What is the role of Chance in our lives? What is the role of those random events on which we have no control of? How do these effect our lives, and do we have any control on how our lives will shape up? There are several good books which deal with these concepts notably by Naseem Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness.
We always assume that we have everything under control. We are under the impression that where we chose to study, what we chose to study, whom we marry, which city to live, which company to work, the career decisions we make etc - all are made with a rational unbiased mind. This is clearly wrong. Human mind would not be able to process all the required information were it not for the 'gleanings' and 'wisdom' that we pick in our life.
To understand the true picture, behind all the facades of thinking process, we have to first look at the definitions of Rational and Bias.
What is Rational? Rational according to dictionary means “in accordance with logic”, “exercising reason” and “(behavior based on) consistent logical reasoning.” That sounds fine. But closer you look, the reasoning and logic is different for different persons, and different even for the same person at different times and situations. If reasoning is so malleable and amorphous then is that a good foundation to base the decisions on? The frank answer is No. However considering that we are basically a ship-adrift in wide ocean any pointer to the possible direction (a distraction, ultimately is a good logic to have. Reasoning and logic therefore helps us narrow down the possible choices to those which offer us the best rewards with least risk, while also helping us the longer term goals.
Now what begs the question is: how are these so called reasoning and logic developed? In other words, what are the reasons why the reasoning and logic are formed the way they are in the first place. What are the reasonings which ultimately forms / learns to become a larger reason / logic – a heuristic – for our decision making.
The inputs that go into forming the reason which forms a larger reason and so on - are all different for different people. They include everything that a person experiences from the family values, social customs, religion, community values, environment, education, influences, prosperity, social status and standing and many more. These are all very subjective and selective absorption that leads to build cases as person goes through their life. Even if the persons are given the same common environment to develop the actual result would vary dramatically. This is because the takeaways from those environment are based on the prior experiences which again would be very individualistic.
However if the current environment can effectively morph - or communicate (perfectly) – the intended message to the recipients, then there is a good chance the outcomes of the group so exposed would be similar. This we see in systems of education, religions, theology etc, wherein all the seeds of thoughts are laid and any ‘doubts’ cleared to form a uniform well-defined opinion on the subject at hand.
What is Bias? Bias is defined as a inclination or a temperament or a prejudice. Bias therefore is the direct result of the rational thinking, as every bias is different for each other. Bias adds or builds on a layer of decision heuristics based on the experiences and learning of the person.
Therefore when the decisions – routine or critical – are made with help of rational and unbiased mind there is a huge factor of heuristics involved to help us come to a decision. It is almost impossible to understand how a particular heurist or bias is affecting a person.
The biggest hurdle for a person to effectively analyses his own decision making process or landmarks used are that majority of the decisions heurists and benchmarks are in sub-conscious of that person. The lack of conscious awareness as to what has influenced their decisions in a black hole of logic.
Hence it is never possible to be completely rational and be unbiased. There are bias in everything that a person does.
Coming to the original point of importance of luck, it is almost a crucial element in success or failure of everything. Assuming decisions made during the process was truly rational and unbiased, then the luck would not play much of a role. However, what is rational for one is irrational for other, what is unbiased stance for one is a biased stance of another. The color of the world is dependent on the spectacles people wear, the view of the world depends on the window they choose to look through.
Luck therefore plays a huge role in being able to choose and make right decisions despite the limitations of rational and biased mind.
In social situations it is impossible to apply any mathematical algorithm or decision support systems with any accuracy. Hence, the city you choose to live, is essentially a random decision no matter how much thought has gone into the process. The decision you make, will form the basis of what your family and friends, view or see the city or yourself. Hence, a simple decision, made totally in random (though not admitted to be random) can influence and form future biases and add newer logic circutis, of not just the decision maker but also all of those around them and even the entities they control and monitor.
So, could a persons’ life have had been different? Could he / she have lived the life that he / she always aspired for, IF there was something up-the-line had nudged the persons decision making towards more favorable bias / goals.
It is almost completely futile to gate-check each input or bias developing, the max we can do is realize that the role of luck in life is huge and respect luck for that.
As Napoleon said, its better to be lucky than smart.
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