WEBVTT - Barbara Blatchley on Why We Believe in Luck 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.280 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:14.080 My Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:16.880 Blow Your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:20.440 Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you an interview that 0:00:20.600 --> 0:00:26.279 Robert conducted with a professor of psychology named Barbara Bletchley. Uh. Rob, 0:00:26.280 --> 0:00:28.560 I was not here for this conversation. You recorded it 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:30.680 while I was out on vacation a while back. So 0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:34.160 to tell me about the talk. What is this? Well, 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:37.000 Barbara came on the show to discuss her new book, 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:40.240 What Are the Chances Why We Believe in Luck. This 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:44.440 is UM publication from Columbia University Press, and it's currently 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:48.400 available in hardback, get as an e book, an audio book, 0:00:48.479 --> 0:00:53.000 So anyway you consume your your books, it's an option UM. 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:57.160 Barbara is a professor of psychology at Agnes Scott College, Indicator, Georgia, 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:02.440 UM and her scholarly and UH teaching interests include of 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:09.560 physiological psychology, neuroscience research, statistics, psychology of learning, sensation and perception. 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:13.759 Also the biology of depression and UH and factors both 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:18.480 environmental and biological, influencing the development of the brain. UM 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:20.840 and of course, the book in question here, which is 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:23.680 a delightful read. I've very much enjoyed. It's just all 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:28.720 about about luck, getting into um various topics related to 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:31.560 luck that you might not even instantly realize are are 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:34.720 central to our understanding of it, such as randomness and 0:01:34.720 --> 0:01:40.120 the difficulty in like, even contemplating randomness from a human perspective. 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:44.399 Barbara also gets into the neuroscience of luck as well 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:48.320 as how it relates to various uh mythologies and and 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:54.240 so forth. Sounds great, Let's jump right on in. Hi, Barbara, 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:57.520 can you introduce yourself to our listeners. Hi, my name 0:01:57.560 --> 0:02:02.040 is Barbara Blushley. I'm a professor of psychology and neuroscience 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:05.960 at Agnes Scott College, and I've been there for about, oh, 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:08.440 this is going to be embarrassing forty years now. Your 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:13.000 book provides such an engrossing look at luck and randomness 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:16.359 and these various concepts that are all kind of interwoven 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:20.040 into the topic. Uh So, in a way, it's kind 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:22.920 of difficult to decide where to start first. I wouldn't 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:25.320 want to just ask you, well, what is luck, because 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:28.480 that is that's that entire answer is the entire length 0:02:28.520 --> 0:02:31.120 of the book. But I thought it might start by 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:34.760 just asking how does luck seem to be connected to 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:39.160 the human unwillingness to accept randomness. Actually, that's a very 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:42.480 good question. I think luck is the word that we 0:02:43.360 --> 0:02:48.240 assign to random and unpredictable events in the world. We 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:51.480 tend not to like things that are random and unpredictable. 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:56.320 They're very often interpreted as fearful or threatening. Randomness is 0:02:56.360 --> 0:03:04.080 scary because it's unknowable, it's unpredictable. Um, it's unexpected. UH. 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:08.480 I was very fascinated to read a book by Nicholas Carlton, 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:13.160 who's a psychologist in Canada. UH. He writes that fear 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:18.040 of the unknown, the fear of not having the information 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:20.400 we need in order to be able to answer a question, 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:25.680 maybe the most fundamental, the most basic fear that we 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:30.080 have and underlies every other fear that we learn. We 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:35.960 are motivated, seriously motivated to reduce that uncertainty, and we 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:38.680 do that in a number of different ways. We can 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:40.680 we can do it by being curious, by going out 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:44.400 and trying to find the answer to the question. We 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:47.280 also do it this is very human. We do it 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:51.280 by labeling that thing that we're afraid of. UM. The 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:55.600 tendency to label things that we don't understand, I think 0:03:55.720 --> 0:04:00.240 is another fundamental human characteristic. It stems from our desired 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:02.360 control of that. Then if you can label it, then 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:06.640 you have some degree of control over it. Um. One 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.840 of the more interesting studies that I came across in 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:14.640 writing the book was a study done by uh Lieberman 0:04:15.120 --> 0:04:18.039 and the whole slew of other people in two thousand 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:25.120 and seven. They were looking at their participants understanding emotions, 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:28.080 and they were doing this in an fMRI machine, So 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:31.320 they're scanning the brain to watch how it uh the 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.800 processes the information that's coming in. They showed their participants 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:38.960 a series of human faces expressing emotion. About of the 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:41.760 emotions were negative because that gets a really big response, 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:45.880 and the other were positive emotions. Or they show them 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:50.280 just a shape, and they asked them to first just 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:54.400 observe the image, don't do anything about it, don't label it, 0:04:54.440 --> 0:04:57.279 don't say anything. And then they asked them to to 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:00.559 label that image. When they were just observed the human 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:04.599 faces with emotional expressions, it activated a part of the 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:08.080 brain called the amygdala, which is part of the emotion 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:12.080 processing system in the brain. When they labeled the emotion 0:05:12.480 --> 0:05:16.000 the activity the amygdala went down. So it's almost as 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:18.920 if being able to apply a label to that thing 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:22.280 reduced the anxiety literally in the part of the brain 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:25.400 that is processing that emotional response, which I thought was 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:31.520 just super interesting. I did not expect that. So, loosely speaking, 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:36.000 like something unexpected happens. Uh, there's the the you know, 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:38.640 the the unexplained, the unexpected in life. Just by merely 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:41.520 being able to label it bad luck, you're kind of 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:47.560 reducing the the emotional um impact of the incident. Yes, 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:50.040 I think that's how they would have interpreted it. They 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:54.520 said that putting your feelings into words helped regulate the 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:59.640 negative emotions that that particular thing unexpected or a negative 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:03.479 emotional response from someone else. Humans are tremendously important to 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:05.760 other humans. We can spend a lot of our time 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:11.080 watching human faces to see what they're doing. So being 0:06:11.120 --> 0:06:14.840 able to label that negative emotion reduced the anxiety that 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:20.279 that negative emotion provoked. Fascinating. Now, speaking of of applying 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:24.200 language to these things. In the book, you outline four 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:27.760 different types of luck. Um, can you describe these four us? 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:30.320 Those four types of luck I came across in a 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:34.640 book by Dr James Austin, who is a neurologist and 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:37.400 an author. In fact, he wrote one of my favorite 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:41.000 books of all time. Um, it's called Zen and the Brain. 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:44.520 Had nothing to do with luck, but just to mention 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:47.279 it because it's a really cool book. So he writes 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:50.599 about these four types of luck in his book, which 0:06:50.680 --> 0:06:56.240 is uh Chase, Chance and Creativity, The Lucky Art of Novelty. 0:06:56.320 --> 0:06:58.680 He's really writing about how luck played a role in 0:06:58.720 --> 0:07:01.560 his own X paraments that he was doing in the lab, 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:05.120 and he details these four different kinds of luck. Each 0:07:05.160 --> 0:07:07.880 type of luck builds on the type that came before. 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:11.720 So at the at the foundation of this is what 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:14.560 he called type one luck, which is what most of 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:17.440 us probably think about when we think about luck. It's 0:07:17.640 --> 0:07:21.560 random chance. It's just an unexpected, random event that happens 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:25.160 to you. We don't see it coming, but there it is, 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:27.800 and we we wind up having to deal with it. 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:30.400 And the example I used in the book for type 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:33.560 one luck is walking into the casino in Las Vegas 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:37.200 and betting everything you have on the outcome of one 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:41.640 game and walking out a winner. That's type one luck. 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:47.200 That's just random, unexpected against the odds. Look type two 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:52.600 luck is a combination of randomness and what Austin called movement. 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:57.200 Um I think of it as persistence. Really, he uses 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:02.560 the example of a Charles Kettering, who's an American inventor, 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:07.000 who very famously said, but if you want to solve problems, 0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:09.040 you have to be persistent. You have to keep moving, 0:08:09.080 --> 0:08:12.480 you have to keep trying. Chances are you will stumble 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:16.080 on something when you least expected. I've never heard of 0:08:16.080 --> 0:08:20.600 anyone stumbling on something sitting down. So Kettering was advocating 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:24.320 to be luckier, get up and move, get up and try. 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:28.120 And Type three luck is a combination then of randomness, persistence, 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:33.880 and preparation, and Austin uses the famous quote by Louis Pasteur. 0:08:34.760 --> 0:08:39.040 Chance favors the prepared mind, so preparation helps you see 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:41.720 patterns in the events that happened to you that other 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:45.280 people who are less prepared might not see. And then 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:50.199 Type four luck combines randomness, persistence, preparation, and our own 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:53.680 unique personality, our own spin on what happens in the world. 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:57.320 And I used the story of Sarah Kesson's and Emily 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:02.840 Cole and their attempt to win the two thousand and 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:08.160 five wood Vale Transatlantic Rowing Race which just blows my mind. 0:09:08.240 --> 0:09:12.160 I just cannot wrap my head around voluntarily getting in 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:14.920 a rowboat and trying to row across the Atlantic Ocean. 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:21.199 Just not not in my wheelhouse. So I got the 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:24.440 chance to talk with Sarah via email. UM. I think 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:28.120 she lives in New Zealand now. Um. She told me 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:31.160 that she accidentally came across a book, so there's random 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:34.840 chance while she was waiting for an airplane to fly 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:39.000 home across the Atlantic, by the way, uh, and read 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:42.240 about the race and that was what got her interested 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:45.400 in it. She and her racing partner, Emily Cole, had 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:49.280 been on the Purdue University women's skulling team, so they 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:53.800 already were familiar with and prepared for racing long distances, 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:57.240 although nothing like what they were about to attempt. Both 0:09:57.280 --> 0:10:01.120 thought that this race sounded like a challenge instead of 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:04.440 something you would avoid at all costs. Uh. And it 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:06.880 was right up there alley, and both of them prepared 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:10.839 like mad, persisting despite the fact that Indiana lacks an 0:10:10.840 --> 0:10:14.920 ocean upon which they could practice, so they were practicing 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:17.840 on rivers and ponds and and things like that, so 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:22.000 they they embodied kind of all four aspects of luck. 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:27.080 They suffered, uh, capsize in the race, as did many 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:30.480 people because apparently this was just an ill fated race, 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.880 but they survived and tried it again. They entered again. 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:37.280 If you couldn't believe it after that, I don't think 0:10:37.320 --> 0:10:40.240 I would go anywhere near a rowboat, but they did. 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:43.560 I love the various examples like this that you share 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:45.520 in the book, so you know, to illustrate these different 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:49.760 views and understandings of luck. UM. One that was particularly 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:53.000 I don't know, alarming, I guess you could say if 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:55.800 if one's not familiar with the story was that of 0:10:55.960 --> 0:10:58.720 Joan Ginther. Can you tell us about Joan Ginther and 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:02.760 what her story reveals about luck? I can't. One of 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:04.880 the things I had the most fun with actually in 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:07.880 writing the book was finding these stories of lucky people. 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:10.880 And John ginther story was one of the most fun 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:14.679 for me because I teach statistics, so UH kind of 0:11:14.720 --> 0:11:19.120 felt a kindred bond with Dr Ginther. She is a 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:22.800 retired professor of mathematics who won the lottery four times, 0:11:23.800 --> 0:11:28.960 winning a total of I think twenty million dollars altogether. UM. 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:33.200 Her experience is a wonderful example of a streak in 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:38.080 a random event, winning the lottery is random. It's really, really, 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:41.080 really hard to predict whether you're going to or not, 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:44.360 whether or not the card that you've got to scratch 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:47.120 off lottery card that you've got is going to be 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:53.120 a winner or not. Um So, her experience winning the 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:56.600 lottery four times against all the odds and repeatedly was 0:11:56.679 --> 0:12:01.199 really remarkable. She kind of embodies all four types of luck. 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:05.360 She was definitely prepared to understand the chances of winning 0:12:05.360 --> 0:12:08.679 the lottery. She's a math professor, so she probably knew. 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:13.200 She was persistent in that she kept trying even though 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:17.960 she knew what the odds were. She also benefited from 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:23.959 the fact that random events are not necessarily pattern less. 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:27.520 They do happen in streaks with apparent patterns. If you 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:31.160 think about the stars in the night sky, you can 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:34.480 see patterns in the placement of those stars. In fact, 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:38.160 those patterns are so consistent that we give them names. 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:41.120 We've we've labeled the patterns that we see in the 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:46.920 night sky. So when something happens like this, when somebody 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:50.120 wins the lottery, for example, four times in a row, 0:12:50.840 --> 0:12:54.520 we tend to think, well, that's not that's not fair, 0:12:55.600 --> 0:13:00.040 it's not how the universe works, it creates uncertainty, and 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:03.720 that uncertainty is unpleasant. So we start looking for a 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:08.480 pattern predictability in that event. If we can find a pattern, 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:12.920 we can then understand that event better. And sometimes that 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:15.600 pattern we just say that's luck. That's an example of luck. 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:20.960 Some people insisted, however, that it couldn't be luck because 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:24.240 it was so unexpected, and that she must have cheated 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:28.280 in order to win. So there there's a whole bunch 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:32.760 of reporters who got attracted to this story and went 0:13:32.840 --> 0:13:34.720 to try to see could they find out how she 0:13:34.800 --> 0:13:38.439 cheated the system. For the life of me, I can't 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:40.679 figure out how she would have cheated unless she had 0:13:40.679 --> 0:13:44.280 a level of control over the creation and distribution of 0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:48.160 scratch off lottery cards. That is impossible, and that, as 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:51.760 far as I can tell, she did not have. UM 0:13:51.800 --> 0:13:53.920 I just can't see how she cheated. I think she 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:57.200 just was the beneficiary of a streak in luck. And 0:13:57.280 --> 0:14:01.920 more power to you, Joan. So I'm not going to run. 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:03.920 I'm not moved to run out and played the lottery 0:14:04.000 --> 0:14:06.440 myself because because I know what the odds are as well. 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:16.760 But there you go, thank you. Now. One question I 0:14:16.800 --> 0:14:18.880 came to mind as I was I was reading the book. 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:22.280 You know, is it is luck just something? Is it 0:14:22.280 --> 0:14:25.960 just seemed like a universal concept for all human cultures? 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:31.760 Is it just something that that emerges alongside language? Is it? 0:14:32.160 --> 0:14:35.320 Did you run anything across anything that even resembled a 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:38.840 culture without a tradition of luck? I did not. Um, 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:42.160 And this was another thing that I found fascinating. I 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:47.000 suppose it's common to all human cultures in that all 0:14:47.080 --> 0:14:51.520 human cultures are created by humans, so we all share 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:56.240 a tendency in our cognition, in the way that we 0:14:56.320 --> 0:14:59.800 leave the world. UM. I saw an interview with Richard Wiseman, 0:14:59.840 --> 0:15:02.040 who wrote a book about luck as well. He said 0:15:02.200 --> 0:15:04.880 that as far as he could tell that there, it 0:15:05.080 --> 0:15:09.080 is common to all humans all over the world. Two 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:13.040 want to have control over the unexpected, and that often 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:17.160 becomes a tradition of luck and luckiness or lucky gods 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:21.440 or lucky shoes, are lucky whatever in the world. So, 0:15:21.840 --> 0:15:27.000 if you ask a cognitive science researcher, these are folks 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:31.080 who study how humans think and what they think about this, 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:33.840 Is this a universal characteristic of the way humans think? 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:37.560 They probably would tell you yes, in that all humans 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:41.280 have the tendency to see patterns in random events, and 0:15:41.400 --> 0:15:45.240 it's related to another tendency in the way that we think, 0:15:45.280 --> 0:15:48.520 which is to look for an agents for whatever caused 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:51.440 an event to happen. Sometimes you can easily identify the agent. 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:54.080 If you do something and I see you do it, 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:57.160 you are the agent. It's really easy for me to tell. 0:15:58.080 --> 0:16:04.160 Sometimes you can't identify the agent, and that makes us nervous. 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:07.960 So searching for and needing an agent for any event 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:12.000 that happens is a pattern. It's a survival mechanism for 0:16:12.160 --> 0:16:16.240 us humans. It goes hand in hand with our tendency 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:21.560 to interpret all patterns as having meaning and discounting randomness 0:16:22.200 --> 0:16:24.800 because we can't see what caused it, so we tend 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:26.840 to just say, well, that didn't happen. There there must 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:30.640 be something causing this. If that event that happened is 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:34.480 beyond the capacity of humans to create, we start looking 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:39.920 for invisible superhuman agents. We refer to these agents very 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:43.320 often as gods and goddesses. They are divine, They have 0:16:43.440 --> 0:16:46.040 control over things we don't have control over. They must 0:16:46.080 --> 0:16:49.000 be the agent of whatever happened, and maybe if you 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:53.560 ask them, really, really nicely, they'll help you experience good 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:56.600 luck as well. I was a bit surprised at how 0:16:56.640 --> 0:17:01.960 consistently we humans have insisted on and institutionalized the idea 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:05.720 of luck um as a force in the universe, as 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:08.520 something that makes things happen. I'm going to go out 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:12.240 on a on a limb here, uh, something that might 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:14.800 get me into trouble. I am not a cultural anthropologist. 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:17.840 I'm interested in this, but I'm not an expert by 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:20.480 any means. But what struck me was that most cultures 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:23.840 have an explanation of luck and how it influences us. 0:17:23.920 --> 0:17:29.240 And most of these explanations involves the divine in some way, 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:32.800 shape or form. That seems to be the common underlying factor. 0:17:33.600 --> 0:17:36.800 Humans like there to be an agent in charge, and 0:17:36.960 --> 0:17:40.080 very often that agent is a god. Now there's a 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:42.040 whole section of the book where you you look to 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:44.879 two different cultures and you go back in history and 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:48.640 look at different ideas. I was. I was a little 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:53.040 surprised when prehistoric cave paintings came up. Can you describe 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:56.880 how prehistoric cave paintings may relate to luck? After say, 0:17:56.960 --> 0:18:01.520 going to see the cave paintings at Lasco or elsewhere, 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:06.960 not just photographs of them. He's on my personal bucket list. 0:18:07.000 --> 0:18:10.320 I would love to do that. I'm told that the 0:18:10.320 --> 0:18:13.040 photographs of them just don't do them justice. There's an 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:17.000 entire group of researchers who study the paintings that humans 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:20.600 have left on the walls of the caves they lived in. Um. 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:26.159 They're trying to understand the apparently fundamental human need to 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:28.159 paint on the walls. If you're a parent and you 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:30.960 have children that paint on the walls, it may just 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:33.800 be wired into us. I don't know. There are a 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:36.119 number of explanations as to why we do this. I 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:41.280 personally liked the Neanderthal adolescent idea that maybe they're tagging 0:18:41.280 --> 0:18:45.280 the caves. Some researchers think that they were simply recording 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:48.400 the hallucinations that they had, because there are some common 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:52.199 patterns in the haucinations visual hallucinations that human beings have. 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:56.359 They're called in toptic images. They are created by the 0:18:56.440 --> 0:18:59.399 machinery of the eye itself. So that's why they're so common, 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:03.680 and that's why all humans, if you're gonna experience them, 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:06.720 probably experienced the same ones. Have you ever seen a 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:11.240 floaty um your visual field, something that appears like it's 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:16.120 floating across. That's probably debris in the eyeball itself. UM. 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:18.480 So that's an example of one of these UH and 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:23.360 topic images. The other explanation had to do with our 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:27.679 ancestors pleading to the universe for good luck. UH. It 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:32.640 might be related. I've often wondered too our modern urge 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:35.080 to display the head of something we've killed on the 0:19:35.080 --> 0:19:39.520 living room all. So maybe they were painting the results 0:19:39.520 --> 0:19:43.240 of the last hunt UH and hoping that that would 0:19:43.280 --> 0:19:47.920 be rewarded by a successful hunt the next time. They 0:19:47.920 --> 0:19:51.359 have found that a number of these paintings seemed to 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:53.520 be done over and over and over again in the 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:56.879 same spot. So there was some aspect of that spot 0:19:56.920 --> 0:20:01.080 in the cave that was lucky. They had really good 0:20:01.160 --> 0:20:04.240 luck with the hunt after they painted on that spot, 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:06.439 so they went back the next time and painted again. 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:09.720 It could just be bragging about what you killed the 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:12.720 last time, but it could also be a ritual attempt 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:16.080 to ask the random universe for success the next time. 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:19.040 You go out with your spear and try to bring 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:25.320 that out a really mammoth seems difficult. Okay, that's fascinating. UM. 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:28.919 Now in the h in this section where you you 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:32.240 deal with different cultural traditions, and I must say you 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:35.639 get into examples from say, you know, Greek and Roman culture, 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:39.879 and and very various other examples. So I highly recommend 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:42.600 folks pick up the book and uh and read it. 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:46.000 But I wanted to ask about one in particular. You 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:49.879 outline three models of luck and Chinese traditions. There's I 0:20:49.920 --> 0:20:54.680 believe ming yun, which is one's own personal destiny on 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:58.280 thin faithful coincidence, and bow ying, a cosmic accounting of 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:00.879 one's life. And you discuss how the easier you know, 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:05.080 not not stand alone but interwoven. And this just got 0:21:05.119 --> 0:21:08.720 me thinking, do do you think this is relatable to 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:12.919 sort of modern Western views um on luck? That you 0:21:12.960 --> 0:21:15.440 know that we may have several different or perhaps even 0:21:15.440 --> 0:21:20.639 contradictory views of how luck might work in our lives. Interesting? Uh, 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:24.720 I do think that we are often contradictory and what 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:26.960 we think in what we think about a lot of things, 0:21:27.000 --> 0:21:31.040 not just luck. I think we're a contrary species. Just basically, 0:21:33.040 --> 0:21:36.359 since the book came out, I can have been asked 0:21:36.359 --> 0:21:39.800 do I believe in luck more times than I can count? 0:21:39.840 --> 0:21:42.360 Which is completely expected. I wrote a book about luck, 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:46.720 So yeah, I guess that means people are reading it. Uh. 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:50.400 I'm not sure that the answer is as binary as 0:21:50.440 --> 0:21:53.800 the question is. If you ask me do I believe 0:21:53.840 --> 0:21:56.639 in luck? I would say yes and no, which is 0:21:56.640 --> 0:22:00.280 a really wishy washy answer. I realized most of the time, 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:03.480 I don't believe in luck. I believe in hard work, persistence, 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:07.840 in preparation. But if I hit the lottery tomorrow, I'm 0:22:07.880 --> 0:22:10.760 going to say something along the lines of Wow, that 0:22:10.880 --> 0:22:15.720 was really lucky. I think lots of people feel that way. 0:22:15.720 --> 0:22:18.919 They share that view when when I can see what 0:22:19.040 --> 0:22:22.760 I did to create an outcome, when I can see 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:26.439 how I've influenced that outcome. When I have control, and 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:29.480 I know I have control, I don't need luck. I 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:32.879 don't need it as an explanation for what happened. But 0:22:32.960 --> 0:22:36.640 when I don't have control, then I need luck, And 0:22:36.680 --> 0:22:41.000 then I believe. I'm actually somewhat embarrassed to admit that 0:22:41.080 --> 0:22:45.439 I own a pair of lucky shoes. They became lucky 0:22:45.680 --> 0:22:49.520 when they got paired randomly with success. I wore them 0:22:49.560 --> 0:22:51.680 to a job interview and I got the I got 0:22:51.680 --> 0:22:54.879 the job. Um, I do not think it was the 0:22:54.960 --> 0:22:57.520 shoes that got me the job. That would be creepy 0:22:57.520 --> 0:23:00.600 and weird. I think it was my preper ration, my 0:23:01.119 --> 0:23:03.760 what I brought to the opportunity, that sort of thing. 0:23:04.359 --> 0:23:07.320 But those shoes are still lucky for me, and I 0:23:07.359 --> 0:23:09.840 still haven't. Yeah, it's it's interesting to think of, Like 0:23:09.880 --> 0:23:12.399 I was, you bring up you know, various you know, 0:23:12.480 --> 0:23:15.280 lucky items and charms and amulets and all, and so 0:23:15.600 --> 0:23:17.880 it got to me got made looking around my own 0:23:17.920 --> 0:23:20.440 house and recognize them some things that are I guess, 0:23:20.480 --> 0:23:23.359 you know, technically lucky charms of some you know, or 0:23:23.800 --> 0:23:27.080 lucky mementos. They're supposed to be items of luck. Uh. 0:23:27.119 --> 0:23:29.359 And then I'll tend to think of them not as 0:23:29.640 --> 0:23:32.239 as some sort of an amulet or anything. I'll think 0:23:32.280 --> 0:23:36.399 of like a reminder of something good. But then again, 0:23:37.480 --> 0:23:40.160 it's just kind of linguistically dancing around, like the idea 0:23:40.200 --> 0:23:42.440 of it being a lucky item. Like, you know, we're 0:23:42.480 --> 0:23:45.159 just kind of arguing about terminology at this point. I 0:23:45.160 --> 0:23:47.960 think it comes down to semantics after a while. Lots 0:23:48.000 --> 0:23:53.679 and lots of people carry carry lucky charms. Um, I 0:23:53.720 --> 0:23:57.040 don't see anything particularly wrong with it. I like my 0:23:57.160 --> 0:24:01.000 lucky shoes. They're very nice shoes. So I'm not going 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:05.679 to worry about it too much. Is it contradictory? Probably, 0:24:06.520 --> 0:24:09.840 but I'm okay with them. Now. Another question that came 0:24:09.880 --> 0:24:13.560 to mind. Do you see a link between divination practices 0:24:13.600 --> 0:24:15.920 and the need to create randomness? I think I've seen 0:24:15.960 --> 0:24:19.800 this discuss before, in terms of ancient bone casting rituals, 0:24:20.080 --> 0:24:23.439 or the or the eaching means of stepping outside of 0:24:23.600 --> 0:24:28.399 humanity's inherent inability to grasp or produce randomness. I actually 0:24:28.480 --> 0:24:32.720 had not heard that. I was I was intrigued when 0:24:32.720 --> 0:24:37.240 you said that. I think human beings are bad at 0:24:37.320 --> 0:24:42.920 creating randomness. If you ask people to create a random display, 0:24:43.280 --> 0:24:46.600 most of the time we can't do it. Um. This 0:24:46.680 --> 0:24:52.160 is actually a question that philosophers and mathematicians argue about um, 0:24:52.280 --> 0:24:55.119 and I'm perfectly willing to let them have added. I 0:24:55.160 --> 0:24:57.720 don't have a good answer for that, but I think 0:24:57.720 --> 0:25:04.639 we're bad generating or creating randomness because we seem to 0:25:04.680 --> 0:25:09.480 be wired to see patterns and to interpret them as meaningful. 0:25:09.920 --> 0:25:12.480 So if you ask me to abandon that and to 0:25:12.600 --> 0:25:18.760 create a random eventum or series of events, it's usually 0:25:18.760 --> 0:25:21.560 not random. There's usually a pattern in it. And that's 0:25:21.560 --> 0:25:24.960