Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you an interview that
Speaker 1: Robert conducted with a professor of psychology named Barbara Bletchley. Uh. Rob,
Speaker 1: I was not here for this conversation. You recorded it
Speaker 1: while I was out on vacation a while back. So
Speaker 1: to tell me about the talk. What is this? Well,
Speaker 1: Barbara came on the show to discuss her new book,
Speaker 1: What Are the Chances Why We Believe in Luck. This
Speaker 1: is UM publication from Columbia University Press, and it's currently
Speaker 1: available in hardback, get as an e book, an audio book,
Speaker 1: So anyway you consume your your books, it's an option UM.
Speaker 1: Barbara is a professor of psychology at Agnes Scott College, Indicator, Georgia,
Speaker 1: UM and her scholarly and UH teaching interests include of
Speaker 1: physiological psychology, neuroscience research, statistics, psychology of learning, sensation and perception.
Speaker 1: Also the biology of depression and UH and factors both
Speaker 1: environmental and biological, influencing the development of the brain. UM
Speaker 1: and of course, the book in question here, which is
Speaker 1: a delightful read. I've very much enjoyed. It's just all
Speaker 1: about about luck, getting into um various topics related to
Speaker 1: luck that you might not even instantly realize are are
Speaker 1: central to our understanding of it, such as randomness and
Speaker 1: the difficulty in like, even contemplating randomness from a human perspective.
Speaker 1: Barbara also gets into the neuroscience of luck as well
Speaker 1: as how it relates to various uh mythologies and and
Speaker 1: so forth. Sounds great, Let's jump right on in. Hi, Barbara,
Speaker 1: can you introduce yourself to our listeners. Hi, my name
Speaker 1: is Barbara Blushley. I'm a professor of psychology and neuroscience
Speaker 1: at Agnes Scott College, and I've been there for about, oh,
Speaker 1: this is going to be embarrassing forty years now. Your
Speaker 1: book provides such an engrossing look at luck and randomness
Speaker 1: and these various concepts that are all kind of interwoven
Speaker 1: into the topic. Uh So, in a way, it's kind
Speaker 1: of difficult to decide where to start first. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to just ask you, well, what is luck, because
Speaker 1: that is that's that entire answer is the entire length
Speaker 1: of the book. But I thought it might start by
Speaker 1: just asking how does luck seem to be connected to
Speaker 1: the human unwillingness to accept randomness. Actually, that's a very
Speaker 1: good question. I think luck is the word that we
Speaker 1: assign to random and unpredictable events in the world. We
Speaker 1: tend not to like things that are random and unpredictable.
Speaker 1: They're very often interpreted as fearful or threatening. Randomness is
Speaker 1: scary because it's unknowable, it's unpredictable. Um, it's unexpected. UH.
Speaker 1: I was very fascinated to read a book by Nicholas Carlton,
Speaker 1: who's a psychologist in Canada. UH. He writes that fear
Speaker 1: of the unknown, the fear of not having the information
Speaker 1: we need in order to be able to answer a question,
Speaker 1: maybe the most fundamental, the most basic fear that we
Speaker 1: have and underlies every other fear that we learn. We
Speaker 1: are motivated, seriously motivated to reduce that uncertainty, and we
Speaker 1: do that in a number of different ways. We can
Speaker 1: we can do it by being curious, by going out
Speaker 1: and trying to find the answer to the question. We
Speaker 1: also do it this is very human. We do it
Speaker 1: by labeling that thing that we're afraid of. UM. The
Speaker 1: tendency to label things that we don't understand, I think
Speaker 1: is another fundamental human characteristic. It stems from our desired
Speaker 1: control of that. Then if you can label it, then
Speaker 1: you have some degree of control over it. Um. One
Speaker 1: of the more interesting studies that I came across in
Speaker 1: writing the book was a study done by uh Lieberman
Speaker 1: and the whole slew of other people in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven. They were looking at their participants understanding emotions,
Speaker 1: and they were doing this in an fMRI machine, So
Speaker 1: they're scanning the brain to watch how it uh the
Speaker 1: processes the information that's coming in. They showed their participants
Speaker 1: a series of human faces expressing emotion. About of the
Speaker 1: emotions were negative because that gets a really big response,
Speaker 1: and the other were positive emotions. Or they show them
Speaker 1: just a shape, and they asked them to first just
Speaker 1: observe the image, don't do anything about it, don't label it,
Speaker 1: don't say anything. And then they asked them to to
Speaker 1: label that image. When they were just observed the human
Speaker 1: faces with emotional expressions, it activated a part of the
Speaker 1: brain called the amygdala, which is part of the emotion
Speaker 1: processing system in the brain. When they labeled the emotion
Speaker 1: the activity the amygdala went down. So it's almost as
Speaker 1: if being able to apply a label to that thing
Speaker 1: reduced the anxiety literally in the part of the brain
Speaker 1: that is processing that emotional response, which I thought was
Speaker 1: just super interesting. I did not expect that. So, loosely speaking,
Speaker 1: like something unexpected happens. Uh, there's the the you know,
Speaker 1: the the unexplained, the unexpected in life. Just by merely
Speaker 1: being able to label it bad luck, you're kind of
Speaker 1: reducing the the emotional um impact of the incident. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think that's how they would have interpreted it. They
Speaker 1: said that putting your feelings into words helped regulate the
Speaker 1: negative emotions that that particular thing unexpected or a negative
Speaker 1: emotional response from someone else. Humans are tremendously important to
Speaker 1: other humans. We can spend a lot of our time
Speaker 1: watching human faces to see what they're doing. So being
Speaker 1: able to label that negative emotion reduced the anxiety that
Speaker 1: that negative emotion provoked. Fascinating. Now, speaking of of applying
Speaker 1: language to these things. In the book, you outline four
Speaker 1: different types of luck. Um, can you describe these four us?
Speaker 1: Those four types of luck I came across in a
Speaker 1: book by Dr James Austin, who is a neurologist and
Speaker 1: an author. In fact, he wrote one of my favorite
Speaker 1: books of all time. Um, it's called Zen and the Brain.
Speaker 1: Had nothing to do with luck, but just to mention
Speaker 1: it because it's a really cool book. So he writes
Speaker 1: about these four types of luck in his book, which
Speaker 1: is uh Chase, Chance and Creativity, The Lucky Art of Novelty.
Speaker 1: He's really writing about how luck played a role in
Speaker 1: his own X paraments that he was doing in the lab,
Speaker 1: and he details these four different kinds of luck. Each
Speaker 1: type of luck builds on the type that came before.
Speaker 1: So at the at the foundation of this is what
Speaker 1: he called type one luck, which is what most of
Speaker 1: us probably think about when we think about luck. It's
Speaker 1: random chance. It's just an unexpected, random event that happens
Speaker 1: to you. We don't see it coming, but there it is,
Speaker 1: and we we wind up having to deal with it.
Speaker 1: And the example I used in the book for type
Speaker 1: one luck is walking into the casino in Las Vegas
Speaker 1: and betting everything you have on the outcome of one
Speaker 1: game and walking out a winner. That's type one luck.
Speaker 1: That's just random, unexpected against the odds. Look type two
Speaker 1: luck is a combination of randomness and what Austin called movement.
Speaker 1: Um I think of it as persistence. Really, he uses
Speaker 1: the example of a Charles Kettering, who's an American inventor,
Speaker 1: who very famously said, but if you want to solve problems,
Speaker 1: you have to be persistent. You have to keep moving,
Speaker 1: you have to keep trying. Chances are you will stumble
Speaker 1: on something when you least expected. I've never heard of
Speaker 1: anyone stumbling on something sitting down. So Kettering was advocating
Speaker 1: to be luckier, get up and move, get up and try.
Speaker 1: And Type three luck is a combination then of randomness, persistence,
Speaker 1: and preparation, and Austin uses the famous quote by Louis Pasteur.
Speaker 1: Chance favors the prepared mind, so preparation helps you see
Speaker 1: patterns in the events that happened to you that other
Speaker 1: people who are less prepared might not see. And then
Speaker 1: Type four luck combines randomness, persistence, preparation, and our own
Speaker 1: unique personality, our own spin on what happens in the world.
Speaker 1: And I used the story of Sarah Kesson's and Emily
Speaker 1: Cole and their attempt to win the two thousand and
Speaker 1: five wood Vale Transatlantic Rowing Race which just blows my mind.
Speaker 1: I just cannot wrap my head around voluntarily getting in
Speaker 1: a rowboat and trying to row across the Atlantic Ocean.
Speaker 1: Just not not in my wheelhouse. So I got the
Speaker 1: chance to talk with Sarah via email. UM. I think
Speaker 1: she lives in New Zealand now. Um. She told me
Speaker 1: that she accidentally came across a book, so there's random
Speaker 1: chance while she was waiting for an airplane to fly
Speaker 1: home across the Atlantic, by the way, uh, and read
Speaker 1: about the race and that was what got her interested
Speaker 1: in it. She and her racing partner, Emily Cole, had
Speaker 1: been on the Purdue University women's skulling team, so they
Speaker 1: already were familiar with and prepared for racing long distances,
Speaker 1: although nothing like what they were about to attempt. Both
Speaker 1: thought that this race sounded like a challenge instead of
Speaker 1: something you would avoid at all costs. Uh. And it
Speaker 1: was right up there alley, and both of them prepared
Speaker 1: like mad, persisting despite the fact that Indiana lacks an
Speaker 1: ocean upon which they could practice, so they were practicing
Speaker 1: on rivers and ponds and and things like that, so
Speaker 1: they they embodied kind of all four aspects of luck.
Speaker 1: They suffered, uh, capsize in the race, as did many
Speaker 1: people because apparently this was just an ill fated race,
Speaker 1: but they survived and tried it again. They entered again.
Speaker 1: If you couldn't believe it after that, I don't think
Speaker 1: I would go anywhere near a rowboat, but they did.
Speaker 1: I love the various examples like this that you share
Speaker 1: in the book, so you know, to illustrate these different
Speaker 1: views and understandings of luck. UM. One that was particularly
Speaker 1: I don't know, alarming, I guess you could say if
Speaker 1: if one's not familiar with the story was that of
Speaker 1: Joan Ginther. Can you tell us about Joan Ginther and
Speaker 1: what her story reveals about luck? I can't. One of
Speaker 1: the things I had the most fun with actually in
Speaker 1: writing the book was finding these stories of lucky people.
Speaker 1: And John ginther story was one of the most fun
Speaker 1: for me because I teach statistics, so UH kind of
Speaker 1: felt a kindred bond with Dr Ginther. She is a
Speaker 1: retired professor of mathematics who won the lottery four times,
Speaker 1: winning a total of I think twenty million dollars altogether. UM.
Speaker 1: Her experience is a wonderful example of a streak in
Speaker 1: a random event, winning the lottery is random. It's really, really,
Speaker 1: really hard to predict whether you're going to or not,
Speaker 1: whether or not the card that you've got to scratch
Speaker 1: off lottery card that you've got is going to be
Speaker 1: a winner or not. Um So, her experience winning the
Speaker 1: lottery four times against all the odds and repeatedly was
Speaker 1: really remarkable. She kind of embodies all four types of luck.
Speaker 1: She was definitely prepared to understand the chances of winning
Speaker 1: the lottery. She's a math professor, so she probably knew.
Speaker 1: She was persistent in that she kept trying even though
Speaker 1: she knew what the odds were. She also benefited from
Speaker 1: the fact that random events are not necessarily pattern less.
Speaker 1: They do happen in streaks with apparent patterns. If you
Speaker 1: think about the stars in the night sky, you can
Speaker 1: see patterns in the placement of those stars. In fact,
Speaker 1: those patterns are so consistent that we give them names.
Speaker 1: We've we've labeled the patterns that we see in the
Speaker 1: night sky. So when something happens like this, when somebody
Speaker 1: wins the lottery, for example, four times in a row,
Speaker 1: we tend to think, well, that's not that's not fair,
Speaker 1: it's not how the universe works, it creates uncertainty, and
Speaker 1: that uncertainty is unpleasant. So we start looking for a
Speaker 1: pattern predictability in that event. If we can find a pattern,
Speaker 1: we can then understand that event better. And sometimes that
Speaker 1: pattern we just say that's luck. That's an example of luck.
Speaker 1: Some people insisted, however, that it couldn't be luck because
Speaker 1: it was so unexpected, and that she must have cheated
Speaker 1: in order to win. So there there's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of reporters who got attracted to this story and went
Speaker 1: to try to see could they find out how she
Speaker 1: cheated the system. For the life of me, I can't
Speaker 1: figure out how she would have cheated unless she had
Speaker 1: a level of control over the creation and distribution of
Speaker 1: scratch off lottery cards. That is impossible, and that, as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, she did not have. UM
Speaker 1: I just can't see how she cheated. I think she
Speaker 1: just was the beneficiary of a streak in luck. And
Speaker 1: more power to you, Joan. So I'm not going to run.
Speaker 1: I'm not moved to run out and played the lottery
Speaker 1: myself because because I know what the odds are as well.
Speaker 1: But there you go, thank you. Now. One question I
Speaker 1: came to mind as I was I was reading the book.
Speaker 1: You know, is it is luck just something? Is it
Speaker 1: just seemed like a universal concept for all human cultures?
Speaker 1: Is it just something that that emerges alongside language? Is it?
Speaker 1: Did you run anything across anything that even resembled a
Speaker 1: culture without a tradition of luck? I did not. Um,
Speaker 1: And this was another thing that I found fascinating. I
Speaker 1: suppose it's common to all human cultures in that all
Speaker 1: human cultures are created by humans, so we all share
Speaker 1: a tendency in our cognition, in the way that we
Speaker 1: leave the world. UM. I saw an interview with Richard Wiseman,
Speaker 1: who wrote a book about luck as well. He said
Speaker 1: that as far as he could tell that there, it
Speaker 1: is common to all humans all over the world. Two
Speaker 1: want to have control over the unexpected, and that often
Speaker 1: becomes a tradition of luck and luckiness or lucky gods
Speaker 1: or lucky shoes, are lucky whatever in the world. So,
Speaker 1: if you ask a cognitive science researcher, these are folks
Speaker 1: who study how humans think and what they think about this,
Speaker 1: Is this a universal characteristic of the way humans think?
Speaker 1: They probably would tell you yes, in that all humans
Speaker 1: have the tendency to see patterns in random events, and
Speaker 1: it's related to another tendency in the way that we think,
Speaker 1: which is to look for an agents for whatever caused
Speaker 1: an event to happen. Sometimes you can easily identify the agent.
Speaker 1: If you do something and I see you do it,
Speaker 1: you are the agent. It's really easy for me to tell.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you can't identify the agent, and that makes us nervous.
Speaker 1: So searching for and needing an agent for any event
Speaker 1: that happens is a pattern. It's a survival mechanism for
Speaker 1: us humans. It goes hand in hand with our tendency
Speaker 1: to interpret all patterns as having meaning and discounting randomness
Speaker 1: because we can't see what caused it, so we tend
Speaker 1: to just say, well, that didn't happen. There there must
Speaker 1: be something causing this. If that event that happened is
Speaker 1: beyond the capacity of humans to create, we start looking
Speaker 1: for invisible superhuman agents. We refer to these agents very
Speaker 1: often as gods and goddesses. They are divine, They have
Speaker 1: control over things we don't have control over. They must
Speaker 1: be the agent of whatever happened, and maybe if you
Speaker 1: ask them, really, really nicely, they'll help you experience good
Speaker 1: luck as well. I was a bit surprised at how
Speaker 1: consistently we humans have insisted on and institutionalized the idea
Speaker 1: of luck um as a force in the universe, as
Speaker 1: something that makes things happen. I'm going to go out
Speaker 1: on a on a limb here, uh, something that might
Speaker 1: get me into trouble. I am not a cultural anthropologist.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in this, but I'm not an expert by
Speaker 1: any means. But what struck me was that most cultures
Speaker 1: have an explanation of luck and how it influences us.
Speaker 1: And most of these explanations involves the divine in some way,
Speaker 1: shape or form. That seems to be the common underlying factor.
Speaker 1: Humans like there to be an agent in charge, and
Speaker 1: very often that agent is a god. Now there's a
Speaker 1: whole section of the book where you you look to
Speaker 1: two different cultures and you go back in history and
Speaker 1: look at different ideas. I was. I was a little
Speaker 1: surprised when prehistoric cave paintings came up. Can you describe
Speaker 1: how prehistoric cave paintings may relate to luck? After say,
Speaker 1: going to see the cave paintings at Lasco or elsewhere,
Speaker 1: not just photographs of them. He's on my personal bucket list.
Speaker 1: I would love to do that. I'm told that the
Speaker 1: photographs of them just don't do them justice. There's an
Speaker 1: entire group of researchers who study the paintings that humans
Speaker 1: have left on the walls of the caves they lived in. Um.
Speaker 1: They're trying to understand the apparently fundamental human need to
Speaker 1: paint on the walls. If you're a parent and you
Speaker 1: have children that paint on the walls, it may just
Speaker 1: be wired into us. I don't know. There are a
Speaker 1: number of explanations as to why we do this. I
Speaker 1: personally liked the Neanderthal adolescent idea that maybe they're tagging
Speaker 1: the caves. Some researchers think that they were simply recording
Speaker 1: the hallucinations that they had, because there are some common
Speaker 1: patterns in the haucinations visual hallucinations that human beings have.
Speaker 1: They're called in toptic images. They are created by the
Speaker 1: machinery of the eye itself. So that's why they're so common,
Speaker 1: and that's why all humans, if you're gonna experience them,
Speaker 1: probably experienced the same ones. Have you ever seen a
Speaker 1: floaty um your visual field, something that appears like it's
Speaker 1: floating across. That's probably debris in the eyeball itself. UM.
Speaker 1: So that's an example of one of these UH and
Speaker 1: topic images. The other explanation had to do with our
Speaker 1: ancestors pleading to the universe for good luck. UH. It
Speaker 1: might be related. I've often wondered too our modern urge
Speaker 1: to display the head of something we've killed on the
Speaker 1: living room all. So maybe they were painting the results
Speaker 1: of the last hunt UH and hoping that that would
Speaker 1: be rewarded by a successful hunt the next time. They
Speaker 1: have found that a number of these paintings seemed to
Speaker 1: be done over and over and over again in the
Speaker 1: same spot. So there was some aspect of that spot
Speaker 1: in the cave that was lucky. They had really good
Speaker 1: luck with the hunt after they painted on that spot,
Speaker 1: so they went back the next time and painted again.
Speaker 1: It could just be bragging about what you killed the
Speaker 1: last time, but it could also be a ritual attempt
Speaker 1: to ask the random universe for success the next time.
Speaker 1: You go out with your spear and try to bring
Speaker 1: that out a really mammoth seems difficult. Okay, that's fascinating. UM.
Speaker 1: Now in the h in this section where you you
Speaker 1: deal with different cultural traditions, and I must say you
Speaker 1: get into examples from say, you know, Greek and Roman culture,
Speaker 1: and and very various other examples. So I highly recommend
Speaker 1: folks pick up the book and uh and read it.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to ask about one in particular. You
Speaker 1: outline three models of luck and Chinese traditions. There's I
Speaker 1: believe ming yun, which is one's own personal destiny on
Speaker 1: thin faithful coincidence, and bow ying, a cosmic accounting of
Speaker 1: one's life. And you discuss how the easier you know,
Speaker 1: not not stand alone but interwoven. And this just got
Speaker 1: me thinking, do do you think this is relatable to
Speaker 1: sort of modern Western views um on luck? That you
Speaker 1: know that we may have several different or perhaps even
Speaker 1: contradictory views of how luck might work in our lives. Interesting? Uh,
Speaker 1: I do think that we are often contradictory and what
Speaker 1: we think in what we think about a lot of things,
Speaker 1: not just luck. I think we're a contrary species. Just basically,
Speaker 1: since the book came out, I can have been asked
Speaker 1: do I believe in luck more times than I can count?
Speaker 1: Which is completely expected. I wrote a book about luck,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I guess that means people are reading it. Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that the answer is as binary as
Speaker 1: the question is. If you ask me do I believe
Speaker 1: in luck? I would say yes and no, which is
Speaker 1: a really wishy washy answer. I realized most of the time,
Speaker 1: I don't believe in luck. I believe in hard work, persistence,
Speaker 1: in preparation. But if I hit the lottery tomorrow, I'm
Speaker 1: going to say something along the lines of Wow, that
Speaker 1: was really lucky. I think lots of people feel that way.
Speaker 1: They share that view when when I can see what
Speaker 1: I did to create an outcome, when I can see
Speaker 1: how I've influenced that outcome. When I have control, and
Speaker 1: I know I have control, I don't need luck. I
Speaker 1: don't need it as an explanation for what happened. But
Speaker 1: when I don't have control, then I need luck, And
Speaker 1: then I believe. I'm actually somewhat embarrassed to admit that
Speaker 1: I own a pair of lucky shoes. They became lucky
Speaker 1: when they got paired randomly with success. I wore them
Speaker 1: to a job interview and I got the I got
Speaker 1: the job. Um, I do not think it was the
Speaker 1: shoes that got me the job. That would be creepy
Speaker 1: and weird. I think it was my preper ration, my
Speaker 1: what I brought to the opportunity, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But those shoes are still lucky for me, and I
Speaker 1: still haven't. Yeah, it's it's interesting to think of, Like
Speaker 1: I was, you bring up you know, various you know,
Speaker 1: lucky items and charms and amulets and all, and so
Speaker 1: it got to me got made looking around my own
Speaker 1: house and recognize them some things that are I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, technically lucky charms of some you know, or
Speaker 1: lucky mementos. They're supposed to be items of luck. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then I'll tend to think of them not as
Speaker 1: as some sort of an amulet or anything. I'll think
Speaker 1: of like a reminder of something good. But then again,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of linguistically dancing around, like the idea
Speaker 1: of it being a lucky item. Like, you know, we're
Speaker 1: just kind of arguing about terminology at this point. I
Speaker 1: think it comes down to semantics after a while. Lots
Speaker 1: and lots of people carry carry lucky charms. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't see anything particularly wrong with it. I like my
Speaker 1: lucky shoes. They're very nice shoes. So I'm not going
Speaker 1: to worry about it too much. Is it contradictory? Probably,
Speaker 1: but I'm okay with them. Now. Another question that came
Speaker 1: to mind. Do you see a link between divination practices
Speaker 1: and the need to create randomness? I think I've seen
Speaker 1: this discuss before, in terms of ancient bone casting rituals,
Speaker 1: or the or the eaching means of stepping outside of
Speaker 1: humanity's inherent inability to grasp or produce randomness. I actually
Speaker 1: had not heard that. I was I was intrigued when
Speaker 1: you said that. I think human beings are bad at
Speaker 1: creating randomness. If you ask people to create a random display,
Speaker 1: most of the time we can't do it. Um. This
Speaker 1: is actually a question that philosophers and mathematicians argue about um,
Speaker 1: and I'm perfectly willing to let them have added. I
Speaker 1: don't have a good answer for that, but I think
Speaker 1: we're bad generating or creating randomness because we seem to
Speaker 1: be wired to see patterns and to interpret them as meaningful.
Speaker 1: So if you ask me to abandon that and to
Speaker 1: create a random eventum or series of events, it's usually
Speaker 1: not random. There's usually a pattern in it. And that's
Speaker 1: because of the way that the brain is designed to
Speaker 1: interpret events in the world. So I think what you're
Speaker 1: saying is that you've come across evidence that, in an
Speaker 1: attempt to introduce randomness, people have used casting bones or
Speaker 1: or the each ng or something like that to create
Speaker 1: random because we're so bad at it. Is that what
Speaker 1: you were that is? I think that's basically the ideas
Speaker 1: I've I've read it. I want to say, maybe it
Speaker 1: was Julian Jaynes who wrote about it at some point.
Speaker 1: I'll have to go look that up. Now. Outside of
Speaker 1: any kind of alaly attempted to understand randomness, I enjoy
Speaker 1: a board games and role playing games such as Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons, which, to varying degrees, uses tables and dice
Speaker 1: to generate randomness that is useful in sort of generating
Speaker 1: an adventure or you know, some sort of a situation
Speaker 1: for players to engage in UM. And some systems even
Speaker 1: have like a luck mechanic. They'll be like a luck
Speaker 1: like some sort of numerical rating for luck that uh
Speaker 1: somehow factored into everything. UM. I don't imagine any of
Speaker 1: this reveals anything about our perceptions of luck, though, does it?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I think I think we're we're fascinated
Speaker 1: by random events. Um, they can be scary, but they're interesting.
Speaker 1: They will grab your attention. Um, how else can you
Speaker 1: explain horror movies and how popular they are. I'm not
Speaker 1: really familiar with games that I don't play Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: so I don't really know the example you're using. But
Speaker 1: I think that since games that we play reflect the
Speaker 1: lives that we live, and many people think of luck
Speaker 1: as an element in the universe that cannon does affect us,
Speaker 1: that having some lux ri of an aspect of the
Speaker 1: game would be completely human. I just didn't realize it
Speaker 1: was built into the game. I did not know that.
Speaker 1: Thank thank In your book, you write that quote luckiness
Speaker 1: could be described as a creature of our imagination. If
Speaker 1: we could imagine something worse happening, and if that's something
Speaker 1: worse is close at hand, it might have happened recently.
Speaker 1: We had a choice of actions that lead to the
Speaker 1: possible something worse, or we deserve that outcome, we say
Speaker 1: we were lucky. It all seems to hinge on being
Speaker 1: able to imagine something worse. I found that that that
Speaker 1: really interesting as well, and and this makes complete sense,
Speaker 1: but it also makes me wonder think people who were
Speaker 1: inclined to engage in catastrophic thinking uh and worst case scenarios,
Speaker 1: are they more inclined to assume luck not Probability played
Speaker 1: a role in say, um, you know, not being bitten
Speaker 1: by a shark on a recent vacation. I like that
Speaker 1: example makes me think. I had a I had a
Speaker 1: student in my statistics class last week, as a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, who asked me if something that I said
Speaker 1: in class was true to what they're listening. That's that's good.
Speaker 1: I had been talking about the Monte Carlo fallacy in
Speaker 1: statistics class and explaining why it's a fallacy. The Monte
Speaker 1: Carlo fallacy is another example of how we usually misinterpret probability.
Speaker 1: It's the belief that an event will be, for example,
Speaker 1: less likely to happen if it follows a series of
Speaker 1: similar events, or that a past event can change the
Speaker 1: probability of a future one. It's named after a famous
Speaker 1: streak in the events that happened at the casino at
Speaker 1: Monte Carlo Um. The player on the roulette wheel betting
Speaker 1: black one time after time after time, the little marble
Speaker 1: kept landing on black, and as it did that the
Speaker 1: other players at the table started to bet more and
Speaker 1: more heavily that the next spin would be read as
Speaker 1: if the probability of the marble landing on black was
Speaker 1: decreasing as the streak went on, and the probability that
Speaker 1: it would land on red was increasing. We're talking about
Speaker 1: independent events here. Each spin of the wheel is independent
Speaker 1: of every other spin of the wheel, unless the wheel
Speaker 1: is rigged, in which case you shouldn't be playing there. Um,
Speaker 1: So what happened on the last spin has no effect
Speaker 1: at all on what happens on the next spin. It's
Speaker 1: fifty that it will land on black every single spin,
Speaker 1: unless the universe is keeping score. Uh. And besides, there's
Speaker 1: been too many landing on black events, so the next
Speaker 1: one has to be red. Um, and I don't think
Speaker 1: it is. Then what happened the last time has no
Speaker 1: effect on what happens the next time. My student looks
Speaker 1: shocked by this, so I asked her why, and she
Speaker 1: said that she had always believed, like the players at
Speaker 1: the table had believed that, to use your example of
Speaker 1: being bitten by a shark, um, that the probability of
Speaker 1: being bitten by a shark if she goes into the
Speaker 1: ocean would go up as the number of days that
Speaker 1: no one had been bitten by a shark also increased.
Speaker 1: Don't work that way, um, And we had an interesting
Speaker 1: discussion about how it does not work that way. UM.
Speaker 1: She came to class the next time kind of reconciled
Speaker 1: to this. So, yeah, my work here is done. So UM,
Speaker 1: I think part of the reason we do this, and
Speaker 1: I do it myself, I have done it myself, is
Speaker 1: that we're wired to think that the worst thing can happen,
Speaker 1: and there's a survival component to that. If you prepare
Speaker 1: yourself for the worst thing that can possibly happen, then
Speaker 1: then you're ready for that should it happen, and if
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen, you're still okay because you were prepared.
Speaker 1: So the problem is that overestimating the probability of a
Speaker 1: negative event produces anxiety, and anxiety can really change how
Speaker 1: you process what happens next. So I think I may
Speaker 1: have wandered down the garden path here, but I do
Speaker 1: think that, uh, we do tend to think catastrophically, uh,
Speaker 1: in order to prepare for catastrophe. UH, and that that
Speaker 1: is related to how lucky or unlucky we feel ourselves
Speaker 1: to be. Believe ourselves to be so. Speaking of of anxiety,
Speaker 1: how does stress and superstition, superstition about luck and bad luck,
Speaker 1: how do these seem to be linked together. Well, stress
Speaker 1: and anxiety can reinforce catastrophic thinking. Anxiety tends to narrow
Speaker 1: what psychologists call the spotlight of attention. If you're anxious,
Speaker 1: that spotlight is really, really narrow. You're focused on just
Speaker 1: that one little thing, and you're missing you're actually not
Speaker 1: seeing or hearing the other things that are happening. If
Speaker 1: you're relaxed and happy, that spotlight is wide and you're
Speaker 1: taking in more information. So if you get stressed out
Speaker 1: in anxious and you're focused on that catastrophic thing and
Speaker 1: only that catastrophic thing, it can make it more and
Speaker 1: more difficult to cope, and it can make you more
Speaker 1: likely to see the negative and less likely to see
Speaker 1: the positive. Superstitions develop as a means of deflecting, usually
Speaker 1: something negative or fearful, uh to keep that from happening.
Speaker 1: There was just very interesting study done on the superstition
Speaker 1: of knocking on wood um, which developed by out of
Speaker 1: the Celtic culture. The belief that trees in the forest
Speaker 1: were inhabited by spirits that could mess with you if
Speaker 1: they felt like it, um especially if you came upon
Speaker 1: them unexpectedly. Produced this this myth or the superstition of
Speaker 1: knocking on wood. So you walked by the tree and
Speaker 1: knock on it to let them know that you're here,
Speaker 1: so that they they'll leave you alone. They won't be
Speaker 1: surprised by your sudden appearance. It keeps bad luck away
Speaker 1: from us. So in this study, they asked people to
Speaker 1: describe their level of stress. How stressed are you? And
Speaker 1: then they gave them a difficult task to do, and
Speaker 1: they asked them as they were doing it, how strong
Speaker 1: is the urge to knock on wood? For example? And uh.
Speaker 1: What they found was that the more stressed they were,
Speaker 1: the more they reported the urge to knock on wood.
Speaker 1: Not not very many of them did it, because they're
Speaker 1: in a psychology experiment and the psychologist is watching them.
Speaker 1: They don't want to look superstitious. But they did report
Speaker 1: that they felt the urged more strongly when they were
Speaker 1: stressed out. So carrying lucky charms produces a similar effect.
Speaker 1: Having a lucky ritual or a lucky pen, or even
Speaker 1: lucky shoes can make us feel more confident in the
Speaker 1: face of the unknown and the unpredictable. Having that with
Speaker 1: you reduces anxiety, and when you're less anxious, you perform better.
Speaker 1: So you know, success breeds success. So I have to
Speaker 1: admit that previously I did not know what the origin
Speaker 1: of knocking on wood was as a sort of good
Speaker 1: luck practice. It's something that I I would catch myself
Speaker 1: doing often if i'm, you know, engaging in a conversation
Speaker 1: with somebody like I don't think I would ever catch
Speaker 1: myself doing it like by myself, but uh, you know,
Speaker 1: someone would say something they knock on wood. I pick
Speaker 1: up on it, and I guess the barrier to entry
Speaker 1: is very low in it. You just have to have
Speaker 1: something wooden around to knock on my desk. Now, traditions
Speaker 1: of luck like like this and others that they can
Speaker 1: be fun and they're they're often a part of one's culture.
Speaker 1: But what do you think it's the best way to
Speaker 1: explain these traditions to to younger people, to children. I
Speaker 1: often wonder about this with my own son, where I
Speaker 1: might explain a tradition or even introduce him to one,
Speaker 1: But then I feel like I have to really couch
Speaker 1: it all in sort of the fiction or the superstition
Speaker 1: of the thing, so that he doesn't take it too seriously. Um,
Speaker 1: but then I am I taking too much of the
Speaker 1: magic out of it. I don't know what do you
Speaker 1: think is the right approach? Oh, well, I will tell
Speaker 1: you right off the bat. But I don't have children,
Speaker 1: so I've never been faced with this. Probably not the
Speaker 1: person to ask. I do think that you probably. I
Speaker 1: don't think you would destroy the magic if you explained
Speaker 1: it to a child. I think children are remarkably will
Speaker 1: to believe in magic. I mean, who but a child
Speaker 1: would think that tying a red towel around their shoulders
Speaker 1: would give them the power of flight. That's that's magic. Um.
Speaker 1: So I don't think that you're going to, by being realistic,
Speaker 1: explain explain away the magic. I think the magic is
Speaker 1: there regardless. There's plenty of adult people who see magic
Speaker 1: as perfectly possible as well. I don't really have any
Speaker 1: good advice for how to how to explain this to
Speaker 1: your child because I don't have any. I have three
Speaker 1: step children, but they were pretty much beyond that stage
Speaker 1: by the time I came around. So yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: I'll just have to have to keep wrestling with it. Here.
Speaker 1: Basically you mentioned the red cape is actually a similar
Speaker 1: situation where my son knows that red is often considered
Speaker 1: a you know, a good luck color, and so they'll
Speaker 1: be we'll be playing a game or something and he'll say,
Speaker 1: oh wait, let me go get a red shirt on
Speaker 1: for this part, you know, to get really geared up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I, you know, when he does that, I
Speaker 1: don't want to say no, don't do that, you know,
Speaker 1: don't engage in superstition. But I also want to explain
Speaker 1: to him what, you know, this is not actually going
Speaker 1: to have an impact on what happens. But yeah, but
Speaker 1: then it keep explaining, Yeah, just keep explaining. Okay. Now
Speaker 1: another question, this is something you get into in the book. Um.
Speaker 1: Are people who believe in luck generally happier? Well, that's
Speaker 1: an easy one, yes. Um. Psychology used to think of
Speaker 1: luck as being a sign that you were focused in
Speaker 1: the wrong direction, that there was a sign of not
Speaker 1: processing things appropriately, But lots of studies more recently have
Speaker 1: shown that people who believe themselves to be lucky people
Speaker 1: are more hopeful, they're happier, they perform better. It even
Speaker 1: affects something called executive function, which is the function of
Speaker 1: the frontal lobe, how you pay attention to the world,
Speaker 1: how you UM. There are several aspects to executive function.
Speaker 1: One is paying attention UH, and all of those aspects
Speaker 1: can be affected by belief in luck, because I think
Speaker 1: because you're happier, you're just a happier person, and that
Speaker 1: change is how you work, how you function. UM. There's
Speaker 1: a study that showed in two thousand and nineteen that
Speaker 1: less happy people people who were unhappy had a stronger
Speaker 1: belief in external luck, that it was out there, not
Speaker 1: them that was lucky, but that it was a force
Speaker 1: out there in the universe that dictated your fate, whether
Speaker 1: it was good or bad. They're blaming luck for what
Speaker 1: happens to them, and that tends to make you feel
Speaker 1: as though you don't have personal agency, that what you
Speaker 1: do isn't going to have an effect. UM diminishes their
Speaker 1: sense of purpose and their overall happiness. So seeing luck
Speaker 1: as external to you might be associated with being more unhappy,
Speaker 1: but seeing luck as personal, as something that's an aspect
Speaker 1: of you, tends to be associated with people being happier. UH.
Speaker 1: It's a I suppose a variant of optimism and optimism
Speaker 1: always makes us feel better. It breeds, it breeds hope,
Speaker 1: it breeds self acceptance, uh, connection with other people and
Speaker 1: with positive experiences. So people who see themselves as lucky
Speaker 1: may be more willing to try something new, to be
Speaker 1: inspired to go out and try to be a helper
Speaker 1: out in the world. Two help other people because they
Speaker 1: feel that life has been kind to them, and so
Speaker 1: they can then extend that to the rest of us. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: people who see themselves as lucky are generally speaking happier.
Speaker 1: So in that case, can we learn to be lucky?
Speaker 1: Can we make that change in our in our lives? Yeah.
Speaker 1: The same psychologist in the UK that I was talking about,
Speaker 1: Richard Wiseman, has been studying luck and uh other factors
Speaker 1: that are related to it for the last twenty years.
Speaker 1: He used to run I don't know if he's still
Speaker 1: running it or not, but he used to run a
Speaker 1: luck school where he would teach you how to be lucky.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's still operating, and he had
Speaker 1: details in his book. He has a book out called
Speaker 1: The lux actor Um and he details in that book
Speaker 1: several ways several things you can do to try to
Speaker 1: improve your your feeling of personal luckiness. Try to be
Speaker 1: more open to new experiences, be more social, make more
Speaker 1: connections with other human beings. Pay attention to your intuition,
Speaker 1: your gut feeling about something. UM, expect good fortune as
Speaker 1: opposed to acting disaster. Uh, and develop your resiliency, your
Speaker 1: ability to come back even from a disaster, come back
Speaker 1: from that. Still looking for the positive in life. I
Speaker 1: think the most practical bit of advice that he had
Speaker 1: was to begin a gratitude diary to track the positive
Speaker 1: in your life. So every day you would write down
Speaker 1: a positive thing that happened to you. It makes you
Speaker 1: focus on the positive more. It tends to make us happier. Uh.
Speaker 1: That widens our attentional spotlight, That makes us more likely
Speaker 1: to notice random things that come up, et cetera. So,
Speaker 1: as I said, success breed success. So if you can
Speaker 1: do that, that might be the first step in learning
Speaker 1: how to be a luckier person. Excellent. Well, there's some
Speaker 1: some some words of wisdom there. Remind everybody that the
Speaker 1: book again is what are the chances why we believe
Speaker 1: in luck? And yeah we we We didn't even get
Speaker 1: into I think half of the material you discussed in
Speaker 1: there there's there's stuff in there about about curses, the
Speaker 1: curse of the Mummy. Um, it's certainly a lot of
Speaker 1: neuroscientific information that's worth reading as well, so I encourage
Speaker 1: everyone to go out there and pick it up. Thanks
Speaker 1: for taking time out of your day to chat with me, Barbara.
Speaker 1: Thank you. This was fun all right. Well, thanks once
Speaker 1: more to Barbara for taking time out of her day
Speaker 1: to chat with me about the book. The book, again
Speaker 1: is what are the Chances Why We Believe in Luck?
Speaker 1: Currently available and I think pretty much any format you
Speaker 1: might be desiring, and that is out from Columbia University Press.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you would like to check out
Speaker 1: other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you'll find
Speaker 1: us in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed.
Speaker 1: We have core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Artifact on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: listener Mail on Monday, and on Friday's we do a
Speaker 1: little uh, a little bit of content called Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: That's our time to set aside most of the serious
Speaker 1: concerns and just discuss a weird film. Huge thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
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