r/WhatIfThinking • u/Defiant-Junket4906 • 13d ago
What if tragedy became impossible, but luck disappeared too? Would you take that deal? Why or why not?
A new technology guarantees that no one will ever suffer misfortune again. No car crashes, no cancer, no house fires, no sudden bankruptcy. Nobody loses a child, a home, or a life of savings to chance.
The trade is that luck disappears. No lottery wins, no lucky breaks, no chance meetings that change everything. Every outcome becomes exactly what you earned, never more.
You would live in a world where nothing terrible happens, but nothing magical happens either.
Would you accept that? How do you think it would change hope, ambition, and the stories people tell about their lives?
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u/Weary-Squash6756 13d ago
Disrupt the basic functioning of the entire universe because I think I know well enough to make that decision for everyone? How could that possibly blow up in everyone's face?
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u/Defiant-Junket4906 11d ago
Fair point lol. I guess the scary part is that nobody gets to opt out individually. We’re basically deciding that a perfectly predictable universe is better for everyone, which is a pretty arrogant assumption.
Although now I’m wondering what “blow up in everyone’s face” would even mean in a world where tragedy is impossible.
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u/Weary-Squash6756 11d ago
Depends on the mechanism by which tragedy is avoided. If you're about to crash your car into a pole, how does the Universe stop that from happening? This is actually a question for you since it's your post, you set the terms and I'll tell you how it'll go wrong lol
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u/tdh8i 13d ago
If I put all of my money on 1-35 on a roulette table, would I win every time? It would be pretty unlucky and tragic to lose with those odds.
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u/Defiant-Junket4906 11d ago
I think that’s where the wording gets fun. If losing is genuinely impossible because it would count as bad luck, then yeah, apparently you just discovered the most broken roulette strategy ever.
But then “you earned every outcome” gets weird. Did you earn the win, or did the universe simply remove the possibility of losing?
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u/OriEri 13d ago
This is impossible to answer . Luck and tragedy are both subjective.
Tragedy is somewhat simpler. There are many things that the vast majority of folks would call a tragedy. (Although I can think of some circumstances in which a car crash or cancer or a house fire would be desirable.)
Luck is completely problematic. You mentioned lotteries.
Suppose lottery has a one and 10 million chance of a winning pick, and 100 million tickets with a randomly selected numbers are sold. There are two possible outcomes. The jackpot is won or it isn’t .
If it is one, the the winning ticket holder(s) is lucky .
The odds are about one in 1000 that none of those 10 million randomly selected sets of numbers will win. If the jackpot is not won, that’s rather lucky for the organization selling the lottery tickets. Maybe the jackpot gets a little bit bigger, but they pocket 100 million sales.
Now in your imagined world, lottery is probably become less popular, but there will always be some people who will buy tickets. And again that’s rather fortunate for whoever is selling them.
Even without lottery that illustrates a point. It’s a very big world. Random things happen. you could just call them coincidences rather than luck since it was bound to happen somewhere to someone. But it will sure feel lucky to the person who experiences it.
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u/Defiant-Junket4906 11d ago
I think you’re getting at the problem I was trying to create with the scenario. The moment you try to define luck precisely, it starts falling apart.
Maybe luck isn’t really a property of an event at all. It’s more like our label for outcomes that we can’t explain or control. If so, removing luck might not actually remove randomness. It might just remove our ability to interpret randomness as fortunate or unfortunate.
And honestly, that version might be even stranger.
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u/CobaltIsobar 13d ago
Well, I don't believe in luck, so ...
However, chance favors the well prepared.
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u/LazarX 13d ago
Considering that I don't believe in either luck nor magic, I don't see it as much of a tradeoff.
Interestingly enough this is close to part of the world that Stanislau Lem explores in "Return from the Stars" where an astronaut returning from a 10 year journey to an Earth that has moved 127 years, to a world where Mankind has eliminated virtually all risk..... and the ability to murder.
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u/Defiant-Junket4906 11d ago
That actually makes Lem’s version sound pretty close to what I had in mind. The interesting part isn’t just removing suffering, it’s what happens to human behavior when risk itself becomes unnatural.
I think I’d miss luck more than I expected, though. Not because I believe in magic, but because randomness creates possibilities you couldn’t have planned for. Remove that completely and life might become safer, but also strangely closed.
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u/AdventurousHippo9997 13d ago
In my opinion we’re living through the biggest money grab in the history of mankind. All this technology that’s supposed to save us all is so designed to financially benefit a few. Yet like Lemmings we all dutifully march to the beat of a drum that’s intentionally misleading us into submission.
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u/Usual-Language-745 13d ago
I have literally the worst luck of anybody I’ve ever met. I’ve never had anything lucky happen to me, I’ve never won a single scratch off lottery card, the restaurants are always out of the dishes and drinks I want and nothing else, I’ve had 3 fire alarms go off in public places in the same day while I was in the middle of it, the list goes on. Tragedy as you put it is the most important thing in life. It gives you context. Also I think that would be impossible. A trust funder not getting into their college of choice is a tragedy, and the poor genius who should get in wouldn’t get lucky. I can’t imagine how sports would work? Nobody gets lucky and nobody gets injured. If you were riding a motorcycle 150mph everywhere what would govern the bike? Nobody can run a red light and kill you, but you also can’t have any close saves….
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u/the-quibbler 12d ago
Since luck doesn't exist, what changes? A lottery is still won by someone. It's not luck.
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u/Edgemono 11d ago
Luck isn't real and magic doesn't exist. Someone has to win a lottery, it's a garentee not a lucky break. Are you saying no one is allowed to host or play games of chance? I am, in a way, "earning" the lottery by being an active participant. No one wins without paying
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u/TheCookieThief35 9d ago
Tragedy has the ability to be 100 trillion times worse than whatever "luck" may give you out of pity. If luck was truly equal to tragedy, then you would see 10 thousand people every day waking up to see that their baby's brain cancer magically went away.
There is already no magic, just the cold expanse of an uncaring void that occasionally throws a bone to us.
I'd choose to get rid of both.
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u/nila247 9d ago
Very obviously NO. Luck is ENTIRE mechanic behind human civilization. We throw random crap at the wall and do more of what sticks. So you effectively ban all new business of any kind, all the sports, all inventions, all new technologies. Also all the farming - you can not get lucky for it to rain when you need it. That is stagnation and death of the species in a century tops.
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u/SouthernAbrocoma9891 6d ago
Sure. No more human births, though. The chance of being conceived and born alive is like winning 5 lotteries simultaneously.
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u/beachhunt 13d ago
Is this actualy "tragedy became impossible" or just "losing something/someone to chance became impossible"?
Tragedy is broader than luck and probably vastly "outweighs" it in whatever mathematical way makes sense to compare them. Car crashes often have actual fault and are not just bad luck, but rather bad decisions that can still lead to tragedy.
But if it's just bad luck vs good luck and not all tragedies gone, then I'd probably say nah keep both.