good luck and bad luck essay

Why Luck Matters More Than You Might Think

When people see themselves as self-made, they tend to be less generous and public-spirited.

I’ m a lucky man. Perhaps the most extreme example of my considerable good fortune occurred one chilly Ithaca morning in November 2007, while I was playing tennis with my longtime friend and collaborator, the Cornell psychologist Tom Gilovich. He later told me that early in the second set, I complained of feeling nauseated. The next thing he knew, I was lying motionless on the court.

He yelled for someone to call 911, and then started pounding on my chest—something he’d seen many times in movies but had never been trained to do. He got a cough out of me, but seconds later I was again motionless with no pulse. Very shortly, an ambulance showed up.

Ithaca’s ambulances are dispatched from the other side of town, more than five miles away. How did this one arrive so quickly? By happenstance, just before I collapsed, ambulances had been dispatched to two separate auto accidents close to the tennis center. Since one of them involved no serious injuries, an ambulance was able to peel off and travel just a few hundred yards to me. EMTs put electric paddles on my chest and rushed me to our local hospital. There, I was loaded onto a helicopter and flown to a larger hospital in Pennsylvania, where I was placed on ice overnight.

Doctors later told me that I’d suffered an episode of sudden cardiac arrest. Almost 90 percent of people who experience such episodes don’t survive, and the few who do are typically left with significant impairments. And for three days after the event, my family tells me, I spoke gibberish. But on day four, I was discharged from the hospital with a clear head. Two weeks later, I was playing tennis with Tom again.

If that ambulance hadn’t happened to have been nearby, I would be dead.

Not all random events lead to favorable outcomes, of course. Mike Edwards is no longer alive because chance frowned on him. Edwards, formerly a cellist in the British pop band the Electric Light Orchestra, was driving on a rural road in England in 2010 when a 1,300-pound bale of hay rolled down a steep hillside and landed on his van, crushing him. By all accounts, he was a decent, peaceful man. That a bale of hay snuffed out his life was bad luck, pure and simple.

Most people will concede that I’m fortunate to have survived and that Edwards was unfortunate to have perished. But in other arenas, randomness can play out in subtler ways, causing us to resist explanations that involve luck. In particular, many of us seem uncomfortable with the possibility that personal success might depend to any significant extent on chance. As E. B. White once wrote, “Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.”

My having cheated death does not make me an authority on luck. But it has motivated me to learn much more about the subject than I otherwise would have. In the process, I have discovered that chance plays a far larger role in life outcomes than most people realize. And yet, the luckiest among us appear especially unlikely to appreciate our good fortune. According to the Pew Research Center, people in higher income brackets are much more likely than those with lower incomes to say that individuals get rich primarily because they work hard. Other surveys bear this out: Wealthy people overwhelmingly attribute their own success to hard work rather than to factors like luck or being in the right place at the right time.

That’s troubling, because a growing body of evidence suggests that seeing ourselves as self-made—rather than as talented, hardworking, and lucky—leads us to be less generous and public-spirited. It may even make the lucky less likely to support the conditions (such as high-quality public infrastructure and education) that made their own success possible.

Happily, though, when people are prompted to reflect on their good fortune, they become much more willing to contribute to the common good.

Psychologists use the term hindsight bias to describe our tendency to think, after the fact, that an event was predictable even when it wasn’t. This bias operates with particular force for unusually successful outcomes.

In his commencement address to Princeton University’s 2012 graduating class, Michael Lewis described the series of chance events that helped make him—already privileged by virtue of his birth into a well-heeled family and his education at Princeton—a celebrated author:

One night I was invited to a dinner where I sat next to the wife of a big shot of a big Wall Street investment bank, Salomon Brothers. She more or less forced her husband to give me a job. I knew next to nothing about Salomon Brothers. But Salomon Brothers happened to be where Wall Street was being reinvented—into the Wall Street we’ve come to know and love today. When I got there I was assigned, almost arbitrarily, to the very best job in the place to observe the growing madness: They turned me into the house derivatives expert.

On the basis of his experiences at Salomon, Lewis wrote his 1989 best seller, Liar’s Poker , which described how Wall Street financial maneuvering was transforming the world.

All of a sudden people were telling me I was a born writer. This was absurd. Even I could see that there was another, more true narrative, with luck as its theme. What were the odds of being seated at that dinner next to that Salomon Brothers lady? Of landing inside the best Wall Street firm to write the story of the age? Of landing in the seat with the best view of the business? … This isn’t just false humility. It’s false humility with a point. My case illustrates how success is always rationalized. People really don’t like to hear success explained away as luck—especially successful people. As they age, and succeed, people feel their success was somehow inevitable.

Our understanding of human cognition provides one important clue as to why we may see success as inevitable: the availability heuristic. Using this cognitive shortcut, we tend to estimate the likelihood of an event or outcome based on how readily we can recall similar instances. Successful careers, of course, result from many factors, including hard work, talent, and chance. Some of those factors recur often, making them easy to recall. But others happen sporadically and therefore get short shrift when we construct our life stories.

Little wonder that when talented, hardworking people in developed countries strike it rich, they tend to ascribe their success to talent and hard work above all else. Most of them are vividly aware of how hard they’ve worked and how talented they are. They’ve been working hard and solving difficult problems every day for many years! In some abstract sense, they probably do know that they might not have performed as well in some other environment. Yet their day-to-day experience provides few reminders of how fortunate they were not to have been born in, say, war-torn Zimbabwe.

Our personal narratives are biased in a second way: Events that work to our disadvantage are easier to recall than those that affect us positively. My friend Tom Gilovich invokes a metaphor involving headwinds and tailwinds to describe this asymmetry.

When you’re running or bicycling into the wind, you’re very aware of it. You just can’t wait till the course turns around and you’ve got the wind at your back. When that happens, you feel great . But then you forget about it very quickly—you’re just not aware of the wind at your back. And that’s just a fundamental feature of how our minds, and how the world, works. We’re just going to be more aware of those barriers than of the things that boost us along.

That we tend to overestimate our own responsibility for our successes is not to say that we shouldn’t take pride in them. Pride is a powerful motivator; moreover, a tendency to overlook luck’s importance may be perversely adaptive, as it encourages us to persevere in the face of obstacles.

And yet failing to consider the role of chance has a dark side, too, making fortunate people less likely to pass on their good fortune.

The one dimension of personal luck that transcends all others is to have been born in a highly developed country. I often think of Birkhaman Rai, the Bhutanese man who was my cook when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal. He was perhaps the most resourceful person I’ve ever met. Though he was never taught to read, he could perform virtually any task in his environment to a high standard, from thatching a roof to repairing a clock to driving a tough bargain without alienating people. Even so, the meager salary I was able to pay him was almost certainly the high point of his life’s earnings trajectory. If he’d grown up in a rich country, he would have been far more prosperous, perhaps even spectacularly successful.

Being born in a favorable environment is an enormous stroke of luck. But maintaining such an environment requires high levels of public investment in everything from infrastructure to education—something Americans have lately been unwilling to support. Many factors have contributed to this reticence, but one in particular stands out: budget deficits resulting from a long-term decline in the United States’ top marginal tax rate.

A recent study by the political scientists Benjamin Page, Larry Bartels, and Jason Seawright found that the top 1 percent of U.S. wealth-holders are “extremely active politically” and are much more likely than the rest of the American public to resist taxation, regulation, and government spending. Given that the wealthiest Americans believe their prosperity is due, above all else, to their own talent and hard work, is this any wonder? Surely it’s a short hop from overlooking luck’s role in success to feeling entitled to keep the lion’s share of your income—and to being reluctant to sustain the public investments that let you succeed in the first place.

And yet this state of affairs does not appear to be inevitable: Recent research suggests that being prompted to recognize luck can encourage generosity. For example, Yuezhou Huo, a former research assistant of mine, designed an experiment in which she promised subjects a cash prize in exchange for completing a survey about a positive thing that had recently happened to them. She asked one group of participants to list factors beyond their control that contributed to the event, a second group to list personal qualities and actions that contributed to it, and a control group to simply explain why the good thing had happened. After completing the survey, subjects were given an opportunity to donate some or all of their reward to charity. Those who had been prompted to credit external causes—many mentioned luck, as well as factors such as supportive spouses, thoughtful teachers, and financial aid—donated 25 percent more than those who’d been asked to credit personal qualities or choices. Donations from the control group fell roughly midway between those from the other two groups.

Experiments by David DeSteno, a psychologist at Northeastern University, offer additional evidence that gratitude might lead to greater willingness to support the common good. In one widely cited study, he and his co-authors devised a clever manipulation to make a group of laboratory subjects feel grateful, and then gave them an opportunity to take actions that would benefit others at their own expense. Subjects in whom gratitude had been stoked were subsequently about 25 percent more generous toward strangers than were members of a control group. These findings are consistent with those of other academic psychologists. Taken together, the research suggests that when we are reminded of luck’s importance, we are much more likely to plow some of our own good fortune back into the common good.

In an unexpected twist, we may even find that recognizing our luck increases our good fortune. Social scientists have been studying gratitude intensively for almost two decades, and have found that it produces a remarkable array of physical, psychological, and social changes. Robert Emmons of the University of California at Davis and Michael McCullough of the University of Miami have been among the most prolific contributors to this effort. In one of their collaborations, they asked a first group of people to keep diaries in which they noted things that had made them feel grateful, a second group to note things that had made them feel irritated, and a third group to simply record events. After 10 weeks, the researchers reported dramatic changes in those who had noted their feelings of gratitude. The newly grateful had less frequent and less severe aches and pains and improved sleep quality. They reported greater happiness and alertness. They described themselves as more outgoing and compassionate, and less likely to feel lonely and isolated. No similar changes were observed in the second or third groups. Other psychologists have documented additional benefits of gratitude, such as reduced anxiety and diminished aggressive impulses.

Economists like to talk about scarcity, but its logic doesn’t always hold up in the realm of human emotion. Gratitude, in particular, is a currency we can spend freely without fear of bankruptcy. Indeed, if you talk with others about their experiences with luck, as I have, you may discover that with only a little prompting, even people who have never given much thought to the subject are surprisingly willing to rethink their life stories, recalling lucky breaks they’ve enjoyed along the way. And because these conversations almost always leave participants feeling happier, it’s not hard to imagine them becoming contagious

This essay is adapted from Robert H. Frank’s new book, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy .

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IELTS Essay: Luck

by Dave | Real Past Tests | 10 Comments

This is an IELTS writing task 2 sample answer essay on the topic of luck and a person’s aims from the real IELTS exam.

If you want to support my efforts to write these essays and also receive my exclusive Ebooks, check out my Patreon (where I’m currently running a discount)!

Whether or not a person achieves their aims in life is mostly related to luck.

To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Some are of the belief that luck is the determining factor when accomplishing a given goal. In my opinion, luck is pivotal in individual situations but its importance decreases over larger sample sizes.

The main argument for the primacy of luck is highly visible, singular examples. This translates to extremely successful individuals. For instance, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were exceptionally intelligent and hard-working but they would never have become leading figures in history if they had not grown up in California in the 1970s during the computer boom. It is likely they would still be successful regardless of their era and place of birth but the extent of influence would be more limited. This same principle applies for the average individual as there are moments in one’s life that are best credited to good luck or an advantageous situation.

However, the significance of luck decreases over time. Take, for example, an average person. They may be born into a wealthy family and have a good start in life; they are lucky from the onset. Nonetheless, if they are not hard-working, there is a strong chance they will not be able to accomplish their goals in life. The reverse is true of someone born into a bad situation. There are exceptions, where the situation is dire or the period in history precludes success, but most people who apply themselves over a long period of time will ‘make their own luck’. This is because as sample sizes become larger, the influence of variance naturally decreases. It still requires some extraordinary luck to attain huge aims but more modest ones result from repeated action rather than fortune.

In conclusion, luck is decisive in particular instances but not more generally. It is therefore more important to place greater value on working hard in the long-term than on the off-chance of being lucky.

1. Some are of the belief that luck is the determining factor when accomplishing a given goal. 2. In my opinion, luck is pivotal in individual situations but its importance decreases over larger sample sizes.

• Paraphrase the overall essay topic.
• Write a clear opinion. Read more about introductions for IELTS here .

1. The main argument for the primacy of luck is highly visible, singular examples. 2. This translates to extremely successful individuals. 3. For instance, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were exceptionally intelligent and hard-working but they would never have become leading figures in history if they had not grown up in California in the 1970s during the computer boom. 4. It is likely they would still be successful regardless of their era and place of birth but the extent of influence would be more limited. 5. This same principle applies for the average individual as there are moments in one’s life that are best credited to good luck or an advantageous situation.

• Write a clear topic sentence with your main idea at the end.
• Explain your main idea.
• Start a specific example.
• Develop it.
• Generalise from your example.

1. However, the significance of luck decreases over time. 2. Take, for example, an average person. 3. They may be born into a wealthy family and have a good start in life; they are lucky from the onset. 4. Nonetheless, if they are not hard-working, there is a strong chance they will not be able to accomplish their goals in life. 5. The reverse is true of someone born into a bad situation. 6. There are exceptions, where the situation is dire or the period in history precludes success, but most people who apply themselves over a long period of time will ‘make their own luck’. 7. This is because as sample sizes become larger, the influence of variance naturally decreases. 8. It still requires some extraordinary luck to attain huge aims but more modest ones result from repeated action rather than fortune.

• Write a new topic sentence with a new main idea at the end.
• Add specific support such as a hypothetical example.
• Develop the example.
• Very your short and long sentences.
• Add in any exceptions.
• Explain your logic.
• Conclude with a strong, clear statement.

1. In conclusion, luck is decisive in particular instances but not more generally. 2. It is therefore more important to place greater value on working hard in the long-term than on the off-chance of being lucky.

• Repeat your main ideas and your opinion.
• Add a final thought. Read more about conclusions here .

What do the words in bold below mean?

Some are of the belief that luck is the determining factor when accomplishing a given goal . In my opinion, luck is pivotal in individual situations but its importance decreases over larger sample sizes .

The main argument for the primacy of luck is highly visible , singular examples. This translates to extremely successful individuals . For instance, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were exceptionally intelligent and hard-working but they would never have become leading figures in history if they had not grown up in California in the 1970s during the computer boom . It is likely they would still be successful regardless of their era and place of birth but the extent of influence would be more limited . This same principle applies for the average individual as there are moments in one’s life that are best credited to good luck or an advantageous situation .

However, the significance of luck decreases over time. Take, for example, an average person . They may be born into a wealthy family and have a good start in life; they are lucky from the onset . Nonetheless , if they are not hard-working, there is a strong chance they will not be able to accomplish their goals in life. The reverse is true of someone born into a bad situation. There are exceptions , where the situation is dire or the period in history precludes success , but most people who apply themselves over a long period of time will ‘make their own luck’. This is because as sample sizes become larger, the influence of variance naturally decreases . It still requires some extraordinary luck to attain huge aims but more modest ones result from repeated action rather than fortune .

In conclusion, luck is decisive in particular instances but not more generally . It is therefore more important to place greater value on working hard in the long-term than on the off-chance of being lucky.

of the belief believe

luck good fortune

determining factor decisive

accomplishing achieving

given goal any random aim

pivotal key

individual situations certain contexts

importance decreases over larger sample sizes value is less important over time and many examples

main argument primary reason

primacy central importance

highly visible well-known

singular unique

translates means

extremely successful individuals people who have done well

exceptionally intelligent really smart

leading figures in history major leaders, people

grown up as they get older

computer boom computers beginning to develop

regardless nonetheless

era time period

extent degree

influence shaping

limited small, not much

same principle applies this translates to

average individual normal person

moments times

best credited is due to

advantageous situation good spot

significance importance

average person normal person

wealthy rich

good start good beginning

onset beginning

nonetheless regardless of

strong chance good odds

accomplish achieve

reverse switch

exceptions situations that don’t fit

dire dangerous

precludes success cancels out the possibility of success

apply also works for

over a long period of time for a while

sample sizes number of examples

influence of variance how important luck is

naturally decreases declines of course

requires needs

extraordinary amazing

modest humble

result from comes from

repeated action doing something over and over

rather than fortune instead of luck

decisive key

particular instances some examples

generally overall

place greater value put more importance on

off-chance sometimes

Pronunciation

ɒv ðə bɪˈliːf   lʌk   dɪˈtɜːmɪnɪŋ ˈfæktə   əˈkɒmplɪʃɪŋ   ˈgɪvn gəʊl ˈpɪvətl   ˌɪndɪˈvɪdjʊəl ˌsɪtjʊˈeɪʃənz   ɪmˈpɔːtəns ˈdiːkriːsɪz ˈəʊvə ˈlɑːʤə ˈsɑːmpl ˈsaɪzɪz meɪn ˈɑːgjʊmənt   ˈpraɪməsi   ˈhaɪli ˈvɪzəbl ˈsɪŋgjʊlə   trænsˈleɪts   ɪksˈtriːmli səkˈsɛsfʊl ˌɪndɪˈvɪdjʊəlz ɪkˈsɛpʃənli ɪnˈtɛlɪʤənt   ˈliːdɪŋ ˈfɪgəz ɪn ˈhɪstəri   grəʊn ʌp   kəmˈpjuːtə buːm rɪˈgɑːdlɪs   ˈɪərə   ɪksˈtɛnt   ˈɪnflʊəns   ˈlɪmɪtɪd seɪm ˈprɪnsəpl əˈplaɪz ˈævərɪʤ ˌɪndɪˈvɪdjʊəl   ˈməʊmənts   bɛst ˈkrɛdɪtɪd   ˌædvənˈteɪʤəs ˌsɪtjʊˈeɪʃən sɪgˈnɪfɪkəns   ˈævərɪʤ ˈpɜːsn ˈwɛlθi   gʊd stɑːt   ˈɒnsɛt ˌnʌnðəˈlɛs strɒŋ ʧɑːns   əˈkɒmplɪʃ   rɪˈvɜːs   ɪkˈsɛpʃənz ˈdaɪə   prɪˈkluːdz səkˈsɛs əˈplaɪ   ˈəʊvər ə lɒŋ ˈpɪərɪəd ɒv taɪm   ˈsɑːmpl ˈsaɪzɪz   ˈɪnflʊəns ɒv ˈveərɪəns   ˈnæʧrəli ˈdiːkriːsɪz rɪˈkwaɪəz   ɪksˈtrɔːdnri   ˈmɒdɪst   rɪˈzʌlt frɒm   rɪˈpiːtɪd ˈækʃ(ə)n   ˈrɑːðə ðæn ˈfɔːʧən dɪˈsaɪsɪv   pəˈtɪkjʊlər ˈɪnstənsɪz   ˈʤɛnərəli pleɪs ˈgreɪtə ˈvæljuː   ɒf-ʧɑːns  

Vocabulary Practice

Remember and fill in the blanks:

Some are o_______________f that l_____k is the d____________________r when a______________________g a g_____________l . In my opinion, luck is p______l in i___________________________s but its i___________________________________________s .

The m____________________t for the p_____________y of luck is h_______________e , s__________r examples. This t_____________s to e______________________________________s . For instance, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were e_________________________t and hard-working but they would never have become l_______________________________y if they had not g____________p in California in the 1970s during the c_______________m . It is likely they would still be successful r________________s of their e___a and place of birth but the e_________t of i__________e would be more l___________d . This s_____________________s for the a_____________________l as there are m_______________s in one’s life that are b_____________d to good luck or an a________________________n .

However, the s________________e of luck decreases over time. Take, for example, an a___________________n . They may be born into a w___________y family and have a g________________t in life; they are lucky from the o______t . N______________s , if they are not hard-working, there is a s______________e they will not be able to a_____________h their goals in life. The r_________e is true of someone born into a bad situation. There are e_____________s , where the situation is d____e or the period in history p__________________s , but most people who a_______y themselves o________________________e will ‘make their own luck’. This is because as s_______________s become larger, the i___________________________________s . It still r____________s some e_________________________y luck to attain huge aims but more m____________t ones r_______________m r_________________n r_________________n f___________e .

In conclusion, luck is d___________e in p_____________________s but not more g______________y . It is therefore more important to p_____________________e on working hard in the long-term than on the o_____________e of being lucky.

Listening Practice

Listen below and take some notes or practice with these activities :

Reading Practice

Read more about this topic and use these ideas to practice:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/09/your-money/stop-and-acknowledge-how-much-luck-has-to-do-with-your-success.html

Speaking Practice

Practice with the following questions from the real IELTS speaking exam :

• Why did you choose your job?
• How much work do you do in a week?
• Do you have to work on weekends as well?

Writing Practice

Write about the related topic below then check with my sample answer:

In some cultures, children are often told that they can achieve anything if they try hard enough.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of giving children this message?

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Answer Essay IELTS Cambridge 15: Children Achieve Anything (IELTS Cambridge 15)

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10 Comments

People tend to think that luck plays a major role in achieving goals. While there are scenarios where people are more fortunate than others, I completely disagree with this statement because there are more important aspects of life that help individuals become successful in their undertakings.

It is undeniable that some people have better life circumstances than others. For instance, most people would consider being born rich, as being lucky. Financial resources allow people to maneuver their lives the way they want in terms of education, career, love, and life in general. Students born in a rich family can study in well-known universities that will open up doors for a bright career while those who are poverty-stricken, would have to work and study harder, to pay for tuition or to get a scholarship. 

However, relying on luck does not guarantee success in life. Instead, individuals should put together a concrete plan and discover ways to execute them through dedication and perseverance. Commonly, people view failure as being unfortunate and they blame life circumstances as they give up on their goals when they should be taking failures as part of their journey and consider them as little hindrances that will help them better their craft. As an example, Jeff Bezos who was born in a working-class family, had so many failed businesses in the past before he founded Amazon and his success would have been otherwise impossible, had he stopped when he failed.

In conclusion, there are situations wherein people have better odds than others, however, it is more important to focus on one’s goals and never give up until they are achieved.

Nice writing again, Chris!

Really accurate writing – we don’t usually use ‘commonly’ the way you did to start a sentence. In general, would be better.

Keep it up!

In recent times, there has been an ever-growing trend in competitiveness in order to achieve greater heights. While numerous astrologers claim that success is certainly related to luck, others, including myself believe that hard work and determination is the key to success. This essay will argue why perseverance and working hard play a critical role in acquiring success.

To begin with, there is a growing body of statistical evidence which suggests that achieving success is not co-related to luck. To exemplify this point, a recent retrospective study conducted by Oxford University, who performed a randomised study on UK high school graduates, revealed that two-thirds of students who kept on procrastinating their assignments and relied on luck to get through their final GCSE exams were less likely to attain university places in competitive fields. By contrast, one-third of students who completed their assignments regularly and studied rigorously for their final exams stood a higher chance in getting into a competitive university degree such as engineering and medicine. Based on this, it is not unreasonable to assume that being lucky is not  the only marker to gain success in life. It is, therefore, essential for a person to stay focused and persevere in order to attain greater heights in life.

Nonetheless, several experts in astrology believe that a person’s success and accomplishments are all written in destiny. Hence they claim that luck plays a significant role in delivering achievements in one’s life. Despite these claims, I firmly believe that there are several examples which suggest us that luck is not the only factor in achieving success. One such example is of Oprah Winfrey, a popular public figure, who was born to a poor family and lived in the deprived regions of Mississippi. In spite of several obstacles such as lack of schooling and proper shelter, she never gave up hope and continued to work hard. In 2008, she became a millionaire and was listed in the Forbes list of richest women alive. This anecdote suggests that despite the several adversities and challenging situations one may face in life, it is essential to work hard and be determined to attain one’s goal in life. and not completely bank on luck and destiny. Overall, it is clear that luck is not the key determiner to success.

To conclude, if a person wants to achieve a goal in life, the person must put in an effort and work hard persistently. From my perspective, luck plays very little role in one’s achievement and success and it is absolutely critical to continue to persevere to see success in life. 

Great work, Bonnie!

It is a little long – how long did it take you to write it?

There is some informal vocabulary but you are obviously at an extremely high level – I hope other students can learn a lot from your writing!

Hey Dave! Thanks a lot for reading my essay! I took about 37 minutes to write this essay 🙂 But I feel in order to develop my main body paragraph I need to write more words 🙁

it was really helpful thank you

You’re welcome!

HY DAVE SIR I am too much poor in writing what can i do? i am ielts student

It is true that some people deem luck as the decisive factor that leads people to the threshold of success. I strongly disagree with this opinion since fortune only plays a small part in geting goals accomplished, while there are more important factors that should not be neglected. Those in favor of luck would point out that it could change the entire status of people. A noteworthy example being lottery represents for luck that could bring people about prosperity. They can use the money to improve the financial background of their family by starting business or sending to banks for later use. However, the probability of wining a lottery is marginally insignificant, so that people should no hold a hopeful expectation on these contingent numbers but devote time on self-development instead. Indeed, there are many other conditions that define success. Research has shown that there are five chief factors forming success: knowledge, skills, experiences, relationships and luck is the last and also the least important one. Actually, a person could hardly have a decent life if he is ignorant and poor-experienced regardless to his luck. Returning to the previous example, the prosperous status would temporarily persist later in life, in other words, lottery winners would be no longer in wealth unless they have good financial management skills and a clearly profitable use of the money, which only are possessed by well-educated people. That is the reason why the majority of people being stuck in impoverishment after winning a lottery after a short period. In conclusion, although luck remains one of the prerequisites of becoming successful, its contribution is far inferior to other factors. People should not wait for lucky events to come but take efforts to learn more because success will come as a result of sufficient endeavors.

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

How Luck and Chance Shape Your Life

Consider the random road that led to you reading this article. At some point, someone introduced you to Greater Good magazine. Perhaps you received an email or saw a post on someone’s social media feed, or maybe Google did the job. At that precise moment of time, you had a few minutes to spare and decided to click on it. That, of course, was in your control.

But before your click, someone—namely, me—had to write this article. An editor had to decide that I was a decent choice to write it. I had to accept—which I did mainly for one completely random reason: I had read the book in question and in fact had recently interviewed the author for my NPR podcast, Attribution .

Then, of course, there are the larger questions of how you, me, the editor, or the author even came into existence at all. Each one of our lives is the result of so many random acts, not the least of which is how our parents met each other or our grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on and so on. 
 If the role of random events is so significant in something as trivial as reading an article, imagine how they impact bigger events in our lives and the history of the world.

This is the point of Mark Robert Rank’s new book, The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us . 

Rank is the Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare at Washington University in St. Louis, whose previous research and writing focused on issues of poverty, inequality, and the American Dream.

While on one level the role of random events in our lives may seem intuitive or obvious, Rank’s book deftly makes the point that we under-appreciate randomness and do so to our own detriment.

The realms of randomness

If we look outside ourselves, we can see that randomness exists in the world around us. For example, Rank shares stories ranging from the ascendency of Adolf Hitler (if only he had gotten into art school) to the Cuban Missile Crisis (thank goodness a Soviet soldier was stuck outside of his submarine) to the unexpected cloud cover in Japan that saved the city of Kokura but devastated Nagasaki. Each of these major historical events were swayed by randomness in ways that irrevocably changed the fates of millions—if not the entire planet.

Speaking of the planet, Rank also looks even more broadly, as he considers randomness in the natural world. He writes:

Most striking is the very reason we are here. Some 66 million years ago, an asteroid hit the Earth at precisely the right angle and location to annihilate the dinosaurs, paving the path for our ascendency. Had there been as little as a 10-mile difference in its path of entry, we would not be here today and the dinosaurs would still be roaming the land.

Then there is the serendipity in scientific discovery. From penicillin to Velcro to sequencing DNA, each has randomness to thank for its very being.

There’s also luck in everyday events. Do you know which professional sports involve the most luck? Soccer and hockey, because the scores are so low. One goal makes a huge difference, and that one goal can be the result of a lucky bounce or random deflection. Or consider college admissions and prison sentencing, where the time of day when someone is “judging” you has been found to influence their receptivity to your cause.

Bringing the role of randomness closer to home, Rank also examines how it operates in our own personal lives. Consider the very basic facts that none of us choose who our parents are, when or where we are born, and our first and last names. All of these have been found to have a pretty significant impact on our lives.

Some may seem obvious, like the financial circumstances of your parents or the opportunities that your neighborhood provides. But some are less so. The month you’re born has an impact on how you’re treated in youth sports. Your first name impacts how often you get called on in class; your last name has an influence on college admissions. The year you were born impacts your job prospects, and so on and so on.

These random patterns also influence who comes in and out of your life. Consider the randomness of how you met your partner or your current group of friends.

As we also know, chance events often have life-or-death consequences, like who died and who escaped a war or a natural disaster. In our lives, we might recount our own amazing stories of accidents, chance, or random events that have either set us back or propelled us forward, shaping not only our lives but those of our families and friends.

Accepting the influence of luck

At this point, you might be blown away by the sheer number of ways randomness factors into our world and lives—or you still might be skeptical. After all, we all want to believe that our lives are largely within our control.

In my own research in conjunction with Public Agenda , when 2,000 Americans were asked about the factors that were most essential to achieving the American dream, they ranked luck 10th out of 11 factors. “A strong work ethic” was number one by a large margin.

Is randomness just another word for “luck”? Rank makes a distinction between the values we associate with the terms random , chance , or luck . As he told me in our interview:

Luck and chance are generally, as I use it in the book, applied to individuals, whereas randomness is more of a system-wide thing. We might say the world is filled with randomness, but that the people experience luck and chance. The difference between luck and chance is that chance is a fairly neutral term; luck implies something either good or bad. Americans tend to really discount the role of luck in terms of their lives. One of the reasons is, we are strongly steeped in the idea of rugged individualism and meritocracy. People do it on their own, they succeed on their own, and they fail on their own. And the idea of luck and chance is not really in the picture. Now, on the other hand, if you do survey data, Europeans are much more likely to say, you know what, luck and chance actually are important in terms of economic outcomes.

Another cause for resisting the role of luck is our idea of a just world. We want to believe that good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people, but that’s not always the case. As Rank says:

We like to think that the world is just, that what we get in life we deserve, either good or bad. The idea of randomness cuts against that. It doesn’t abide by this concept of justice. It doesn’t abide by the fact that, well, good luck or bad luck may even out. It may even out, it may not even out.

The benefits of recognizing randomness

All these effects of randomness are fascinating, and as I read Rank’s book, I found myself delighted by example after example. Each is another interesting tidbit one might look forward to dropping into their next dinner conversation.

But the value of appreciating the role of randomness extends well beyond the novelty of these stories. Importantly, Rank’s book also shares how thinking about randomness differently can improve our lives. Appreciating randomness increases support for the unlucky. On a societal level, Rank told me, “Because we downplay the role of chance and luck, we also downplay the role of a social safety net. We say, you know what, you do it on your own, and that’s it, and go from there. I think that by accepting the idea of randomness and chance, it does have policy implications as well as personal implications.”

When we truly appreciate how much luck shapes our lives, it allows us to want more support in place that we can access if we ever need it.

Seeing randomness in our lives makes us more empathic and humble. On a personal level, appreciating the role randomness plays in our life creates more empathy for others and more humility when it comes to our role in the world. It elicits a sense of wonder and awe at the randomness of life in a way that doesn’t have to take away from our own agency or diminish our own hard work. Rather, it should elevate feelings of empathy and inspire us to help others.

Seeing luck creates more luck. Some believe in the mantra that we “make our own luck.” Rank has a slightly different take. When we acknowledge the role of randomness, we become more attuned to it. This openness allows us to both accept that some things are beyond our control and take advantage of luck when we see it. He asks us to consider how we respond to chance events. What happens when an expected opportunity comes our way, or, conversely, how do we respond to adverse chance events?

Acknowledging luck increases our gratitude and appreciation for what we have. Some people wake up every day grateful to be alive. Or we see misfortune fall upon another and are thankful that it’s not us. The lack of control that comes with random acts can be frightening, knowing that the “bell may toll for us” next. But it can also expand our gratitude for what we have and the good fortune that comes with just being alive and healthy.

The recognition of randomness ensures that we do not take the good things in life for granted, and it allows us to understand the precarious nature of good fortune. Even for those currently less fortunate, it can be cause for appreciating the small things in life and hoping that the winds of chance may yet blow your way.

Randomness is the “spice of life.” Lastly, Rank asks us to imagine a life where everything is predetermined and predictable. “What a boring life that would be,” he writes. So many of life’s greatest moments happen without plans or expectations. Chance encounters and unpredictable events that we neither planned nor control spice things up and make life more enjoyable. It’s the excitement of not knowing how a game you’re watching may turn out, or the anticipation of never really knowing what tomorrow will bring. 

One final random thought

Let’s imagine you found this random article of value—which I hope you did. Perhaps this changes your attitude the next time you see someone down on their luck, enough to help them. Maybe you give them some money or a connection that helps them get a job. Perhaps that job allows them to create something wonderful that helps the world.

Wouldn’t that be awesome? Such is the power of reflecting and recognizing the randomness all around us. It can inspire action, compassion, and a better life. For ourselves, for others, and for the world.

About the Author

Bob McKinnon

Bob McKinnon is an adjunct professor at the City College of New York and co-founder of the Social Mobility Lab at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership there. He is also host of the award-winning NPR podcast Attribution. He is author of the bestselling children’s book Three Little Engines , the forthcoming children’s book America’s Dreaming , and the weekly Substack newsletter Moving Up Mondays .

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Essay Samples on Luck

Luck is when opportunity meets preparation.

The adage "luck is when opportunity meets preparation" encapsulates the intricate interplay between chance and readiness in achieving success. This essay delves into the profound wisdom of this statement, exploring how preparation lays the foundation for seizing opportunities and how serendipity often arises when one...

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The Move “Better Luck Tomorrow” by Justine Lin

The move, illustrates an image hidden behind well-mannered students of Sunny Hills high schools who are trying hard to over achieve. The main characters Ben and Virgil is showed as those over achievers of high schools who are known for their grades and extracurricular activities....

• Human Behavior
• Social Movement

The Point Of View Of Luck: Matter Of Preparation Meeting Opportunity

You probably also know this from yourselves: days when everything doesn't go as it should, days when everything goes wrong. Sometimes you wonder if you could help your luck a little. The phenomenon of luck not only fascinates us, it is also a constant companion...

• Positive Psychology

Scientific Discovery And Invention: Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention

Hundreds of inventions and discoveries appear every day. Do you think all inventions are intentional? And are discovered after research and experimentation? I don’t think so. A famous quote states: “Necessity is the mother of invention.” That is true to a great extent. However, many...

The Measure Of Success: Luck Or Hard Work

Whether Hard Work or luck? What is more powerful? My approach to answering this is: Hard work can overcome bad fate and it conveys immeasurable luck and also extends its consequence. In childhood, we are prepared to study harder and we are often taught that...

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Success And Luck: The Influence Of Hard Work On Success

'Success and Luck: Good Luck and the Myth of Meritocracy' examines the role of luck in success, claiming that success is much more due to luck than is generally believed. The book has the merit of offering both a very concrete analysis of the role...

Cultural Views and Legends Surrounding Clover

Cambridge dictionary defines a clover as “a small plant with three round, green leaves that are joined together”, but in a field full of three-leaf clovers, finding a four-leaf one could have a special connotation its signifier gives us a feeling of joy and suspicion...

The Interplay of Luck, Effort, and Motivation in Achieving Success

Luck wields a momentous influence over an individual's triumph. This assertion holds true, as luck opens doors to favorable events even when the odds are low. However, can we declare that only those blessed with good fortune can achieve success? What about the unfortunate ones?...

How Much Luck Matters in Achieving Success in Business: Analysis of the Studies

The controversy of the topic of luck and success in the world of business has always been discussed and argued about. Successful business people share their views on the importance of luck in business, and even then, there are disagreements being faced. People often see...

Analysis of David Roberts' Article The Radical Moral Implications of Luck in Human Life

'The radical moral implications of luck in human life' by David Roberts It is not hard to perceive any reason why numerous individuals complain when helped to remember their good fortune, particularly the individuals who have gotten the most. Taking into account fortunes can gouge...

Best topics on Luck

1. Luck Is When Opportunity Meets Preparation

2. The Move “Better Luck Tomorrow” by Justine Lin

3. The Point Of View Of Luck: Matter Of Preparation Meeting Opportunity

4. Scientific Discovery And Invention: Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention

5. The Measure Of Success: Luck Or Hard Work

6. Success And Luck: The Influence Of Hard Work On Success

7. Cultural Views and Legends Surrounding Clover

8. The Interplay of Luck, Effort, and Motivation in Achieving Success

9. How Much Luck Matters in Achieving Success in Business: Analysis of the Studies

10. Analysis of David Roberts’ Article The Radical Moral Implications of Luck in Human Life

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Essay on “Luck” for School, College Students, Long and Short English Essay, Speech for Class 8, 9, 10, 12 and Competitive Exams.

We commonly speak of good luck and bad luck, and talk of people being lucky or unlucky, and of things happening by pure chance. Yet science tells us there is no such thing as chance or luck. According to the law of cause and effect, every happening has a cause. Not a leaf falls, not a wind blows, not a flower opens, without a reason. But we still use the word chance to describe happenings, the reason of which we do not know. When such apparently causeless happenings are favourable to us, we say they are lucky; when unfavourable, we call them unlucky. “Luck is simply untraced, and so far untraceable, law.”

All purely gambling games are games of chance. They are not decided by skill or forethought, but simply by the happening of something we cannot control, like the fall of a coin or the turning up of a certain card. No doubt there is a reason why, when we spin a coin, it is sometimes “heads” and sometimes “tails”. But, if we are playing fairly, we cannot discover the reason, and so we cannot control the coin. So we say that it’s turning up heads or tails is simply a matter of luck or chance.

Now ignorance is the mother of superstition. When people do not know why a thing happens in a certain way, they attribute its happening to good or bad luck. People to whom pleasant things often happen are called “lucky”; and those who seem to be always meeting with misfortune are called “unlucky”; as if there were something in themselves that attracts good or bad fortune. They even think that inanimate things can bring them good or bad luck. So they wear charms to keep away misfortune and are really nervous if the salt is upset in their direction, or if they pass under a ladder, or see the new moon through glass.

Now of course all such superstitions are pure nonsense. There is really no such thing as luck or chance, and only foolish people waste their time in waiting for a miracle of good luck to bring them a fortune. The wise man will try to attain it by hard work, wise effort, and enterprise, and Will leave nothing to chance. Most of the people who are called “lucky” have good fortune because they work for it, and the so-called “unlucky” men miss it because they are lazy or dull.

Modern science has taught us that nothing happens by chance. Everything is the effect of some cause, even though we may not be able to discover what that cause is. Not a leaf falls to the ground, not a wind blows, and not a flower opens, without a reason. There is really, then, no such thing as chance. But we still use the word to describe happenings the reason of which we do not know, and when such apparently causeless happenings are favourable to our interests we say they are lucky; when unfavourable, we say they are unlucky.

All gambling games are games of chances because they are decided not by skill or forethought, but simply by the happening of something which we cannot control, like the fall of a coin or the turning up of a certain card. No doubt there is the reason why, when we spin a coin, it is sometimes “heads” and sometimes “tails.” But if we play fairly, we cannot discover that reason, and so we cannot control the fall of the coin So we say that it’s turning up heads or tails is simply a matter of luck or chance.

Now ignorance always produces superstition. When people do not know why a thing happens in a certain way, they attribute its happening to good or bad luck. People, to whom pleasant things often happen, is called “lucky” men; and those who are always meeting with misfortune are called “unlucky,” as if there were something in the people themselves that attracted good or bad fortune. When folk have once got this idea of good and bad luck into their heads, they believe in all kinds of silly superstitions, and really think that inanimate things can bring them good fortune or bad fortune. Such people are really nervous if the salt is upset on the table in their direction; if they sleep in a room numbered 13 at a hotel; if they pass under a ladder; or see the new moon through glass. These things, for no reason at all, are supposed to bring bad luck.

Now of course all such superstitions are pure nonsense, and no educated person should bother about them for a moment. There is really no such thing as luck or chance, and only foolish people waste their lives in waiting for a miracle of good luck to bring them a fortune. The wise man will try to attain it by hard work, wise effort and enterprise, and leave nothing to chance. Most of the people who are called “lucky” have good fortune because they work for it, and so-called “unlucky men” miss it because they are lazy or stupid.

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ESL Discussion Questions about Luck

Luck is a fascinating concept that has intrigued and perplexed humans for centuries. We often find ourselves pondering the role of luck in our lives, questioning whether it is merely a matter of chance or if there are factors that can influence its presence.

From winning the lottery to stumbling upon an unexpected opportunity, luck can have a profound impact on our daily experiences.

In this blog post, we will help you examine various perspectives on luck through a series of discussion questions.

Table of Contents

What’s Luck?

Different perspectives on luck, superstitions related to luck, discussion questions about luck, how to use these luck discussion questions.

Luck is a concept that permeates our lives in various ways. It is often defined as an unpredictable force that brings about favorable or unfavorable outcomes.

While some perceive luck as a purely random occurrence, others believe that it can be influenced or even created.

One fascinating aspect of luck is how it is viewed and interpreted across different cultures.

Cultural beliefs play a significant role in shaping our understanding of luck.

Superstitions and rituals surrounding luck have been prevalent in various cultures throughout history.

These beliefs often involve specific actions or objects that are believed to bring good luck or ward off bad luck.

For example, crossing fingers for luck, avoiding walking under ladders, or carrying a lucky charm are common superstitions that people engage in.

Superstitions related to luck can vary significantly across cultures and individuals. Some may find comfort and reassurance in these rituals, while others may dismiss them as mere superstitions.

Here are 40 questions about luck categorized into different themes:

General Questions:

• What is luck, and how would you define it?
• Do you believe in luck, or do you think everything is a result of chance?
• Is luck a universal concept, or does it vary from culture to culture?
• Can you give an example of a time when you experienced good luck or bad luck?
• Are some people naturally luckier than others?
• Is there a connection between hard work and luck?
• How much do you think luck influences the outcome of a person’s life?

Superstitions:

• What are some common superstitions related to luck in your culture?
• Have you ever followed a superstition in hopes of improving your luck
• Do you think superstitions actually have any effect on luck, or are they purely psychological?

Probability and Chance:

• Can luck be quantified or measured scientifically?
• Are some events truly random, or do they only appear that way due to our lack of understanding?
• How does the concept of luck relate to the field of statistics and probability theory?
• How do you differentiate between luck and probability?

Historical and Cultural Perspectives:

• How has the concept of luck evolved throughout history?
• Are there any historical figures or events associated with extraordinary luck?
• How do different cultures around the world perceive and interpret luck?
• Can you think of any cultural practices or rituals related to luck?

Personal Beliefs and Experiences:

• Do you consider yourself a lucky person? Why or why not?
• Have you ever relied on luck when making important decisions?
• How do you react when you attribute your success to luck versus your own efforts?
• Can people influence their own luck through positive thinking or other means?

Philosophical Questions:

• Is luck a matter of fate or destiny, or is it purely random?
• Does the concept of luck challenge the idea of personal responsibility?
• How does the belief in luck affect a person’s outlook on life?
• Can we control our luck through our actions and choices?

Ethical Considerations:

• Is it ethical to rely on luck when others are in need?
• Are there situations where relying on luck is irresponsible or selfish?
• How do societal inequalities impact an individual’s access to luck?

Games of Chance:

• What role does luck play in games like poker, roulette, or slot machines?
• Can someone be skilled at games of chance, or is it all about luck?
• How does the gambling industry exploit the concept of luck?

Good Luck Charms and Rituals:

• Have you ever carried a good luck charm or engaged in a lucky ritual?
• What are some common good luck symbols and their origins?
• Do you think carrying a good luck charm can actually change one’s luck?

Literature and Pop Culture:

• How does the concept of luck appear in literature, movies, and popular culture?
• Can you name any fictional characters known for their incredible luck or bad luck?
• What is the significance of luck as a literary or cinematic theme?

Luck and Happiness:

• 39. Is there a correlation between luck and happiness?
• Can luck influence a person’s overall well-being and life satisfaction?

Cultural Perspectives on Luck:

Objective: Explore how different cultures perceive luck and superstitions.

• Cultural Research : Assign each student or group of students a different culture to research. They should find information about common superstitions and beliefs related to luck in that culture.
• Group Presentation : Have students present their findings to the class, highlighting key superstitions, rituals, or symbols of luck in the assigned culture.
• What are some interesting superstitions or beliefs about luck in the cultures you researched?
• Are there any similarities or differences in how luck is perceived across cultures?
• How do these cultural beliefs compare to your own views on luck?

3. Personal Experiences with Luck:

Objective: Encourage students to share personal stories and anecdotes related to luck.

• Storytelling Activity : Have each student prepare a short anecdote or story about a lucky or unlucky experience they’ve had. They should focus on describing the situation, their feelings, and the outcome.
• Pair or Group Sharing : Pair or group students and have them take turns sharing their stories with their partners or group members.
• Can you recall a specific moment when you felt incredibly lucky or unlucky? Describe it in detail.
• How did that experience change your perspective on luck or superstitions?
• Do you have any personal rituals or lucky charms that you believe bring you luck?

Manuel Campos

I am Jose Manuel, English professor and creator of EnglishPost.org, a blog whose mission is to share lessons for those who want to learn and improve their English

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Lucky idioms: Talk about fortune or wish someone good luck

Do you consider yourself a lucky person? Whether you feel like luck is always on your side or you’re a bit down on your luck , these lucky idioms will help you describe the situation. You can also use some of these to wish someone good luck ahead of a big event.

Idioms can be hard to understand when you first see them, so we have included definitions and example sentences with all of these idioms about luck.

Lucky idioms

Beginner’s luck.

Talk about lucky idioms, and beginner’s luck may jump to mind. This is the good luck that people who are new to something are said to experience.

“I can’t believe that she only started gymnatiscs 6 months ago and won the champinonship today. Beginner’s luck I guess?”

Push your luck

This idiom about luck is not about good luck. When you push your luck , you are taking a risk by continuing to do something, hoping that you will be successful.

It suggests that you have already been fortunate to some extent, and now you should stop asking for more or continuing a certain action.

“Ok, I’ve lisened to your argument and can agree to a few small changes, but don’t push your luck.” “You had pancakes for breakfast and now you want an ice cream?! I know we’re on vacation, but don’t push your luck!”

The luck of the draw

Here’s an informal way to say that the outcome of something can’t be controlled and is simply down to chance.

The luck of the draw may be used as a sports idiom , said at sporting events in which teams are drawn out at random to play each other. However, you can also use it when discussing other situations you can’t influence.

“I can’t believe York City is playing Man United. I guess that’s just the luck of the draw!” “I’m gutted that I’m working the night shift all week, but that’s the luck of the draw sometimes.”

Although this idiom is not strictly about bad luck, it is generally spoken to offer some consolation when things didn’t work out as hoped.

Strike it lucky

Here’s another good luck idiom found mainly in British English. When you strike it lucky , you have unexpected good luck in a certain situation.

“I really struck it lucky and passed the test.”

A similar money idiom is to ‘strike it rich’, meaning to suddenly or unexpectedly acquire a great deal of money.

Luck on your side

Saying that someone has luck on their side is simply another way of saying that they are lucky. Often it is used in the past tense to say that they were fortunate with the outcome of a certain situation.

“Looks like luck is on our side today. My mother just called to say she won’t be coming to dinner after all.” “Although she was a novice she had luck on her side, and made her way into second place.”

Down on your luck

Conversely, someone who is down on their luck is having a string of bad luck, or it seems like things are just not going well for them in life.

“James seems down on his luck these days. He lost his job and then his girlfriend.”

Interestingly, the opposite ‘up on your luck’ is not a valid idiom about luck.

Some idioms about bad things happening could also be helpful to describe this kind of situation.

Lucky streak

Normally, a lucky streak would describe a string of wins in a casino while gambling. However, you can use it whenever someone keeps winning any kind of game, or indeed when they have just been fortunate in a series of events.

“She’s won ten games in a row. She’s really on a lucky streak.”

As luck would have it

Here’s a good luck idiom made popular by William Shakespeare. Nowadays, we simply say  as luck would have it , but originally it included the word ‘good’. This phrase describes a lucky occurrence.

“I thought I didn’t have any money for the taxi home, but as luck would have it, I found $10 in my jacket pocket!”

For more details on the play this is from and other Shakespearian sayings, enjoy our William Shakespeare idioms list .

You should be so lucky

Idioms about luck can be said about yourself, someone else, or a situation in general. If someone mentions that you should be so lucky , they are being informal and a little sarcastic. They are saying that whatever you are talking about is highly unlikely to happen or be successful.

“I entered the competition to win a new car.” “Ha! You should be so lucky!”

This luck idiom can be used in the first person too, to say that you doubt something will happen to you.

“Me, win the lottery? I should be so lucky!”

Born under a lucky star

This is a fun good-luck idiom that you’ll hear from time to time. When someone seems to be very fortunate or simply does well no matter what they apply themselves to, you could joke that they were probably born under a lucky star .

“I can’t believe that Dave is being fast-tracked to the management position. He really was born under a lucky star.”

It’s curious how quite a few star idioms are about luck and good fortune.

Happy-go-lucky

Although this looks like a lucky idiom, it is more about a personality trait. Someone who is happy-go-lucky is cheerful and unconcerned about the future; a relaxed person, who doesn’t plan too much and likes to take each day as it comes.

‘She’s such a happy-go-lucky child.”

Discover some more happiness idioms here.

Bless your lucky stars / Thank your lucky stars

The saying bless or thank your lucky stars is a lovely way to say you feel grateful for something or someone, or to suggest that someone else adopts this attitude.

“I thank my lucky stars I met you.” “You should bless your lucky stars that you have a stable income.”

This good luck idiom alludes to the ancient belief that the stars somehow had an influence over people’s destinies.

Third time lucky / Third time’s the charm

A good example of idioms heard more in the UK than the US , these lucky idioms are used to suggest that after failing at something twice, you will succeed on the third try.

“Yes, I’m so glad that worked. The third time really is the charm.’ “I’ve failed my driving test twice, but third time lucky!”

The number three is mentioned a lot in English idioms, like ‘third time lucky’, ‘bad news comes in threes’, and ‘three’s a crowd’. So why is the number three so popular ?

You’ll be lucky

On the surface, you may think that saying they’ll be lucky is just a nice way to wish someone good luck. In fact, it’s said sarcastically meaning the opposite: that actually, whatever is being hoped for is very unlikely to happen.

“Oh, he wants to borrow the car for the weekend, does he? Well, he’ll be lucky!”

The Best of British to you

Some of these luck idioms are mainly used in the UK. When you wish someone the best of British ; you are wishing them good luck even though you believe they may not be successful.

“You’re going to ask for a raise? The best of British to you!”

Here are some more British-themed idioms to look through.

Break a leg

Believe it or not, to tell someone to break a leg is actually a way of wishing them good luck. This phrase originated in theaters, where saying the words ‘good luck’ is seen as unlucky. However, this expression is commonly used in other situations nowadays too.

“I heard your first show is tonight. Break a leg!’

Fingers crossed

This lucky idiom is something that you can do as well as say. You can either say fingers crossed or actually cross your fingers as a sign that you wish for someone or something to succeed.

“Sue has her fifth driving test this afternoon, so fingers crossed she’ll pass!”

There are lots more idioms for success that you can use to celebrate achievements.

Pot luck / Potluck

This saying has two meanings, depending on how you spell it. To take pot luck on something is to take a chance that whatever is available will work out or be good enough.

“Let’s not book anywhere. We’ll just take pot luck and see what’s availble when we get there.”

The other way potluck is used is more of an American English term . It’s a party or meal style in which everyone brings a dish for the buffet to share with everyone else.

“What are you bringing for the potluck at church this weekend?”

M ore by accident than by design

When something goes well or is achieved simply due to coincidence or luck, rather than the skill or planning of the people involved, you may hear someone say that it was more by accident than design .

“In the end we won the new busines account, but honestly it was more by accident than by design.”

Murphy’s law

Finally, it only feels right to end the list of lucky idioms with the polar opposite: Murphy’s law. This is a belief that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. A common example of this is a slice of bread landing buttered side down when dropped.

‘I can’t believe it’s raining on my wedding day. Talk about Murphy’s Law!”

There really are plenty of lucky idioms and ways to wish someone good luck in English. Leave a comment if you have any questions or can think of other luck idioms to add to this list.

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What’s Luck Got to Do With It?

By JIM COLLINS and MORTEN T. HANSEN

• Oct. 29, 2011

BETTER to be lucky than good, the adage goes.

And maybe that’s true — if you just want to be merely good, not much better than average. But what if you want to build or do something great? And what if you want to do so in today’s unstable and unpredictable world?

Recently, we completed a nine-year research study of some of the most extreme business successes of modern times. We examined entrepreneurs who built small enterprises into companies that outperformed their industries by a factor of 10 in highly turbulent environments. We call them 10Xers, for “10 times success.”

The very nature of this study — how some people thrive in uncertainty, lead in chaos, deal with a world full of big, disruptive forces that we cannot predict or control — led us to smack into the question, “Just what is the role of luck?”

Could it be that leaders’ skills account for the difference between just meeting their industry’s average performance (1X success) and doubling it (2X)? But that luck accounts for all the difference between 2X and 10X?

Maybe, or maybe not.

But how on Earth could we go about quantifying something as elusive as “luck”? The breakthrough came in seeing luck as an event, not as some indefinable aura. We defined a “luck event” as one that meets three tests. First, some significant aspect of the event occurs largely or entirely independent of the actions of the enterprise’s main actors. Second, the event has a potentially significant consequence — good or bad. And, third, it has some element of unpredictability.

We systematically found 230 significant luck events across the history of our study’s subjects. We considered good luck, bad luck, the timing of luck and the size of “luck spikes.” Adding up the evidence, we found that the 10X cases weren’t generally “luckier” than the comparison cases. (We compared the 10X companies with a control group of companies that failed to become great in the same extreme environments.)

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Justice and Bad Luck

Some people appear to be worse off than others partly because they have had bad luck. Is that just? Many philosophers are inclined to answer this question negatively where certain kinds of case are concerned. To understand this inclination, we need a clear account of what luck involves. On some accounts, luck nullifies responsibility. On others, it nullifies desert. But whichever account is adopted, most observers believe that it matters whether a piece of luck is the outcome of an avoidable gamble deliberately engaged in. It is often said that justice requires luck to be ‘neutralized’. However, it is unclear whether a distributive pattern that eliminates the influence of luck can be described. Thus an agent's level of effort—something few would see as a matter of luck—might be inseparable from his level of talent, and this might challenge standard accounts of just deviation from equality (or, for that matter, other favored distributive patterns). Recently, it has been argued that theories of justice overemphasize compensation for bad luck and thereby fail to acknowledge the importance of equal dignity and equal standing.

1. Different Kinds of Luck

2. distributive justice, 3. thin luck, 4. thick luck, 5. independent notions of luck.

• 6. How Much is There?

7. Option Luck Versus Brute Luck

8. neutralizing luck and equality, 9. non-separability of luck and effort, 10. equal status, humiliating revelations and the critique of luck-egalitarianism, bibliography, other internet resources, related entries.

Luck is a pervasive feature of human life (Williams 1981, 21) and appears to arise in four main ways (Nagel 1979; Statman 1993, 11). First, the outcomes of our actions are affected by luck (resultant luck). Some years ago it may have seemed prudent to take a degree in computer science; someone who did so and completed a course just before the IT bubble burst unforeseeably may rightly see his ensuing unemployment as bad resultant luck. Second, the circumstances in which one acts introduce luck (circumstantial luck). A person who is offered proper incentives and plenty of time to deliberate may make a wiser decision than he would under less favorable conditions; it may be by accident that he finds himself in the favorable conditions and hence makes the wiser decision (but see Pritchard 2005, 254–261). Third, luck affects the kind of person you are (constitutive luck). Genetically, some people are at greater risk of cancer through smoking than others, and because of this it makes sense to say that some smokers are lucky to avoid cancer. Finally, there is luck in the way one's actions are determined by antecedent circumstances (antecedent causal luck). Children who grow up in a stimulating environment perhaps become more motivated than they would in a duller setting; yet children rarely determine the time and place in which they are raised. When we add up resultant, circumstantial, constitutive, and antecedent causal luck, the area of life that is free of luck seems to shrink “to an extensionless point” (Nagel 1979, 35; compare Parfit 1995, 10–12).

Luck that does not affect a person's interests is irrelevant from the point of view of justice. But luck that does—whether the interests are characterized in terms of welfare, resources, opportunities, capabilities to achieve functionings, or in some other way—certainly seems relevant. People who end up less well (or better) off than others as a result of luck often ask “Why me?” (Otsuka 2004, 151–152). For instance, many affluent people, reflecting on the situation of people in developing countries, would be inclined to think that it is simply the latter's bad luck to have been born in poor countries. They would further assume that it is their own good luck to have been born in affluent countries, that they do not deserve their favorable starting position, and that this makes the inequality unjust. If those who live in developing countries were in the situation they find themselves in through their own fault, and not victims of bad luck, no question of distributive justice would arise. But they are not, and it seems unfair and unjust that some people's prospects are worse than others' simply in virtue of birthplace (Caney 2005, 122; for opposing considerations see Miller 2007, 56–75). The underlying assumption seems to be that luck-affected differential standings are morally undesirable or unjust (Arneson 1989, 85; Temkin 1993, 200); but this assumption calls for philosophical clarification. Given the pervasiveness of luck, such clarification appears to be required whenever people end up unequally well off.

It is commonplace to distinguish between retributive justice and distributive justice. In both cases the issue of bad luck arises, and offhand it seems that the role one ascribes to luck in one area will constrain the role one can ascribe to luck elsewhere: if luck raises questions about the significance of desert in the sphere of distributive justice, it will probably have similar repercussions vis-a-vis desert and retributive justice (Sandel 1982, 91-92; Scheffler 1992, 306). In the present entry, however, we shall focus on relations between luck and distributive justice.

In fact it will be useful to narrow the focus further to a particular family of theories of distributive justice—namely, those involving an end-result principle of justice (Nozick 1974, 153–155). End-result principles entail that one can judge whether a certain distribution of goods is desirable without knowing how it came about. The following are well-known principles of this kind and/or theories giving a central role to them. (a) Crude egalitarianism, given which it is bad or unjust if some people are worse off than others. (b) Crude sufficientarianism, given which it is bad or unjust if some people do not have enough of whatever is the relevant currency of distributive justice (Frankfurt 1988, 134–158; see Casal 2007). (c) Prioritarianism, given which we should maximize the sum of welfare that is weighted to ensure that benefits at lower levels of welfare have more weight than those at higher levels. (d) The difference principle, given which it is unjust if the worst off are less well off than they could be. (Strictly speaking, Rawls himself says that the difference principle applies to the basic structure of society (Scheffler 2006, 102–110; compare Cohen 2000, 134–147; Cohen 2008, 116–180), so for Rawls it applies only indirectly to outcomes. On this understanding, the difference principle is not, in any straightforward sense, an end-state principle. Here I prefer to treat the difference principle as one that applies directly to outcomes. Many observers handle the difference principle this way, and some subscribe to such a principle on merit, regardless of whether it should be labeled “the difference principle.” Some writers, such as Jerry Cohen, think that Rawls ought to understand his principle in this way, in view of the principle's rationale.) Finally, there is (e) utilitarianism, given which we should maximize the sum of welfare.

There are two reasons for narrowing the focus in this way. First, some end-result principles have been defended on the basis of considerations about luck. Thus it is often suggested that considerations about neutralizing luck favor the difference principle over ‘historical’ principles of justice, i.e., principles defining justice in terms of the way a distribution of goods comes about. No such suggestion has been made on behalf of non-end-result principles. Take Nozick's entitlement view. On this view, it may be a matter of luck what people are entitled to, and yet Nozick explicitly claims that this does not erode the relevant entitlements (Nozick 1974, 225). Second, many have inserted into end-result principles clauses that allow for deviations from the prescribed end-result provided that these deviations do not reflect luck. For instance, most contemporary egalitarians believe that an unequal distribution that is not a matter of bad luck for the worse off could be just. Luck plays no comparable role in historical principles. The important conceptual point is that, as Arneson puts it, we should distinguish the “luckist” element in a theory of distributive justice from the end-result favored by the theory, when setting aside “luckist” concerns (Arneson 2006).

John Rawls' work explains why the concept of luck has had a central place in discussions of justice over the last 30 years. In an immensely influential section of his A Theory of Justice he introduced the metaphors of the social and natural lotteries. The underlying idea is that every person's starting point in society is the outcome of a social lottery (the political, social, and economic circumstances into which each person is born) and a natural lottery (the biological potentials each person is born with). Rawls says that the outcome of each of person's social and natural lottery is, like the outcomes of ordinary lotteries, a matter of good or bad “fortune” or “luck” (Rawls 1971, 74, 75). Hence, since one cannot possibly merit, or deserve, an outcome of this kind, people's starting positions cannot be justified by appeal to merit or desert (Rawls 1971, 7, 104). It can be seen, then, that Rawls' social and natural lotteries provide negative support of his theory of justice. They undermine alternative theories in which distributions of social and economic benefits deviating from that prescribed by the difference principle are tolerated (Nozick 1974, 216; Arneson 2001, 76). They also underpin Rawls' claim that a system of natural liberty—one in which formal equality of opportunity obtains in that “all have at least the same legal rights to all advantaged social positions” (Rawls 1971, 72) and applicants are assessed on their merits alone—is unjust because “it permits distributive shares to be improperly influenced by” the outcomes of the social and natural lottery.

Luck also plays an important positive role in Rawls' work. Since we can regard people's inborn talents as a matter of luck, it is appropriate, Rawls thinks, to regard these as a “common asset.” This means that “[t]hose who have been favored by nature…. may gain from their good fortune only on terms that improve the situation of those who have lost out” (Rawls 1971, 101. This point is put somewhat less strongly in the second edition of A Theory of Justice ). This is exactly what the difference principle, in one of its versions, says. Moreover, if we assume an independently plausible principle of redress which says that “undeserved inequalities… are to be compensated for”, and if people's lives are shaped by undeserved outcomes of the social and the natural lottery, then we can say that the difference principle “does achieve some of the intent of the [principle of redress]” (Rawls 1971, 101). (While it is undeniable that luck plays a role in A Theory of Justice , and that the considerations described above are congenial to luck-egalitarians, some commentators argue that this role is exaggerated and misconceived when Rawls is understood in luck-egalitarian fashion (Scheffler 2003, 8-12, 24-31; Scheffler 2005; Scheffler 2006; Freeman 2007, 98, 120–125). In Section Eight I ask whether the luck-neutralizing aim can play a positive role in justifying equality, an issue that is, of course, distinct from the question whether it has been widely thought to be capable of playing such a role.)

Luck has been examined closely in the writings of successive egalitarians (Arneson 1989; Cohen 1989; Cohen 2008; Dworkin 2000; Nagel 1991; Rakowski 1991; Roemer 1993; Roemer 1996; Roemer 1998; Temkin 1993). (While the philosophers mentioned here are often referred to as “luck egalitarians”, not all of them favor this label (e.g., Dworkin 2003, 192)). Ronald Dworkin holds that differences in wealth generated by differences “traceable to genetic luck” (Dworkin 2000, 92) are unfair. He describes a hypothetical insurance device which, on the one hand, neutralizes “the effects of differential talents” (Dworkin 2000, 91) and, on the other hand, is insensitive to the different ambitions people have in their lives (Kymlicka 2002, 75–79). Similarly, G. A. Cohen writes that “anyone who thinks that initial advantage and inherent capacity are unjust distributors thinks so because he believes that they make a person's fate depend too much on sheer luck” (Cohen 1989, 932). In his view, “the fundamental distinction for an egalitarian is between choice and luck in the shaping of people's fates” (Cohen 1989, 907).

Generally speaking, sufficientarians do not incorporate a “luckist” element into their views about distributive justice. A sufficientarian theory that does so might say, e.g., that it is unjust if some people do not have enough through no fault or choice of their own (“luck-sufficientarianism”, we might call this view). The reason sufficientarians tend not to endorse some such view is that they believe that people are entitled to a certain minimum, however they exercise their responsibility.

Luck is also appealed to by some who believe that benefits matter more, morally speaking, the worse off those to whom the benefits accrue are. Thus Richard J. Arneson has recently defended a version of prioritarianism accommodating the “generic egalitarian intuition” that “fortunate individuals should give up resources to improve the life prospects of those whose initial conditions are unpropitious [i.e., the upshot of bad luck]” (Arneson 1999, 227). According to this view, “the moral value of achieving a gain (avoiding a loss) for a person” is “greater, the lower the person's lifetime expectation of well-being prior to receipt of the benefit (avoidance of the loss)” and “greater, the larger the degree to which the person deserves this gain (loss avoidance)” (Arneson 1999, 239–240).

Finally, while no one has argued that utilitarianism is grounded in reflections on luck, it has certainly been argued that non-luck considerations qualify our obligation to maximize welfare. Fred Feldman, for instance, defends a version of consequentialism that adjusts utility for justice on the basis that a pleasure is more valuable if it is deserved and less valuable, or perhaps even disvaluable, if it is undeserved (Feldman 1997). Given an appropriate account of desert, this position might be looked upon as luck-utilitarianism (or luck-consequentialism). On one version of this kind of view (one differing from Feldman's), the moral value of an outcome always increases with increasing welfare for individuals. But as is the case with Arneson's responsibility-sensitive prioritarianism, on this view the moral value of an extra unit of welfare to a person is “greater, the larger the degree to which the person deserves this gain (loss avoidance).”

The concept of luck is a curious one (Dennett 1984, 92; see also Pritchard 2005, 125–133). To avoid various pitfalls, it helps to distinguish thin and thick notions of luck (as suggested by Hurley 2002, 79–80; Hurley 2003, 107–109; Vallentyne 2006, 434). To say that something—whether a choice or an outcome (other than choice) (Olsaretti 2009; Scheffler 2003, 18–19)—is a matter of thin luck for someone is to say merely that this person does not stand in a certain moral relationship to a certain object, where such moral relationship essentially involves this individual in his or her capacity as a rational agent. To say that something is a matter of thick luck is to say this and to commit oneself to a certain account of the non-moral properties in virtue of which this moral relationship obtains. Accordingly, a thick concept of luck is a more specific version of the corresponding thin concept of luck. In either case, to say that something is a matter of luck for someone, in the sense of “luck” that is relevant to justice, is to imply that it affects this person's interests for good or bad.

There are several varieties of thin notions of luck. One is the following kind of responsibility luck:

(1) Y is a matter of luck for X if, and only if, X is not morally responsible for Y .

In this definition, like those set out below, “ X ” ranges over individuals and “ Y ” ranges over items that can be a matter of luck for an individual, e.g., events, states of affairs, personality traits, actions, omissions, and much else. A number of views about what makes an agent responsible for something have been taken (for an overview, see Matravers 2007, 14–64). On responsibility for actions (and omissions), (a) some emphasize the role of the ability to act otherwise (Ayer 1982; Moore 1912), (b) others focus on whether an act is appropriately related to the agent's real self (Frankfurt 1988; Watson 1982), and (c) yet others think that what matters is whether the agent acted from a suitable reasons-sensitive mechanism (Fischer and Ravizza 1998; Fischer 2006). To say that an outcome conforms to (1) is to remain neutral on which of these accounts is correct. (It has become common to distinguish between attributive and substantive responsibility (Scanlon 1999, 248–251; Scanlon 2006, 72–80). The former concerns what comprises a suitable basis for moral appraisal of an agent. The latter concerns what people are required to do for one another. While the issue of luck arises in relation to both senses of responsibility, it is the latter which is crucial to distributive justice).

Thin notions of luck need not be notions of responsibility luck. Thus the following notion of desert luck is thin:

(2) Y is a matter of thin luck for X if, and only if, it is not the case that X deserves Y .

As with responsibility, a number of views about what makes an agent deserving have been taken. Some accounts hold the basis of desert to be the value of one's contribution, while others hold the desert basis to be one's level of effort. People who think that justice should neutralize the luck specified by (2) can disagree over these accounts.

It is worth emphasizing that thin responsibility luck and thin desert luck are independent of one another. First, X may be responsible for Y and yet not deserve Y . Thus a man who heroically throws himself on to a grenade to save his comrades, thereby losing his life, is responsible for his own death—indeed this is what makes his act praiseworthy—even if he did not deserve to die. Second, X may deserve Y without being responsible for Y . Thus a poor saint who stumbles, entirely fortuitously, upon a gold nugget might deserve (in the wider scheme of things) to be enriched by his discovery even though he is not responsible for making it.

Other thin notions of luck can be described, but thin desert luck and (especially) thin responsibility luck have received the lion's share of attention in the literature on distributive justice. While clearly different, they are occasionally conflated (as pointed out in Hurley 2003, 191–95).

The claim that something is a matter of thin responsibility luck can be combined with various accounts of responsibility and thus various accounts of luck. It is these latter accounts— thick accounts of responsibility luck—that tell us what makes a person responsible for something. On the thick, control-based account of responsibility luck:

(3) Y is a matter of luck for X if, and only if, (i) X is not responsible for Y ; and (ii) X is not responsible for Y if, and only if, X does not and did not control Y (Otsuka 2002, 40; Zimmerman 1993, 219).

A competing thick, choice-based account of responsibility luck says:

(4) Y is a matter of luck for X if, and only if, (i) X is not responsible for Y ; and (ii) X is not responsible for Y if, and only if, Y is not, in an appropriate way, the result of a choice made by X (Cohen 1989, 916).

To see how these control-based and choice-based notions diverge, consider a Frankfurtian scenario in which Y comes about as a result of X 's choice, but X did not control whether Y came about because had X not chosen to bring about Y , then Y would have been realized through some alternative causal means (Frankfurt 1988). Conversely, in a case in which X fails to make up his mind whether to prevent Y coming about and then finds he can no longer control the outcome, it might be said that Y does not come about as a result of X 's choice even if X controlled Y .

Often it makes a crucial difference which items Y ranges over (see Cohen 1989, 927; Price 1999). Suppose, for instance, that a person deliberately, and in full control, cultivates a preference for spending leisure hours driving about in her car reasonably foreseeing that the prices of gas will stay low (Arneson 1990, 186). Unfortunately, and unpredictably, the price of gas skyrockets and her preference becomes very costly. In this case, the fact that this person prefers to spend her leisure hours driving her car is neither bad control luck, nor bad choice luck. However, the fact that she is worse off as a result of her preference may be both, since she neither chose to act in such way to make this fact obtain, nor controlled whether it did.

It has been argued that both the control-based and choice-based thick notions of luck are too broad. Most people neither control nor choose their religion, yet it seems odd to ask for compensation for feelings of guilt engendered by religious belief on the grounds that it is a matter of bad luck that one holds those beliefs (Scanlon 1975; Cohen 1989, 935–939). To accommodate this intuition G. A. Cohen introduces the notion of counterfactual choice. One can explain this notion with the following claim:

(5) Y is a matter of luck for X if, and only if, (i) X is not responsible for Y ; and (ii) X is not responsible for Y if, and only if, Y is not the result of a choice made by X and X would not choose Y if X could.

Given the opportunity to do so, the theist would not choose to be free of the feelings of guilt engendered by his religious convictions. Therefore, it is not a matter of luck that he has such feelings and so justice does not require him to be compensated for the feelings. As Cohen says, the costs of the unchosen and uncontrolled commitments of the religious believer “are so intrinsically connected with his commitments that they” are not bad luck (Cohen 1989, 937; compare Cohen 2004, 7). Hence, if by “responsible for” we simply mean “should bear the costs of” (compare Ripstein 1994, 19n), the theist is responsible for his religiously mandated feelings of guilt.

Just as there are different accounts of thick responsibility luck, there are different accounts of thick desert luck. These correspond to competing accounts of the basis of desert. One notion is that of thick, non-comparative desert luck, which can be elaborated as follows:

(6) Y is a matter of luck for X if, and only if, (i) it is not the case that X deserves Y ; and (ii) X deserves Y if, and only if, it is fitting that X has Y given the moral or prudential merits of X .

The notion fleshed out here contrasts with that of thick, comparative desert luck:

(7) Y is a matter of luck for X if, and only if, (i) it is not the case that X deserves Y ; and (ii) X deserves Y if, and only if, it is fitting that X has Y given the relative moral or prudential merits of X and Z and given what Z has.

It may be a matter of bad thick, non-comparative desert luck that the crops of a talented, hard-working farmer are destroyed by cold weather. If, however, the crops of a farmer who is even more hard-working and talented are also destroyed, it will not be a matter of bad thick, comparative desert luck that the first farmer's crops are destroyed.

The list of thick notions of luck mentioned so far is not intended to be exhaustive, and each notion may of course be developed in several directions. Clearly, thick luck is quite complex.

Some accounts of luck are neither thin accounts of luck nor aim at capturing a general moral notion such as responsibility or desert. Instead they appeal to an independent conception of luck. Lottery luck is arguably one example:

(8) Y is a matter of luck for X if Y , from the perspective of X , is the outcome of a lottery.

The underlying idea here is that there is a sense in which the outcome of a (fair) lottery is a matter of luck for the person who participates in it whether or not he is responsible for it—as some accounts of responsibility imply and others do not. It can be maintained that justice is concerned with this notion of luck independently of how it relates to responsibility and desert. Thus an egalitarian may think that it is bad if people are unequally well off as a result of differential lottery luck even if he has not made up his mind whether people are responsible for differential lottery luck. He might add that it would be illegitimate for the state to enforce equality in face of inequality resulting from a fair lottery to which all parties consented. Also, lotteries might be excellent means of making outcomes independent of the unjust biases of distributors (compare Stone 2007, 286–287), even if outcomes might be unjust despite the fact such biases played no role in their genesis.

In principle, one could also care about choice and control luck independently of how these relate to thin luck, e.g., responsibility and desert. However, philosophers who think that justice is a matter of eliminating differential luck have studied choice and control mainly because they assume that the absence of choice and control nullifies responsibility or desert.

6. How Much Luck is There?

Accounts of responsibility or desert affect how much luck there is in the world. If, on the one hand, one accepts a hard deterministic account of responsibility, everything is a matter of responsibility luck. A hard deterministic account of responsibility says that responsibility and determinism are incompatible, that determinism is true, and, hence, that no one is ever responsible for anything. Most believe that, if hard determinism is true, extensionally speaking, luck-egalitarianism collapses into straight equality of outcome (e.g., Smilansky 1997, 156; but see Stemplowska 2008). If, on the other hand, one accepts a compatibilist, reason responsiveness account of responsibility, many outcomes will not be a matter of responsibility luck, at least for some agents. A compatibilist, reason responsiveness account of responsibility for outcomes says that an agent is responsible for outcomes that he or she brings about in the right sort of way through the agent's actions (or omissions) where these issue from an action-generating process that is sufficiently sensitive to practical reasons, e.g., normal human deliberation, and that actions may issue from such mechanisms whether or not determinism obtains (Fischer and Ravizza 1998). Still, agents who act from reason responsive mechanisms may face choice situations that differ much in terms of how favorable they are in which case inequalities reflecting such differences may not be just, even if they obtain between agents who are responsible for the choices they made. For this reason (among others), it is open for compatibilists luck-egalitarians to think that little inequality can be justified by differential exercises of choice (see Barry 2005).

One issue which has received quite a lot of attention in the debate about justice and luck is the regression principle governing luck:

(9) If the causes of Y are a matter of luck for X , so is Y .

If this principle is coupled with control or choice accounts of luck, everything turns into luck. For if we couple (9) with, say, the thick, choice-based account of responsibility luck, it follows that for my present reckless driving not to be a matter of (bad) luck, it will have to be the case that I am responsible for, and hence have chosen, the causes of my present reckless driving. In turn, for me to be responsible for these causes I will in turn have to be responsible for, and hence have chosen, the causes of these causes of my reckless driving; and so on. Obviously, at some point, moving back through the causal chain (e.g., prior to my coming into existence, if not long before that), choice, and thus responsibility, will peter out. So it will follow that I am not responsible for my present reckless driving: it is my bad luck that I drive my car in a totally irresponsible way. Generalizing this sort of reasoning, it seems no one would ever be responsible for anything—that everything would be a matter of responsibility luck. As Thomas Nagel writes “Everything seems to result from the combined influence of factors, antecedent and posterior to action, that are not within the agent's control. Since he cannot be responsible for them, he cannot be responsible for their results” (Nagel 1979, 35; compare Strawson 1994; Watson 2006, 428).

The view that everything is a matter of responsibility (and desert) luck obviously flies in the face of our everyday ascriptions of responsibility. Accordingly, this implication of the regression principle is often deployed in a corresponding reductio ad absurdum (Hurley 1993, 183; Hurley 2003; Nozick 1974, 225; Sher 1997, 67–69; Zaitchik 1977, 371–373). However, this reductio is perhaps too hasty. It has been argued that the principle (applied to control) is not simply a matter of “generalization from certain clear cases.” Rather, it is a condition that we “are actually being persuaded” is correct when we apply it to cases “beyond the original set”, where, on reflection, we find that “control is absent” (Nagel 1979, 26–27). If this is right, it seems we need an alternative explanation of why moral responsibility is absent in those cases where control of causes is absent. So, for instance, if we agree that a person who offends, as an adult, as a result of childhood deprivation is not responsible for his action, we need to explain what, here, nullifies responsibility if not lack of control over causes of the agent's actions. That is, we need to explain why certain kinds of causal background to action threaten control while others do not even if we are dealing with cases with the shared feature that the agent does not control the early parts of those causal backgrounds.

Addressing this problem, Fischer and Ravizza suggest that a “process of taking responsibility is necessary for moral responsibility” (Fischer and Ravizza 1998, 200). They add that, since processes are necessarily historical, it follows that their account of responsibility attends to an action's genesis or origins. With the same problem in mind, Susan Hurley suggests that responsibility requires that the process “by which reason-responsive mechanisms and self-perceptions in relation to these mechanisms are acquired” (Hurley 2003, 51) is one in which the agent is equipped with mechanisms that are sufficiently responsive to objective reasons (Hurley 2003, 51–2). That is, the reasons for which the agent acts must match the reasons for action that there in fact are sufficiently well, although this match need not be perfect. Whether either of these suggestions accommodates cases where, initially, responsibility seems to be undermined by lack of control of causes, remains to be seen.

For a brief discussion of the notion of constitutive luck see the following supplementary document: Constitutive Luck .

Most observers agree that not all bad luck is unjust. Luck-egalitarians, for example, often separate option luck and brute luck and deny that bad instances of the former are unjust.

Canonically, Ronald Dworkin explains option luck as follows: “Option luck is a matter of how deliberate and calculated gambles turn out—whether someone gains or loses through accepting an isolated risk he or she should have anticipated and might have declined” (Dworkin 2000, 73). Brute luck is “a matter of how risks fall out that are not in that sense deliberate gambles” (Dworkin 2000, 73). If I suddenly go blind as a result of a genetic condition, my brute luck is bad, but if I buy a lottery ticket and win, my option luck is good.

The availability of insurance provides a link between brute and option luck. For “the decision to buy or reject […] insurance is a calculated gamble” (Dworkin 2000, 74). This means that a person may suffer bad brute luck, and for that reason end up worse off than others, and yet the resulting inequality might reflect differential option luck (see, however, Otsuka 2002, 43–51). Roughly, this will be so if the person who ends up worse off could have insured against the sort of bad brute luck that she later suffered but declined to do so (Dworkin 2000, 74, 77). So although it may be bad brute luck that I suddenly go blind as a result of a genetic condition, the fact that I end up worse off as a result of going blind (if this occurs) will reflect bad option luck provided suitable insurance was available to me. (This is not to say that suitable insurance against the risk of becoming blind is possible. I am neither denying nor affirming that no amount of money can compensate one for the loss of one's ability to see; nor am I denying, or affirming, that although some, presumably large, amount of money can compensate one for becoming blind, the required insurance policy will be unreasonably expensive. If suitable insurance against the risk of becoming blind is not possible or possible but unreasonably expensive, it follows that ending up worse off as a result of this is, to some extent at least, a matter of bad brute luck.)

Dworkin's distinction needs to be clarified, amended, and qualified in certain ways (Lippert-Rasmussen 2001; Vallentyne 2002; Vallentyne 2008; Sandbu 2004, 294–299: Otsuka 2002, 45; Steiner 2002, 349; see also Dworkin 2002, 122–125). First, consider a case where I can choose between two alternatives. One involves a 75% chance of having one's crop destroyed by cold weather. The other one involves a 70% chance of having one's crop destroyed by flooding. In one sense, obviously, either risk is avoidable. Yet, if one were to go for the first alternative, and if one's crops were destroyed by cold weather, it would seem odd to say that the full extent to which one becomes worse off as a result of that choice is a matter of bad option luck. After all, the chances of becoming just as badly off via a different causal route, had I chosen the other alternative, were almost as great. So it seems we should often think of a given piece of luck as a mixture of brute luck and option luck where the exact mixture depends on the extent to which one could influence the expected value of the outcome of one's choice. In the present case, I could only marginally influence the expected value of the outcome. Hence the disadvantages resulting from my choice should be seen as mostly a matter of bad brute luck.

Second, suppose I am morally required to perform a certain action, say, to save someone from a burning house thereby risking some moderate burns in the process. Let us also suppose that I am worse off than the person I save and that my doing so happens to make me even worse off than this person, since I do get burned in a way that requires expensive medical attention. While the extra inequality that results from my doing what I am morally required to do, on Dworkin's definition, reflects bad option luck on my part, the view that the resulting extra inequality is in no way unjust is implausible. In fact, the same conclusion would seem to apply to cases where the risk of severe burns is so high that one's intervention is supererogatory and one ends up worse off as a result of one's choosing to engage in a supererogatory rescue mission (Eyal 2007, 4; but see Temkin 2003(b), 144).

Third, suppose you and I face a prisoners' dilemma. I know that there is some chance that you may defect in which case I will end up worse off. I However, because I do not want to exploit you by defecting myself in case you do not, I cooperate. As it happens you defect and I end up worse off. Again, since I am now worse off as a result of a calculated gamble, I am worse off through bad option luck. Yet, it seems plausible to hold that the inequality that results from your exploiting my resistance to exploiting you is unjust (Lippert-Rasmussen, forthcoming; for a different, but, related problem, see Seligman 2007).

Setting aside refinements to it, in what way does Dworkin's distinction matter from the point view of justice? We can split this question into two, one concerning brute luck and one concerning option luck. Most egalitarians believe that justice requires the nullification of all differential effects of brute luck (Cohen 1989, 908, 931; Dworkin 2000; Rakowski 1991), feeling that it cannot be just that some people are worse off than others simply because they have been unfortunate, say, to have been born with bad genes. Not all egalitarians, however, take this position. Peter Vallentyne believes that while it is true that justice requires compensation for congenital dispositions to develop serious diseases, this is because justice requires not the neutralization of bad brute luck but equality of initial prospects (Vallentyne 2002, 543). This equality obtains between two people when at some early stage in their development—say, the time at which they become sentient—their prospects are equally good. A genetic defect, at this point in time, would limit one's opportunities, and so such defects will often provide grounds for compensation. However, if two people face the same initial risk of developing malaria and have equally good initial opportunities, justice does not require us to compensate the one who gets malaria as a result of bad brute luck.

It is an advantage of Vallentyne's approach (over brute luck neutralizing egalitarianism) that it avoids the costs incurred in neutralizing the effects of differential brute luck. Of course, such costs may lower everyone's ex ante prospects. Hence, brute luck egalitarians are committed implausibly, in such cases, to worsening everybody's prospects—or, at least, to saying that it would be better to do so from the point of view of equality even if it may not be better tout court. However, as Vallentyne concedes, initial equality of opportunity also raises problems. Suppose we live in a caste society but make sure that babies are assigned starting positions in that society by a fair lottery. This society may well realize initial equality of opportunity, yet it does not seem just (Barry 1989, 224n). Indeed, it is far from clear that the lottery reduces the injustice of this society at all.

Turning now to option luck, three positions should be noted. First, some believe that justice requires the differential effects of option luck not to be nullified. Dworkin takes this view (Dworkin 2000; Rakowski 1991, 74). He thinks it would be unjust if the state were to compensate people who suffer bad option luck by taxing people who enjoy good option luck: “…people should pay the price of the life they have decided to lead, measured in what others give up in order that they can do so… But the price of a safer life, measured in this way, is precisely foregoing any chance of the gains whose prospect induces others to gamble” (Dworkin 2000, 74).

Others believe that justice permits but does not require the nullification of the effects of differential option luck. Peter Vallentyne defends this position. According to him, justice requires initial equality of opportunity, and this can be achieved through a scheme that provides equality of initial opportunities for advantage and no compensation for bad option outcome luck. However, initial equality of opportunity can also be achieved if the state, say, taxes all good option outcome luck (and all good brute luck) and compensates all bad option outcome luck (as well as all bad brute luck). This, in effect, will deprive people of the opportunity to gamble and hence ensure that everyone ends up equally well off. In Vallentyne's view, the latter is required by justice when, and only when, this increases the value of people's initial opportunities, and when the scheme is introduced publicly and proactively so that people know the rules of the game before it starts (Vallentyne 2002, 549, 555). The first of these conditions may be met where people are very risk averse and the transaction costs involved in the tax scheme are not very great.

In a third position, justice requires the nullification of some or all effects of differential option luck (e.g. Barry 2008). This view comes in several versions. In one, justice requires compensation in some but not all cases of bad option luck. For instance, Marc Fleurbaey argues that justice has a sufficientarian component such that it requires differential option luck outcomes where some people are left very badly off to be eliminated. Suppose, for instance, that someone decides to use his motorcycle without wearing a helmet, knowing the risks involved, and ends up in a traffic accident in which he is seriously hurt as a result. According to Fleurbaey, justice requires us to help this person (Fleurbaey 1995, 40–41; Fleurbaey 2001, 511; Fleurbaey 2008, 153–198; see also Segall 2007; Stemplowska 2009, 251–254; Voigt 2007). Those attracted by Dworkin's position on bad option luck will reply that we confuse an obligation of justice with an obligation of charity. It would be unfair for the motorcycle driver to impose costs on us simply because he prefers to take the gamble of driving without helmet without insurance. He should pay the price of his decisions (which, of course, is not to say that he deserves his bad fate). By contrast, friends of Vallentyne's view might urge that there is nothing unjust about a system that publicly and proactively declares that bad outcome option luck will be compensated by means of taxing away good option luck. Hence, while a refusal to assist the unlucky motorcyclist need not be unjust, the imposition of assistance costs on others, under the circumstances mentioned, would not be unjust either.

A more extreme egalitarianism has it that it is better for justice if differential option luck differences—including those that do not involve some people being very badly off—are eliminated. For if what really drives egalitarians is the conviction that one group of people should not be worse off than others as a result of causes for which they are not responsible, then, arguably, it follows that differential option luck is bad. This view does not commit its advocates to the position that the state should prevent conduct that might lead to inequalities reflecting differential option luck: advocates of the view may be pluralists and insist that any such preventative measures would conflict with other values. Again, the claim that differential option luck is bad is consistent with the view that, given that people do choose to gamble, it is better if differential option luck is not eliminated, even if it would be better if people had chosen not to gamble in the first place (Lippert-Rasmussen 2001, 576; compare Persson 2006).

Many passages in the luck egalitarian literature suggest that justice is luck-neutralization, not luck-amplification, not luck-mitigation (Mason 2006), and not luck-equalization. Consider, for instance, Rawls' remark that “Intuitively, the most obvious injustice of the system of natural liberty is that it permits distributive shares to be improperly influenced by these factors [i.e., social circumstances and such chance contingencies as accident and good fortune] so arbitrary from a moral point of view” (Rawls 1971, 71). On the admittedly disputable assumption that Rawls thinks that factors that are “arbitrary from a moral point of view” and affect people's interests are a matter of luck, one might read this passage as saying that under a just distribution, luck does not influence distributive shares (Rawls 1971, 72). As we saw in Section 2 a similar passage can be found in Cohen's work: “anyone who thinks that initial advantage and inherent capacity are unjust distributors thinks so because he believes that they make a person's fate depend too much on sheer luck” (Cohen 1989, 932). This passage can be read as suggesting that the aim of neutralizing luck justifies equality and that realizing equality will eliminate luck.

Such passages can, however, be read in other ways. Thus Rawls might simply mean to say that, while luck influences distributive shares under a just distribution, it does not do so improperly. Likewise, Cohen might be saying that, while people's fates depend on luck under a just distribution, they do not depend on sheer luck. And the fact that there is room for these different readings encourages us to ask exactly what role luck-neutralization can play in relation to a theory of distributive justice.

Addressing this question, Susan Hurley distinguishes between a specificatory and a justificatory role for the aim of luck-neutralization. In the first role, the aim specifies what egalitarianism “is and what it demands” (Hurley 2003, 147). In the second, it provides a justification for favoring egalitarian over non-egalitarian theories of distributive justice. Hurley believes that the luck-neutralizing aim fails in both roles. If the aim were to play either role, it would have to be the case that the favored distribution—e.g., equality, utility maximization, or maximizing the position of the worst off—limits the influence of luck on outcomes. However, there is no clear sense in which this is the case (compare Parfit, 1995, 12). For the sake of simplicity, suppose the favored distribution is an equal one. Suppose also that the inequality that we are concerned with exists between two people who have each been stranded on a small island. Through sheer good luck, the first person's island is lush and fertile, and through sheer bad luck the other person's island is arid. It does not follow from the fact that this unequal outcome is the result of luck that, if we eliminate the inequality, the resulting equal outcome will not to the same degree be the result of luck, i.e., will not be one in which factors for which people are not responsible play no (or a smaller) causal role in bringing about the outcome. To see this, assume we are dealing with thick, control-based responsibility luck and imagine that a powerful egalitarian intervener dumps a shipload of fertilizer on the second island so that equality in the Robinson Crusoe-like setting is realized. Since neither of the two people controlled what happened, the resulting equality here is just as much a matter of luck for them as the prior inequality was. Since we can implement equality without eliminating luck, this shows that we can neither justify equality as a means of neutralizing luck, nor specify what equality requires as neutralizing luck. The same applies to other end-result principles (Hurley 2003, 146–80).

In response to this important point, it might be argued that when luck-egalitarians write about “neutralizing luck”, this is really short-hand for something like “eliminating the differential effects on people's interests of factors which from their perspective are a matter of luck.” This is no different from saying that affirmative action in favor of women is a way of neutralizing the effects of sexist discrimination. In saying this, we do not imagine that affirmative action removes sexist discrimination and all its effects; we mean merely that the affirmative action program eliminates the differential effects on men and women of sexist discrimination (e.g., in university admissions). On this reading, considerations about luck serve, not to justify equality, but to select the appropriate egalitarian view from among the large family of views that ascribe intrinsic significance to equality. As Arneson puts it: “The argument for equal opportunity rather than straight equality is simply that it is morally fitting to hold individuals responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their voluntary choices” (Arneson 1989, 88). Equality is the default position, morally speaking. It is not justified by appeal to luck. Such an appeal, however, explains why some deviations from this default position need not be bad from an egalitarian point of view, for in the relevant deviations it is not a matter of luck that some people are worse off than others. In response to Hurley's point, Cohen offers a related reply: “That it extinguishes the influence of luck is no more of an argument for egalitarianism than that it promotes utility is an argument for utilitarianism and in each case for the same reason, to wit, that the cited feature is too definitive of the position in question to justify the position in question” (Cohen 2006, 441–442; see also Vallentyne 2006, 434; Hurley 2006, 459–465). In fact, he goes on to offer something which is more radical than the short-hand description of the luck-egalitarian aim offered in the opening sentence of this paragraph. Since luck-egalitarians are opposed to luck “in the name of fairness” (compare Temkin 2003(a), 767) and since, no less than inequality, equality is unfair when “in disaccord with choice”, equality might unjust for exactly the same reason as inequality might (Cohen 2006, 444). Pragmatic, not principled, reasons explain why unjust equalities tend to not to be mentioned by luck-egalitarians.

For a further discussion of the notion of bad and good luck, see the following supplementary document: Bad Luck Versus Good Luck .

A number of luck egalitarian accounts suggest that how much talent people have is a matter of luck, whereas their levels of effort are not. Metaphorically speaking, the first is a matter of the cards one has been dealt, whereas the latter is a matter of how one chooses to play them. To be sure, it will often be plausible to say that one's present level of talent reflects past effort, and that one's level of effort is a matter of good or bad luck (Rawls 1971, 74). Partly for the sake of simplicity, and partly because the problem about separability will arise whichever way we make the cut between luck and non-luck with regard to talents and efforts, let us initially assume that while talents are wholly a matter of luck, one's levels of effort are wholly a matter of non-luck. Accordingly, people who have different levels of talent, but the same level of effort should end up equally well off if we neutralize the effects of luck, whereas people who have the same levels of talent but different levels of effort should end unequally well off. More generally, differences in effort should be reflected in differences in reward, but differences in talent should not. Under these assumptions we can easily identify a luck-neutralizing distribution under the assumption of a constant sum of rewards in the following four-person case:

This distribution neutralizes luck (not necessarily uniquely: there may be other luck-neutralizing distributions). Adam and Dorothy, who despite different levels of talent put in the same amount of effort, get the same level of reward. The same is true of Beatrice and Claude. Beatrice and Claude's levels of reward are higher than Adam and Dorothy's, reflecting their higher level of effort.

Assume next that level of effort is non-separable from level of talent. That is, assume that if a group of people's levels of talent had been different from what they actually are, so would their levels of effort. Assume that in our four-person case above the facts are as follows:

It no longer is clear which distribution neutralizes luck. Two responses seem possible, both of which may have unattractive implications.

First, suppose we insist that counterfactual levels of effort are simply irrelevant to luck-neutralization: ex hypothesi , one's actual levels of effort are not a matter of luck, and a luck-neutralizing distribution should fit the distribution of actual efforts. This view may fail to capture the full range of luck-egalitarian intuitions. After all, Adam—if for a moment we disregard problems about knowledge and indeterminacy in counterfactual choices (Hurley 2001, 66–69; Hurley 2003, 164–168)—might correctly say that his case is identical to Beatrice's, and that he was merely unlucky not to be talented. And given that the cause of their putting in different levels of effort is simply a matter of luck, how can Beatrice's higher level of effort justify a higher level of reward for her? In not being talented, Adam may have suffered from bad circumstantial luck. That is to say, the circumstances in which he decided on his levels of effort—his particular skills not being much in demand—may have ensured that those decisions were less prudent than they would have been in different contexts. Alternatively, Adam may have suffered from bad constitutive luck in that he could have been differently constituted, and had he been so he would have made greater effort.

Second, we might say that actual as well as counterfactual levels of effort matter (compare Zimmerman 1993, 226). Rewards should match average effort across different possible worlds. Since Claude's levels of effort are high whatever his level of talent, Dorothy's are low whatever her level of talent, and Adam's and Beatrice's levels of effort varies with their level of talent, a luck-neutralizing distribution would leave Claude best off, Adam and Beatrice second-best off, and Dorothy worst off. The problem now is that people who actually make the same efforts, i.e., Adam and Dorothy and Beatrice and Claude, are rewarded differently. Beatrice might complain that her level of effort is as high as Claude's, and yet he gets rewarded more—and he does so, moreover, not solely as a consequence of how he actually conducted himself, but partly as a result of how he would have conducted himself had his level of talent been different from what it in fact is. When we focus on thick, responsibility control luck or thick, responsibility choice luck, it becomes unclear whether this is the right way to neutralize luck. For, on many accounts of responsibility, what I am responsible for depends on properties of the actual sequence of events and not on what I would have done in some counterfactual sequence of events in which my personality differs from the way it actually is. It appears that, to reconcile such thick accounts of luck with neutralizing luck on the basis of counterfactual levels of effort, we would need to endorse a regressive conception of responsibility on which to be responsible for something one has to be responsible for its causes. This would solve the problem of accounting for which distribution neutralizes luck in that, as argued above, it now seems that the only distribution that neutralizes luck is an equal one. However, it would also prevent luck-egalitarians from claiming that people with different levels of talent should be rewarded differently. Hence, while the non-separability of talent and effort does not refute luck-egalitarianism, two ways of resolving the issues it raises generate further problems.

Most egalitarians want to compensate people for bad brute luck but not bad option luck. Moreover, they have tended to assume that this is essentially what justice is about. Recently, this attitude has been criticized as either leaving out of the picture an important non-distributive egalitarian concern or, more radically, being a misconstrual of egalitarian justice.

Jonathan Wolff defends the moderate position that while distributive concerns about bad brute luck are part of what justice is about, that is not the whole story: “Distributive justice should be limited in its application by other egalitarian concerns” (Wolff 1998, 122), for the ideal of justice also includes the view that we should respect one another as equals. According to Wolff, this introduces a reason not to strive for perfect equality of opportunity. For making people equally well off in terms of opportunity would require “shameful revelations” on the part of people who must, for instance, pass on to others (and thus themselves come to terms with) the information that they have no talent (for a discussion, see Hinton 2001; Lang 2009, 329–338).

Wolff's point is well made, but luck-egalitarians may be able to accommodate it. First, insofar as they accept Wolff's factual observation, they may think that this points to a strong (welfarist) luck-egalitarian reason not to implement equality of opportunity: we can know in advance that collecting the relevant information is likely to make some of those who are already worse off through bad luck even worse off. Of course, this would not show that if we could collect the relevant information without bad side effects, we should not aim to compensate bad brute luck alone. Additionally, luck-egalitarians may simply concede that the pursuit of the luck-egalitarian ideal is constrained by other ideals, including that of equal respect. In any case, luck-egalitarians are unlikely to claim that luck-neutralization is the only ideal, as that would imply that a world where everyone lives miserable lives is better, all things considered, than a world where half the people live tremendous lives and the other half live even better lives.

Like Wolff, Elizabeth Anderson argues that egalitarians believe people should live in communities based on principles that “express equal respect and concern for all citizens” (Anderson 1999, 289; compare Scheffler 2003, 22,31). Unlike Wolff, however, Anderson makes the more radical claim that (true) egalitarians have, in a way, no non-instrumental concern about distribution at all: they are concerned about distribution only indirectly, their direct concern being that members of the community should stand as equals (compare Scheffler 2003, 22). No doubt, to achieve this, large scale redistribution of income, wealth, etc., might be required, but the elimination of differential brute luck per se is not. What is required is the ability of all to function as equal human beings in civil society and in political decision making.

Luck-egalitarians question whether this is plausible (Barry 2006; Knight 2005; but see Kaufman 2004). Suppose resources are distributed in such a way that equal functioning in civil society and in political decision making is assured. Suppose, moreover, that we can choose between two distributions: one that benefits those who are worse off in terms of how well their lives go, and another that benefits those who are best off in terms of how well their lives go. Since this choice will not affect democratic equality, these options are equally good on Anderson's account. To many, this is an unattractive implication of her view. Of course, if the threshold of equal functioning is very high the problem becomes less serious. However, with high thresholds a different problem becomes more serious. For if people should be assured of equal functioning at a very high level irrespective of whether they act (perhaps repeatedly) in irresponsibly foolish ways, it will not seem fair to impose the cost of their choices on others—i.e., the cost of bringing them up to the appropriate threshold of equal functioning (Arneson 2000, 347–348; for a reply, see Anderson (Other Internet Resources, 2(e)). Intuitively, then, the complaint is that democratic equality ascribes no significance to the fact that responsibility of choice can negate luck. It is far from clear that concern about equal status overturns the pivotal belief that justice is concerned with compensation for bad luck (see, however, Scheffler 2003; Scheffler 2005).

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desert | equality | equality: of opportunity | -->justice --> | justice: distributive | luck: moral | moral responsibility

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the editors of The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the anonymous referee who reviewed the entry, as well as Mark D. Friedman, Nils Holtug and Paul Robinson for valuable comments.

25 luck conversation questions

Luck conversation questions.

Here are some fun discussion questions about luck, something that most people believe plays a part in our lives.

Before starting this speaking activity be sure that your students are familiar with these terms – superstition, lucky charm, fortune teller, lottery ticket, casino, object, ladder, clover, culture, capture, jar, and expression.

The luck conversation questions are –

Would you say you are a lucky or an unlucky person? Why?

What do you think makes a lucky life? What could happen to make you feel luckier?

Do you have a lucky number? What is it?

What are some superstitions about good and bad luck in your home country?

Do you carry a lucky charm? What kinds of lucky charms do you know of?

Do you know anyone who is very lucky or very unlucky? What happened to them?

Have you ever been to see a fortune teller? How did they read your future?

Do you ever buy lottery tickets? Do you think you will win one day?

What games of chance do you like to play?

Have you ever been to a casino? Did you win or lose money?

What do you think it means to be “born lucky”?

Who do you think is the luckiest person in the world? Why are they so lucky?

Are there any lucky objects in your home? What are they?

What is something very lucky that has happened in your life?

What would you do tomorrow if you knew it was going to be a very lucky day?

Do you think people can make their own luck? How can they do this?

How do you feel about black cats ? Would you ever walk under a ladder?

Would you rather have a lot of luck or a lot of money?

What colors do you think are lucky and unlucky?

Have you ever tried to find a four-leaf clover? Did you find one?

Are there any lucky days in your culture? Does it matter what day you get married?

If you could capture luck in a jar, what would it look like?

If you were feeling very unlucky, what would you do that day?

What are some expressions about luck in your country?

For a similar topic, check out the superstition conversation questions .

Luck idioms and expressions

Once you have completed the luck conversation questions, share these interesting luck idioms with your students.

A person who tells you to “ break a leg ” before doing something is actually wishing you good luck!

If many lucky things happen to you in a short period of time it is called a lucky streak . This is often used when talking about good luck in gambling. The opposite of this expression is a bad run or a bad trot .

If you are having an unlucky time in your life, you can be said to be down on your luck .

The expression “ third time lucky” means that after you fail to achieve something two times, on the third attempt you will be successful.

A person who wins or succeeds at something the first time they try it is said to have beginner’s luck .

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Good Luck or Bad Luck

: Read ‘Superstitions’ and the following sentences carefully then answer ‘good luck’ or ‘bad luck’.

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