Today, as I was on my way to class, I passed two undergrads, one of whom was opening his umbrella inside. As we were in an echo-filled stairwell, I ended up hearing their subsequent conversation.
Friend: That's so much bad luck.
Umbrella kid: There can't be any such thing as luck.
Friend: Why not?
Umbrella kid (passionately): Think about it. If luck was real, once you got bad luck, you would just keep getting more and more of it. Because if you were unlucky, you'd keep running into more bad luck. It would keep increasing itself.
Friend: What?
Umbrella kid: That's why there can't be luck. Like if I found a four leaf clover, then I would have good luck, and I would find more four leaf clovers, and I would keep finding them and end up getting more and more good luck. So if luck was real, then some people would keep getting good luck and other people would only get bad luck...
I found myself rather amused by this exchange, mostly because of how intensely this fellow felt about the logical end results of "the luck system" and how much thought he had clearly devoted to it. But I found myself wondering if he had ever heard of economics before.
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