
I have been interested in the role of chance in our lives for as long as I can remember. I would watch people pass me in the street and know it was often only chance that placed a barrier between us just as it was often only chance that sparked the initial contact with friends who would prove to be lifelong companions.
I have become increasingly convinced that the role of serendipity is underplayed in problem solving and may be the bridge between the material world and a person's internal workings. When you incorporate the external environment into the cognitive ecosystem you necessarily accord it some agency and taking that agency seriously involves unpicking the role of luck.
I use techniques from experimental psychology to observe the role of chance on an aggregate scale but I also combine those fine grained individual analyses to observe serendipity in the moment.