I have always been a denouncer of fate, luck, superstition or anything alike. The last four months, however, have really put my resoluteness to the test.

The term ‘luck’ is probably the one that I find most challenging to accept as actually being meaningful. Something can’t bring you luck. If there is any causality between the object that supposedly brings you good fortune and a positive turn of events then there was no luck involved – it was an agent of causality, it did something necessary in abetting the outcome. If it didn’t have an objective hand in the outcome then what did it actually do? Nothing! It’s a lucky charm? But what does that even mean?!

Fate is something even more ridiculous. It’s just a byword for ‘a thing happened’. “It was meant to be, it was fate”, or “going to meet your destiny” means nothing but your life unfolding and you joining the dots.

Most people defending superstition are willing to concede that there is no rational basis for their beliefs. The argument then tends to take one of two paths.

The first path leads to much deeper topics i.e. not everything can be explained by human logic, empiricism, our rationality. There are things that we are just not able to understand, causes that we are unable to comprehend or perceive. Ok, fine, I personally agree with this. What doesn’t fit, however, is when this defence is used for such daft notions. Walking under a ladder. Seeing a solitary magpie. Breaking a mirror. If one of these events were able to have a direct influence on your life, if it was consistent enough to merit the tag of ‘harbinger of bad luck’, then surely the way it brings about its effect would be tangible. These are not higher spirits or mystical objects, these are ladders, birds and glass! Also, wouldn’t they always bring bad luck? In my experience they always do, you just have to wait long enough until the next bad thing happens to you!

The second main form of argument people take is to not really have an argument. Their superstitions are part of something they consider abstract like tradition, culture, social beliefs. They fail to appreciate that the terms they try to attribute to superstition are actually concrete things in which we have a choice to participate and influence. Only the braindead choose to believe something for the sake of it. Using tradition as an excuse doesn’t change that.

The number of exclamation marks I’m using probably suggests how silly a subject I find it. You can imagine me saying these points with a jovial high-pitched squeal of incredulity. Yet even I have been tested recently, to the point where I have uttered madness such as “I think I’m jinxed”.

What’s really got me into this anxious state of mind is the same as what inspires the half-truth “you make your own luck”. The reason it’s a half-truth is because, if you break it down, every cause has an effect. If A then B. I tried to hula, I couldn’t. I drove to Dundee, I got tired. I kissed a girl, I liked it. The complexity of the things we try to achieve in life, and the myriad of influences and arbiters outside of our control and beyond our understanding or awareness, quite often means that although we expect that doing A will result in B, the outcome is instead something unexpected, unwanted or seemingly unwarranted.

The more you put yourself out there and try to achieve things at the mercy of the world and not in the isolation and protection of your own private sphere where you have enough control to ensure A leads to B, the more the result of your actions will be harder to explain or even inexplicable. Like the throwing of dice. And when you start to use analogies involving dice, you know that superstitious thoughts and fallacies are just around the corner.

So the statistician in me reminds myself about regression to the mean and all the dumb systems I’ve wasted hours modelling to try to beat the bookies and how, despite bad things happening to me in my life, by having goals and working hard I have undoubtedly progressed. If you have a bad run the worst thing you can do is let it dampen your spirit. It’s only by trying again that something good can happen to you.

This month's favourites:
   Don Henley, Building the Perfect Beast
   Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
   Casablanca (1942)