large number of trials I should see an equal number of heads and tails. However, maybe I flip a particular coin and over a large number of trials I see a large disparity, maybe we flip it 1000 times and never see tails. Maybe it’s just a statistical anamoly. Maybe we have some sort of experimental bias that makes it much more likely than expected to land on heads. Maybe our understanding of the odds of flipping a coin is wrong. Providence is just another possibility among many that could explain such a scenario.
Then again, many don’t believe that the hand of God operates in overt ways, so perhaps it could be something as simple as taking advantage of these variations in seemingly random events such that they coincide in accordance with that plan. But even then, I don’t see it as really that meaningfully different. Even if we follow that approach, how do we know what value to assign to those situations? We certainly cannot have reasonable expectations that unexpected events will happen at expected times.
A couple of favorite quotes, from God knows where:
If it wasn’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all.
Unfortunately the law of probabilities isn’t enforced around here.
“If it wasn’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all.”
Gloom, despair, agony on me.
Deep dark depression, excessive misery.
If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.
Gloom, despair, agony on me.
From Hee-Haw
Statistical anomaly
If you get hit by a bus, then you weren’t prepared. Preparation and opportunity are methods of weighting in your favor the giant probability engine that is life. It’s a military maxim that’s carved into the laws of the universe. You can’t catch a break if you’re not present to receive the opportunity or lack the ability to pursue it.
Preparation and opportunity make it so that no matter which of a dozen ways the situation decides to go, you win.
I don’t get it. Is it funny because 7x7=49? Or that he was thinking 7s and ended up with 48?
Luck is success without preperation and/or opportunity.
People often “take credit” for their good luck and not for their bad luck. People that correlate luck with preparation and opportunity were invariably the recipients of good luck. In this case, the man was taking credit for winning the lottery due to his dreams. I don’t know if he was implying that there was divine intervention or simply a random but fortunate dream sequence. But in either case, he was truly lucky that he wasn’t prepared, i.e. not having a good memory of the multiplication tables or a handy calculator or motivation to check his math.
If you read that as, “derpdie-derpie-doo, here I go wandering into traffic,” then I concede. But I was using the phrase metaphorically. Bad things happen to people for absolutely no reasons all the time, due to nothing they have done, haven’t done or prepared for.
Unless we want to get metaphysical about it and say, “you weren’t prepared for that plane crashing into your house, because if you were, you wouldn’t have bought a house where a plane might crash.”
As you get older you’ll learn 99% of the time luck is nothing more than having the financial and/or social resources to overcome your bad choices in life
moral luck. confer Nussbaum.
Enough futzing around. You can find the Straight Dope on luck here. Go thou and do likewise.
Selective perception.
Enjoy,
Steven
Wonderful! Wire me the money!
Probably from “Born Under a Bad Sign.”
Coincidences that we like. Or sometimes a series of coincidental events that result in a favorable outcome.
When I say, “What great luck! I found $50!”, I’m not attributing this to some non-random pattern or the whims of something mystical (otherwise, I would have used the word “blessed”). I’m just using “luck” as shorthand for, “Wow! What an unexpected course of events that just happens to work in my favor!”
Some people use it to describe someone who tends to have good things go their way more likely than not, but that’s just crazy. Some people no doubt do seem to have “luck” on their side, but usually they’re consistently putting themselves in the right place at the right time, perhaps taking more risks than normal. As the saying goes with the lottery, “You can’t win if you don’t play.” The same goes for life too. It’s hard to have a “series of fortunate events” happen to you if you’re at home all the time, eating Munchos and staring at the dust motes.
That’s not so much “lucky,” as it is “fraudulent.”
Please! Such an ugly word! Call it “Preparation + Opportunity!”
Yeah, but then, the luck lies in not being caught.