Dissertation Defense Announcement Ph.D. in Education Program: Aaron Rabinowitz “Luckpilled: A New Pedagogy of Luck”

1:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Everything is luck, all the way down. Everything we experience and everything we don’t. Every feature of our world, from the circumstances we are born into to the outcomes we receive. Everything about us, from the uncontroversial cases of hair color and height, to the more controversial cases of values and beliefs. They are all 100% luck. This is not a new idea, but it is one that most people find unappealing, extreme, or even dangerous for a variety of reasons. Some believe the view is simply false, while others worry that it poses an existential threat to the deeply held illusions that keep society functioning. I argue that psychological resistance to luckpilling originates in our deeply rooted, healthy desires for fairness and control. Out of those desires emerges a cluster of supposedly “positive” illusions, centered on the need to believe our world is just and, by extension, orderly, predictable, and meaningful (Lerner, 1980). The just-world illusion exists in a mutually reinforcing cluster with the illusions of free will, meritocracy, and divine justice. These illusions serve to protect the just-world illusion by creating permission structures for techniques like victim blaming and offender demonization that can effectively fend off threats to the just-world illusion, and by extension our senses of fairness and control. Proponents of preserving these illusions argue that they are psychologically adaptive, and may be essential to social stability, even if they sometimes promote unhealthy and unethical coping mechanisms for handling injustices. I argue it is profoundly unethical to advocate for lying to students or downplaying reality to preserve of these “positive” illusions for the sake of small comforts and achievement gains. Furthermore, a thorough analysis of the research on luck suggests we can provide students with better outcomes by rejecting the noble lie approach in favor of a luckpilled pedagogy. The absolute pervasiveness of luck is a difficult pill to swallow, but it is crucial medicine for making progress towards an ethical educational system and society that promotes lives of flourishing.

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