What's Luck Go To Do With It?

[Lunch Box]

^short and sweet. Deleted my winded version for this.

On this we agree completely.

 

[kuksul08]

Great post, 100% agree.

 

[bruceflinch]

Nice post, but the Song is "What's Love got to do with it?"...just saying

 

[HeatXfer]

Great post Hun. It makes me look back and wonder how I made it through some very stupid activities.

Luck, chance, and randomness don't really exist. By saying that something happened randomly or by chance we're merely admitting that we don't understand the complex chain of causes that led to that event. It's really not that different from our ancestors saying that lightning is caused by gods when they didn't understand what causes lightning.

Similarly with riding. There are causes of crashes that are more complex than just riding skill - e.g. hubris - and I think our choices (related to riding) have a lot more impact on our safety than we typically believe. Truly unavoidable crashes are extremely rare, if you broaden your view beyond the most immediate observable causes of crashes.

lol - that's exactly what luck is.

 

[UDRider]

Glad to see, Flying Hun start this thread.. I agree with what he is sayin.

Really now? Because when Archimedes said something similar just worded differently, you had a different reply.

Yup. You can do everything possible to lower your risk and still have your number come up. And unfortunately, the real downside of motorcycling isn't just the increased probability of an accident. It's the size of the negative payoff often involved in the event of an accident, i.e., death or permanent disability. Expected return needs to consider both probability and size of the outcome, but most of us motorcyclists only focus on the first half of the equation. Even before my accident, I always said, if motorcyclists were honest about the second half, many of us wouldn't ride.

There is a possibility that a rider thinks they were doing everything possible..
But they Weren't.

Then of course there is this:

I believe in making your own "luck".

From what I see, some riders make bad luck.

Others have learned how to make good luck.

I guess you missed this part of his post:

I believe in doing what I can to be the best rider I can be. I don't believe in infallibility. I don't believe popes are infallible, and I sure as shit don't think motorcyclists are infallible.

There were enough Greek tragedies taught when I was in K-12 that I soaked in the lesson that hubris is a bad thing and will lead to a bad end. If you've got the hubris to believe you're infallible, well then, all I can do is suggest a little humility and awareness, and wish you good luck.

 

[DataDan]

Luck is a hot button topic.

One group--we're talking a single-digit number of BARFers--thinks luck can be ground down to nothing. They believe that with skill and experience, random shit can be eliminated as a motorcycling risk factor. This is what philosophy geeks would call a "non-falsifiable hypothesis". There is no experiment, no observation of reality that could disprove it. If you crash, you clearly lack the needed crash-prevention trait. Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.

A similarly small second group sees reality as a sequence of preordained events orchestrated by external forces. We can call an outcome "lucky" or "unlucky", but that's just personal spin on what was meant to be and couldn't have been otherwise. They say "when it's your time, it's your time" but don't object to skill development or protective gear, so maybe they're hedging just a little.

A third group--don't know how many, but it seems like a lot--thinks luck plays a considerable part in motorcycling risk and that it's constant across the population. Riding safely is part skill and protective gear, which can be improved, but the remainder is intractable luck. If you disagree with them and believe instead that luck is a variable that can be improved, you're as deeply in denial as the first group. They find their view comforting because no one can be safer than they are, with their above-average bike handling skills (like the children of Lake Wobegon) and designer-label gear. And it's low-effort because trying to improve luck by learning from experience would be a waste of time with the riding environment so vast and unpredictably random.

A fourth group--which includes me and, I think, a majority of BARF--sees luck as a variable that can be developed. Through directed effort, I'm a luckier rider today than I was 10 years ago, and I hope next year to be luckier still. Each new wrinkle learned about motorcycles and roads and traffic can be put to use. But we acknowledge that safety will always be part luck. That includes "unknown-unknowns", things we don't know and don't know that we don't know, and also "known-unknowns", things we are aware could go wrong, but which we choose not to adopt countermeasures against. Known-unknowns are what I call "falling dog" problems. Thirty years ago my sister, worried about my taking up motorcycling, sent me a clipping about rider who was killed when a dog fell from an overpass. Whatever. If it happens, it happens, but I'm not taking precautions against it.

As a longtime adherent of the fourth view, I'm fed up with being accused of holding the first view. An example of a skilled and experienced rider who crashes doesn't contradict the view that luck can be improved; I don't claim the role of luck can be eliminated. And one rider's acceptance of a certain risk in order to enjoy a reward doesn't mean that that risk is inevitable for all; I may choose not to accept that risk. And is it hubris to think that one can improve his luck by working to understand a certain crash and adopt a countermeasure? Really?

 

[UDRider]

DataDan I believe Flying_hun was referring to the first group in his post. He can correct me if I am wrong.

 

[Marcoose]

Neat topic, Kurt.

Being just an average rider, luck is a big part of my riding. I try not to use it, but I know it's there. I wish I was as good as Craig and Gary, and 90% of the people here. But I'll never be. The talent wall is too strong. In the meantime, vive la chance.

 

[Mike95060]

When Gary J died it dawned on me that I had gotten by dumb luck. I thought to myself, "if it can happen to a guy that good, it should have happend to me already."

 

[ratsblast]

There is skill and preparation and there is fatalism. Great skills basically keep you away from trouble and get a camel through the eye of a needle but if your card is drawn time is up. To me it seems about the time and place, a concurrence of unlikely events leads to mortal danger.

 

[redruM]

We go out in the world and take our chances
Fate is just the weight of circumstances
That's the way that lady luck dances
Roll the bones


[youtube]YoE1SrWWyNA[/youtube]

 

[ilikefood]

unirr didn't post here, yet!

 

[ilikefood]

A couple of questions for you:

1. Do we live in a deterministic or a probabilistic universe?
2. Whatever your answer to the first question, tell us how you track every single variable that could impact every single scenario you encounter in a day's worth of riding. Extra credit if you can explain how you account for interactions between variables.

1. There is no simple answer to that question, and those two aren't the only possible choices anyway. Probability is merely a way to deal with phenomena whose causes we don't completely understand. For example, we say that the outcome of rolling dice is random because we have no way of understanding and tracking everything that impacts how the dice land. Nevertheless, how the dice land is determined by physical forces that work in specific ways, and that's quite deterministic.

2. You can't track every little variable, but in the case of riding to understand how there is no luck you have to look further up the chain of causality. You can call hitting a deer a completely random event, but places and times where deer congregate aren't random (even in the conventional sense of "random"), and you can choose when and where you ride. You can call hitting a left turner random, but intersections and cars approaching them don't appear randomly out of nowhere. You can call great, skilled riders crashing on the street "bad luck", but the choice to disregard the dangers of treating the street like a race track is a conscious decision and has nothing to do with luck.

As I said before, crashes that absolutely couldn't have been prevented by "riding smarter" are very rare.

 

[canyonrat]

Flying_hun: "Do we live in a deterministic or a probabilistic universe?

Tell us how you track every single variable that could impact every single scenario you encounter in a day's worth of riding. Extra credit if you can explain how you account for interactions between variables."

First I've studied and practiced with a Buddhist monk for 7 years, twice a week in one-on-one sessions and every night in dream-practice, while hanging with his top student becoming "life long best friends" with him and developing a 24/7 constant non-technical telepathic communication, if it could be called anything.


SO I'm back to bed, with more to follow in a few hours. Jedi stuff of course

 

[ontherearwheel]

1. There is no simple answer to that question, and those two aren't the only possible choices anyway. Probability is merely a way to deal with phenomena whose causes we don't completely understand. For example, we say that the outcome of rolling dice is random because we have no way of understanding and tracking everything that impacts how the dice land. Nevertheless, how the dice land is determined by physical forces that work in specific ways, and that's quite deterministic.

2. You can't track every little variable, but in the case of riding to understand how there is no luck you have to look further up the chain of causality. You can call hitting a deer a completely random event, but places and times where deer congregate aren't random (even in the conventional sense of "random"), and you can choose when and where you ride. You can call hitting a left turner random, but intersections and cars approaching them don't appear randomly out of nowhere. You can call great, skilled riders crashing on the street "bad luck", but the choice to disregard the dangers of treating the street like a race track is a conscious decision and has nothing to do with luck.

As I said before, crashes that absolutely couldn't have been prevented by "riding smarter" are very rare.

So, you are implying one should know when a drunk is going to cross the double yellow when going too fast for a corner?

So, I should have known that I would be rear ended while stopped at a red light?

The only reason anyone is alive today is luck. Lucky that you haven't gotten cancer, lucky you haven't been shot in a movie theater, the list goes on.

 

[Lunch Box]

Four group breakdown

Good stuff, as usual, Dan. I find myself planted firmly in the fourth group, as well. I am a firm believer in constantly improving my skills, and in adopting safety technology (better gear, electronic aids, etc) as ways of reducing the effects of luck. It is still there, and is a variable which can be reduced considerably but never eliminated.

 

[rsrider]

"Luck favors the prepared." Edna Mode

 

[Marcoose]

Good stuff, as usual, Dan. I find myself planted firmly in the fourth group, as well. I am a firm believer in constantly improving my skills, and in adopting safety technology (better gear, electronic aids, etc) as ways of reducing the effects of luck. It is still there, and is a variable which can be reduced considerably but never eliminated.

+1. I learn something with every ride of mine and of others, and put that towards mitigating luck.

So, you are implying one should know when a drunk is going to cross the double yellow when going too fast for a corner?

So, I should have known that I would be rear ended while stopped at a red light?

The only reason anyone is alive today is luck. Lucky that you haven't gotten cancer, lucky you haven't been shot in a movie theater, the list goes on.

While not subscribing 100% to food's view —waiting to see where he goes with it—, it seems he's saying that some do know when and where deer congragate and still ignore knowledge and when they crash into deer they call random acts. And then they do it again and again. No learning. Same for mishaps with left turners and even drunks. FYI, most companies pay on the 15th and last day of the month, or every other Friday. When the first group falls on a Friday, it's the busiest day for bars. Having that knowledge, I avoid riding those evenings. It's a process of applying lessons to counter "luck".

 

[JohnBoy]

1. There is no simple answer to that question, and those two aren't the only possible choices anyway. Probability is merely a way to deal with phenomena whose causes we don't completely understand. For example, we say that the outcome of rolling dice is random because we have no way of understanding and tracking everything that impacts how the dice land. Nevertheless, how the dice land is determined by physical forces that work in specific ways, and that's quite deterministic.

2. You can't track every little variable, but in the case of riding to understand how there is no luck you have to look further up the chain of causality. You can call hitting a deer a completely random event, but places and times where deer congregate aren't random (even in the conventional sense of "random"), and you can choose when and where you ride. You can call hitting a left turner random, but intersections and cars approaching them don't appear randomly out of nowhere. You can call great, skilled riders crashing on the street "bad luck", but the choice to disregard the dangers of treating the street like a race track is a conscious decision and has nothing to do with luck.

As I said before, crashes that absolutely couldn't have been prevented by "riding smarter" are very rare.

I suppose I would have to counter that rides that don't have a reasonably foreseeable crash risk are equally rare.

In the twisties, for example. You should have known that riding in the early morning would lead to that spilled coffee/barely awake/absent minded commuter crossing your lane, and you should have known that at noon you'd have that person rushing home for lunch crossing your lane, and you should have known in the afternoon that they high school kids would be racing through the hills, and you should have known that in the evening you'd have deer and drunks, and you should have known that absolutely any time you'd have a squid blowing the yellow. You can ride at half of reasonable sightline speed and still have 0% chance of avoiding blind corner opposing speeding double-yellow crossers. Point being that if you're in the hills, you have a crash risk that anyone could monday-morning quarterback if they happened to be a dick, so I certainly agree with your last sentence, but only because every ride could be improved by 'riding smarter', regardless of how smart you ride.

That said, of course training, practice, critical thinking before/during/after every ride greatly mitigate all of the above risks. And sure, if you want to be pedantic (I certainly am with my above hyperbolic remarks) then you're right, chance is an illusion created by our mental limitations, but those limitations are real and we have to have a word for those factors beyond our critical thinking capabilities. I believe that word is luck, and so I believe luck is real.

The key, of course, is to train till luck is the smallest factor possible, but there is no such thing as total risk avoidance on a bike.

I think.

 

[danate]

I suppose I would have to counter that rides that don't have a reasonably foreseeable crash risk are equally rare.

In the twisties, for example. You should have known that riding in the early morning would lead to that spilled coffee/barely awake/absent minded commuter crossing your lane, and you should have known that at noon you'd have that person rushing home for lunch crossing your lane, and you should have known in the afternoon that they high school kids would be racing through the hills, and you should have known that in the evening you'd have deer and drunks, and you should have known that absolutely any time you'd have a squid blowing the yellow. You can ride at half of reasonable sightline speed and still have 0% chance of avoiding blind corner opposing speeding double-yellow crossers. Point being that if you're in the hills, you have a crash risk that anyone could monday-morning quarterback if they happened to be a dick, so I certainly agree with your last sentence, but only because every ride could be improved by 'riding smarter', regardless of how smart you ride.

That said, of course training, practice, critical thinking before/during/after every ride greatly mitigate all of the above risks. And sure, if you want to be pedantic (I certainly am with my above hyperbolic remarks) then you're right, chance is an illusion created by our mental limitations, but those limitations are real and we have to have a word for those factors beyond our critical thinking capabilities. I believe that word is luck, and so I believe luck is real.

The key, of course, is to train till luck is the smallest factor possible, but there is no such thing as total risk avoidance on a bike.

I think.

There are some choices that drastically affect your chances of being in an accident. I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to ride on weekdays. Because of that, I rarely ride up in the mountains on weekends and when I do I take it extra slow and cautious with the expectation of some yahoo blowing a DY or drifting into my lane. I feel like that reduces my chances of being in a "bad luck" accident greatly as those two lane roads have the possibility for many circumstances that can be out of your hands (head on, dear, etc.).