@bacon - I agree completely - if only we weren’t so damned close-minded…
also, soylent green is made of people.
My point was that that guy was saying he’d spend half of the money he got from killing someone to help others.
Where then, do your interpretations come from?
In an effort to avoid being Socratic I’ll simply say that my argument here is that ‘choice’, be it an illusion or otherwise, is in practice a conscious or unconscious ‘act’ of decision making. As Pascal argued, you cannot ‘not choose’. There are no non-choices or non-actions, for even if you choose inaction, you have still chosen. This is meaningful here because you are suggesting that the act of choosing is less important than our interpretations of that choice’s outcomes. Perhaps you are right, as those interpretations are what will influence our future decision making, rather than the act of choosing itself, but this does not exclude the necessity of choosing. However unimportant it may be, it is not possible to not choose.
That said, even if every choice is emergent, decision making is not. We are pattern recognition machines, we are construct formers, and we name things and define them in order to construct the illusion of a more recognizable ordered environment. Our decisions are necessarily formed based on our continual reactions to our environment. Cause and effect. Psychologically speaking, our reactions stem from a complex series of chemically induced electrical signals in the brain. Learning is nothing more than chemical reactions which are by themselves governed by predictable physical laws.
While predetermination typically assumes that the guiding hand of fate has ordered the course of our lives, the fundamental principle of causality is difficult to argue with given the ordered nature of the world we live in. Consequently, if all decision are made based on your interpretation of past events, and all your interpretations are fundamentally nothing more than predictable chemical signals, then all your decisions are governed by the laws of physics.
Granted, it would be nice if things were more complicated than that, if our decisions were more than just physics. But, even if they are, my point is that they are still rooted in the physical world, and are still governed by an ordered environment. Even if we cannot know how or why, the reality is that without causality, we are left with nothing but chaos. Without basing your choices on prior experience, without cause and effect, you would be just as likely to choose to fly as you would choose to cross the street. There would be no reason or method to any choice. But even then, by nature of simply being a human, your choices would still the result of complex chemical reactions.
As well, much effort has been made to study the formation of the brain, and it is entirely probable, if not definitely proven, that the brain is always in a state of change, and its changes are dependent upon both its environment and the genetic map encoded into an individuals DNA. Thus, even its physical structure is, at any given moment, a result of past experience. Cause and effect.
While you may argue that predetermination does not exist, and I would be inclined to agree considering what it implies, I would argue that you have not yet disproved Causality.
I rather enjoy this subject, but if you are all looking for a new one, I might have a suggestion that is a bit of a brain teaser. A number of years ago, the academic community at large decided that “Time”, even as a human notion, was a fundamental aspect of our existence, just like space. Consequently, they argued, Time itself exists in the same way space “exists” dimensionally. They concluded that for anything which exists, it must exist at a given time. So we have the first dimension, which is a point, the second, which is a series of points that form a line (and any number of lines can form a plane), the third, in which a series of planes stacked on top of each other create depth, and the fourth, which is ‘time’.
I have a rather reasonable argument which potentially disproves the notion that time can exist as a dimension, and should you all be interested in this topic I would like to hear your thoughts.
I’m more than happy to continue on the subject of Choice and Luck though, even if it seems we’ve left “Luck” to its own devices at this point.
I said I was messing around. My real answers two pages back.
I have indeed and I do! The Harry Harrison book “Make Room! Make Room!” on which it’s based is a much better story though and doesn’t have Charlton Heston giving himself splinters and going “NOOOOOOOOOO” (again!!) 
I’d take the money, but it’d have to be a lot closer to a billion. Everyone’s got a price and I’m suprisingly avaricious, in spite of myself! 
My interpretations are born out of my reactions to the effects of my choices; these interpretations are constantly re-evaluated as time goes by - sometimes resulting in my initial interpretation being totally inverted, but that’s the nature of the beast. Where possible, I take the long view on my life and my choices, accepting that views can change as I mature. This “choice” (and indeed, all of the choices I make) can only be relevant to me, as can my perception and interpretation of choice. I accept that this might be a cop out. However it’s 0120hrs and I’m not really in the mood for deep thought!
In the light of that, I’m going to paraphrase your quote a little, apologies!
I believe that the only negative choice is the choice of inaction, “yes I will” or “no I will not” are both positive, active choices. I also didn’t say ANYTHING about choice not being necessary, only that your choices are yours alone and that each choice informs subsequent choices
Semantics much? surely a decision is a choice by another name? If, as I suspect, this is true, the rest of your rebuttal is rendered somewhat less potent! 
Which is pretty much what I said, only I used the word “choice” instead of “decision”…
Surely you mean physiologically, not psychologically? Psychologically speaking, our reactions stem from our experiential history, not from chemicals. Learning is the ingraining & formation of neuron signal paths as a result of those chemical reactions, which may or may not be governed by predictable physical laws - it is conceivable that our brain has a significant quantum aspect, which (for the moment) renders such prediction uncertain. Anyhow, both of these are interesting, but irrelevant to my stance that predetermination doesn’t exist.
If one takes an existentialist viewpoint though (and I tend in that direction), the universe is chaos and not a neatly ordered thing. Given sufficient chaos a pattern (and therefore order) can be inferred, whether or not it exists. My interpretation of that chaos (and the pattern that I appear to see in it) is purely that, my interpretation. The chaos still exists, but my experience of it informs my interpretation of it. Thus the universe doesn’t have to conform to a causal model. I’m stopping now as it’s 0150hrs and I have to go to SLEEEEEEP!