Thursday, February 23, 2006
There Is No Such Thing As Luck
Ok, most of you know i've already posted this. somehow though it disappeared from my blog. wierd. anyway, i'm reposting it
I had an epiphany a moment ago. I was watching some videos over at ebaum’s world, and one of them was one of those generic “lucky shot” videos. This one happened to be in golf. An announcer or someone mentioned “luck”. He was wrong. But I figured out what “luck” really is.
What we might call a “lucky” event is simply a moment where the incomprehensible and overwhelming complexities of matter an energy become aligned into such a way, so that the end result is an outcome we were not trying to achieve but would have loved to achieve were we capable of it alone.
Example:
A fellow chips from 40 yards. He can barely see the green, let alone the hole. But then, he makes the shot. What happened is that all the incalculable variables worked in his favor for a moment. The ever-changing breeze, the humidity levels, the air pressure, temperature, the way each atom on each blade of grass is positioned at that ONE moment. All these things allow that ball to fall into that hole
This is the sort of thing that inevitably gets the phrase “Chaos Theory” thrown at it, but it is precisely the opposite of chaos. It is a highly ordered system, but it happens on such a small and persistently changing scale that our little brains can’t get around it.
And that is luck, in a nutshell. And the next time someone uses the term “Chaos Theory” or uses any of its nomenclature, throw some of that complexity crap at them and explain how randomness is an illusion of the feeble human mind.
Now you know.
And knowing is half the battle.
Have a lovely day.
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Ok, most of you know i've already posted this. somehow though it disappeared from my blog. wierd. anyway, i'm reposting it
I had an epiphany a moment ago. I was watching some videos over at ebaum’s world, and one of them was one of those generic “lucky shot” videos. This one happened to be in golf. An announcer or someone mentioned “luck”. He was wrong. But I figured out what “luck” really is.
What we might call a “lucky” event is simply a moment where the incomprehensible and overwhelming complexities of matter an energy become aligned into such a way, so that the end result is an outcome we were not trying to achieve but would have loved to achieve were we capable of it alone.
Example:
A fellow chips from 40 yards. He can barely see the green, let alone the hole. But then, he makes the shot. What happened is that all the incalculable variables worked in his favor for a moment. The ever-changing breeze, the humidity levels, the air pressure, temperature, the way each atom on each blade of grass is positioned at that ONE moment. All these things allow that ball to fall into that hole
This is the sort of thing that inevitably gets the phrase “Chaos Theory” thrown at it, but it is precisely the opposite of chaos. It is a highly ordered system, but it happens on such a small and persistently changing scale that our little brains can’t get around it.
And that is luck, in a nutshell. And the next time someone uses the term “Chaos Theory” or uses any of its nomenclature, throw some of that complexity crap at them and explain how randomness is an illusion of the feeble human mind.
Now you know.
And knowing is half the battle.
Have a lovely day.
|
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