To be lucky, it’s often essential to be open and alert to the unexpected
February 7, 2021 6:12 PM   Subscribe

How to be lucky (Psych): My research suggests that serendipity has three core characteristics. It starts with a serendipity trigger – the moment when you encounter something unusual or unexpected. Next, you need to connect the dots – that is, observe the trigger and link it to something seemingly unrelated, thus realising the potential value within the chance event (sometimes referred to as a Eureka moment). Finally, sagacity and tenacity are required to follow through and create an unexpected positive outcome. While a particular chance encounter is an event, serendipity is a multifaceted process.
posted by not_the_water (29 comments total) 48 users marked this as a favorite
 
I love this so much. In my experience, this stuff can be tricky to talk about without veering into "create your own reality" or "woo" vibes happening. I really appreciate the thoughtful and considered tone of this article.
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 6:29 PM on February 7, 2021 [5 favorites]


This is an interesting way of looking at fortunate-ness, and agreed, some good techniques to get away from negativity! But it seems to me the same techniques are also intellectual traps, and can be very dangerous ones.
You might think of serendipity as passive luck that just happens to you, when actually it’s an active process of spotting and connecting the dots. It is about seeing bridges where others see gaps...
A counterpoint: if you see a 'bridge' of four cards in your poker hand with a 'gap', one missing card that would make it five-sequential, a bet on that hand is called 'chasing an inside straight', an unwise strategy (because the odds of hitting that necessary card are usually very small). If you do beat the odds and hit that exact card, though, and then follow this author's advice:
connect the dots – that is, observe the trigger and link it to something seemingly unrelated, thus realising the potential value within the chance event
You will have ratcheted up two classic gambler's fallacies—first, linking the odds of cards being drawn (or lottery numbers, dice throws, roulette ball drop, etc.) to outside factors, things like 'being due for a win', your birthday, wanting the card to come out, or all the infinite unrelated things that have nothing to do with the shuffle, and second, finding more emotional 'meaning' in your wins than losses, and giving the hands you won more significance than the beats. It's a positive way of looking at random outcomes—after all, why wouldn't we prefer to remember the good hands, the nice evenings, the feeling of winning? But it's also how we self-justify when gambling, and continue to chase losses. It's interesting, and probably not coincidence, that a lot of people who play poker well, rather than remember their unexpected windfalls, have much more elaborate-significant funny stories about 'bad beats', the hands where by rights and statistics they should have won, but where someone else drew on their 'luck'.

Absolutely be open to the unexpected, but also, IMO, know when it's time to fold 'em.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:50 PM on February 7, 2021 [40 favorites]


i'm reading Annie Duke's book "Thinking in Bets" right now, so the comparison to poker struck a chord:

> be open to the unexpected, but also, IMO, know when it's time to fold 'em

Perhaps one thing to think about is: in the particular "game" that you're playing, how much of an outcome is attributable to luck, and how much of an outcome is within your control? In a fair game of poker you're not able to influence what cards get drawn from the deck, although you can keep track of what cards you've seen and what are are left to draw. But poker is a very structured kind of game, with a very structured random component that you cannot influence, unlike many real life situations.

In a real life situation, if you're lucky enough to get "dealt" an opportunity, assuming you have the skill to notice that you're staring at an opportunity, "connecting the dots" and producing a positive outcome out of that opportunity may be partly or largely or completely within your control, requiring little or no luck. Depends on the "game" that you're playing. In real life the rules of the "game" will be a lot hazier, and you may have more opportunity to bend or rewrite or work around the "rules" than something that's as formal a game as poker. Particularly if you have the luxury to apply lots of time and resources and advice to the problem.
posted by are-coral-made at 7:38 PM on February 7, 2021 [5 favorites]


One thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is how much we are responsible for the "luck" that others experience. I'm probably not alone in thinking that much of the good luck/fortune I've had throughout my life has been at least partially due to the actions of others who were generous or kind, sometimes without even knowing me or intending to help me specifically. It's a (probably not original and certainly very shallow!) personal reflection on how much better we could make the world if we were more kind and generous to one another.
posted by ElKevbo at 7:53 PM on February 7, 2021 [37 favorites]


So yesterday afternoon I was watching a couple of long-form interviews of Kurt Cobain, right at the end of his life (these were not just short flash MTV interviews but rather Kurt and an interviewer with a tape recorder -- was there ever a prettier kid than Cobain? Those blue eyes, intent and intense and alive, so deeply beautiful) and in one of them he spoke about having money, tons of money, and what it gives (he went on about how unreal cool it was to find this one store in The Mall Of America that pretty much had all of the types of items that he just loved, and buying half the store) but how that wasn't as good as wandering into a thrift shop, just on a lark, and after nosing through the piles of garbage finding that one shirt that's perfect, or a stuffed aardvark maybe except someone had painted the aardvarks eyes the exact same blue as Kurt's eyes, and as intense somehow, and even though he couldn't afford it he wanted it, needed it morelike, and maybe he got it even though he couldn't afford it, traded half a joint and two buffalo nickels and a feather from a cardinal to make up for what he didn't have, and how those kind of finds bring him more joy than buying the whole store.

~~~~~.

Myself, I don't have money, my life isn't one of ease, and ecstatic joy, I'm not lucky that way like you are.

I tend to keep an eye open, just to see what's shakin'.

The best things come, in my experience, with some patience.

~~~~~

I wanted a red Doberman, female, I think they're just so beautiful, and that intelligence in their eyes is just the best -- they look you dead-on, they get a read right to your soul. I went looking at a few but always somehow couldn't afford it or something, I kindof gave up on it.

One day I was driving to meet friends, there in Houston, and there is a red dobe romping the field across the street from this one apartment complex, she's out there with some woman. The thing is, I could easy tell she'd just thrown some pups, as she was gorged, full of milk. I pulled over, walked up (that dog looked me dead in the eye,that deep read, just like they do) walked up and said hi, and how many puppies are there, etc. Turns out that they weren't full-blood dobe pups, most were black, I'd bet lab if I had to; the woman said she was giving the pups away when time came, I asked "Hey, can I come spend time with them, and in that way *really* get the pick of the litter, by knowing, and the woman thought that fine. Thus I embarked upon a quest to get to know these pups.

Two weeks maybe, not time yet but I've got an eye on a couple of them, my father came into town to visit, he and I were getting into my car to take a drive down the coast, my phone rang, it's the woman, frantic -- she's got to get rid of the pups, and the momma dog also, her life was exploding somehow, as lives will. I told her "Look, go on, get rid of the pups you can, my father and I are just headed down the coast, back in three days, I'll take everything on when I get back." and she was agreeable. So, couple nights later, my father and I pick up Gorgeous Red Dobe Momma Dog, and six puppies, and food, leash, etc, and back we head, to my place.

The cat flipped the fuck out.
The cat also A Gift, found him in my apartment complex, snow white, yellow eyes, calm, steady. I named him "WhIte Cat."

Inside two weeks the pups are gone, it's me, the cat, and Rusty, The Wonder Dog.

To this day, by far the very best dog I have ever seen, known, heard of. She was spectacular. I'm smiling, thinking of all the stories I could tell you, and would tell you, except you need to think for yourself -- what is the most amazing thing you've ever heard about any dog? Forget it.

Rusty, The Wonder Dog, she puts every other dog in the shade.

If you spent even two days hanging with us, you'd throw rocks at your dog.

She thought she was my wife.

I thought she was my kid.

The truth lay somewhere in the middle.

She was patient, here comes this woman now, and then that one, and Rusty has to share the pickup, and not sleep on the bed, but it was a matter of time. I never did love Rusty hard as I loved a couple of those women, and the whole thing was different anyways; I couldn't just tell them to knock it off if they were barking. Plus, as great as Rusty, The Wonder Dog was, to be fair it has to be noted here that no woman I loved ever pooped on the floor, or ate some homeless guys shit in the park and then puked it up on the floor in the back seat of the car.

So anyways. Luck is real. The wheel does turn. Some judiciousness is required, you oughtn't to take any dog offered you, it helps to have a sense of what you want, you could end up swamped with dogs that aren't the best. But good luck is there. Life is grand. Keep your eyes open.
posted by dancestoblue at 8:52 PM on February 7, 2021 [21 favorites]


That was beautiful, a conjuction of luck would be a Robin who lost her nest early last year during lockdown, a neighbor tore it out of a old truck. I watched and she was clearly distraught. So I layed out food because she had decided to rebuild the nest. I got 2 good looks at her. She rebuilt but alot of...energy seemed to create a strain. Then the truck was moved in May.
Yesterday, bright but cold (10°f) on my deck rail, there was a Robin and I swear it was her but rougher and looked towards the door and I just through bread out. This Robin moved along the rail when I opened the door. Today, the bread was gone, little tracks in the snow. But my heart and head agreed it was her. Yesterday did mark a change on a few levels all good. Anthromorphic luck, something I couldn't see for 9 months personally.
I felt alive and cranked 'Bille Jean'. It is as if I were back in 1973, at my father's weekend job at a garage, a place of legend in Ann Arbor, watching a man cross the street and dad said " That's Enrique, he was Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima, didn't see a scratch, that's luck" Enrique crossed and waved, my father gave a nickel for a Fanta and watched my first tyre change.
Like running between the raindrops, the patterns emerge. Like being able to move fast through a crowd, it's timing, angle and antiisamal. Luck? well, at the 83' Aerosmith concert, I was the first to get a car up to front to pick up the rest. $2 bribe to the security and that blurred the fact I had no licence.
Perhaps luck was being able to go to big ten university, community college first, without a high school diploma or g.e.d.

walking through the rain drops.
posted by clavdivs at 10:16 PM on February 7, 2021 [6 favorites]


My philosophy is "bad luck is caused by people or circumstances out of my control; good luck is recognising opportunities and making the most of them."

Bad luck was being born into my family of origin. Bad luck was my ex-ratbastard being a lier, a spendthrift and a criminal. Good luck was saving enough for a deposit on a house by typing hours on incredibly boring academic interviews with a quick turnaround so I got more and more work. Good luck was choosing to buy a quirky house (the back door opened straight onto a hall, with toilet facing the back door) within walking distance of a university (because I can't drive), that I checked jobs daily, applied with more care than usual, collected every interview question and best answer available on the internet, researched my interviewers and congratulated one on his reason teaching award, and managed to acquire a temporary role, because although there was an incumbent in place, they thought I would be useful. Good luck was saying to supervisors, I don't know about databases, powerpoint, broken photocopiers but I'll find out, (and doing so, while my peers shrugged their shoulders and said "not my job") and then being mentored by my academics during my online undergrad degree. Good luck was meeting my current academic client back then and telling her the first day we met that my plan was to make myself indispensable - 17 years later, she's still my boss (and my friend) and now my PhD supervisor, and I'm even more indespensible.
posted by b33j at 10:18 PM on February 7, 2021 [10 favorites]


So I'm in this hippie-ish discussion group on Sundays which started out doing vision boards and is still hanging out. The last few times we've been discussing if manifestation works or not, because for some folks it does pretty frequently and for me, that sort of thing is intermittent. Sometimes I've gotten things to work out and sometimes they just don't.

I'm inclined to say that my theory is that you may have the desire, but also the option has to be available to you. I may try to manifest my way into getting cast into a play, but the director has to actually like me and want me to be in it, and if they don't agree, that's not going to work. Sometimes it's worked, sometimes it hasn't. You have to be looking/wanting that red Doberman, but also somewhere in your vicinity, the red Doberman also has to be looking/wanting for you on some level. Or somehow you connect online, or whatever, but both sides have to want each other and be able to connect in order for it to fly/go/work.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:20 PM on February 7, 2021 [6 favorites]


"Every Thought sends forth one Toss of the Dice"
posted by thatwhichfalls at 10:28 PM on February 7, 2021


Metafilter and AskMe are actually pretty good places to encounter the "serendipity trigger."

And so is Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD).

A couple of months ago, I was looking at this picture on APOD of the Geminid meteor shower, and the meteor streaks suddenly reminded me of lines in a poem written in the late 1700s which has been a favorite of mine for quite a few decades by now:
The Tyger

Tyger Tyger. burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye.
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright.
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye.
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
And I realized Blake must've been inspired by seeing a big fireball during a meteor shower!

The lines that sprang to mind were
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
"When the stars threw down their spears" clearly (to me) evokes the streaks of the smaller meteors, and the "Tyger Tyger. burning bright" would have been one of the spectacular bright fireballs which are often part of meteor showers.

And since Blake is talking about 'Tygers', we could guess he saw the Leonids, which peaked on November ?17 last year.

The "water'd heaven with their tears" is interesting because meteor showers often do cause rain by furnishing condensation nuclei, but the rain apparently comes about 30 days later -- which could put it around Christmas. Hence the "Lamb", perhaps. More than a considerable stretch, but I'd consider it more likely if I could find a source saying that English farmers in the 18th Century had noticed rain subsequent to meteor showers.

But somebody (Danny Ihara) beat me to this of course, at least as early as 1966, and Ihara adds the interesting detail that Blake knew Edmund Halley of Halley's Comet fame, which I'd never heard before.
posted by jamjam at 11:37 PM on February 7, 2021 [4 favorites]


This article jives pretty hard with my general philosophy on life, but there is one big caveat:

From the article:
Note, while this approach has been successful across many settings, it does need to go hand in hand with tackling the structural inequality related to factors such as race, gender and income.
The author just kind of throws out this line, but one could go quite deep on this angle. For instance, the kind of serendipitous friend-making that can lead to so many opportunities likely doesn't work so well for black people trying to meet white people in a world of pernicious racism, or women trying to meet men for platonic/business relationships in a world of patriarchy. Micro-aggressions are transformed into persistent bad luck.
posted by sixohsix at 12:50 AM on February 8, 2021 [15 favorites]


So you're saying that J.R. “Bob” Dobbs was right, and there is a Luck Plane?
posted by acb at 1:43 AM on February 8, 2021 [3 favorites]


I love this subject. I remember reading an article (probably linked from Metafilter) about research comparing people that described themselves as lucky versus unlucky. In one test, participants had to look through a newspaper and correctly count the # of ads. The "unlucky" folks scanned every page carefully and came up with the number 42...and it took them about 5 minutes. The "lucky" people got to the 2nd page and saw a ad that said "this newspaper has 42 ads" and so "solved" the problem in 30 seconds. Obviously, this was just one test out of many, but the take away that stuck with me is that people that consider themselves lucky are actually just more aware of opportunities and connections but also willing to take a risk that the ad is correct and not a deliberate attempt to mislead them.

I've always considered myself to be a lucky person but I also recognize that a huge amount of privilege has allowed me to be in positions to have the opportunity to "become" lucky. Believing that luck is really just access highlights the disparity in people having access and being able to capitalize on these change opportunities when they present themselves.
posted by victoriab at 5:33 AM on February 8, 2021


There's a book about this (the author is mentioned in the article)-- The Luck Factor.

Part of the idea is that people who are very worried about making mistakes are much less likely to notice opportunities.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:11 AM on February 8, 2021 [4 favorites]


@victoriab (maybe from the same article/book/reference?) - I remember hearing something on NPR years ago about luck. They did an experiment where they invited the participants, lucky and unlucky to a coffee shop to talk about something, and left a $20 on the ground outside. The lucky people found it, the unlucky people did not.
posted by lextex at 6:51 AM on February 8, 2021


Seems to me that attempting to understand luck is entirely missing the nature of it and misapplying a perfectly useful word to stuff it really shouldn't to be used to label.

A philosopher of the absurd weighs in.
posted by flabdablet at 6:54 AM on February 8, 2021


"In the fields of observation chance favours only the prepared mind." -- Louis Pasteur
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:09 AM on February 8, 2021 [6 favorites]


I'm unlucky enough not to believe in a just world fallacy no matter how you package it.
posted by srboisvert at 7:23 AM on February 8, 2021 [7 favorites]


This was a really interesting article, and I was torn on how I felt about it. On one hand, I agree with many of the author's points and can see MANY serendipitous moments in my own life. I appreciate the focus of the article on how to cultivate a mindset that helps you to take advantage of unexpected events.

On the other hand, I am a cishet white woman without a visible disability. And I think that the glossover of how minority status and prejudice intersect with "luck" is really unfortunate. Often, "luck" really just refers to privilege as people open up space for opportunities based on surface level characteristics that are coded positively to them, and deny those same spaces of opportunity to others. I felt like this article was written in the same spirit of the "American Dream" myth: we can all learn to take advantage of the unexpected to create serendipity if we work hard enough- even introverts!! I think the role of structural factors needs to figure heavily into any conversation about capitalizing on unexpected opportunities.
posted by DTMFA at 7:26 AM on February 8, 2021 [2 favorites]


“Effort is good fortune” is my favorite saying— Morita and Constructive Living changed my life.
posted by Ideefixe at 8:12 AM on February 8, 2021


So a friend and I hitch to a Hampton Dead show, get there early in fact because even though it was about 120 miles. We did it in one ride and a mile walk. Then after wandering around the parking lot and what then passed for a Shakedown Street, mostly grilled cheese sammies, we looked up and saw that there was a long line to get in. The floor was GA. My friend says, "Let's go say hello to that cop over there." "Are you nuts? I can barely speak to you," I say. But, I follow him over, we start talking to the cop and he says, "They are about to open the doors, come with me." And her lets us in FIRST! We are now dead center against the stage. Only time I ever got as close as the wall. The Dead come out and play a killer first set. It is as if they are playing to us. There is nothing obstructing our view. It is me and my friend and Bob and Jerry.

The set ends and my friend looks distraught. Are you kidding me? I ask what is up. He is shaken. Finally, he starts telling me that he has a theory about luck. Everyone has a limited luck pool. For some it is a large pool and for others a small pool, but when you use it all up, you will not have good luck anymore. We were at a Dead show in the right frame of mind so it was sort of making sense or was at least believable to me. "Ok, so why are you so distraught?" "I think I just used up the last of my good luck pool." I thought for a moment, a long moment and said, "That may or may not be true, but if it is true, fear not, you are with me and I have a lot of good luck left." "But what happens when you are not with me?" "Can't help you there, but you are assuming it was your good luck that got us the ride and got us these "seats". Maybe it was mine." That seemed to appease him for the moment. On the way out of the concert as we were trying to figure out how to get back to Charlottesville, I ran into someone I hardly knew from one of my classes. She asked how we were getting back. We shrugged. She gave us a ride and dropped us off at my apartment.

"See?" I said to my friend when we got inside, "It was my luck not yours that got depleted." He was not convinced. He knew he was out of good luck for the rest of his life. We are both sober now and he keeps at it. He truly was never the same happy go lucky (pun intended) person he was before the end of that first set that night in Hampton, VA. He turned cautious about any risk. Barely left his apartment or the library. I tried to tell him that he could not possibly know he was out of good luck. "I just know. I felt it that night. Sort of like hearing from god himself or an epiphany." We drifted apart.

Sure enough, a few years after graduation from college, he died of a rare blood cancer.

I am very sure his cancer had nothing to do with luck, good or bad. But, I do think that people have the ability to "make their own" luck. Positive thinking versus negative thinking. Expect a negative outcome, and you are likely to get it. Expect a positive outcome and you will recognize it when it is passing by and you will grab it.

Also, it helps to have an Olympic size good luck pool like me.
posted by AugustWest at 8:49 AM on February 8, 2021 [6 favorites]


I still remember a story we read in grade school. Mommy and Daddy take Billy and Suzy out to dinner. At the end of the dinner the waiter says to the kids, “Now for dessert! We have two choices: chocolate ice cream or Dessert Surprise.” The kids ask, what’s Dessert Surprise? The waiter says it’s a surprise, you won’t know until you get it.

Billy loves chocolate ice cream , who knows what that other thing is? So he chooses chocolate ice cream. Suzy also loves chocolate ice cream but, hey, Dessert Surprise! So she chooses that.

The desserts come, great chocolate ice cream, two big scoops. The Dessert Surprise: a banana split with nuts, whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Billy’s all jealous.

The moral of the story, well that’s obvious. It wasn’t the moral that has stuck in my mind all these years. It was my instant reaction at the age of eight. Of course I’d choose the Dessert Surprise! You mean there are kids who wouldn’t? Even if the Dessert Surprise was blah and Billy was like “ha ha you loser” it still would’ve been worth it, just to try something new.

I wonder where that eagerness for new experiences comes from?
posted by mono blanco at 9:32 AM on February 8, 2021


addendum.
As luck would have it.
Iuck is athing that belongs to a realm of statistics. To overthink it is anethma personally. A continued good day until I recieved my best friend's father passed yesterday. It was imminent as of last week none the less a hamper, a portent to tempt not. Mr. S was a good quiet man. An auto worker from Drummond Island Mi. A very insular Folk. Ironically, the last time I saw him we started talking about what's changed since March and my friend said "people seem to find more money on the ground and lottery sales are up and our video store closed."
Red Box, he pointed.
Hunc hominem tam bonum requiem.
posted by clavdivs at 4:19 PM on February 8, 2021


Sometimes luck arrives in a non-obvious way, and you just have to be open to it enough to recognize it. But sometimes the opposite happens: it arrives in a too-obvious way, and you need to overcome your urge to dismiss it as "too good to be true". This happened to me recently, I got an email congratulating me on winning a (minor) prize in a competition that I didn't know I had entered, and I was *this* close to just deleting it as spam, but it turns out it was legit. Apparently the competition was advertised on the packaging of a box of cider and you automatically enter when you swipe your supermarket loyalty card.
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 4:24 PM on February 8, 2021


My own luck is mostly confirmation bias that I deliberately cultivate in other people for my own amusement.

Whenever I find a parking spot right outside whatever shop we're headed for, I will usually make a remark about having rung ahead for it. Drawing attention to these events in this way, while drawing no attention to the rather more numerous occurrences of not finding the perfect park, has got my family convinced that if they want not to walk very far they'll let me do the driving.

The other big one is something I've been confirming for long enough that I half believe it myself: the "it always works for Stephen" effect that I seem to have on technology. Pretty sure this is mainly down to me having beaten my head against enough IT failure modes over the course of a long programming/sysadmin career that I now just instinctively know where to click first or how hard you have to shove one of those connectors in to make it reliable or what sound a properly pushed power button is supposed to make or how long I need to wait for something to happen before joggling the system's elbow and so on. But whatever it is, it's eerily effective, to an extent that's repeatedly made it hard for me to figure out exactly what the equipment in question was doing to frustrate the person who asked me to help with it before I showed up. All I seem to need to do is be there in the room, and it behaves itself.
posted by flabdablet at 5:21 PM on February 8, 2021


I'm a mix of both timid and observant, so I can (relatively) easily identify all these random opportunities for luck as described in the article, especially in hindsight but often enough when they are happening, whether it be dating, work opportunities, or personal growth, but since I'm timid, never actually act on them.

It used to bother me a bit, but even without it I've been relatively successful and dreaming about the you that did seize opportunity is of course always the best you, never the one that jumps at opportunity so therefore is more likely to fail or jump to an alternate course.

So am I lucky? Decidedly not, but I've grown ok with that.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:53 AM on February 9, 2021


Speaking of occasions in which serendipity occurred but was ignored, and APOD, today's APOD features a video of flashes from the Crab Nebula, and the description links to a very interesting essay by Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered pulsars in !967, received the Nobel Prize for it and was ultimately knighted, in which she talks about her discovery and mentions several serendipitous instances where pulsars could have been discovered before she did the job:
Some other astronomers have kindly related to me how they ‘nearly discovered pulsars’ and I repeat some of the stories here. I concentrate on the stories where pulses were actually seen, rather than on the ‘if only’ kind of story.

The first dates from summer 1957 when Elliott Moore helped out at a public observing night at the 82 inch McDonald Observatory telescope (now known as the Otto Struve telescope). For the final observation of the night the telescope was set on the inner part of the Crab Nebula. One member of the public was a young woman probably in her late twenties; she was familiar with the night sky because her job was flying planes and in the dark cockpit there was little else to do except watch the stars. After her turn at the telescope she reported that one of the stars in the Crab nebula was blinking rapidly, and described which one. Elliott Moore looked but could not see the effect. He suggested it was scintillation, but later realised that with such a large aperture telescope it couldn’t be.

The second dates from December 1965. Sue Simkin was taking UV spectra with the Carnegie Image Spectrograph at the Kitt Peak 84 inch telescope. She was asked by Lo Woltjer to take a UV spectrum of Minkowski’s star (now known to be the pulsar). She said the spectrum was dull, but as she took it she observed flickering, or as if there were waves going out from it. Lo maintained there couldn’t be, but after the discovery of the pulsar agreed that must have been what she had seen. [The Crab pulsar, with a period of 30Hz, is sufficiently fast that many people cannot see it; however some people can see 30Hz and Sue Simkin knows she is one of them – as a child she lived in an area where the mains power supply was at 30Hz.]
I am sure Dame Susan realizes, or would if she thought about it for a single moment, that seeing flickers from a mains power supply of 30Hz implies an ability to see flicker at 60 Hz because the light would have flashed twice during each cycle, once for the positive and once for the negative peak in voltage.

And not to turn my nose up at far, far more humble serendipity, but I might not have thought about the 30Hz/60 flashes except for a comment by JackFlash in a recent AskMe, in which yet another young woman notices flashing that a man cannot see and dismisses -- this time in an elevator light.

Are women more likely to be able to see flickering in lights at a higher frequency threshold than men? I suspect so.
posted by jamjam at 1:46 PM on February 9, 2021


I forgot to mention that the Crab pulsar flashes at about 30 Hz.
posted by jamjam at 1:57 PM on February 9, 2021


Are women more likely to be able to see flickering in lights at a higher frequency threshold than men?

This is probably one of those things where the spread within groups completely swamps the spread across them. I'm a man and I could never bear to use a CRT monitor refreshed at 60Hz for any length of time; had to go to at least 75Hz for the perceived flicker not to be badly distracting, and 85Hz was better. As a working PC fixit guy I would often reset customer's monitors to run at a higher refresh rate if I had to work on them for any length of time. Some of my customers would ask me to leave it set that way after I'd finished; men and women in roughly equal numbers.

For me, at least, flicker is much much easier to spot in light sources I'm not looking directly at, which I'm guessing is down to a difference in response speed between foveal photoreceptors and those nearer the periphery.

Easiest way to spot flicker if you can't see it directly is via movement. For example, if you're following a truck on the highway at night and you want to find out if it has LED tail lights, just sweep your vision left and right a little: if the blurred streak this makes out of the tail lights looks more like a row of dots than a continuous streak, that's pulsed LEDs rather than a steady incandescent.

Or if you're working with a computer screen, fill most of a window with white and then wave your hand quickly back and forth between your eyes and the screen. You'll probably see some barring in the blur your hand makes, caused by the flickering of the backlight (which is, thankfully, usually switched much faster than 60Hz on today's LCD monitors).
posted by flabdablet at 2:01 PM on February 9, 2021


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