Ringworld, can you breed humans for luck?

[Mighty mouse]

Just been re-reading this and a thread to it is an alien culture has bred humans in order to use the most lucky.
Thinking about it (and forgive any biological naivete) but if luck did exist wouldn't that have messed up the laws of genetics and natural selection long ago?

 

[Thunderchild]

who knows mybe it already has...

afterall we would have to have been bretty lucky to accomplish all that we have as a race

 

[Mighty mouse]

Perhaps there are two assumptions here, 1. luck exists and 2. it is an inheritable characteristic.
If both and as you say there is a chicken egg situation where natural selection is just an aspect of luck rather than luck being just a factor in natural selection, surely you would still get non predictable outcomes in controlled genetic experiments which are not seen? Unless there is a balancing factor(s)!
I feel it can't be true otherwise we would be evolving into a lucky but stupid race. Perhaps this all requires a more evolved brain than mine!

 

[Princess Ivy]

I feel it can't be true otherwise we would be evolving into a lucky but stupid race. Perhaps this all requires a more evolved brain than mine!

looking at the 'acomplishments' of humanity, wars, terrorism, spread of illness, general and specific nastyness, i have to wonder just how intelligent we are!
but without the cynicism, we can breed for intelligence, why not for luck? and then there is the red dwarf 'luck' virus. if anything is possible, why not that?

 

[Dave]

I don't believe it is possible, just a fun idea, but maybe the kind of luck necessary for, say a hunt animal to pass by you at a particular time, is much less than the kind needed to win an international birth lottery, and anyhow the skill required to actually kill the hunt animal is far more important.