Coincidence and luck

So I wanted to know what your views are on about whether coincidence and luck exist or is everything that happens due to fate and destiny?

Play nice guys!

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Reply 1

Picnic1

I believe that fate exists for the good!

And fate DOESN'T exist for the bad! They are allowed by nature to swim along in their own confusion.

The problem is that the good often think they're bad and the bad often think they're good!

Someone in prison is not necessarily the 'bad'. They're the 'caught' under current laws. There are natural laws that far, far, more people break every day. Such as, in my view, it is a terrible thing to wish harm on or to ignore a child. And natural punishments will follow.

Sometimes the fate for the good is to have 20 fantastic years on Earth and then tragically die young rather than 80 mundane ones (nor 20 fantastic ones followed by 60 only OK ones).

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 2

Barny army

you make your own luck- thats my philosophy

Reply 3

skunkboy

1. Everything that happens due to cause or causes.
2. Coincidence or luck is one of all possible outcomes of actions.

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(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 4

AstroNandos

I don't believe that things happen due to fate or destiny, or that things happen for a reason. Same with karma, I don't think that exists.

I believe luck exists as it's just a way of saying if the odds seem to be against/in the favour of an individual. For example, If someone seems to often get the worse end of a scenario with multiple outcomes, then they can be considered unlucky. You can't change your luck, It's just random.

You won't win the lottery because of fate, you're just one lucky b******.

Reply 5

KingStannis

Original post by skunkboy

1. Everything that happens due to cause or causes.
2. Coincidence or luck is one of all possible outcomes of actions.

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The first premise is false.

Reply 6

the_pie_man

Original post by Barny army

you make your own luck- thats my philosophy

Mine too, you need to do stuff to get a chance of been lucky.

Reply 7

Noura*

Original post by KingStannis

The first premise is false.

How?

Reply 8

KeepYourChinUp

Original post by 286001

So I wanted to know what your views are on about whether coincidence and luck exist or is everything that happens due to fate and destiny?

Play nice guys!

Original post by Noura*

How?

Coincidence is just a word we use to describe the apparent relation between two random events. Humans are great at pattern recognition, so good that we see patterns where there isn't any. Luck, just like karma, jinxes, curses and other such voodoo beliefs is again man’s attempt to find a pattern or relationship with two random events.

Using the lottery as a prime example. Someone plays the lottery their entire life and never wins which is pretty normal right? Then someone plays the lottery and wins straight away. Immediately people will say "omg that person is super lucky blah blah" but in reality it just boils down to mathematical probability.

Luck doesn't exist, its probability. The chances of winning the lottery are something like 1 in 13million. Why do we consider it lucky to win the lottery on your first attempt as apposed to the 8,978,484th time for example?

It comes down to psychology. It's the same reason most people do not play the numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 despite those numbers having the exact same chance to come up as 15,18,23,34,37,40,42 for example. At a fundamental level it's how we try to relate two independent events together but we assume that there must be some sort of connection, despite the fact that it's just purely math and psychological.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 9

carlisomes

Fate doesn't exist. don't get why many think it should (life has ambiguity... :wink:

)

I think many things occur at random, it may seem chaotic to some.

Reply 10

skunkboy

Original post by KingStannis

The first premise is false.

Lol,really? Why it's false?

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Reply 11

KingStannis

Original post by Noura*

How?

Quantum mechanics. Also, read Hume.

Reply 12

KingStannis

Original post by skunkboy

Lol,really? Why it's false?

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See above.

Reply 13

Stinkum

Everything that happens is by fate. Nothing occurs at random.

Reply 14

Neshida

Meh, I prefer destiny than luck. With destiny when things are going disarray in life, you can always turn around and say comfortingly, that it is the path pre chosen by a great force. With lucky, you would still some how feel like you could have done more to increase the odds of your winnings.

Reply 15

286001

This is how I see it:

Everything is pre-destined for us. No matter how much luck a person thinks they have, or if anything to happen was thought to be a coincidence, it all happened anyway. It was going to happen, whether you like it or not.

I know this isn't mathematically/statistically correct but if you were to win the lottery, for example, the 'chances' of it actually happening was 100%. It happened- you cannot 'unhappen' it. It was your fate to win that lottery, it's written for you. I mean, whatever we do HAS to be written some where, right?

But in a sense YOU still made it happen. Another example would be studying for exams: if you don't study, you won't get the results you wanted- that isn't being unlucky, nor is it a coincidence.

Reply 16

Plantagenet Crown

I don't believe in either coincidence or luck, but I reject fate and destiny too.

Reply 17

Octohedral

"Luck is where preparation meets opportunity".

As to whether we live in a deterministic universe - maybe it's pre-determined whether we'll ever work that one out. However, for the purposes of life on a human scale, chance and coincidence are pretty good mathematical models.

It's human nature to make patterns, and therefore believe in destiny. Even if life is pre-determined, there is no evidence that the determined outcome has anything to do with 'good' or 'bad'.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 18

tazarooni89

Original post by 286001

So I wanted to know what your views are on about whether coincidence and luck exist or is everything that happens due to fate and destiny?

Play nice guys!

I don't think coincidence and luck are things that "exist", they're subjective concepts.

Luck is when you are not really able to predict or influence an event, but it still turns out with the outcome that you wanted. But it's could still be the result of a deterministic set of causes. For example, you might get "lucky" and correctly guess the outcome of a roulette spin. But it still depends upon how fast the ball was thrown, how quickly the wheel was spun etc.

Reply 19

KeepYourChinUp

Original post by tazarooni89

But you're just as likely to guess an incorrect number. Imagine numbers 1 ... 49. If I asked you to guess a number obviously the chances of you guessing the correct number is 1/49 but the chances of any number to come up is 1/49 so when something like this happens, we like to assign a word to it. Luck.

But there are much more complex variations and this is when people start to call it fate and destiny etc. Imagine you dream tonight that your friend breaks his arm, and next week he breaks his leg. If you're religious you're bound to try and pin some sort of "connection" to those two random events, when infact there is no connection.

This isn't aimed at you it's just a general observation and it would leave lots of people freaked out, religious or not but it's just probability. Imagine this for "luck" or "fate" then. You have a sack of balls (pun intended) and each ball has a number written on it from 1 to 100. Could you imagine how freaked out you'd be if you just so happened to pull out 1,2,3,4,5 ... 99, 100 in a row? lol.

You wouldn't be freaked out if you pulled them out in a random order though? Strange that :P