Nareed's Laws of Las Vegas (Tourist Edition)
Quote: bluefireI was thinking about your point that luck includes emotion, and while I don't completely agree with it, I understand where you're coming from with it.
I think a lot of it is because the concept of luck is something we understand at a young age. Since lots of things seemingly happen out of chance (or, at least, it seems that way when a human isn't in complete control of a situation), it's an easy concept to get. Given that + the stakes when gambling, it's easy to associate emotion with it.
Since the concept of "luck" is a lot more natural than "short term variance", it seems a lot more natural to call it "luck", even though it's referring to similar things.
Luck is also a concept that also isn't always easily quantifiable. It is, in gambling, because it's easy to know the house edge, variance, and all the other stats that go along with a particular game. Thus, it seems more mysterious when used in everyday life, as all the factors aren't known.
Exactly. What I'm saying is that luck is related to perception. And perception is reality. You might know a thing, but often that has very little to do with how you act. Luck is about how we understand and store experiences in our brain. Pick a word, any word. But the way we natively understand the experience to recall it for future reference is "luck".
There has been a lot of research into decision making, and how it is done, and what goes on in the brain. Interestingly, what happens is that we weigh all possibilities and then trust our gut instinct. We will act on "I feel lucky" when we sense that there is an advantage to doing so, even if the odds are against us.
And remember that while you can quantify money and monetary gain, there is a lot more going on. There is more to living than economics. "Luck" is about life.
I have to read the other part of what you wrote, again, to comment.
Nareed's 26th Las Vegas Law (Tourist Edition):
27) Players will tend to take advantage of any casino or dealer errors regardless of whatever personal ethics they may profess.
I'll edit the blog post to reflect this.
28) Personal ethics go out the window when there is cash on the line.
Quote: SFBNareed:
28) Personal ethics go out the window when there is cash on the line.
Not bad, but it's redundant to Law 26.
See, when speaking of ethics and large numbers of people, there are no valid absolute statements. That's why the 26th law says "players will tend to." that's what a majority will do, not what all players will do. We have anecdotal evidence that some people here did not do so when faced with the problem, and pledges by other people not to do so in the future when the situation presents itself.
It's too broad, also. I believe most people won't cheat at a casino, even if they should chance upon an oportunity. I mean outright cheats like past-posting, deck-fixing, card-switching, colluding with a dealer, etc.
