The Luck You Got

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November 23rd, 2017
Back The Luck You Got

It’s been a hellacious year for me; I’ll tell you guys what.

Most recently, I was on my way back from a casino picking up some Free Play when a deer decided to run straight into the driver’s side of my car when I was going the Speed Limit of seventy mph. Of course, I saw the deer perhaps half a second or maybe even a full second before contact and instinctively hit the brakes while nailing the horn at the same time. Swerving way right was out of the question because there was quite a ditch to my right that probably would have rolled the car over...and I’d probably be dead.

Naturally, you keep replaying the event in your head to try to figure out if you could have done something in a better way. It occurred to me that, the way the deer had started running, it wouldn’t have hit me had I not slowed down.

I almost immediately dismissed that with the thought, how are you going to NOT slow down when you see a friggin’ deer!?

The fact remains, though, that while slowing down is a perfectly reasonably response, the deer wouldn’t have hit me had I maintained speed. Assuming the deer would have continued on his trajectory, he would have come in behind the car, or at worst, ran into the back body panel.

Inner-01---I-almost-immediately-dismissed-that-with-the-thought

In the meantime, my hood, bumper, front fender, driver’s side door front, driver’s side door rear, windshield and side mirror all need to be replaced.

Fortunately, the car is on bank loan which necessitates, ‘Full Coverage,’ insurance, and as a result, I only have to pay the deductible.

I also don’t know if this is true in all states and situations, but in this general area, most insurance companies consider hitting a deer, “No Fault,” (sometimes termed, ‘Act of God’). It’s really not a question of whether or not deer will be hit...it’s just that who hits them or not comes down to chance.

I don’t believe that the Universe is deterministic, but nor do I believe that the Universe is entirely random. In my opinion, we live in an interconnected series of causal effects that lead to new causes and new effects up until the ultimate extinction event...whatever that may be. And, even if we don’t find an alternative planet or solar system to call home, the Universe will continue without us until it either does or does not anymore.

If there are aliens, which I don’t know, but I think is mathematically feasible, then they may continue without us as well. Hell, maybe they’ll come along to help us out sometimes in the next billion or so years, or maybe we won’t last that long because they’ll kill us all and take our resources.

Anyway, I want to talk about luck. As a person who appreciates higher mathematics, strictly speaking, I don’t believe in luck. That takes us back to that ever connected series of causes and effects that lead to new causes and new effects beginning with, ‘First Cause.’ Many people, of course, suggest that the notion of, ‘First Cause,’ is the Big Bang, while others still believe in God.

I’m not here to discuss Religion. I say it doesn’t matter if you believe in God and pray to him/her/them or whether, as Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion so brilliantly put it.

“Let’s put aside the notion of whether there’s a God or not, that really has nothing to do with it. For all it matters, when someone sends up a prayer, they could be praying to the initial boundary conditions of a deterministic Universe.”

Inner-02---eather-way,-we-are-faced-with-a-Universe-of-interrelated

In other words, from a pragmatic day-to-day standpoint, the existence of a God or the absence of one doesn’t matter. Either way, we are faced with a Universe of interrelated, interconnected and interdependent events that sometimes break our way and sometimes do not.

Many people call it a “Butterfly Effect,” but those are just people who want to find signal amidst a Universe of noise. You could say any number of things and there exist infinite possibilities as to what could have happened, but as we all should know, the Universe can only exist in one of those states at any given time. That is absent the theory of alternate dimensions, of course, but until we can access those (assuming they exist) they’re really not directly relevant to the subject at hand.

People seek to find meaning in all of it, or dismiss meaning entirely, relegating the entire concept of this interconnectedness to a vague notion of, “Luck,” “Fate,” or “Destiny.” In fact, I would assert that many people believe (or act) as if the entire Universe’s course of events is predetermined because, on a freeze frame basis, the Universe (as a whole) can only be in one state at a time.

For some people, the concepts of, “Fate,” or, “Destiny,” are the meaning of the Universe. They tend to adopt an attitude of, “Whatever will be, will be,” and I also subscribe to that attitude, but not for that reason.

There are undoubtedly an initial set of conditions that have to be satisfied for the event that I opened this piece with to happen. In the most basic sense, the Universe must first exist. In a more specific sense, myself, my car and the deer must all exist. (Well, the deer doesn’t anymore). In an even more specific sense, the deer, myself and my car must be attempting to occupy the same physical space at the same time, which anyone with a basic understanding of practical physics can tell you is not allowed to happen.

So, the, “Butterfly Effect,” people might say, “If you had decided to wait out the vulturable machine that you ultimately took a pass on because someone was playing it and it was getting late, then that would not have happened.” Strictly speaking, that’s an true statement. If I had waited out that machine, then I would have been at the casino longer, and it’s physically not possible that the specific event would have happened in that particular place with those specific actors (myself and the deer) and that specific time.

We can look at that and say, What bad luck! Here are a few colloquialisms luck that I find amusing:

If I didn’t have bad luck, I wouldn’t have any.

You don’t find luck, luck finds you.

Inner---03---The-fact-of-the-matter-is-that-any-notion-of

The fact of the matter is that any notion of, “Luck,” is actually conceptually ridiculous. Luck is not an actor, it is a concept. “Luck,” cannot choose to do anything because, “Luck,” is a non-entity. Because, “Luck,” is a non-entity, “Luck,” cannot effectuate. Because Luck cannot effectuate, there is no event on the physical plane (or otherwise) that happens because of Luck or the absence thereof. In fact, Luck is inherently absent because, as a non-entity, it doesn’t exist.

If we get back to the notion that I could have waited out that machine and that would directly cause the physical event that took place not to be possible, then we have to ask ourselves, what other physical events could have happened at that time or any other?

Impossible to answer. There are so many different physical events that could take place as initial conditions related to the event change that it is impossible to determine.

However, if we were to assume, just for the sake of argument, that there are a staggeringly finite number of possibilities, let’s say three, then did I have bad luck?

For instance, let’s say that these three things could have happened based on the times that I did leave or could have left:

A.) I get nailed by a semi-truck and die immediately.

B.) The event above.

C.) I get home and nothing worthy of note happens in the interim.

Given such a limited set of options, would we really say I had, “Bad Luck,” since Option B came to pass? Does it not seem like Option A would be far worse? If you compare just those three possibilities, and you want to reduce them to a vague notion of, “Luck,” I would rank them as follows:

A.) Bad luck.

B.) Neutral.

C.) Good luck.

But, is it really, “Lucky,” just to make it home unscathed? Is that not the expected result? Would we say I suffered, “Bad Luck,” since in the realm of every single possible event I did not encounter the most likely one, which is nothing worthy of note happening?

Inner-04---I-would-argue

I would argue, “No.”

We know that a deer running into me is a possible physical state of affairs because that is the one that happened. We know that getting hit by a semi-truck is a possible physical state of affairs because people have been hit. We know that making it back unscathed is possible because I have done it (not on that exact trip at that exact time) on a substantially similar attempt.

Besides, let’s look at things in the overall mathematical sense.

Everything in life takes place with some degree of uncertainty and is therefore a gamble.

What could I do theoretically?

Maybe I could do a study on the average amount of time traveled v. average amount of distance traveled before one encounters a deer and the deer strikes them, or they strike the deer. Given that set of statistics, if it could be determined with exactitude, I could then determine the probability of hitting a deer within a specified amount of time and over a specified distance.

Given a non-zero probability of the event, which we can posit because it happened, over enough driving hours or distance traveled, the event MUST happen to someone. It eventually becomes a mathematical certainty.

Let’s have a little fun with Binomial Distributions.

Okay, we’re going to have a pretend slot machine with a jackpot probability for the top prize of 1/20000. Now, over the course of x number of plays, and we’ll use five different conditions, let’s see what the probability is of the jackpot coming up at least once:

2,000 Plays: 0.095163

5,000 Plays: 0.221199

20,000 Plays: 0.632121

100,000 Plays: 0.978164 (Normal Distribution)

1,000,000 Plays: >.999999 (Normal Distribution, Poisson Distribution says, “1”)

A fascinating aspect, at least to me, is that even though the probability is 1/20000 of the event, by the time one hits, 20,000 plays, it is more likely than not to have happened at least once. Of course, the probability of the event happening EXACTLY once (0.367879) is well under 50%.

I imagine the probability of hitting a deer is even less than that given a similar distance traveled and amount of time spent driving, either that, or I am, “Running bad.” Under ideal conditions, the round trip would have taken 5.5 hours, so if the probability of it happening during a substantially similar trip were as low as 1/20000, then that would mean I would have to drive a total of 110,000 hours to yield a probability of 63.2121% for that to happen once or more. We get as close as possible to 50% of it happening more than once at the 13,863 mark.

Therefore, I would need to make that trip 13,863 times before I expect the event to happen on one or more occasions. That would be 76,246.5 hours spent making that specific trip before the event happens. That would mean driving a total of 3,176.94 (rounded) complete days. That would come out to 8.704 (rounded) entire years, which is only nine fewer years than I have actually been a driver.

I have not spent that much time driving anywhere, much less on that specific trip.

So, while I can’t specifically quantify it, I am willing to accept that the probability of hitting a deer on that particular trip is likely less than 1/20000.

That’s why the erroneous notion of Luck is so fascinating to me. If we accept that a particular event, sooner or later, MUST occur, then the only question is one of upon whom it occurs.

The Universe doesn’t care about you that much. In fact, the Universe itself comprises everything and physically exists, but does not make active decisions. Because it does not actively make decisions, the Universe does not care about you AT ALL because, by definition, the Universe is incapable of caring about anything.

That was the second deer I’ve hit in my entire life, the first came at the age of 24. At that point, I had been driving for about seven years, so I guess maybe I was, “Running good,” prior to that event. If I accept that, then I also, “Ran good,” after that event because it would be nearly ten more years until a similar event would happen again.

Here is the definition of Luck that Google first pulls up:

Success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.

That definition of Luck itself invalidates the existence of luck.

As we have discussed, there is a partially deterministic aspect that applies here. That aspect is self-determination.

For example, a guy who hits that top prize with a 1/20000 probability on the slot machine might say, “I got lucky,” but that’s not actually true. Luck played no part in it.

The reason why is because luck describes, “...Brought by chance rather than one’s own actions.”

The guy took an action, very clearly, which was making a spin. If he had not made the spin, then he could not have won the jackpot because the machine would have done nothing. Further, the entire course of events, everything preceding, in that guy’s life ultimately led him to be at that machine and to take that spin. If he had died five years before, he could not have made that spin. If he had made a decision early in life that he hates gambling and would never do it, then he could not make that spin.

There is an element of chance with respect to that slot machine, given a particular number of reel stops, there is a finite number of things that could have happened...some with the same result. Actually, most with the same effective result, though each reel stop is technically a different result.

However, the chance is but a mere element and, “Pure Luck,” cannot exist because an action cannot occur without an actor. Even if you say, “Well, what if a deer runs into your car while you are not driving it and it is parked,” it wouldn’t matter...because for a car you own to be run into, you must first own a car. If you do not own a car, then a car you own cannot be hit.

Therefore, the chance is, was and forever will be only a partial element in the course and scope of our lives.

People might ask, “Well, what if an asteroid hits the Earth and we all die, is that not pure chance?”

I would suggest that the answer to that might be, “It depends.” In the entire Universe of things that, “Could have happened,” would there be any foreseeable path to us making the scientific investment necessary that would have led to the asteroid being stopped? If there had been such a path, then it was not a matter of pure luck, it was a matter of inadequate preparedness. In that sense, it was not an action that caused the event, but rather an inaction.

Inactions are just as relevant as actions. As I discussed above, if the guy did not press the button, then he could not possibly hit the jackpot. Everything that we do or don’t do renders results either possible (with varying degrees of probability) or impossible. This is true even in the world of gambling.

Inner-05---For-example-if-I-am-playing-Jacks-or-Better

For example, if I am playing Jacks or Better and get dealt:

2s-9s-10h-Qd-Kh

And decide to hold all of the cards, I cannot possibly win. If I hold any of the cards, I render some results possible and some results impossible. For instance, if I hold Q-K, I cannot possibly hit a Royal Flush (or any other) but I make a high pair more likely.

We are liberated in our ability to make decisions, but then we become confined to a certain range of possible outcomes by the decisions that we make. Again, that is true in both life and gambling. If I hit a hard-21 in Blackjack, if allowed, there is no possible outcome aside from busting.

We occasionally have the opportunity to make decisions in which we know that the entire realm of possibilities that will come as a result of those decisions are positive. One example of this would be finding a slot machine that is going to have Stacked Wilds on the first and second reels, guaranteed, on the very next spin. As long as the machine is one in which at least one paying symbol must land on the third reel, it is impossible to lose by playing that spin. The amounts to be won are varied, but the fact that there will be a profit is certain.

So, what would be, “Bad luck,” on that? To make the least amount possible on the spin? I disagree because if we are going to argue that hitting the least profitable of all the possibilities is bad luck, then would we not confine ourselves to arguing that finding that game state at all is good luck?

How could you have, “Good luck,” or, “Bad luck,” simultaneous to the event when the two are diametrically opposed terms? Even if you said, “The worst possible good luck,” would that not be an oxymoron?

Once again, we have a series of interconnected events leading to a range of possibilities that are made possible by the decisions of actors. The first actor was the person to immediately play the machine previously who left the game in that state. The second actor is the person who played it in that state knowing the result would be a profit. If the first person (or another similar person) did not play the machine thus leading to that state, then the second person could not. If nobody ever plays the machine again, then that game state (or any similar) will never exist again.

This lends itself to the position that maybe the Universe is wholly deterministic, that all events are predetermined given the interconnectedness of everything. However, I think that’s a false equivocation. I personally chalk it up to the fact that a lot of things could happen, and something must happen, but no one event (ahead of time) can be deemed as one that must happen.

In other words, once an event has taken place, other than some quasi-metaphysical quantum physics elements that we won’t get into (this time) the event is irrevocable. Only one event could have taken place (past tense) in physical reality, so when a person speaks of what did or did not happen, he/she is either right, wrong or partially right and wrong.

But, that should not lead to the conclusion of strict determination. What I am calling, “Strict Determination,” is often known in Philosophical circles as, “Fatalistic Determinism,” which just means it has all been decided, and with perfect knowledge of all past states and the entire present state (read: Omniscience) everything in the future could be known in advance.

But, it’s meaningless. We have no such knowledge and short of knowledge of a Universe-ending event, we will never have such knowledge.

Besides that, even if Fatalistic Determinism were the case, it would have no pragmatic bearing on our lives, outlooks or anything we do. The reason why is because, as actors, we do not know what we are going to do until we are actually in the process of doing it. There are a number of arguments that can be made lending themselves to that conclusion, but the most unassailable of them is the fact that we could die any second. To wit, I could talk about what I will do in five minutes, but I don’t know if I will be alive in five minutes.

If true, does this Fatalistic Determinism that would result in my death within the next five minutes have a practical meaning? I would say no, because I do not know I will die in the next five minutes and, if I do, I will be no less dead Fatalistic Determinism or not.

The fact is, complete predetermination or otherwise, as actors, we essentially have no choice but to act as if everything has not been predetermined. How could you make a decision if your decision had already been predetermined? In the truest sense, if predetermined, it wouldn’t be you making the decision, it would just be a decision, “Made,” by the Universe. As we discussed before, the Universe is inanimate and does not make decisions.

We could say that God makes all of those decisions, whatever God or Gods there might be, but it still doesn’t change the fact that we consider ourselves as actors and behave as actors by taking actions. You could even take a judge with that interpretation of the Bible, but if you throw out the, “God made me do it defense,” after committing a murder, it’s not going to work out so well for you. Therefore, I conclude that in at least several cases, people who believe that the Universe is predetermined still behave as though it is not.

The relevance of all of this as it relates to luck is that luck either absolutely doesn’t exist, or pragmatically does not exist. Now, in that definition of Luck above, we note the word, “Apparently.”

“Apparently brought about by chance rather than one’s actions.”

Here’s the thing: Anything that would happen without the actor taking some kind of action, at any point, would be an uncaused effect. That being said, the definition of luck essentially boils down to, “Success or failure that is apparently uncaused.”

Inner-06---Once-again-as-with-all-things-in-the-Universe

But, there is always a cause.

Once again, as with all things in the Universe and physical events, the effects (and causes leading to those effects) may increase or decrease in likelihood, but all boil down to probability. Let’s talk about death in five minutes again. It is possible that I will die in five minutes. We know that I will die at some point so five minutes is certainly within the boundaries of possibility. Based on my age, health conditions, the fact that I am sitting at a desk typing right now et. al., I’m going to suggest that the probability of my dying in the next five minutes is staggeringly unlikely.

But, if I did die in the next five minutes, it’s not going to be because of an uncaused effect. In the event that I die, an action that I have taken in the past, or more correctly, the culmination of all of my past actions, will have led to the effect of death at that particular time.

We can even break it down more specifically than death. Let’s say death while sitting at my desk. If I were to get up and move from the desk, even if I do die in the next five minutes, there is no possible way for me to die at my desk. I would die somewhere else.

More importantly when we look at that definition of luck, we have to understand that chance itself is a causal element. In effect, there is no pure chance. If we look at the way a Random Number Generator works, even though the player does not know ahead of time the result upon striking the button, the jackpot is awarded because the player struck the button while the RNG hit the specific numbers corresponding to the reel positions that resulted in the jackpot symbols lining up.

“But, but, that’s still luck!

No, it’s not, because even that element of the game has a cause beyond the player pressing the button. The random number generator must be programmed to cycle through numbers that correspond to the reel positions that result in an ending game state. Hypothetically speaking, the RNG could be deliberately programmed to throw out any result that effectuates a jackpot. For example, if the reel positions are 25-36-17 and that results in three jackpot symbols for the top prize, the machine could theoretically be programmed to throw out one of those three numbers and replace it with something else. The machine could be programmed only to recognize the jackpot if one of the numbers has been replaced with a different (or the same) jackpot causing number on the second attempt.

For example, if the third reel were to have forty stops, of which only one is the jackpot symbol, then there is a 1/40 chance that it lands on that. Now, if the probability of a natural jackpot is 1/20000, but the machine is going to throw out that 1/40 shot and replace it with something else on a second attempt (or the same thing) then the player effectively has to hit `1/20000 * 1/40, which would be 1 in 800,000.

The machine is programmed not to behave that way, however, because any such programming would be illegal and the machine would not be approved by the Gaming Commission. Slot machines may do a lot of things, but one thing that they cannot do is have reel stops with less of a chance of occurrence than any other reel stop. Now, they can have fewer of a higher paying symbol, but each actual reel stop must have an equal chance of occurring.

The final result is that the effect of a jackpot cannot boil down to luck because there are many direct causes behind it and most of those causes require some sort of human intervention. The only thing that happens when one hits that button is that a range of possibilities has been initiated and then one of those possibilities occur.

Of course, that doesn’t even have to happen because a possibility external to the RNG is that the machine could freeze. That’s an exceedingly rare event, hitting the top jackpot is perhaps 100 times more likely than the machine freezing, maybe more, maybe less.

Inner---07---If-I-didnt-have-bad-luck-I-wouldnt-have-any-at-all

Anyway, the ultimate point of the matter is that nothing that would impact a human being takes place without that human being taking some sort of action that made the present effect (i.e. the current state of affairs) a possibility to begin with. Therefore, luck is a nonsense concept.

Conclusion

If I didn’t have bad luck, I wouldn’t have any at all.

Good, because you don’t have any luck at all. Nobody does. All you have is a current state of affairs that exists at any given isolated point in time as as effect as well as a future causal state. Not to be morbid, but the final effect for all of us is death, and then everything may or may not continue without us. We will not know, of course, but we don’t know what is going to happen as it is, but let there be no doubt we will have had some active cause in what happens to us along the way.

In the meantime, watch out for those damned deer!

“How could you have, “Good luck,” or, “Bad luck,” simultaneous to the event when the two are diametrically opposed terms?”

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