Richard Wiseman

That's why you should try you best to enhance your luck factor. http://www.richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf

I came here to say this. It's important to realize the size of luck's effect on our lives, but the next step isn't just to shrug and say "oh well, I guess I wasn't lucky." There are in fact scientifically proven ways to increase one's chance for getting lucky. I highly recommend Richard Wiseman's book "The Luck Factor" which goes into this research: http://www.richardwiseman.com/books/luckfactor.html

Thank you for pointing out that this paper of Sheldrake's was indeed peer reviewed. That paper also mentions that three independent scientists were invited to attempt to replicate Sheldrake's work. In this paper by one of those scientists http://www.richardwiseman.com/resources/psychicdogreply.pdf one of the scientists (Wiseman) reports that they were in fact not able to confirm Sheldrake's findings, that Sheldrake had criticized their criteria for measurement _after_ they had led to failure, and badgered them into arbitrarily establishing other criteria for success. Wiseman also complains that he and his colleagues were badly misrepresented in Sheldrake's paper, and that Sheldrake tried to present excuses for the failed trials. This post hoc selection of evaluation criteria is one way in which crackpots massage experimental data to substantiate their claims. Honest scientists usually do their best to avoid it. In conclusion, in the one instance where an attempt was made to verify Sheldrake's strongest results, he was seen to be acting in a manner suspiciously characteristic of trying to introduce a bias in the direction he preferred. Even if he isn't intentionally dishonest, this man is almost certainly a crackpot.

To me the advise given by Richard Wiseman in his book titled “The Luck Factor” from 2003 feels like the most generalized. TLDR is lucky people: (0) are social and intentionally seek out new connections; (1) maximize chance opportunities, they’re not fixated on a grand plan; (2) nurture and listen to their intuition; (3) expect good fortune; (4) find the good in bad situations. Here are links to: - https://www.amazon.com/Luck-Factor-Richard-Wiseman/dp/0786869143 - http://richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf - https://youtube.com/watch?v=WizT_VdtOYM

What's wrong with it? Buffett himself acknowledges how lucky he was, so clearly seeing the role of luck is not incompatible with success: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/04/warren-buffett-says-the-key-to-his-suc… You might also look at Richard Wiseman's work on why some people are "luckier" than others. E.g.: http://richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf

You may also attribute the possession of various types of intelligence to luck and you are done! Richard Wiseman argued quite convincingly that luck is mostly self-made. http://richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf In the famous picture-counting experiment, people were grouped into two categories (those who were considered successful/lucky and those unsuccessful/unlucky) and given the the task of counting the number of pictures in a newspaper. People in the "lucky/successful" group found the correct number in less than half the time it took people in the "unlucky/unsuccessful" group. There was a small footnote in the front page of the newspaper: "This paper has 47 pictures." Guess which group was more likely to notice that.

Luck Factor link (its only 5 pages and interesting): http://richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf

Richard Wiseman wrote a book on the subject of changing your luck: http://amzn.to/2jDN04M Shorter overview: http://www.richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf

Link to papers: http://www.richardwiseman.com/resources/ghost-in-machine.pdf http://www.richardwiseman.com/resources/Something-in-the-Cellar.pdf

Thanks for the reference. I was unaware of Wiseman's replication. Here is Wiseman's peer reviewed paper, http://www.richardwiseman.com/resources/petsBJP.pdf with most of the data at the end. Some data is missing like the time of departure, which could reveal other correlations. However, I would say, that with the information available in that paper it seems pretty random and doesn't suggest any unexplained phenomenon.

Reminds me of the studies done of walking pace in cities. Researchers discretely measure off a known length stretch of sidewalk and then secretly time a bunch of people walking it, with interesting results ("people in fast-moving cities are less likely to help others and have higher rates of coronary heart disease"). Radiolab podcast from 2010: http://www.radiolab.org/2010/oct/08/ Paces in different cities: http://www.richardwiseman.com/quirkology/pace_home.htm