Craig Presson wrote:
>
> --- delriviere christophe <mich@thehzone.tzo.org> wrote:
> [...]
> > >There's no evidence for "luck" as an attribute of individuals, and I don't
> > >see any plausible way to posit a mechanism for it. Sounds a lot like "Psi."
> > >If either were proved to exist, that would be a huge scientific revolution,
> > >completely aside from possibilities of natural or sexual selection being
> > used
> > >to enhance any such abilities.
> > >> >
> > of course ;) I was just kidding, I've read Ringworld some little time ago,
> > and one of the person in the book is choosen for a quest just because of her
> > extreme luck.
>
> I knew I had seen that theme in a SF book at some point. There is also The
> Duck in
> Spider Robinson's Callahan's stories, same deal -- improbable stuff happens
> around him
> constantly. I think it's pretty craven of an author to use
> something that remarkable and not take a good shot at explaining it.
> Robinson can be
> excused because no one would mistake his stuff for hard SF, but Niven ...
> sheesh.
>
> I stopped reading SF for a long time because of stuff like this.
>
Yeah, the Puppeteer's plot to add the birth lotteries to the human society supposedly bred it. As for myself, I've often thought of myself as a sort of Murphy Vortex, that odd and/or bad luck things always tend to happen to me, that have nothing to do with carelessness. Few if any good luck things tend to happen. I find it interesting that studies I've seen trying to find 'luck' always focus on GOOD luck, to no avail. I can't find anyone who has tried to find bad luck deviations from the norm.
The only good result of a lot of my odd or bad experiences is that I have a lot of stories to tell..
Mike Lorrey