[FRIAM] observability and randomness

[Roger Critchlow]

Okay, so we touch on "free will" as the buttress of personal moral
responsibility, but how about the opposite side of the coin, as in I chose
to keep those millions in the hedge fund, therefore I deserve all the
returns that my investment earned, no one else can have any of it, it's
mine!  And if great-great-great-grand-dad earned all of his in the slave
trade, so what, that was perfectly respectable business back then, no blot
on the wealth he left us from the lives it destroyed.  So the doctrine of
free will simultaneously punishes the poor and rewards the rich for making
equally no-brainer decisions, that's just the way the world is.

This came up in recent reviews of Maria Konnikova's new book, The Biggest
Bluff, which is largely a meditation on Chance and Necessity, to recall
another best-seller.  Her description of how to be a high stakes poker
player sounds a lot like Glen's construction on how free will might work,
hours spent watching video of other high stakes players, disciplining
oneself to not take credit for the strokes of luck that fall your way, nor
to take the blame for the strokes that fall the other way.  Riding the edge
of what you can effect, learning to discriminate, disdaining to be
distracted by that which you cannot control.

Are poker games deterministic?  Can you learn to play better poker?

-- rec --
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