We have no control

First and foremost, my deepest sympathies for you and your friend for the bad news. I hope whatever else happens, the outcomes for her are positive. I will keep you in my prayers, (Or, if you are of the agnostic persuasion, I'll spare you a thought the next time I do a mathematical equation.) Thank you for your kind sentiments, sir. I’m actually not religious, although I think she is a believer so a prayer surely couldn’t hurt. How I know her is that she is a former student of mine; I taught her math. A brief tribute over your next equation would thus ironically be more apropos than you might have guessed. In the six or seven years I’ve known her, she has always been relentlessly cheery, despite her struggles with other challenges, including Asperger’s Syndrome and obesity. As she faces this most ominous circumstance, I can’t help but admire her defiant optimism. Your opening argument largely illustrates that while there are a great many things we obviously don't control, such as our health or thirst, there are still others which we obviously do, such as when we choose to drink. I would submit that things in the latter category only APPEAR to be matters of choice. Perhaps you choose to drink sooner or later, but at the end of the day you may turn your faucet and have nothing come out. The fact that circumstances sometimes line up the way we want or anticipate, however frequently, does not ultimately mean we can take credit for those predictable outcomes. Well… why not? You’ve given no rationale or support to this position; you’ve merely made an assertion, and as it happens, there are severe problems with your assertion. A resourceful and thirsty person, upon finding the faucet dry, will hardly throw up their hands and surrender to dehydration. Maybe the outside hose works. If not, and even if it is past time for the water company to answer phones, the person can call neighbors, or if phones are down too, walk over to visit them personally. He could drive over to the market to buy water. If the individual has the foresight to possess a Life Straw [1], they need only find a suitable body of water to quench thirst. In a cold environment, bringing in ice or snow and melting it is an option. If it is raining, a plastic garbage bag can be used to collect water into a jar. What does the concept of “credit” even mean in the context of this example? Should the thirsty man get a parade when he finds a way to drink? Of course not; his reward is to avoid the consequences of dehydration. But isn’t that all the “credit” he is likely to care about anyway? Should he not enjoy the rewards of his quest simply because he didn’t control all the variables of the world which led to the water being his to drink? I’m not sure I even understand what your argument is suggesting, let alone why you think it should hold. We have agreed that humans do not have complete control over our circumstances. However your position, at least as far as I can tell, is that we actually have none, and that appearance of control is nothing more than an illusion. You’ve given us no argument in support of this position. I don’t see how I as Con have any burden to knock down an argument Pro hasn’t made. Even so, I will build my own case against it. Poker is sometimes thought of as gambling, or as a game of chance where anything can happen, rather than a game of skill. Perhaps that is true – but only over the course of a small sample of hands. Because of the law of large numbers, good players, over a long enough timeline, will after enough games win out against bad players, even though the bad players may win individual hands or games. Because of this, some people are able to play poker professionally [2]. Correct bankroll (total personal funds dedicated for poker) management is to never have more than 1 or 2% of the bankroll at stake at any one table or in any one tournament. This allows them to weather the unfavorable probabilistic winds of “luck” [3]. On a larger scale, the entire Casino industry is based on the certainty that over a long enough timeline, putting the odds just slightly in one’s favor yields tremendous profits over a long timeline [4]. It isn’t control as imagined in the traditional iron-fisted, absolute sort, no. But these people exert a powerful form of control nonetheless, and reap the rewards accordingly. 1) http://eartheasy.com... 2) http://www.nytimes.com... 3) http://www.pokerlistings.com... 4) http://vis.supstat.com...