AtD, as the wheel turns, turns, turns

[Monte Davis]

Michael Bailey sez:

> and in the Heechee Books (I think) weren't the Pearson's 
> Puppeteers engaging in a long breeding experiment with the 
> human race, selecting for "luck" which they had found to be a 
> heritable trait?

As JamesK says, Larry Niven's Ringworld. Also hinted at in Alfred Bester's
short story "Oddy and Id," and the long-lived Howard Families in Heinlein.

Get a mailing list of a million gamblers. Send them letters predicting the
winner of the first race at Hialeah next Friday -- a different horse named
in each batch of 100,000.  After the race, send another such letter to the
100,000 who got the winning pick. After that race, send another to the
10,000 who got the winning pick... Eventually you'll have 100 well-primed
suckers who've had compelling proof of your infallibility. Proceed with the
con of your choice.

Over the decades Niven geenrated many many hours of debate about whether the
Puppeteers are fooling themselves about "the luck of Teela Brown." Does
their monitoring and breeding of generations of humans actually select for
heritable luck, or is it the same mechanism as above? Analysis takes you
deep into thickets of information theory and time [ir]reversibility.

But -- silly me --what could the latter possibly have to do with AtD?