breeding for "luck"

[c...@cca.cca.com]

From: c...@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.