Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and we don't normally air a vault episode
Speaker 1: on a Tuesday like this, and it wasn't originally the plan,
Speaker 1: but we had some scheduling issues come up with some
Speaker 1: interviews that we were putting together here, so I'm going
Speaker 1: to just roll out of vault episode here, but don't worry.
Speaker 1: I'm putting some stuff together for Thursday, So come back
Speaker 1: then and experience a new episode all of the show.
Speaker 1: So here's one from the vault. I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: today we're bringing you an interview that Robert conducted with
Speaker 1: a professor of psychology named Barbara Bletchley. Uh. Rob, I
Speaker 1: was not here for this conversation. You recorded it while
Speaker 1: I was out on vacation a while back. So to
Speaker 1: tell me about the talk, what is this? Well, Barbara
Speaker 1: came in the show to discuss her new book, What
Speaker 1: Are the Chances Why We Believe In Luck? This is
Speaker 1: um publication from Columbia University Press, and it's currently available
Speaker 1: in hardback get it 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 in 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 very much enjoyed. It's just all
Speaker 1: about out about luck. Getting into UM various topics related
Speaker 1: to luck that you might not even instantly realize are
Speaker 1: are central to our understanding of it, such as randomness
Speaker 1: and the difficulty in like even contemplating randomness from a
Speaker 1: human perspective. Barbara also gets into the neuroscience of luck
Speaker 1: as well as how it relates to various UH mythologies
Speaker 1: and and 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 and
Speaker 1: randomness and these various um concepts that are all kind
Speaker 1: of interwoven into the topic. Uh So, in a way,
Speaker 1: it's kind of difficult to decide where to start first.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to just ask you, well, what is luck,
Speaker 1: because that is that's that entire answer is the entire
Speaker 1: length of the book. But I thought I might start
Speaker 1: by just asking how does luck seem to be connected
Speaker 1: to the human unwillingness to accept randomness? Actually, that's a
Speaker 1: very good question. I think luck is the word that
Speaker 1: we assign to random and unpredictable events in the world.
Speaker 1: We 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. He writes that fear of
Speaker 1: the unknown, the fear of not having the information we
Speaker 1: need in order to be able to answer a question,
Speaker 1: maybe the most fundamental to basic fear that we have
Speaker 1: and underlies every other fear that we learn. We are motivated,
Speaker 1: seriously motivated to reduce that uncertainty, and we do that
Speaker 1: in a number of different ways. We can We can
Speaker 1: do it by being curious, by going out and trying
Speaker 1: to find the answer to the question. We also do
Speaker 1: it this is very human. We do it by labeling
Speaker 1: that thing that we're afraid of. UM. The tendency to
Speaker 1: label things that we don't understand, I think is another
Speaker 1: fundamental human characteristic. It stems from our desire to control that.
Speaker 1: Then if you can label it, then you have some
Speaker 1: degree of control over it. Um. One of the more
Speaker 1: interesting studies that I came across in writing the book
Speaker 1: was a study done by H. Lieberman and the whole
Speaker 1: slew of other people in two thousand and seven. They
Speaker 1: were looking at their participants under standing emotions, and they
Speaker 1: were doing this in an fMRI machine, So they're scanning
Speaker 1: the brain to watch how it uh the processes the
Speaker 1: information that's coming in. They showed their participants a series
Speaker 1: of human faces expressing emotion about the emotions were negative
Speaker 1: because that gets a really big response, and the other
Speaker 1: were positive emotions. Or they show them just the shape,
Speaker 1: and they asked them too, first, just observe the image,
Speaker 1: don't do anything about it, don't label it, don't say anything.
Speaker 1: And then they asked them to to label that image.
Speaker 1: When they were just observing the human faces with emotional expressions,
Speaker 1: it activated a part of the brain called the amygdala,
Speaker 1: which is part of the emotion processing system in the brain.
Speaker 1: When they labeled the emotion, the activity in the amygdala
Speaker 1: went down. So it's almost as if being able to
Speaker 1: apply a label to that thing reduced the anxiety literally
Speaker 1: in the part of the brain that is processing that
Speaker 1: am sational response, which I thought was just super interesting.
Speaker 1: I did not expect that so loosely speaking, like something
Speaker 1: unexpected happens. Uh, there's the the you know, the the unexplained,
Speaker 1: the unexpected in life. Just by merely being able to
Speaker 1: label it bad luck, you're kind of reducing the like
Speaker 1: the emotional um impact of the incident. Yes, I think
Speaker 1: that's how they would have interpreted it. They said that
Speaker 1: putting your feelings into words helped regulate the negative emotions
Speaker 1: that that particular thing unexpected or a negative emotional response
Speaker 1: from someone else. Humans are tremendously important to other humans.
Speaker 1: We can spend a lot of our time watching human
Speaker 1: faces to see what they're doing. So being able to
Speaker 1: label that negative emotion reduced the anxiety that that negative
Speaker 1: emotion provoked. Fascinating. Now, speaking of of applying language to
Speaker 1: these things. In the book, you outline four different types
Speaker 1: of luck. M can you describe these fours? Because four
Speaker 1: types of luck I came across in a book by
Speaker 1: Dr James Austin, who is a neurologist and an author.
Speaker 1: In fact, he wrote one of my favorite books of
Speaker 1: all time. Um, it's called Zen and the Brain. Had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with luck, but just to mention it
Speaker 1: because it's a really cool book. So he writes about
Speaker 1: these four types of luck in his book, which is
Speaker 1: 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 experiments 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
Speaker 1: movement um I think of it as persistence. Really, he
Speaker 1: uses the example of 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 Veil 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. I think she
Speaker 1: lives in New Zealand now. Um. She told me that
Speaker 1: she accidentally came across a book, so there's random chance
Speaker 1: while she was waiting for an airplane to fly home
Speaker 1: across the Atlantic by the way, UH and read about
Speaker 1: the race and that was what got her interested in it.
Speaker 1: She and her racing partner Emily Cole, had been on
Speaker 1: the Purdue University women's skulling team, so they already were
Speaker 1: familiar with and prepared for racing long distances, although nothing
Speaker 1: like what they were about to attempt. Both thought that
Speaker 1: this race sounded like a challenge instead of something you
Speaker 1: would avoid at all costs uh, and it was right
Speaker 1: up their alley, and both of them prepared like mad,
Speaker 1: persisting despite the fact that Indiana lacks an ocean upon
Speaker 1: which they could practice, so they were practicing on rivers
Speaker 1: and ponds and and things like that, so they they
Speaker 1: embodied kind of all four aspects of luck. They suffered, uh,
Speaker 1: capsize in the race, as did many people, because apparently
Speaker 1: this was just an ill fated race, but they survived
Speaker 1: and tried it again. They entered again. If you can't
Speaker 1: believe it after that, I don't think I would go
Speaker 1: anywhere near a rowboat, but they did. I love the
Speaker 1: various examples like this that you share in the book,
Speaker 1: so you know, to illustrate these different views and understandings
Speaker 1: of luck. Um. One that was particularly I don't know, alarming,
Speaker 1: I guess you could say, if if one's not familiar
Speaker 1: with the story, was that of Joan Ginther. Can you
Speaker 1: tell us about Joan Ginther? And what her story reveals
Speaker 1: about luck. I can't. One of the things I had
Speaker 1: the most fun with actually in writing the book was
Speaker 1: finding these stories of lucky people. And Joan ginther story
Speaker 1: was one of the most fun for me because I
Speaker 1: teach statistics, so I kind of felt the kindred bond
Speaker 1: with Dr Ginther. She is a retired professor of mathematics
Speaker 1: who won the lottery four times UM, winning a total
Speaker 1: of I think twenty million dollars altogether UM. Her experience
Speaker 1: is a wonderful example of a streak in a random event.
Speaker 1: Winning the lottery is random. It's really, really, really hard
Speaker 1: to predict whether you're going to or not, whether or
Speaker 1: not the card that you've got to scratch off lottery
Speaker 1: card that you've got is going to be a winner
Speaker 1: or not. UM. So her experience winning the lottery four
Speaker 1: times against all the odds and repeatedly was really remarkable.
Speaker 1: She kind of embodies all four types of luck. She
Speaker 1: was definitely prepared to understand the chances of winning the lottery.
Speaker 1: She's a math professor, so she probably knew. She was
Speaker 1: persistent in that she kept trying even though she knew
Speaker 1: what the odds were. She also benefited from the fact
Speaker 1: that random events are not necessarily patterned. Less they do
Speaker 1: happen in streaks with apparent patterns. If you think about
Speaker 1: the stars in the night sky, you can see patterns
Speaker 1: in the placement of those stars. In fact, those patterns
Speaker 1: are so consistent that we give them names. We've we've
Speaker 1: labeled the patterns that we see in the night sky.
Speaker 1: So when something happens like this, when somebody wins the lottery,
Speaker 1: for example, four times in a row, we tend to think, well,
Speaker 1: that's not that's not fair. It's not how the universe works.
Speaker 1: It creates uncertainty, and that uncertainty is unpleasant. So we
Speaker 1: start looking for a pattern predictability in that event. If
Speaker 1: we can find a pattern, we can then understand that
Speaker 1: event better. And sometimes that pattern we just say that's luck.
Speaker 1: That's an example of luck. Some people insisted, however, that
Speaker 1: it couldn't be luck because it was so unexpected, and
Speaker 1: that she must have cheated in order to win. So
Speaker 1: there there's a whole bunch of reporters who got attracted
Speaker 1: to this story and went to try to see could
Speaker 1: they find out how she cheated the system. For the
Speaker 1: life of me, I can't figure out how she would
Speaker 1: have cheated unless she had a level of control over
Speaker 1: the creation and distribution of scratch off lottery cards. That
Speaker 1: is impossible, and that, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: she did not have. UM, I just can't see how
Speaker 1: she cheated. I think she just was the beneficiary of
Speaker 1: a streak in luck. And more power to you, Joan.
Speaker 1: So I'm not going to run. I'm not moved to
Speaker 1: run out and play the lottery myself because because I
Speaker 1: know what the odds are as well. But there you go.
Speaker 1: Thank Now. One question I came to mind as I
Speaker 1: was I was reading the book. You know, is it
Speaker 1: is luck just something? Is it just seemed like a
Speaker 1: universal concept for all human cultures? Is it just something
Speaker 1: that that emerges alongside language? Is it? Did you run
Speaker 1: anything across anything that even resembled a culture without a
Speaker 1: tradition of luck? I did not, um. And this was
Speaker 1: another thing that I found fascinating. I suppose it's common
Speaker 1: to all human cultures in that all human cultures are
Speaker 1: created by humans, so we all share uh a tendency
Speaker 1: in our cognition, in the way that we leave the world. UM.
Speaker 1: I saw an interview with Richard Wiseman, who wrote a
Speaker 1: book about luck as well. He said that as far
Speaker 1: as he could tell that there it is common to
Speaker 1: all humans all over the world. Two want to have
Speaker 1: control over the unexpected and that often becomes a tradition
Speaker 1: of luck and luckiness or lucky gods or lucky shoes
Speaker 1: or lucky whatever in the world. So, if you ask
Speaker 1: a cognitive science researcher, these are folks who study how
Speaker 1: humans think, what they think about this. Is this a
Speaker 1: universal characteristic of the way humans think? They probably would
Speaker 1: tell you yes, in that all humans have the tendency
Speaker 1: to see patterns in random events, and it's related to
Speaker 1: another tendency in the way that we think, which is
Speaker 1: to look for an agent for whatever caused an event
Speaker 1: to happen. Sometimes you can easily identify the agent. If
Speaker 1: you do something and I see you do it, you
Speaker 1: 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 cause did 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 involved the divine in some
Speaker 1: way shape or form that seems to be the common
Speaker 1: underlying factor. Humans like there to be an agent in charge,
Speaker 1: and very often that agent is a god. Now there's
Speaker 1: a whole section of the book where you you look
Speaker 1: to two different cultures and you go back in history
Speaker 1: and look at different ideas. I was. I was a
Speaker 1: little surprised when prehistoric cave paintings came up. Can you
Speaker 1: describe how prehistoric cave paintings may relate to luck after say,
Speaker 1: going to see the cave paintings at lasco Um 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 hallucinations visual hallucinations that human beings have.
Speaker 1: They're called a 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 going to experience them,
Speaker 1: probably experienced the same ones. Have you ever seen a
Speaker 1: floating 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 a
Speaker 1: toptic images. The other explanation had to do with our
Speaker 1: answer ster's pleading to the universe for good luck. 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 it. 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: them a wily mammoth seems difficult, Okay, that's fascinating. Um.
Speaker 1: Now in UH in this section where you you deal
Speaker 1: with different cultural traditions, and I must say, you get
Speaker 1: 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 min Yungu, 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 these are, 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,
Speaker 1: h I do think that we are often tradictory and
Speaker 1: what we think in what we think about a lot
Speaker 1: of things, not just luck. I think we're a contrary species.
Speaker 1: Just basically, since the book came out, I can have
Speaker 1: been asked do I believe in luck? More times than
Speaker 1: I can count? Which is completely expected. I wrote a
Speaker 1: book about luck, so yeah, I guess that means people
Speaker 1: are reading it. Uh. I'm not sure that the answer
Speaker 1: is as binary as the question is. If you ask
Speaker 1: me do I believe in luck? I would say yes
Speaker 1: and no, which is a really wishy washy answer. I realized.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, I don't believe in luck. I
Speaker 1: believe in hard work, persistence, in preparation. But if I
Speaker 1: hit the lottery tomorrow, I'm going to say something along
Speaker 1: the lines of wow, that was really lucky. I think
Speaker 1: lots of people feel that way. They share that view
Speaker 1: when when I can see what I did to create
Speaker 1: an outcome, when I can see how I've influenced that outcome.
Speaker 1: When I have control, and I know I have control,
Speaker 1: I don't need luck. I don't need it as an
Speaker 1: explanation for what happened. But when I don't have control,
Speaker 1: then I need luck. And then I believe I'm actually
Speaker 1: somewhat embarrassed to admit that I own a pair of
Speaker 1: lucky shoes. They became lucky when they got paired randomly
Speaker 1: with success. I wore them to a job interview and
Speaker 1: I got the I got the job. Um, I do
Speaker 1: not think it was the shoes that got me the job.
Speaker 1: That would be creepy and weird. I think it was
Speaker 1: my preparation, my what I brought to the opportunity, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. But those shoes are still lucky for me,
Speaker 1: and I still happen. Yeah, it's it's interesting to think of,
Speaker 1: like 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 me got made for 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, rich wolves,
Speaker 1: or the or the eaching means of stepping outside of
Speaker 1: human andy's inherent inability to grasp or produce randomness. I
Speaker 1: actually had not heard that. I was I was intrigued
Speaker 1: when you said that. I think human beings are bad
Speaker 1: at creating randomness. If you ask people to create a
Speaker 1: random display, most of the time we can't do it um.
Speaker 1: This is actually a question that philosophers and mathematicians argue
Speaker 1: about um, and I'm perfectly willing to let them have added.
Speaker 1: I don't have a good answer for that, But I
Speaker 1: think we're bad at generating or creating randomness because we
Speaker 1: seem to be wired to see patterns and to interpret
Speaker 1: them as meaningful. So if you ask me to abandon
Speaker 1: that and to create a random eventum or series of events,
Speaker 1: it's usually not random. There's usually a pattern in it,
Speaker 1: and that's because of the way that the brain is
Speaker 1: signed to interpret events in the world. So I think
Speaker 1: what you're saying is that you've come across evidence that
Speaker 1: in an attempt to introduce randomness, people have used casting
Speaker 1: bones or or the each ing or something like that
Speaker 1: to create random because we're so bad at it. Is
Speaker 1: that what you were that is? I think that's basically
Speaker 1: the the ideas i've I've read it. I want to say,
Speaker 1: maybe it was Julian Jaynes who wrote about it. At
Speaker 1: some point, I'll have to go look that up. Now.
Speaker 1: Outside of any kind of scholarly attempts to understand randomness,
Speaker 1: I enjoy board games and role playing games such as
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons, which to varying degrees, uses tables and
Speaker 1: dice to generate randomness that is useful in sort of
Speaker 1: generating an adventure or some sort of a situation for
Speaker 1: players to engage in. UM. And some systems even have
Speaker 1: like a luckman panic, they'll be like a luck like
Speaker 1: some sort of numerical rating for real luck that somehow
Speaker 1: factored into everything. UM. I don't imagine any of this
Speaker 1: 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 luck driven aspect of the game would
Speaker 1: be completely human. I just didn't realize it was built
Speaker 1: into the game. I did not know that thank thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. 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 do you think people
Speaker 1: who were inclined to engage in catastrophic thinking uh and
Speaker 1: worst case scenarios, are they more inclined to assume luck
Speaker 1: not probability played a role in say, um, you know,
Speaker 1: not being bitten by a shark on a recent vacation.
Speaker 1: I like that example. It makes me think. I had
Speaker 1: a I had a student in my statistics class last week,
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, who asked me if something
Speaker 1: that I said in class was true to they're listening,
Speaker 1: that's that's good. I had been talking about the Monte
Speaker 1: Carlo fallacy in statistics class and explaining why it's a fallacy.
Speaker 1: The Monte Carlo fallacy is another example of how we
Speaker 1: usually misinterpret probability. It's the belief that an event will be,
Speaker 1: for example, less likely to happen if it follows a
Speaker 1: series of similar events, or that a past event can
Speaker 1: change the probability of a future one. It's named after
Speaker 1: a famous streak in random events that happened at the
Speaker 1: casino at Monte Carlo. Um The player on the roulette
Speaker 1: wheel betting black one time after time after time, the
Speaker 1: little marble kept landing on black, and as it did that,
Speaker 1: the other players at the table started to bet more
Speaker 1: and more heavily that the next spin would be. Read
Speaker 1: as if the probability of the marble landing on black
Speaker 1: was decre see as the streak went on and the
Speaker 1: probability that it would land on red was increasing. We're
Speaker 1: talking about independent events here. Each spin of the wheel
Speaker 1: is independent of every other spin of the wheel, unless
Speaker 1: the wheel is rigged, in which case you shouldn't be
Speaker 1: playing there. Um. So what happened on the last spin
Speaker 1: has no effect at all on what happens on the
Speaker 1: next spin. It's that it will land on black every
Speaker 1: single spin unless the universe is keeping score. Uh. And besides,
Speaker 1: there's been too many landing on black events, so the
Speaker 1: next one has to be read. Um, and I don't
Speaker 1: think it is than what happened the last time has
Speaker 1: no effect on what happens the next time. My student
Speaker 1: looked shocked by this, so I asked her why, and
Speaker 1: she said that she had always believed, like the players
Speaker 1: at the table had believed that, to use your example
Speaker 1: of being bitten by a shark, UM, that the probability
Speaker 1: of being bitten by a shark if she goes to
Speaker 1: the ocean would go up as the number of days
Speaker 1: that 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 developed 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
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 urge 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'd 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 knock. Now,
Speaker 1: traditions of luck like like this and others that they
Speaker 1: can be fun and they're they're often a part of
Speaker 1: one's culture. But what do you think it's the best
Speaker 1: way to explain these traditions to younger people, to children.
Speaker 1: I often wonder about this with my own son, where
Speaker 1: I 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 willing
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: has sickly 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. Yeah,
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's keep explaining, Yeah, just keep explaining. Okay. Now,
Speaker 1: another question, this is something you get into in the book.
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 nine 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 a feel better. Uh. 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 or not. He
Speaker 1: had details in his book. He has a book out
Speaker 1: called The lux Actorum, 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 UH. Expect good fortune as
Speaker 1: opposed to expecting 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 bread 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 there.
Speaker 1: There's there's stuff in there about about curses, the curse
Speaker 1: of the Mummy. Um, it's certainly a lot of neuroscientific
Speaker 1: information that's worth reading as well. So I encourage everyone
Speaker 1: to go out there and pick it up. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thanks for taking time out of your day to chat
Speaker 1: with me, Barbara. Thank you, this was fun all right. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks once more to Barbera for taking time out of
Speaker 1: her day to chat with me about the book. The
Speaker 1: book again is what are the Chances Why we Believe
Speaker 1: in Luck? Currently available and I think pretty much any
Speaker 1: format you might be desiring, and that is out from
Speaker 1: Columbia University Press. In the meantime, if you would like
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: you'll find us in the Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: podcast feed. We have four episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 1: Artifact on Wednesday, listener Mail on Monday, and on Friday's
Speaker 1: we do a little uh, a little bit of content
Speaker 1: called Weird House Cinema. That's our time to set aside
Speaker 1: most of the serious concerns and just discuss a weird film,
Speaker 1: huge things. As always to our wonderful audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hi,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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