Is It All Luck?
by Tibor R. Machan

Woody Allen has been peddling the idea that it's all a matter of luck (v.
no luck). Several of his movies promote this idea--Match Point and
Whatever Works are just two recent ones. Crimes and Misdemeanors is an
early one.

Well, much may be luck or its absence but much also isn't. This is a case
of what I called in one of my early books, The Pseudo-Science of B. F.
Skinner (1973), the blow up fallacy. It involves taking a picture--i. e.,
considering--some small portion of the world or life and seeing it quite
clearly but then making the leap of applying it to everything.

The blow up fallacy, also known by other names (hasty generalization, for
example), is very tempting and widely committed, especially by erudite
people--a good many economists, sociologists, biologists, and others like
them. These folks know a thing or two about some part of the world--their
own discipline, usually--and then claim that what they know about it is
actually something they know of the entire world.

In this instance of its application, one may find that quite a few things
are a matter of luck. Indeed, most of us have lucked out big time in some
cases, as when while we turned around and talked to someone in the back
seat of the car, no one crossed the street and so we didn't smash into
anyone. Or, as in my own case, when a huge brush fire engulfs one's
neighborhood, one's house is "spared." And so on and so forth, luck, just
as its absence, plays a part in one's life, no doubt about it.

But that surely isn't the whole story. Consider Mr. Allen himself.
Although even in the few published and broadcast interviews he has given
he insists that it's all luck, the fact that he gets it together quite
competently, even at times superbly, whenever he sets out to make his
movies belies the point of view he is peddling. And as the British
psychologist Bannister remarked about those in his own field, "... [one]
cannot present a picture of man which patently contradicts his behavior in
presenting that picture." Woody just cannot claim that it is all a matter
of luck when, in point of fact, hardly anything about his own work fits
the bill.

Why then make this assertion? I do not know Mr. Allen and haven't some way
to accessing the content of his mind, let alone his motivations, yet I
venture to guess the reason may well be that he finds it awkward to take
credit, just as all those academy award recipients do who wave off the
compliment implied by the award they received show--or feign--humility.
"No, it is not me, it's my mother, brother, second grade teacher and, of
course, all the others associated with the movie!" Or something to this
effect.

This calls to mind what W. H. Auden said in another context, namely, "We
are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I
don't know." This can be paraphrased, "We are here never to accept
compliments, only others may, but then why may they but not us?"
It is, I venture to suggest, mainly a matter of being badly taught about
how things get accomplished in this world. The eggheads tend to tell us
that we individual persons are nothing to brag about, that it is dangerous
pride to take credit, that humility is the name of the game. Never mind
that they, the eggheads, tend to have great pride in producing insights
like this, or at least they are superbly confident that they get it right!
But then they themselves must be taking credit for how well they have
figured things out. And if they can take credit for that, why not others
for different achievements, great or small?

No, it is only partly luck. And even the part of it that is luck needs to
be made good use of before it can be of benefit.

The Pseudo-Science of B. F. Skinner (Paperback)

by Tibor R. Machan

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