Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

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Re-read the article. The people who considered themselves "lucky" turned out to be more observant, and therefore would encounter unexpected opportunities. The people who considered themselves "unlucky" would miss glaring opportunities that should have been staring them in the face. If opportunities keep on dropping in your lap but not in others, after a while you're likely to feel lucky. If opportunities keep on not dropping in your lap while they do in others, after a while you're likely to feel unlucky. Objectively you just don't understand the source of your consistent fortune. But that is how it will feel.

It isn't about risks or risk-taking at all. It is about better observation leading to noticing and taking advantage of opportunities. What is the risk in being given an offer to easily make 250 British pounds? The unlucky people didn't even see it! (The lucky people presumably would have noticed that, but didn't because they noticed that the second page gave them the answer they were looking for so they didn't read the rest of the paper.)

He then figured out some of the factors that lead to the improved observation rate, and found that he could teach "luckiness" as a skill. Of course you aren't going to actually be lucky if you learn that skill. But if you have it you'll have more opportunities to take advantage of. And that's pretty worthwhile.

That is easily an artifact of verification bias.

There was no effort in trying to introduce events that would be negative if aggressively pursued such as a Nigerian 411 or lottery scam. You certainly aren't lucky if you noticed one of these and decided it was a nice opportunity.

The perception is definitely verification bias. However there was an effort to train "unlucky" people to be more "lucky", and there was evidence that this really improved their lives. So while there are cases that it will cause them to fall for scams, on the whole it seems to be a good change.

The "training" wasn't actually luck, it was a training of attitude.

Sure it may have improved their lives, but attributing this to luck is as much of a mistake as saying that learning to prospect for gold is increasing my luck at getting rich.

You conflate two separate things there – 'noticing' and 'deciding it was a nice opportunity'.

The article claimed that noticing opportunities was a characteristic of lucky people. It did not say that lucky people were any more likely to be more risk-taking or credulous than other people.

> The article claimed that noticing opportunities was a characteristic of lucky people. It did not say that lucky people were any more likely to be more risk-taking or credulous than other people.

No I did not conflate them. The author only presented "good" opportunities, so it is obvious that the people who noticed them would always benefit from being more observant of things they deem good.

In fact this attitude made them more expectant that good things happen to them, as evidenced by the lottery test where they expected to win twice as much as the people who were "unlucky".

If you naturally expect to benefit more from any such activity, isn't this naturally more risk-taking and credulous?

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