May 06, 2019 Monday
Bedtime Story
Psychology of "Luck"
In general most of us apes are innumerate especially
when it comes to dealing with large numbers in spite of being literate and loaded
with fancy vocabulary.
Literacy does not necessary leads to
innumeracy.
A knowledgeable mathematician who has the
ability to detach himself emotionally would view luck as a probabilistic
outcome taken very personally.
A truly rational person who is master of
probability would view others’ belief in luck or bad luck as either wishful
thinking or poor reasoning.
So any Hindu who believes that he or she
has passed the hardest and toughest UPSC examination (or the civil services
examination whose qualification rate is roughly 0.1%) or made into the premier
institutes of India such as an IIT or an AIIMS simply because she had been to a
specific holy site is displaying her poor reasoning and lack of probabilistic
understanding.
He is also thereby committing a fallacy
that is known as Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc is Latin for
“after this, therefore because of this” is the fallacy which states that “since
an event B followed event A, then event B must have been caused by event A.’
This fallacy is often shortened to post hoc
fallacy during routine conversations and most well-read people seem to be aware
of it though erudite people are generally few in any society.
This is an extremely common and tempting
fallacy as it assigns causality when there is none but which strongly appeals
to the intuition.
The fact that so many others who did not
qualify and yet who had prayed as ardently and feverishly is totally
discounted.
The sequence of events takes the priority
in assigning the causality and is often the origin of much of lucky charms or
totems seen among sportsmen such as the t-shirt numbering or some specific
apparel part.
(6.) Belief in luck is strongly related to
superstitions and supernatural beliefs and it is generally the case that more
the superstitious a society is the more its beliefs are pertaining to good or
bad luck.
(7.) Belief in luck finally can also be
related to psychological profile of a person.
In psychology when it comes to their belief
in luck people are categorized into four types:
Believers in luck, Non-believers of luck
who reject such a notion (and who obviously are a tiny minority for who do you
know who does not call himself lucky or unlucky), who believe they are
inherently lucky and the fourth who believe that they are born unlucky.
The third category of people is the
optimists and a generally satisfied lot whereas the fourth category is the
people who suffer from anxiety disorder and who are also less likely to take
advantage when an opportunity presents to them.
Johns Hopkins was one of those people who
not only tried and worked hard but fortune (chance) smiled upon him.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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