cjh@CCA.CCA.COM (11/26/86)
From: cjh@CCA.CCA.COM (Chip Hitchcock) GWS states that luck is sufficiently obvious a survival trait that we should have it already. Perhaps we do---at some unnoticeably low level (or some level sufficiently even that it's not readily observable). This is true of most survival traits, since without a reasonable assortment of them a species doesn't survive at all. If you wish to develop one particular trait in a plant or animal species, you have to breed for it selectively, which is precisely what the birthright lotteries did. Niven's biology is often questionable (a local fan did a wonderful demolition of the notion of non-sentient Kzinti females, plus some branches on how it could happen from a plague rather than evolution), but breeding for luck seems plausible.