Ep 10. The Secrets of Luck The Delusional Podcast with Kevin Blake Ferguson

I. Superstition
I use to have a lucky pair of swimming goggles. They were neon green, the color of speed, and when I looked through them I felt like I was seeing the world how plants see the world, all blinding greens and yellows. I remember when I would take them off everything would seem faded, like the summer sun had bleached out the true colors of the day. The goggles were lucky, which I knew because every time I would wear them at swim meets I would win my races. Of course, the truth was that I was 8 years old, and the real luck I had was (1) a natural gift for swimming and (2) a backyard pool and (3) minimal competition. But as a kid, it was the goggles, so I wore them every day at practice even though they made my nose bridge bleed.
Luck is the most important determining factor in our lives. I’d rather be lucky than just about anything else. Chance contributes to who we date and marry, if we're athletic, attractive, charming, or intelligent. The luck of where we’re born and who our parents are determines our potential to experience healthy relationships and the quality of education, which (when combined with chance encounters and lucky breaks) lead to the careers, trajectories, hobbies we pursue, and who become our friends and neighbors. Whether we get eaten by a shark or win the lottery or grow up to be a magician or a glassblower or a management consultant is all the luck of the draw. Luck makes up the core of who we are and what we have in life. It’s everything, which is why we can't help but grasp for a way to control it. Can we?
People have been trying to gain good luck and avoid bad luck for millennia. If you want good luck in 18th century Britain, shake a chimney sweep’s hand. In ancient Egypt, you might carry a hedgehog amulet on a string. In 700BCE China, consider acquiring a lucky cricket. But good luck is just the half of it. The fears of Protestant Christians about satanic rituals and witchcraft are why you should avoid black cats. And did you know that walking under ladders desecrates the symbol of the holy trinity? Never do that. Or break a mirror, lest the souls trapped within escape and torment you for the rest of your life. Quant and silly though these superstitions may be to us now, most of us can’t help but breathe a prayer when we see basketball or football mid-arc. And are you going to tell me that when it really matters you don’t knock on wood? I do.
Much research has been done on the power of superstition and belief. Most of it has searched for a link between superstition and its impact on uncontrollable effects, such as if a good luck charm could impact one’s success on guessing whether a coin flips heads or tails. Of course, it doesn’t. But some has actually shown a moderate measurable effect for the power of luck. Lysann Damisch et al, 2010 ran a now famous experiment that tasked subjects to attempt golf putts. Interestingly, they found that subjects who were told their golf ball had been a lucky ball so far scored more hole-in-one putts than a comparison group. Considering the experiment was done with only 28 subjects, I’m agnostic as to whether the experiment would replicate (surprise! I looked further into it and turns out it didn’t), but the reason this type of story is so compelling is that it seems obvious that luck, if you believe in it, seems like it would offer a shortcut to confidence, which has been linked with performance.
It’s a pretty common assumption that in the world of sports, conscious thinking can get in the way. “I was in my head” is something you’ll constantly get from athletes who flub a free throw, a golf swing, or a pitch. The rule is: don’t overthink it. Lucky charms and superstitious rituals may not connect with anything deeper than the ingrained neural pathways that can lead to a mindset of confidence, becoming a powerful placebo that allows elite athletes (and the rest of us) to perform without worrying about our performance, whi