Would you say that using the phrase "Just my luck" is a "Confirmation Bias" fallacy"?
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Original Question
I was wondering if a person who is experiencing something that they perceive as an unfortunate event and then uses the phrase "Just my luck" is committing a "Confirmation Bias" fallacy? It could be an event as trivial as accidentally knocking over a drink, or something a little more serious like finding out that the IRS is going to audit them.
It seems like a "Confirmation Bias" fallacy since the person appears to be dismissing or filtering out any life experiences that were positive or fortunate to date, and are focusing on "any" event that they see as a negative or unfortunate experience which affects them personally in some way.
It is as if they view such events as some sort of "cosmic punishment" that is especially targeted at them since they feel that they "always" have bad luck" or experience more than the average person's share of misfortune.
Answers
2The idea of luck, generally, is a bit of a weird one. A person who considers themself lucky or unlucky may be doing so as the result of confirmation bias by only remembering the good or bad events that seemingly happen by chance.
However, when you get into statistics, you start to see luck seeming to appear, since good and bad chance events don't necessarily distribute evenly. For example, the odds that you will be hit by lightning are about 1 in 15,000. With nearly 7 billion people on Earth, it's pretty much inevitable that several people who are currently alive will get hit by lightning not just once, but multiple times. If one of those people called themselves unlucky, it would probably be justified.
"Just my luck" isn't meant to be taken literally. There's no fallacy there, it's an expression.
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