Hmm. I'm being far too slow at thinking with penetration, but here goes:
assuming the coin is balanced and that the die isn't rigged, the chance of a particular result of a coin flip is 50 percent and of the roll of a die is 16⅔ percent; but the percentage attributable to luck is 100 percent for each: it's entirely chance.
Well, if the coin isn't balanced but no one rigged it, wouldn't the percentage attributable to luck still be 100 percent, even if the chance of heads is only 43 percent? But if someone were very careful in manufacturing the coin, so that there were far fewer imbalances and imperfections than in the average coin, wouldn't the fact that this was closer to 50-50 than most coins are be 0 percent luck — i.e., entirely the intention of the person who worked carefully on the coin? But what about the fact that this person had the time and the resources to design this coin, and wanted to, and that the technical means existed both to measure and create the precision she's after? That's not 100 percent intention and 0 percent luck — and what are we even measuring? Whose intention? And is the word "percentage" even applicable here? In 1900, the chance that I would be typing these words at exactly this moment (October 21, 4:18 AM Mountain Daylight Time) would be vanishingly small. But, while the chance at 9:00 PM last night would have been far greater, it'd still have been vanishingly small. But the chance in 1900 that someone in the year 2013 would be more or less thinking about these questions would be very high (basically, a certainty minus the chance that there'd have been a civilization-ending event such as a giant meteor strike or a nuclear war or [something possible but in 1900 as unknown to us as nuclear war]). But specifying a number, a percentage, hardly seems meaningful here, and what the word "luck" means is not so clear. That's what I was trying to get at above.**
Assuming that the principle of cumulative advantage is correct (and how could it not be?), the chance that there will be an ineradicable element of unpredictability — of chance — in what becomes well known is 100 percent. That is, unpredictability is a certainty. Random differences will get locked in. Even a change in human psychology won't change this, assuming we still pay attention to and learn from each other's behavior. (If not, we're no longer human, and probably no longer alive as a species.) But I continue to question the word "percent" earlier in this paragraph: it's not as if something's being measured. And the amount we should assign to random differences getting locked in — to chance — is just as elusive to me today as it was ten days ago, as is what my question about "amount" even means, conceptually.
*Or maybe someone who's thought about such questions far harder and better than I have could argue that specifying a vague number here isn't so meaningless. What shape would that person's argument take?
**But cosmologists rightly are concerned with asking what the chance is that our universe has the physical laws it actually seems to have, or anyway, what the chances are that it would have laws close enough to ours that the universe would still contain matter, and life. I believe Susskind and crew do at least try to assign numbers, unless I'm misremembering.
no subject
Well, if the coin isn't balanced but no one rigged it, wouldn't the percentage attributable to luck still be 100 percent, even if the chance of heads is only 43 percent? But if someone were very careful in manufacturing the coin, so that there were far fewer imbalances and imperfections than in the average coin, wouldn't the fact that this was closer to 50-50 than most coins are be 0 percent luck — i.e., entirely the intention of the person who worked carefully on the coin? But what about the fact that this person had the time and the resources to design this coin, and wanted to, and that the technical means existed both to measure and create the precision she's after? That's not 100 percent intention and 0 percent luck — and what are we even measuring? Whose intention? And is the word "percentage" even applicable here? In 1900, the chance that I would be typing these words at exactly this moment (October 21, 4:18 AM Mountain Daylight Time) would be vanishingly small. But, while the chance at 9:00 PM last night would have been far greater, it'd still have been vanishingly small. But the chance in 1900 that someone in the year 2013 would be more or less thinking about these questions would be very high (basically, a certainty minus the chance that there'd have been a civilization-ending event such as a giant meteor strike or a nuclear war or [something possible but in 1900 as unknown to us as nuclear war]). But specifying a number, a percentage, hardly seems meaningful here, and what the word "luck" means is not so clear. That's what I was trying to get at above.**
Assuming that the principle of cumulative advantage is correct (and how could it not be?), the chance that there will be an ineradicable element of unpredictability — of chance — in what becomes well known is 100 percent. That is, unpredictability is a certainty. Random differences will get locked in. Even a change in human psychology won't change this, assuming we still pay attention to and learn from each other's behavior. (If not, we're no longer human, and probably no longer alive as a species.) But I continue to question the word "percent" earlier in this paragraph: it's not as if something's being measured. And the amount we should assign to random differences getting locked in — to chance — is just as elusive to me today as it was ten days ago, as is what my question about "amount" even means, conceptually.
*Or maybe someone who's thought about such questions far harder and better than I have could argue that specifying a vague number here isn't so meaningless. What shape would that person's argument take?
**But cosmologists rightly are concerned with asking what the chance is that our universe has the physical laws it actually seems to have, or anyway, what the chances are that it would have laws close enough to ours that the universe would still contain matter, and life. I believe Susskind and crew do at least try to assign numbers, unless I'm misremembering.