When Bad Luck is Good Luck

“Las Vegas exists because of a bunch of people who get overly excited about bad math.”

-          Penn Gillette

Through my day job I’ve had to fly into Las Vegas several times – much of what I do (without getting into specifics) deals with remote work. In this case, I was headed to a small spec in the middle of the desert and Las Vegas was the closest airport – and it was still another 3+ hour drive.

I ran into some friends during an overnight layover once and we decided to hit the town; our definition of “hitting the town” didn’t involve any gambling for me as I adhere to Penn Gillette’s take. 

One of my friends has some of the most astounding luck – both good and bad – that I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t require Las Vegas to show it – it just follows him there. It’s always fun to see what luck is in store for him wherever we went.

We’d scheduled to see a comedian that night. We had great tickets – front row, dead center. To kill some time my friend entered a poker tournament that had a $200 buy-in. I watched him from the peanut gallery. Early on, he went all-in (betting all of his chips) based on the two cards he had on his hand – and nothing else. For those of you not familiar with poker – Texas Hold ‘Em in particular – you begin with these two cards and there are subsequent cards that come out, each giving remaining players opportunities to raise the pot of chips. One person called him and they both showed their cards. My friend had two kings – the second highest possible hand you can begin with. The other guy showed his cards – a kind and six – and merely commented, “Oh, I guess I shouldn’t have done that.” My friend had a 94%+ chance of winning the hand by the time all subsequent cards would show; however, his opponent got two sixes and bucked the odds. My friend was done. He got up and left the table in a pretty foul mood. Admittedly, I would, too. The sourness is a combination of someone winning when they clearly made the wrong decision – and then cheering that luck is one their side. In poker, pretty much anything can happen… it’s just when it does luck appears to be a cruel mistress.

Now here’s the insult to injury…

Later that night we went to see the comedian. My friend was looking forward to some laughs to shake off the bad beat he took earlier. The headlining comedian had an opening act: It was the same guy that beat my friend at poker. For the next 20 minutes, my friend sat there clinching his fists. You see, not only did luck want my friend to lose at poker, but luck also wanted my friend to be forced to sit listening to him for 20 minutes. Needlessly to say, the night didn’t improve. My friend wanted to gamble roughly $2,000 that night but wasn’t in the mood.

That $2,000 would have surely ended up in the coffers of Las Vegas. Losing $200 and the forced watching of the guy who beat him made me wonder if something else was set up for my friend – to keep his money. It’s not statistically impossible for these events to happen, but these are things that are usually reserved for the impossibilities found in movies.

The next time you get a “bad beat” with luck, consider that it was actually good luck saving you from something far worse.

"Correlative Causes"

Sugar intake in our diets has increased by nearly 50% over the past 50 years or so. At the same time, our life expectancy has increased with it. Thus, eating sugar makes you live longer.

<end asinine assertion>

All too often we fall prey to studies and news reports that try to portray causes because of correlation: If A happened when B happened then somehow A and B have a dependency. We as a populous react on these assertions - usually without much thought. After all, we aren't all scientists. We don't have access to the data, but it sounds right... right?

There are many complexities that are out there and these "correlative causes" are designed to simplify understanding - they intend well, but they sometimes over-extend themselves. For example, not too many people would disagree that smoking greatly increases your chances of health problems.

It doesn't take one too long to scour the Internet to find some pretty interesting assertions through "correlative causes". Pets make us live longer. A glass of wine a day will make you live longer. Omega-3 fatty acids will make you live longer. If there ever was a correlation to be found from any of these things it would be that they're all focused on allowing you to live longer.

Without getting too deep into politics - we've seen enough "correlative causes" from politicians, "A happened because B was happening."

If you took away the promise of living longer and the antics that come along with politics, how many "correlative causes" would actually appear? Probably very few.

If you were to look into the unfathomable chain of events that guides your life, you would find a near-infinite number of "correlative causes" that will cause you to meet your doom and prove that you've been voting incorrectly.

In summary, do your best to separate what is truly a cause and not just a correlation - the world isn't so doom and gloom after all.

The Curious Thing About Curious George - A Child's Insight

Chances are that if you're on Facebook - or even email - you've seen a regular feed of kids being ruthlessly cute through honesty. Kids will ask people why they're fat, why they're ugly, and why <insert insult here>. Kids will also come up with funny names for things - a child once called highway rest areas 'Pee Pee Stores'. Kids will also cry for no apparent reason... or so it seems.

If you've been around children regularly, you will see that they may cower quickly at things they don't understand, things that may scare them. They will seek shelter through an adult they trust. Kids will do this during movies at parts that aren't scary at all for adults. You will find that kids will instantly warm up to complete strangers when, most of the time, they're hopelessly shy. They are born with being highly sensitive to things they don't understand - in other words, they don't use logic at all; they simply react.

Because they do surprise parents by, for example, warming up to a select few strangers it makes one wonder if children are operating wholly on their intuition. As adults we use our intuition in situations that we don't fully understand. We let our gut tell us what to do - in part or in whole. Children are no different except they don't understand MANY situations. It would be easy to say that children are born being scared but if you've been around children you will see that they are not scared 100% of the time. Something is telling them not to be scared.

I was recently spending time with some children. We were watching Curious George (the newer series produced by Ron Howard). A three-year-old asked me if Curious George was a monkey. I said he was because everyone on the show calls him one and he looks like one. The child retorted, "But monkeys have tails. Curious George doesn't have a tail." And how about that? Curious George doesn't have a tail and monkeys, by definition, have tails. A three-year-old was able to put the pieces together that me, an adult, didn't notice.

The next time a child cowers, take note - there could be more to his/her reasoning than just being scared.

(for the record apes do not have tails and if you really want to split hairs one can point to macaques as being monkeys without tails... George doesn't resemble a macaque)

Blog Schedule Changes

Due to recent demands for the sequel to POLARITY, I will only have one entry per week - mostly on Wednesdays.

Goodreads.com - The Social Medium that's Here to Stay

Today's entry is found here:

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/5848723-why-goodreads-is-a-social-medium-that-won-t-go-away

This is a little off-topic for this blog, but I felt it necessary to point all readers (and chances are that you're a reader if you read blogs) to Goodreads.com.

The Flight Attendant Who Took Down The Dictator

Vesna Vulović isn't a household name anywhere outside of the country of Serbia. She should be for two reasons.

First, in late 2000 her home country of Serbia had some serious problems - most notably with their reviled president Slobodan Milošević. After soundly losing his presidential re-election, he refused to step down. He had good reason to - he wasn't a very nice guy to say the least. He was later indicted by the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for these atrocities:

• genocide; 
• complicity in genocide; 
• deportation; 
• murder; 
• persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds; 
• inhumane acts/forcible transfer; 
• extermination; 
• imprisonment; 
• torture; 
• willful killing; 
• unlawful confinement; 
• willfully causing great suffering; 
• unlawful deportation or transfer; 
• extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly; 
• cruel treatment; 
• plunder of public or private property; 
• attacks on civilians; 
• destruction or willful damage done to historic monuments and institutions dedicated to education or religion;
• unlawful attacks on civilian objects

What was Vesna's role? She was a very vocal voice in the revolution that overthrew him. She risked life and limb to rally her people to take down this bad guy. She was already somewhat of a celebrity whom the public adored - Why?

Well, that's the second reason she should be a household name. In 1972, she was a flight attendant on an airplane that disintegrated 6 miles (10 kilometers) in the air. She fell (without a parachute), landed, and sustained some serious injuries. She made a full recovery and was instantly a household name in her home country.

How did she survive? Was it a hoax? At the end of the day, the only thing that the people in Serbia would care about was that she made their lives better. She could have chosen to stay out of the public spotlight, but she didn't. It still makes one wonder how serendipitous these two amazing events were and just how much "luck" was involved.

Don't Believe Everything You See... Hear... Wait, What?

Watch the following 4 second video and pay close attention to the man's mouth.

http://youtu.be/HYgIiGaJ9_g

http://youtu.be/HYgIiGaJ9_g

You heard Dah Dah... Dah Dah... Dah Dah... right?

Play it again, but this time turn your head away from the screen and just listen. What did you hear?

You heard Bah Bah... Bah Bah... Bah Bah... right?

How can this be? Without going too deep into science, let's first accept the fact that this happens (well, to most people). The theory behind it is that your hearing is actually dependent upon what you see and not solely on what you hear. This is called an auditory illusion - similar to an optical illusion except the illusion is centered on what you hear. This particular illusion is called the McGurk effect. It was discovered - completely by accident - in 1976 by Harry McGurk.

1976 wasn't too long ago in the grand scheme of things. This means that mankind has been unknowingly sitting on this for thousands of years and it was right in front our faces the entire time. It makes one think: How many other illusions do we experience continuously but don't know it? This accentuates the point that you should listen to your other senses even if it isn't obvious at the time.