Richard Wiseman enumerates four principles used by “lucky” people to create good fortune:
Principle One: Maximise Chance Opportunities
Lucky people are skilled at creating, noticing and acting upon chance opportunities. They do this in various ways, including networking, adopting a relaxed attitude to life and by being open to new experiences.Principle Two: Listening to Lucky Hunches
Lucky people make effective decisions by listening to their intuition and gut feelings. In addition, they take steps to actively boost their intuitive abilities by, for example, meditating and clearing their mind of other thoughts.Principle Three: Expect Good Fortune
Lucky people are certain that the future is going to be full of good fortune. These expectations become self-fulfilling prophecies by helping lucky people persist in the face of failure, and shape their interactions with others in a positive way.Principle Four: Turn Bad Luck to Good
Lucky people employ various psychological techniques to cope with, and often even thrive upon, the ill fortune that comes their way. For example, they spontaneously imagine how things could have been worse, do not dwell on the ill fortune, and take control of the situation.
I can attest to the first one. Not sure about the rest.
“Just go with your gut” is the worst advice you can give to some people. Some guts are smarter than others.
So true, Harry Jones: some guts are genius and some are plain fucking retarded.
The four principles of good luck pretty much describe gambling addicts I have known who have lost everything. “Once he had a future full of money, love and dreams, which he spent like they was goin’ out of style.”
Sounds like cope to me. Or the guy is simply an idiot.
“Lucky” people are either really lucky or they are people who know exactly what they are doing.
Most people don’t realize that because most people think they already know what they’re doing, but in fact, most people are clueless about everything and keep trying to consume “signals” to luck it out.
Pathetic, we only got to this point because of ‘education’ — if people didn’t even know how to read they wouldn’t be so conceited and hubristic.
Or as that proverb says: «a pessimist is but a well-informed optimist».
Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking.
A positive, optimistic outlook does tend to keep one open to opportunity, whereas a negative outlook tends to one withdrawn and effectively paralyzed. So the optimist accomplishes more. But many people are delusional, and do not understand the reality around them.
Visualization is more influential than most people realize. If you are always visualizing yourself prevailing over obstacles, you tend to bounce back from life’s hardships better than the folks who always visualize defeat.
I think Richard Wiseman is an intellectually dishonest denier of psi evidence, but I also imagine I would be lucky if I were forgive him for his sins, so I will stop complaining and get busy with forgiveness.
Maybe I’m judging Wiseman too harshly from his infamous past. He seems to have mellowed very slightly. He recently wrote:
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/missing-trick-how-psychology-could-benefit-more-paranormal
Still, my opinion of him was formed circa 1990 and it’s not easy to forgive him.
Bob Sykes says:
Indeed. Stripped of the lunacy parts, this seems to be mostly what Taleb was talking about.
Generally (in the long term) people have to take risks. Those who were incautious and get unlucky bad crash and burn, but those excessively risk-averse are often in a position where they wither with certainty.
Which had many recorded manifestations over millennia.
E.g. we know that debts increase risk aversion; which is enough to make them inherently poisonous; and that’s why “debt jubilee” thing was a widespread practice: it was adaptive. And so on.