WEBVTT - From the Vault: Luck, with Barbara Blatchley 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:08.399 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is 0:00:08.520 --> 0:00:12.680 Robert Lamb and we don't normally air a vault episode 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:15.520 on a Tuesday like this, and it wasn't originally the plan, 0:00:16.079 --> 0:00:18.639 but we had some scheduling issues come up with some 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:22.800 interviews that we were putting together here, so I'm going 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:25.800 to just roll out of vault episode here, but don't worry. 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:29.760 I'm putting some stuff together for Thursday, So come back 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:32.760 then and experience a new episode all of the show. 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:38.599 So here's one from the vault. I hope you enjoy. 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:41.519 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:00:41.640 --> 0:00:50.920 Heart Radio. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:54.080 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:58.040 today we're bringing you an interview that Robert conducted with 0:00:58.160 --> 0:01:02.480 a professor of psychology named Barbara Bletchley. Uh. Rob, I 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:04.959 was not here for this conversation. You recorded it while 0:01:05.000 --> 0:01:07.480 I was out on vacation a while back. So to 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:10.919 tell me about the talk, what is this? Well, Barbara 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:13.399 came in the show to discuss her new book, What 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:16.560 Are the Chances Why We Believe In Luck? This is 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:21.080 um publication from Columbia University Press, and it's currently available 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:24.559 in hardback get it as an e book an audio book, 0:01:24.640 --> 0:01:28.520 So anyway you consume your your books, it's an option. UM. 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:33.319 Barbara is a professor of psychology at Agnes Scott College, Indicator, Georgia, 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:38.600 UM and her scholarly and UH teaching interests include of 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:45.720 physiological psychology, neuroscience research, statistics, psychology of learning, sensation and perception. 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:49.920 Also the biology of depression and UH in factors both 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:54.600 environmental and biological influencing the development of the brain. UM 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:56.960 and of course the book in question here, which is 0:01:57.040 --> 0:01:59.760 a delightful read I very much enjoyed. It's just all 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:04.760 about out about luck. Getting into UM various topics related 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:07.480 to luck that you might not even instantly realize are 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:10.720 are central to our understanding of it, such as randomness 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:14.800 and the difficulty in like even contemplating randomness from a 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:19.480 human perspective. Barbara also gets into the neuroscience of luck 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:23.840 as well as how it relates to various UH mythologies 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:30.320 and and so forth. Sounds great, let's jump right on in. Hi, Barbara, 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:33.640 can you introduce yourself to our listeners. Hi, my name 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:38.200 is Barbara Blushley. I'm a professor of psychology and neuroscience 0:02:38.320 --> 0:02:42.119 at Agnes Scott College, and I've been there for about, oh, 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:44.600 this is going to be embarrassing forty years now. Your 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:48.320 book provides such an engrossing look at luck and and 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:51.640 randomness and these various um concepts that are all kind 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:55.840 of interwoven into the topic. Uh So, in a way, 0:02:55.880 --> 0:02:58.320 it's kind of difficult to decide where to start first. 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:01.119 I wouldn't want to just ask you, well, what is luck, 0:03:01.160 --> 0:03:04.359 because that is that's that entire answer is the entire 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:07.120 length of the book. But I thought I might start 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:10.320 by just asking how does luck seem to be connected 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:15.079 to the human unwillingness to accept randomness? Actually, that's a 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:18.480 very good question. I think luck is the word that 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:23.320 we assign to random and unpredictable events in the world. 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:27.640 We tend not to like things that are random and unpredictable. 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:32.480 They're very often interpreted as fearful or threatening. Randomness is 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:40.200 scary because it's unknowable, it's unpredictable. Um, it's unexpected. Uh 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:44.640 I was very fascinated to read a book by Nicholas Carlton, 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:49.480 who's a psychologist in Canada. He writes that fear of 0:03:49.520 --> 0:03:54.360 the unknown, the fear of not having the information we 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:56.560 need in order to be able to answer a question, 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:01.960 maybe the most fundamental to basic fear that we have 0:04:02.200 --> 0:04:07.680 and underlies every other fear that we learn. We are motivated, 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:12.600 seriously motivated to reduce that uncertainty, and we do that 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:15.120 in a number of different ways. We can We can 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:17.320 do it by being curious, by going out and trying 0:04:17.320 --> 0:04:21.039 to find the answer to the question. We also do 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:24.080 it this is very human. We do it by labeling 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:28.040 that thing that we're afraid of. UM. The tendency to 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:32.240 label things that we don't understand, I think is another 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:37.080 fundamental human characteristic. It stems from our desire to control that. 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:39.080 Then if you can label it, then you have some 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:43.200 degree of control over it. Um. One of the more 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:46.800 interesting studies that I came across in writing the book 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:52.159 was a study done by H. Lieberman and the whole 0:04:52.480 --> 0:04:55.920 slew of other people in two thousand and seven. They 0:04:55.920 --> 0:05:01.560 were looking at their participants under standing emotions, and they 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:04.919 were doing this in an fMRI machine, So they're scanning 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:08.200 the brain to watch how it uh the processes the 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:11.440 information that's coming in. They showed their participants a series 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:16.160 of human faces expressing emotion about the emotions were negative 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:19.040 because that gets a really big response, and the other 0:05:19.720 --> 0:05:22.640 were positive emotions. Or they show them just the shape, 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:28.400 and they asked them too, first, just observe the image, 0:05:28.839 --> 0:05:31.440 don't do anything about it, don't label it, don't say anything. 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:34.640 And then they asked them to to label that image. 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:39.039 When they were just observing the human faces with emotional expressions, 0:05:39.440 --> 0:05:42.000 it activated a part of the brain called the amygdala, 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:45.839 which is part of the emotion processing system in the brain. 0:05:46.400 --> 0:05:50.000 When they labeled the emotion, the activity in the amygdala 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:53.599 went down. So it's almost as if being able to 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:57.240 apply a label to that thing reduced the anxiety literally 0:05:57.440 --> 0:05:59.600 in the part of the brain that is processing that 0:05:59.720 --> 0:06:03.560 am sational response, which I thought was just super interesting. 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:08.800 I did not expect that so loosely speaking, like something 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:12.960 unexpected happens. Uh, there's the the you know, the the unexplained, 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:15.320 the unexpected in life. Just by merely being able to 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:19.560 label it bad luck, you're kind of reducing the like 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:24.080 the emotional um impact of the incident. Yes, I think 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:26.520 that's how they would have interpreted it. They said that 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:32.240 putting your feelings into words helped regulate the negative emotions 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:36.880 that that particular thing unexpected or a negative emotional response 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:40.239 from someone else. Humans are tremendously important to other humans. 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:43.839 We can spend a lot of our time watching human 0:06:43.880 --> 0:06:47.520 faces to see what they're doing. So being able to 0:06:47.600 --> 0:06:51.520 label that negative emotion reduced the anxiety that that negative 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:57.479 emotion provoked. Fascinating. Now, speaking of of applying language to 0:06:57.600 --> 0:07:01.080 these things. In the book, you outline four different types 0:07:01.120 --> 0:07:04.520 of luck. M can you describe these fours? Because four 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:07.200 types of luck I came across in a book by 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:11.280 Dr James Austin, who is a neurologist and an author. 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:13.920 In fact, he wrote one of my favorite books of 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:18.080 all time. Um, it's called Zen and the Brain. Had 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:20.760 nothing to do with luck, but just to mention it 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:23.720 because it's a really cool book. So he writes about 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:26.920 these four types of luck in his book, which is 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:32.400 Uh Chase, Chance and Creativity, The Lucky Art of Novelty. 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:34.800 He's really writing about how luck played a role in 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:37.680 his own experiments that he was doing in the lab, 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:41.280 and he details these four different kinds of luck. Each 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:44.000 type of luck builds on the type that came before, 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:47.800 so at the at the foundation of This is what 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:50.720 he called type one luck, which is what most of 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:53.560 us probably think about when we think about luck. It's 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:57.720 random chance. It's just an unexpected, random event that happens 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:01.280 to you. We don't see it coming, but there it is, 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:03.920 and we we wind up having to deal with it. 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:06.559 And the example I used in the book for type 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:09.680 one luck is walking into the casino in Las Vegas 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:13.400 and betting everything you have on the outcome of one 0:08:13.480 --> 0:08:17.760 game and walking out a winner. That's type one luck. 0:08:17.840 --> 0:08:23.320 That's just random, unexpected against the odds. Look. Type two 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:28.239 luck is a combination of randomness and what Austin called 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:32.680 movement um I think of it as persistence. Really, he 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:38.720 uses the example of Charles Kettering, who's an American inventor 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:43.160 who very famously said, but if you want to solve problems, 0:08:43.240 --> 0:08:45.199 you have to be persistent. You have to keep moving, 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:48.640 you have to keep trying. Chances are you will stumble 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:52.200 on something when you least expected. I've never heard of 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:56.760 anyone stumbling on something sitting down. So Kettering was advocating 0:08:57.080 --> 0:09:00.079 to be luckier, Get up and move, get up and try. 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:04.240 And Type three luck is a combination then of randomness, persistence, 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:10.000 and preparation, and Austin uses the famous quote by Louis Pasteur. 0:09:10.880 --> 0:09:15.200 Chance favors the prepared mind, so preparation helps you see 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:17.840 patterns in the events that happened to you that other 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:21.400 people who are less prepared might not see. And then 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:26.319 type four luck combines randomness, persistence, preparation, and our own 0:09:26.400 --> 0:09:29.800 unique personality, our own spin on what happens in the world. 0:09:30.240 --> 0:09:33.480 And I used the story of Sarah Kesson's and Emily 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:38.960 Cole and their attempt to win the two thousand and 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:44.319 five wood Veil Transatlantic Rowing Race, which just blows my mind. 0:09:44.400 --> 0:09:48.320 I just cannot wrap my head around voluntarily getting in 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:51.040 a rowboat and trying to row across the Atlantic Ocean. 0:09:52.280 --> 0:09:57.360 Just not not in my wheelhouse. So I got the 0:09:57.440 --> 0:10:00.680 chance to talk with Sarah via email. I think she 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:04.440 lives in New Zealand now. Um. She told me that 0:10:04.480 --> 0:10:07.720 she accidentally came across a book, so there's random chance 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:11.400 while she was waiting for an airplane to fly home 0:10:11.600 --> 0:10:15.480 across the Atlantic by the way, UH and read about 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:18.719 the race and that was what got her interested in it. 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:22.000 She and her racing partner Emily Cole, had been on 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:26.079 the Purdue University women's skulling team, so they already were 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:30.760 familiar with and prepared for racing long distances, although nothing 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:33.960 like what they were about to attempt. Both thought that 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:37.680 this race sounded like a challenge instead of something you 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:41.000 would avoid at all costs uh, and it was right 0:10:41.040 --> 0:10:43.920 up their alley, and both of them prepared like mad, 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:47.720 persisting despite the fact that Indiana lacks an ocean upon 0:10:47.840 --> 0:10:51.640 which they could practice, so they were practicing on rivers 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:55.360 and ponds and and things like that, so they they 0:10:55.360 --> 0:11:00.160 embodied kind of all four aspects of luck. They suffered, uh, 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:04.320 capsize in the race, as did many people, because apparently 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:08.160 this was just an ill fated race, but they survived 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:11.640 and tried it again. They entered again. If you can't 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:13.800 believe it after that, I don't think I would go 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:17.040 anywhere near a rowboat, but they did. I love the 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:20.120 various examples like this that you share in the book, 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:22.680 so you know, to illustrate these different views and understandings 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:28.199 of luck. Um. One that was particularly I don't know, alarming, 0:11:28.200 --> 0:11:30.720 I guess you could say, if if one's not familiar 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:33.560 with the story, was that of Joan Ginther. Can you 0:11:33.559 --> 0:11:36.040 tell us about Joan Ginther? And what her story reveals 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:39.640 about luck. I can't. One of the things I had 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:41.800 the most fun with actually in writing the book was 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:45.920 finding these stories of lucky people. And Joan ginther story 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:48.000 was one of the most fun for me because I 0:11:48.080 --> 0:11:52.360 teach statistics, so I kind of felt the kindred bond 0:11:53.120 --> 0:11:57.239 with Dr Ginther. She is a retired professor of mathematics 0:11:57.240 --> 0:12:00.840 who won the lottery four times UM, winning a total 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:06.760 of I think twenty million dollars altogether UM. Her experience 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:10.200 is a wonderful example of a streak in a random event. 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:14.840 Winning the lottery is random. It's really, really, really hard 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:18.880 to predict whether you're going to or not, whether or 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:21.120 not the card that you've got to scratch off lottery 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:23.720 card that you've got is going to be a winner 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:30.040 or not. UM. So her experience winning the lottery four 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:33.880 times against all the odds and repeatedly was really remarkable. 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:38.280 She kind of embodies all four types of luck. She 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:42.040 was definitely prepared to understand the chances of winning the lottery. 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:45.800 She's a math professor, so she probably knew. She was 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:49.880 persistent in that she kept trying even though she knew 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:55.199 what the odds were. She also benefited from the fact 0:12:55.320 --> 0:13:01.080 that random events are not necessarily patterned. Less they do 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:04.200 happen in streaks with apparent patterns. If you think about 0:13:04.240 --> 0:13:08.720 the stars in the night sky, you can see patterns 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:11.320 in the placement of those stars. In fact, those patterns 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:15.320 are so consistent that we give them names. We've we've 0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:18.800 labeled the patterns that we see in the night sky. 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:24.480 So when something happens like this, when somebody wins the lottery, 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:28.160 for example, four times in a row, we tend to think, well, 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:33.720 that's not that's not fair. It's not how the universe works. 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:38.920 It creates uncertainty, and that uncertainty is unpleasant. So we 0:13:38.960 --> 0:13:43.440 start looking for a pattern predictability in that event. If 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:47.720 we can find a pattern, we can then understand that 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:50.440 event better. And sometimes that pattern we just say that's luck. 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:55.320 That's an example of luck. Some people insisted, however, that 0:13:55.440 --> 0:13:59.120 it couldn't be luck because it was so unexpected, and 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:03.040 that she must have cheated in order to win. So 0:14:03.240 --> 0:14:07.920 there there's a whole bunch of reporters who got attracted 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:10.000 to this story and went to try to see could 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:13.040 they find out how she cheated the system. For the 0:14:13.120 --> 0:14:15.600 life of me, I can't figure out how she would 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:18.480 have cheated unless she had a level of control over 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:22.080 the creation and distribution of scratch off lottery cards. That 0:14:22.280 --> 0:14:25.120 is impossible, and that, as far as I can tell, 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:29.000 she did not have. UM, I just can't see how 0:14:29.000 --> 0:14:31.600 she cheated. I think she just was the beneficiary of 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:34.520 a streak in luck. And more power to you, Joan. 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:38.840 So I'm not going to run. I'm not moved to 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:41.240 run out and play the lottery myself because because I 0:14:41.360 --> 0:14:43.360 know what the odds are as well. But there you go. 0:14:48.400 --> 0:14:53.600 Thank Now. One question I came to mind as I 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:56.880 was I was reading the book. You know, is it 0:14:56.960 --> 0:14:58.920 is luck just something? Is it just seemed like a 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:02.920 universal concept for all human cultures? Is it just something 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:08.720 that that emerges alongside language? Is it? Did you run 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:12.240 anything across anything that even resembled a culture without a 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:15.560 tradition of luck? I did not, um. And this was 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:21.080 another thing that I found fascinating. I suppose it's common 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:24.080 to all human cultures in that all human cultures are 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:29.960 created by humans, so we all share uh a tendency 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:34.040 in our cognition, in the way that we leave the world. UM. 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:36.400 I saw an interview with Richard Wiseman, who wrote a 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:39.160 book about luck as well. He said that as far 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:42.360 as he could tell that there it is common to 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:46.040 all humans all over the world. Two want to have 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:50.760 control over the unexpected and that often becomes a tradition 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:54.560 of luck and luckiness or lucky gods or lucky shoes 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:58.560 or lucky whatever in the world. So, if you ask 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:04.360 a cognitive science researcher, these are folks who study how 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:07.680 humans think, what they think about this. Is this a 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:10.880 universal characteristic of the way humans think? They probably would 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:14.400 tell you yes, in that all humans have the tendency 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:18.440 to see patterns in random events, and it's related to 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:21.760 another tendency in the way that we think, which is 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:25.040 to look for an agent for whatever caused an event 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:28.400 to happen. Sometimes you can easily identify the agent. If 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:30.880 you do something and I see you do it, you 0:16:30.920 --> 0:16:33.240 are the agent. It's really easy for me to tell. 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:40.280 Sometimes you can't identify the agent, and that makes us nervous. 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:44.120 So searching for and needing an agent for any event 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:48.120 that happens is a pattern. It's a survival mechanism for 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:52.360 us humans. It goes hand in hand with our tendency 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:57.640 to interpret all patterns as having meaning and discounting randomness 0:16:58.360 --> 0:17:00.960 because we can't see what cause did so we tend 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:03.040 to just say, well, that didn't happen there there must 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:06.760 be something causing this. If that event that happened is 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:10.639 beyond the capacity of humans to create, we start looking 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:16.040 for invisible superhuman agents. We refer to these agents very 0:17:16.080 --> 0:17:19.439 often as gods and goddesses. They are divine, They have 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:22.200 control over things we don't have control over. They must 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:25.119 be the agent of whatever happened, and maybe if you 0:17:25.160 --> 0:17:29.720 ask them, really, really nicely, they'll help you experience good 0:17:29.800 --> 0:17:32.760 luck as well. I was a bit surprised at how 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:38.080 consistently we humans have insisted on and institutionalized the idea 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:41.840 of luck um as a force in the universe, as 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:44.640 something that makes things happen. I'm going to go out 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:48.359 on a on a limb here, uh, something that might 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:50.879 get me into trouble. I am not a cultural anthropologist. 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:54.000 I'm interested in this, but I'm not an expert by 0:17:54.000 --> 0:17:56.640 any means. But what struck me was that most cultures 0:17:56.640 --> 0:17:59.399 have an explanation of luck and how it influences us, 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:04.640 and most of these explanations involved the divine in some 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:07.919 way shape or form that seems to be the common 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:12.520 underlying factor. Humans like there to be an agent in charge, 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:15.920 and very often that agent is a god. Now there's 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:18.040 a whole section of the book where you you look 0:18:18.080 --> 0:18:20.919 to two different cultures and you go back in history 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:24.520 and look at different ideas. I was. I was a 0:18:24.520 --> 0:18:27.920 little surprised when prehistoric cave paintings came up. Can you 0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:33.000 describe how prehistoric cave paintings may relate to luck after say, 0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:37.639 going to see the cave paintings at lasco Um or elsewhere, 0:18:38.880 --> 0:18:43.120 not just photographs of them. He's on my personal bucket list. 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:46.400 I would love to do that. I'm told that the 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:49.199 photographs of them just don't do them justice. There's an 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:53.199 entire group of researchers who study the paintings that humans 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:56.719 have left on the walls of the caves they lived in. Um. 0:18:56.760 --> 0:19:02.320 They're trying to understand the apparently fundamental human need to 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:04.320 paint on the walls. If you're a parent and you 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:07.119 have children that paint on the walls, it may just 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:09.960 be wired into us. I don't know. There are a 0:19:10.040 --> 0:19:12.240 number of explanations as to why we do this. I 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:17.400 personally liked the Neanderthal adolescent idea that maybe they're tagging 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:21.440 the caves. Some researchers think that they were simply recording 0:19:21.440 --> 0:19:24.520 the hallucinations that they had, because there are some common 0:19:24.840 --> 0:19:28.359 patterns in the hallucinations visual hallucinations that human beings have. 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:32.520 They're called a toptic images. They are created by the 0:19:32.600 --> 0:19:35.560 machinery of the eye itself. So that's why they're so common, 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:39.840 and that's why all humans, if you're going to experience them, 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:42.879 probably experienced the same ones. Have you ever seen a 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:47.360 floating um your visual field, something that appears like it's 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:52.160 floating across that's probably debris in the eyeball itself. Um, 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:54.639 So that's an example of one of these uh a 0:19:54.760 --> 0:19:59.480 toptic images. The other explanation had to do with our 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:03.800 answer ster's pleading to the universe for good luck. It 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:08.800 might be related. I've often wondered too, our modern urge 0:20:08.840 --> 0:20:11.199 to display the head of something we've killed on the 0:20:11.240 --> 0:20:15.640 living room all. So, maybe they were painting the results 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:19.399 of the last hunt uh and hoping that that would 0:20:19.400 --> 0:20:24.040 be rewarded by a successful hunt the next time they 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:27.520 have found it. A number of these paintings seemed to 0:20:27.560 --> 0:20:29.679 be done over and over and over again. In the 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:32.960 same spot, so there was some aspect of that spot 0:20:33.040 --> 0:20:37.200 in the cave that was lucky. They had really good 0:20:37.320 --> 0:20:40.399 luck with the hunt after they painted on that spot, 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:42.560 so they went back the next time and painted again. 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:45.879 It could just be bragging about what you killed the 0:20:45.960 --> 0:20:48.840 last time, but it could also be a ritual attempt 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:52.200 to ask the random universe for success the next time 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:55.200 you go out with your spear and try to bring 0:20:55.240 --> 0:21:01.440 them a wily mammoth seems difficult, Okay, that's fascinating. Um. 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:05.320 Now in UH in this section where you you deal 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:08.560 with different cultural traditions, and I must say, you get 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:11.800 into examples from say, you know, Greek and Roman culture 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:15.960 and and very various other examples. So I highly recommend 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:18.720 folks pick up the book and UH and read it. 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:22.119 But I wanted to ask about one in particular. You 0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:26.040 outline three models of luck and Chinese traditions. There's I 0:21:26.040 --> 0:21:30.840 believe min Yungu, which is one's own personal destiny on 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:34.399 thin faithful coincidence, and bow ying, a cosmic accounting of 0:21:34.440 --> 0:21:37.000 one's life. And you discuss how these are, you know, 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:41.200 not not stand alone but interwoven. And this just got 0:21:41.240 --> 0:21:44.879 me thinking, do do you think this is relatable to 0:21:44.960 --> 0:21:49.080 sort of modern Western views um on luck that you 0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:51.560 know that we may have several different or perhaps even 0:21:51.600 --> 0:21:56.120 contradictory views of how luck might work in our lives. Interesting, 0:21:56.720 --> 0:22:00.679 h I do think that we are often tradictory and 0:22:00.720 --> 0:22:02.760 what we think in what we think about a lot 0:22:02.760 --> 0:22:06.240 of things, not just luck. I think we're a contrary species. 0:22:06.400 --> 0:22:11.800 Just basically, since the book came out, I can have 0:22:11.920 --> 0:22:15.280 been asked do I believe in luck? More times than 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:17.760 I can count? Which is completely expected. I wrote a 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:20.800 book about luck, so yeah, I guess that means people 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:25.040 are reading it. Uh. I'm not sure that the answer 0:22:25.200 --> 0:22:28.800 is as binary as the question is. If you ask 0:22:28.920 --> 0:22:31.640 me do I believe in luck? I would say yes 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:34.800 and no, which is a really wishy washy answer. I realized. 0:22:35.560 --> 0:22:38.000 Most of the time, I don't believe in luck. I 0:22:38.040 --> 0:22:41.560 believe in hard work, persistence, in preparation. But if I 0:22:41.640 --> 0:22:45.520 hit the lottery tomorrow, I'm going to say something along 0:22:45.560 --> 0:22:49.520 the lines of wow, that was really lucky. I think 0:22:50.160 --> 0:22:52.720 lots of people feel that way. They share that view 0:22:53.280 --> 0:22:56.280 when when I can see what I did to create 0:22:56.320 --> 0:23:00.480 an outcome, when I can see how I've influenced that outcome. 0:23:01.200 --> 0:23:03.760 When I have control, and I know I have control, 0:23:04.280 --> 0:23:06.840 I don't need luck. I don't need it as an 0:23:06.880 --> 0:23:10.600 explanation for what happened. But when I don't have control, 0:23:11.520 --> 0:23:15.240 then I need luck. And then I believe I'm actually 0:23:15.400 --> 0:23:17.960 somewhat embarrassed to admit that I own a pair of 0:23:18.040 --> 0:23:23.600 lucky shoes. They became lucky when they got paired randomly 0:23:23.880 --> 0:23:26.520 with success. I wore them to a job interview and 0:23:26.600 --> 0:23:29.840 I got the I got the job. Um, I do 0:23:29.960 --> 0:23:32.720 not think it was the shoes that got me the job. 0:23:32.840 --> 0:23:35.600 That would be creepy and weird. I think it was 0:23:35.640 --> 0:23:39.240 my preparation, my what I brought to the opportunity, that 0:23:39.359 --> 0:23:42.640 sort of thing. But those shoes are still lucky for me, 0:23:43.160 --> 0:23:45.800 and I still happen. Yeah, it's it's interesting to think of, 0:23:45.880 --> 0:23:48.560 like I was. You bring up you know, various you know, 0:23:48.640 --> 0:23:51.439 lucky items and charms and amulets and all, and so 0:23:51.720 --> 0:23:54.000 it got me got made for looking around my own 0:23:54.040 --> 0:23:56.600 house and recognize them some things that are I guess, 0:23:56.640 --> 0:23:59.640 you know, technically lucky charms of some you know, or 0:24:00.040 --> 0:24:03.200 lucky mementos. They're supposed to be items of luck. Uh. 0:24:03.240 --> 0:24:05.760 And then I'll tend to think of them, not as 0:24:05.800 --> 0:24:08.400 as some sort of an amulet or anything. I'll think 0:24:08.400 --> 0:24:12.560 of like a reminder of something good. But then again, 0:24:13.640 --> 0:24:16.320 it's just kind of linguistically dancing around, like the idea 0:24:16.320 --> 0:24:18.600 of it being a lucky item. Like you know, we're 0:24:18.640 --> 0:24:21.280 just kind of arguing about terminology at this point. I 0:24:21.320 --> 0:24:24.119 think it comes down to semantics after a while. Lots 0:24:24.119 --> 0:24:29.800 and lots of people carry carry lucky charms. Um, I 0:24:29.840 --> 0:24:33.199 don't see anything particularly wrong with it. I like my 0:24:33.280 --> 0:24:37.080 lucky shoes. They're very nice shoes, so I'm not going 0:24:37.160 --> 0:24:41.800 to worry about it too much. Is it contradictory, Probably, 0:24:42.640 --> 0:24:46.000 but I'm okay with them now. Another question that came 0:24:46.040 --> 0:24:49.680 to mind. Do you see a link between divination practices 0:24:49.720 --> 0:24:52.080 and the need to create randomness? I think I've seen 0:24:52.080 --> 0:24:55.960 this discuss before, in terms of ancient bone casting, rich wolves, 0:24:56.200 --> 0:24:59.520 or the or the eaching means of stepping outside of 0:24:59.680 --> 0:25:04.080 human andy's inherent inability to grasp or produce randomness. I 0:25:04.200 --> 0:25:08.080 actually had not heard that. I was I was intrigued 0:25:08.640 --> 0:25:13.159 when you said that. I think human beings are bad 0:25:13.200 --> 0:25:16.439 at creating randomness. If you ask people to create a 0:25:16.560 --> 0:25:22.560