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Luck is a short term fluctuation in Texas Hold'em. Over the long term, the fluctuations of luck smooth out. A given action could win or lose on one hand, but ov

by gexla 9y ago

Luck is a short term fluctuation in Texas Hold'em. Over the long term, the fluctuations of luck smooth out. A given action could win or lose on one hand, but over the long term, the return (or loss) will reflect the strength of the decision. In real life, lottery wins happen, but not often enough to bank on.

projektir 9y ago
Except there's no balancing measure to make the various events equally impactful. There's nothing out there to even out or amortize luck effects. There's no nice pseudo-randomness mechanic to make things "fair" or "fun". The effects are often catastrophically long-term and there's no smoothing out. Why would you think otherwise? Why would you compare life to a human-made game? Life is explicitly not a game, it's not fair, it's not fun, it's not balanced. Being born a human is huge. Being born in the right country is huge. Being born without genetic problems is huge. Being born to decent parents is huge. These account for the vast majority of a given's person experience pool. Once you get to individual decisions, all the most important things have already been determined. If you're sitting at a place where you feel like you can make all the important decisions yourself, you're already way ahead of the game. The other problem is that decisions are not fully free and are very strongly influenced by luck, as well. Things like education, information availability, clarity of mind, and, if you want to go there, fluid intelligence, likely influence the quality of your decisions, and that's also luck. Everyone wants to make all the best decisions, otherwise you're saying that lots of people are deliberately trying to reduce the quality of their lives...
xapata 9y ago
Texas Hold'em is IID -- events are independent and identically distributed. Life is non-stationary, with autoregressive conditional variance. Heck, for some aspects of life, the mean and variance are undefined. It doesn't always smooth out in the long term, except for that in the long run we're all dead.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  So far. Technically immortality is not out of question but a really long shot.
brudgers 9y ago
Living requires playing the hand that is dealt. Everyone gets one and only one and some people sit down at the table with no chips.
KGIII 9y ago
I dislike the term luck, I prefer chance or happenstance. I am where I am because of being, by chance, in the right place, at the right time, and able to take risks.
petraeus 9y ago
imagine playing texas holdem where the dealer always deals you two aces, thats basically being a white american male

by gexla 9y ago

projektir 9y ago

Except there's no balancing measure to make the various events equally impactful. There's nothing out there to even out or amortize luck effects. There's no nice pseudo-randomness mechanic to make things "fair" or "fun". The effects are often catastrophically long-term and there's no smoothing out. Why would you think otherwise? Why would you compare life to a human-made game? Life is explicitly not a game, it's not fair, it's not fun, it's not balanced. Being born a human is huge. Being born in the right country is huge. Being born without genetic problems is huge. Being born to decent parents is huge. These account for the vast majority of a given's person experience pool. Once you get to individual decisions, all the most important things have already been determined. If you're sitting at a place where you feel like you can make all the important decisions yourself, you're already way ahead of the game. The other problem is that decisions are not fully free and are very strongly influenced by luck, as well. Things like education, information availability, clarity of mind, and, if you want to go there, fluid intelligence, likely influence the quality of your decisions, and that's also luck. Everyone wants to make all the best decisions, otherwise you're saying that lots of people are deliberately trying to reduce the quality of their lives...

xapata 9y ago

Texas Hold'em is IID -- events are independent and identically distributed. Life is non-stationary, with autoregressive conditional variance. Heck, for some aspects of life, the mean and variance are undefined. It doesn't always smooth out in the long term, except for that in the long run we're all dead.

AstralStorm 9y ago
So far. Technically immortality is not out of question but a really long shot.

brudgers 9y ago

Living requires playing the hand that is dealt. Everyone gets one and only one and some people sit down at the table with no chips.

KGIII 9y ago

I dislike the term luck, I prefer chance or happenstance. I am where I am because of being, by chance, in the right place, at the right time, and able to take risks.

petraeus 9y ago

imagine playing texas holdem where the dealer always deals you two aces, thats basically being a white american male