Yes. But you should notice how we don't blame machine no. X for not doing it's job correctly (aka having buggy programs run on it) - it does exactly what it was supposed to do.
No - we blame the programmer/hardware manufacturer for screwing things up - which in the case of humans is the environment and genes.
Your reductionist mindset seems to be on a path of destruction, leaving many useful abstractions in its wake.
Is a car actually a car, or is it just a collection of atoms? It's both. Does the car actually drive, or is it just physics? It's both - "driving" is a subset of physics that acts on a collection of atoms known as a "car".
When people say "luck", they are usually referring to external circumstances not under the influence of the biological machine's algorithm. To say that luck is the only factor, or never a factor, is wrong. Given similar inputs, some algorithms will excel and some will fail.
You certainly can "blame" an algorithm for certain outcomes. How the algorithm formed is a red-herring.
> When people say "luck", they are usually referring to external circumstances not under the influence of the biological machine's algorithm
Your DNA, aka the algorithm that is who you are, is given to you by the external environment - you have no control over it, and neither do you have any control over your upbringing - rich/poor/race/sex.
I don't understand the reasoning behind your comment here.
First, how does physics eliminate the possibility of free will?
Second, why are you even bothering to tell us this?
How do you personally justify taking any action in life, as the pointlessness of it all clearly hasn't escaped you. Yet, from my naive perspective, I see someone determined to have their self-perceived intellectual superiority and ability to transcend it all recognized. I don't understand why, though.
Are people that use Newtonian physics to calculate bilard ball movement also wrong? They know theorethically they should use general relativity, but they also know it won't change the result in any meaningful way. So they optimize it away.
Thinking of yourself as probability function interconnected with the whole universe all the time must be pretty inconvenient for you. Why not simplify it to "this factors are ME, and the rest it external Universe, and the interactions can be rounded to work mostly like Newton said. Bonus - your algorithm now knows almost exactly which parts of that function are under his direct control. It's very useful model, why not use it?
We're not sure our current best model is The Truth anyway. And notion of free will is another useful simplification. You already think in its terms (English is impossible to use otherways).
I've actually thought about this a long time ago -- back in high school, and came to the conclusion that if everything were to follow a certain set of "laws", then indeed free will wouldn't exist.
But that isn't the case. Have you heard of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle for starters? If not, look more deeply into physics. After a certain point, the "laws" stop governing, and probability takes over. Probability leaves room for multiple possiblities -- a.k.a. choice. I can't say an electron chooses to be at position X at time T, but I can say that the fact that you can't determine it's positions and that it does tend to be "wherever it wants" within a certain range, hints at something of the kind. For more lookup the "Free Will Theorem": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem
This is getting frustrating. Physics being at the beginning of the causal chain does not invalidate latter sections of the chain. If "A → B → C", pointing out "A → B" does not make "B → C" false.
A = physics
B = individual values and behavior (aka "algorithm")
Indeed so. But still how much luck is there between B and C? Some[0] argue there might be quite a lot of it, which we don't notice, overestimating causality. (Not to say it's bad—imagine constantly keeping in mind that our lives largely depend on chance.)
[0] Like author of Fooled by Randomness, an interesting book on the subject.
No - we blame the programmer/hardware manufacturer for screwing things up - which in the case of humans is the environment and genes.