Brazilian Grand Prix 2010, Interlagos Circuit - Race 18/19

But luck is never refereed to as the uncertain event. When people say luck, as in this thread. It is said as if it is the driving force behind it. That is never the case.
luck noun

the force that causes things, especially good things, to happen to you by chance and not as a result of your own efforts or abilitiess
 
But luck is never refereed to as the uncertain event. When people say luck, as in this thread. It is said as if it is the driving force behind it. That is never the case.

Luck (AND unluck) is NOT an uncertain event. It is the result (or results) of events which are uncertain and undefined and unpredictable. And no amount of calculations can make such a prediction, only a statistical probability of the event in question, taking place.
If P(x) = 1, then there is no uncertainty and no luck since the result of this event is 100% known.

If the likelihood of an event occuring is P(x) = 0.01 and you bet on such an event occuring (and assuming you have no prior knowledge of previous events), i.e. a 1 in 100 chance, then you would have been deemd "lucky"

Wiki said:
Luck or fortuity is good or bad fortune in life caused by accident or chance...

Chance althought distinct from luck, still stems from... statistics.
And luck stems from achieving the events in the face of complete unliklihood.
 
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This is not the case, luck it the traditional sense id the driving force behind events. That is why it does not exist. It is not a driving force. It does not make stuff happen.

Even uncertain things can be calculated given enough inputs and the correct maths. That's what science is a predictive model and the better we get at it the more we can predict correctly.

As I said it's still a useful word, when we don;t know the reasons behind it as it's much simpler to say luck than x.y.z.
But that is not how it's been used in this thread, it has been used as some sort of driving force, that is just wrong. Everything happens for a reason.
 
To me it suggests that you are claiming the results of dice throwing can be predicted/calculated using "complicated maths", if that we're true then I'm sure this would have been exploited.
Well yes, of course it probably could be predicted.

If you knew the exact speed and angle the dice were thrown at, the precise composition of the surface it was thrown onto, and perhaps the air pressure/temperature/flow at the time, you could conceivably, after some serious mathematical calculation, work out the number it would land on.

Trouble is, apart from perhaps the surface, all of those other variables change infinitesimally every throw, due to nature, and whatever it is that makes us not robotically perfect. So unless you had a supercomputer to hand, you're never going to be able to call a throw perfectly, and even then, it would only be after it was thrown.

Of course,with that said, I actually agree with you. Those things that change each throw are what we define as luck, even the fact that some of those (the throw) are affected by you. So to say there's no such thing as luck is pretty silly.
 
Well yes, of course it probably could be predicted.

If you knew the exact speed and angle the dice were thrown at, the precise composition of the surface it was thrown onto, and perhaps the air pressure/temperature/flow at the time, you could conceivably, after some serious mathematical calculation, work out the number it would land on.


So to say there's no such thing as luck is pretty silly.

How is it silly, you just explained why it isn't luck. Luck is a driving force. there is no force as you just explained.
 
Well yes, of course it probably could be predicted.

If you knew the exact speed and angle the dice were thrown at, the precise composition of the surface it was thrown onto, and perhaps the air pressure/temperature/flow at the time, you could conceivably, after some serious mathematical calculation, work out the number it would land on.

Trouble is, apart from perhaps the surface, all of those other variables change infinitesimally every throw, due to nature, and whatever it is that makes us not robotically perfect. So unless you had a supercomputer to hand, you're never going to be able to call a throw perfectly, and even then, it would only be after it was thrown.

Oh Im sure that if you have all the values and variables as well as the throwing angle, elasticity of the materials involved, weight distribution of the dice etc etc, such a think can be calculated. But what Im saying is that I am assuming the thrower has no prior knowledge of the dice, or mathematics or whatever. Just a random person throwing a random dice and placing a bet on throwing a certain number and concurrently throwing and achieving the outcome on the dice.


So to say there's no such thing as luck is pretty silly.

:)
 
It's not a force in the way that gravity or magnetism is a force sure, but you can't go saying "Oh it doesn't exist because it's not a tangible, measurable thing", because that's missing the point completely. :confused:

The sky is just air, but more of it, above us. Doesn't mean you're right to say "there's no such thing as the sky".
 
It's not a force in the way that gravity or magnetism is a force sure, but you can't go saying "Oh it doesn't exist because it's not a tangible, measurable thing",

Yes I can, because that is exactly how it has been used in this thread. If it is not tangible it does not exist.

I dont understand what you mean by a "driving force". Are you refering to it as something similar to electricity/love/the things we cant see?

yes, it directly changes or influences the outcome. That is the meaning of luck and how it has been used in this thread.

If he had more luck his engine wouldn't of blown and a 101 over things. It's not luck it's probably those extra 100rpm.
 
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It's not luck it's probably those extra 100rpm.
That extra 100rpm which the driver may well have had no control over allowing into the engine set-up?

That piece of dirt in the air intake which the engineers might have accidentally missed, but just happens to block up a critical piece of the cooling?

That loose spring that detached from the car in front and just happened to catch a driver full in the head, causing a severe crash?

You apparently class luck as some kind of harry potter wizardry, but I can assure you that most of the rest of the world would define those above scenarios as "bad luck", because they're beyond the driver's control.
 
yes as I said it's fine to define it as bad luck. But luck is not a driving force.

So when we analyse the championship you can not go if he had more luck. We've been over this already.
 
So if Felipe Massa had been 9 points clear of the Championship, on the last race of the season, and three laps ahead of everyone when that spring knocked him out and made him drive into a wall, and whoever was second ended up winning the title, you're telling me luck wouldn't have been a major factor?

EDIT: Using 9 to refer to the old style points system here. Substitute 24 if you want.
 
So if Felipe Massa had been 9 points clear of the Championship, on the last race of the season, and three laps ahead of everyone when that spring knocked him out and made him drive into a wall, and whoever was second ended up winning the title, you're telling me luck wouldn't have been a major factor?

EDIT: Using 9 to refer to the old style points system here. Substitute 24 if you want.

Again you are using luck as a driving force, there is no such thing.

Why are you arguing the semantics of language in motors for gods sake?

Why not, and it was all down to if vettle didn't have such bad luck. which I called BS on.

+ I'm bored been of work just over two weeks and going insane with bordem.
 
Well I give up. I post you a perfectly good hypothetical scenario, and all you respond with is "luck as a driving force doesn't exist" when I don't even understand what you mean by that any more. :confused:

Are you saying luck wasn't that decider of the championship in that scenario? Even though I intentionally made it so?

Why are you arguing the semantics of language in motors for gods sake?
The only reason I want to clarify this is so that next time someone posts a "what if" question, we don't get AcidHell saying exactly the same thing, about how luck doesn't exist, or maybe it does, but it doesn't matter, or maybe it does matter, but it's not the "driving force", whatever that is, or something. :)
 
Are you saying luck wasn't that decider of the championship in that scenario? Even though I intentionally made it so?

Of course it's not. Luck is not like gravity, electricity or any other existing force.
At no point is luck taken into a calculation or prediction model. it simply doesn't exist.
 
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