Re:Career advice for people with bad luck
by KerryJones on Friday April 24, 2020 @07:21PM
(#22974011)
Very much agreed on both points -- which is why I think studying that is important. The tide is definitely against you, but you have a greater chance of fighting it if you know how it works.
Re:Career advice for people with bad luck
by TheCowboy on Friday April 24, 2020 @10:49PM
(#22975142)
Speaking from experience, and also having known a lot of people with a deep understanding of probability, the kind of unluckiness described by OP isn't immediately resolved by a familiarity with probability. For example, it can work against a person where becoming aware of the number of small chance events, that you come to believe you're just wasting your time. But I do think understanding probability is useful in life and underrated.
So that is where good advice would step in to offer some guidance about how to actually apply this knowledge.
A) You really want to identify gambles with positive expectation. If you constantly expose yourself to “more chances of success” with negative expectation (such as going to the casino for the chance of winning big), you’ll end up ruined.
B) Even if you can identify gambles with positive expectation, the more resources you have initially, the more you can afford to gamble. Thus, people initially deprived of luck might have less chance of catching up, let alone making it big.