JusticeMachine

There is no such thing as luck, or chaos. These are expressions used to define a lack of knowlege of a give situation.

Ones accuracy to predict the outcome of any given situation is directly proportional to the amount of knowlege that person has of all elements involved in that same situation ie: to know 100% everything would allow me to predict all outcomes with 100% accuracy.

Is there any validity to this statement?

Keith Russell

Justice:

Sounds accurate to me.

Keith.

sweep

It depends on what we are measuring, and whether accuracy matters.

If a meteor was to strike you on the head then the term 'luck' or 'unlucky' could be applied. The probability of this occuring is astronomical.

Of course we aren't going to monitor every single change, as it happens, nor can we, as movement means that something has changed. Yes, luck or lack of it depends on the odds, and marks occurences that we aren't going to sweat over too much.

Chaos; war? rain? earthquakes?

Keith Russell

Sweep:

If a meteor strikes someone on the head, we 'say' they are 'unlucky', but is that what we really mean--that something in their character ifluenced the universe to take action against them?

Keith.

Amie

...and why do some say "I got lucky" when they had sexual intercourse?

what does luck have to do with a man being able to penetrate a woman?

John Page

Haha.

Luck=Happy Coincidence, something beneficial that was not caused by the beneficiary.

Unlucky=Tough Shit.

Cheers, John

Shadowy Man

In terms of mathematics, chaos definitely means something.

jpbrooks

Hello JusticeMachine.

I tend to agree with you on this topic. However, the scientists who developed <a href="http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/" target="_blank">this random number generator</a> might disagree with us. If genuine random numbers can be generated, then genuine luck, chance, etc., is possible in our universe because the outcomes of uncertain events can be genuinely unpredictable no matter how much information we possess. That is, predicting the outcome of the events would be rendered impossible by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
(<a href="http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/how.html" target="_blank">Here is how the random number generator works</a>.)

My view on this (and I want to emphasize that this is strictly my tentative opinion on this matter) is that just as Einstein's "Relativity" only applies to our observation and measurement of things and events in the universe, and therefore, does not really rule out the (theoretical?) existence of absolute space and time, the limitation on our ability to predict the output of a genuine random number generator is the result of the limitation on our ability to be certain in our observation and measurement of subatomic events, and does not rule out the (theoretical?) possibility of accurately predicting the random number generator's output based on sufficient knowledge of all of the variables that influence that output.

[ December 11, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

Beoran

Well, yes and no. The uncertainty relationship of heisenberg makes it so that you cannot know the universe with 100% accuracy. Add to that the "butterfly effect", that small causes can have great , and we get utter inpredictability. The net effect of this is that our world is indistinguishable from one in which true randomness exists. In other words, determinism in the "Daemon of Laplace" way you present is irrelevant.

hypoxia

I don't think the statement is accurate because as far as I know, our best theory to explain light appears to deny that we can know the path of a photon, we can just predict the probability of its arrival at a location. If it were possible to know 100% of everything, I think at best we could give very accurate probabilities of events. But I'm just a QED novice