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Originally Posted by Sun Tzu
Do you believe in luck? Or is life a bunch of simple carbon based organisms bumping into one another inside a mathematical equation peppered with chaos?
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Define luck. In some circles, the traditional concept of luck is eschewed in favour of the idea that everything is affected by quantum fluctuations; in these circles, one would wish a peer 'good fluctuations' instead of 'good luck'. In a practical sense, it serves the same purpose. If one wishes to take a deterministic view, one could argue that with a sufficiently advanced algorithm one could predict the future with perfect accuracy; I think, however, that this discounts the not inconsiderable human factor. We make decisions that alter the outcomes of everyday events in ways that aren't always immediately obvious. At any rate, even if such an algorithm could theoretically be possible, it would likely be far too complex to be useful in any practical sense, and would most probably require access to data that we have no way of acquiring. Whether there truly is such a thing as random chance or if everything is pre-determined and we simply lack the means to make the necessary calculations, it all comes out the same in the wash. Sometimes events work out in your favour, sometimes they don't. Call it luck or God or fate or whatever makes you happy. I reckon it's semantics, really. And I'm not sure what it has to do with ESP, unless you're arguing that statistically insignificant fluctuations are evidence.