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I propose an alternative lens: What if "luck" was actually just an individual's ability to perceive an opportunity... intersected with their own feeling that t

I propose an alternative lens: What if "luck" was actually just an individual's ability to perceive an opportunity... intersected with their own feeling that they have permission to act upon it?

i_made_a_booboo 8y ago
What if you were born in Puntland, Somalia and you were shit out "luck".
godelski 8y ago
> What if "luck" was actually just an individual's ability to perceive an opportunity. >>Hard work results in being able to take advantage of more opportunities. But you still have to have those opportunities. That's what is meant by "being able to take advantage of more opportunities. You are better able to see that they exist. You are also primed to look for them. You also believe that you can succeed at that opportunity. BUT a key thing is that they actually have to exist. There are situations where you can work really hard and there be no opportunities to be successful (financially. Because we can redefine what successful means but that doesn't consider context). As illustrated above you can work really hard in jail and that can result in no gained success. But we're talking about sayings. Sayings are never exact but rather hold a generalization in a nice and easy to remember package. Sayings always include a lot of implicit information. We could quibble about finer details but whether you should or shouldn't depends on the context of the conversation and whether the context the saying is provided in contextualizes that implicit information. What this saying packages is: Though work highly correlated with success it does not necessitate it. There are opportunities for success frequently around us and frequently unseen. Hard work will not result in seeing or being able to take advantage of said opportunities, but rather it correlates with the ability to. Furthermore, hard work often correlates with improvements in skill, which grant access to new opportunities that previously were not obtainable. While there are a lot of things that lead to success that correlate with hard work and while success itself in turn correlates with hard work, success itself is not granted to all those that work hard.
EliRivers 8y ago
I bought a lottery ticket, and I have permission to win, yet I didn't. I suspect luck is, in fact, simply the event of uncertainities crystallising favourably (or unfavourably if the luck is "bad"). Like it says in the dictionary.
- dkersten 8y ago
  Yes, to me luck is exactly that: the impact/outcome of uncertain or unpredictable circumstances. If they work out positively, then we say it was good luck, if negatively, then we say its bad luck. So luck is just a name for something that happens to us that we feel we didn't have any control over. Which is also why many people believe we make our own luck: because in many situations that people attribute to luck, we can influence the outcome, consciously or otherwise.

I propose an alternative lens: What if "luck" was actually just an individual's ability to perceive an opportunity... intersected with their own feeling that they have permission to act upon it?

i_made_a_booboo 8y ago

What if you were born in Puntland, Somalia and you were shit out "luck".

godelski 8y ago

> What if "luck" was actually just an individual's ability to perceive an opportunity. >>Hard work results in being able to take advantage of more opportunities. But you still have to have those opportunities. That's what is meant by "being able to take advantage of more opportunities. You are better able to see that they exist. You are also primed to look for them. You also believe that you can succeed at that opportunity. BUT a key thing is that they actually have to exist. There are situations where you can work really hard and there be no opportunities to be successful (financially. Because we can redefine what successful means but that doesn't consider context). As illustrated above you can work really hard in jail and that can result in no gained success. But we're talking about sayings. Sayings are never exact but rather hold a generalization in a nice and easy to remember package. Sayings always include a lot of implicit information. We could quibble about finer details but whether you should or shouldn't depends on the context of the conversation and whether the context the saying is provided in contextualizes that implicit information. What this saying packages is: Though work highly correlated with success it does not necessitate it. There are opportunities for success frequently around us and frequently unseen. Hard work will not result in seeing or being able to take advantage of said opportunities, but rather it correlates with the ability to. Furthermore, hard work often correlates with improvements in skill, which grant access to new opportunities that previously were not obtainable. While there are a lot of things that lead to success that correlate with hard work and while success itself in turn correlates with hard work, success itself is not granted to all those that work hard.

EliRivers 8y ago

I bought a lottery ticket, and I have permission to win, yet I didn't. I suspect luck is, in fact, simply the event of uncertainities crystallising favourably (or unfavourably if the luck is "bad"). Like it says in the dictionary.

dkersten 8y ago
Yes, to me luck is exactly that: the impact/outcome of uncertain or unpredictable circumstances. If they work out positively, then we say it was good luck, if negatively, then we say its bad luck. So luck is just a name for something that happens to us that we feel we didn't have any control over. Which is also why many people believe we make our own luck: because in many situations that people attribute to luck, we can influence the outcome, consciously or otherwise.