Something...

So I didn't really have any ramblings going on in my head that I wanted to spew about, but I figured I should try and write something as it has been a few days.

So I played some live poker tonight and lost like normal... One would think that the math major that claims to be good at reading people would actually be good at poker, but it seems to be just the opposite. I am starting to pick up on some of the strategies and naturally just counting out odds, but I haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet. I play in freeroll tournaments almost everyday online (which are basically tournaments that are free to play in, but have small pots) and am slowly getting better but still can't seem to pull it off. Anyway, enough rambling about that as I just thought about something real to philosophize about: luck.

Could luck really be something that someone can have? Can people really have an invisible umbrella following them around on a rainy day? I think this all comes down to a couple key flaws in human nature. The first of which is the idea that the grass is always greener on the other side. People take for granted what they actually have and always see other people's things as better than theirs even if they are essentially the same. Perhaps it is just part of the human condition, the same drive that causes humans to be so curious, but people are never happy with what they have. What this comes down to is that people tend to ignore the good things that they have and exaggerate the good things that other people have.

I think another key element to the illusion of luck is that people tend to hide their failures and only flaunt their successes, especially if that success was against great odds. There is nothing inherently wrong with this beyond that people are in a sense lying to themselves and everyone else by trying to misinterpreter themselves, but everyone does it. So as people only express their successes to other people and those people see other people's successes as greater than their own, the people will see everyone else as having luck.

To me actually believing in and banking on good luck charms is one of the stupidest things you can do. I think that looking for some item or person for comfort or solace or help is a great thing, but believing that different items have some inherent property of good luck is just plain stupid, right up there with astrology.

Everyone has even luck, equal probabilities will mean equal or close to equal outcomes in the long term, it is the basis of statistics. Just because people want to explain away their mistakes, shortcomings, and bad hands with some sort of mystical idea, we shouldn't lower ourselves to that level. We should just face life head on and realize that if something doesn't go our way, either we should have worked harder or maybe the cards weren't right.