A lovely article, but I take slight umbrage at poker as a metaphor for life. It is exactly the opposite.
Poker has fixed rules and finite outcomes with knowable probabilities. It is a zero sum game where to win someone has to lose.
Neither of these is an accurate reflection of life except for that of the sociopath and the scoundrel.
Life is perfectly complex, and our inability to capture it in probabilities is what creates opportunity and everything that is worthwhile. A life that has been so constrained as a poker game is a prison.
The behaviors in poker should not be lauded. They are manipulations and discreditable. They are also inevitable in a zero sum game. In a pure poker game, winning and losing would become as probability as a roulette wheel. That is why bad behavior - lying, misrepresentation, and loutishness - become virtues: there is no other escape, you have to “cheat” to win.
In real life, none of that should be necessary. It is only so because those with power attempt to constrain the rules to the point where there is either no fair way to win or they always win (clientism, oligarchy and the mob).
To paraphrase Morgan Housel, your personal experiences make up maybe 0.00000001% of what's happened in the world, but maybe 80% of how you think the world works.
I love that feature image. In university we did a whole module on things that are not used as intended, or as designed. Humans normally take the path of least resistance whether that’s work, money or social life.
I think this piece is beautiful in its compassion for the human experience. It is not likely that we can know what triggers behaviour in others. It’s hard enough mining the reasons for our own behaviour, though this is a crucial aspect of awakening to ourselves and well worth the work it takes to examine them. But maybe it is enough to know that there are reasons people behave the way they do. Note I do not say there are reasons people “are the way they are” because each one of us, in our most foundational essence, is perfect and completely deserving of love. Could we move past needing to understand why a personality shows up in a certain way and simply go right to the understanding that the personality is a temporary role being played out by a magnificent being?
Just because most serial killers were abused as children does not mean that most people who were abused as children go on to become serial killers. What you are describing here is the phenomenon by which a narrative can be attached to any behavior to make it make sense. But is the narrative real?
Maybe your boss is so control because he's fearful, or maybe he's fearful and likes control. Maybe he is really just doing it because he's fearful. But then did he chose to be controlling as opposed to being a likeable leader?
You can stop the narrative at "my boss is controlling so he's fearful" or you can blast into the infinite looking at counterfactuals and tying together the pieces of your boss' life story. Is this information real? Does it matter? I don't know. Your own goals probably dictate the answer.
Anyone who says “I’ll never understand why someone would ____________” simply can’t be bothered to gather the proper context that would lead inevitably to understanding.
One's genetic endowment plays a large, but largely indecipherable role in what we are and how we act. We do not know the other person's genome, and even if we did, we would not know how to read 99% of it. Nor do we know how a genome interacts with an environment. Nicholas Eply's book Mind wise makes a strong argument for how bad we are at reading others' minds. ((He also specifies under what circumstances we can best understand them, which probably chimes well with your account) . And your point that other people's behaviour would make more sense if we had a fulsome understanding of where they come from, is well taken! (Hope my comments aren't based on misreading you!)
Definitely agree though that it’s never that people’s behavior ever “makes no sense.”
But it begs the question of how do we know which explanations are correct and how much they explain. I could of course explain everything in Freudian conflicts, or via astrology patterns, and they would be internally coherent and comprehensive…
The assertion that all behaviour makes sense with sufficient information (even just internally to the mental state of the decision-maker) is provably false. Most human decisions are based on false convictions (internal assertions of knowledge) which violate the principle of sufficient reason and therefore the law of non-contradiction, which is the formal definition of non-sense.
This idea taken seriously leads to the dissolution of praise and blame.
That person you admire (which could very well be yourself) is not as worthy of praise as you once thought, nor is that person you hate (which could also very well be yourself) worthy of blame. Pride and vanity, as well as wrath and hatred, dissolve.
Doesn’t mean we stop encouraging helpful behaviour and discouraging harmful behaviour. Interesting to think about though, glad you’ve been thinking about this.
This is where stoicism is useful. Generally you do better when you underreact to the world around you, especially when trying to understand the behavior of others.
A lovely article, but I take slight umbrage at poker as a metaphor for life. It is exactly the opposite.
Poker has fixed rules and finite outcomes with knowable probabilities. It is a zero sum game where to win someone has to lose.
Neither of these is an accurate reflection of life except for that of the sociopath and the scoundrel.
Life is perfectly complex, and our inability to capture it in probabilities is what creates opportunity and everything that is worthwhile. A life that has been so constrained as a poker game is a prison.
The behaviors in poker should not be lauded. They are manipulations and discreditable. They are also inevitable in a zero sum game. In a pure poker game, winning and losing would become as probability as a roulette wheel. That is why bad behavior - lying, misrepresentation, and loutishness - become virtues: there is no other escape, you have to “cheat” to win.
In real life, none of that should be necessary. It is only so because those with power attempt to constrain the rules to the point where there is either no fair way to win or they always win (clientism, oligarchy and the mob).
Life is beautiful and complex and not poker.
To paraphrase Morgan Housel, your personal experiences make up maybe 0.00000001% of what's happened in the world, but maybe 80% of how you think the world works.
I love that feature image. In university we did a whole module on things that are not used as intended, or as designed. Humans normally take the path of least resistance whether that’s work, money or social life.
I think this piece is beautiful in its compassion for the human experience. It is not likely that we can know what triggers behaviour in others. It’s hard enough mining the reasons for our own behaviour, though this is a crucial aspect of awakening to ourselves and well worth the work it takes to examine them. But maybe it is enough to know that there are reasons people behave the way they do. Note I do not say there are reasons people “are the way they are” because each one of us, in our most foundational essence, is perfect and completely deserving of love. Could we move past needing to understand why a personality shows up in a certain way and simply go right to the understanding that the personality is a temporary role being played out by a magnificent being?
Just because most serial killers were abused as children does not mean that most people who were abused as children go on to become serial killers. What you are describing here is the phenomenon by which a narrative can be attached to any behavior to make it make sense. But is the narrative real?
Maybe your boss is so control because he's fearful, or maybe he's fearful and likes control. Maybe he is really just doing it because he's fearful. But then did he chose to be controlling as opposed to being a likeable leader?
You can stop the narrative at "my boss is controlling so he's fearful" or you can blast into the infinite looking at counterfactuals and tying together the pieces of your boss' life story. Is this information real? Does it matter? I don't know. Your own goals probably dictate the answer.
yeah ofc, we are not without agency, but there's directionally correct indicators - def not perfect
The old quote: “You can't really understand another person's experience until you've walked a mile in their shoes.”
Or, “Before you judge a man, walk a mile in their shoes. Because then you are a mile away. And you have their shoes”
Thanks. I needed this today.
We are all contextual snowballs.
Anyone who says “I’ll never understand why someone would ____________” simply can’t be bothered to gather the proper context that would lead inevitably to understanding.
This is great stuff, Adam! I love all the movie references!!
One's genetic endowment plays a large, but largely indecipherable role in what we are and how we act. We do not know the other person's genome, and even if we did, we would not know how to read 99% of it. Nor do we know how a genome interacts with an environment. Nicholas Eply's book Mind wise makes a strong argument for how bad we are at reading others' minds. ((He also specifies under what circumstances we can best understand them, which probably chimes well with your account) . And your point that other people's behaviour would make more sense if we had a fulsome understanding of where they come from, is well taken! (Hope my comments aren't based on misreading you!)
Definitely agree though that it’s never that people’s behavior ever “makes no sense.”
But it begs the question of how do we know which explanations are correct and how much they explain. I could of course explain everything in Freudian conflicts, or via astrology patterns, and they would be internally coherent and comprehensive…
The assertion that all behaviour makes sense with sufficient information (even just internally to the mental state of the decision-maker) is provably false. Most human decisions are based on false convictions (internal assertions of knowledge) which violate the principle of sufficient reason and therefore the law of non-contradiction, which is the formal definition of non-sense.
It's imperfect ofc but directionally correct, and that's good enough
This idea taken seriously leads to the dissolution of praise and blame.
That person you admire (which could very well be yourself) is not as worthy of praise as you once thought, nor is that person you hate (which could also very well be yourself) worthy of blame. Pride and vanity, as well as wrath and hatred, dissolve.
Doesn’t mean we stop encouraging helpful behaviour and discouraging harmful behaviour. Interesting to think about though, glad you’ve been thinking about this.
Really appreciated this. Best random read Substack has put across my feed. Great job!
This is where stoicism is useful. Generally you do better when you underreact to the world around you, especially when trying to understand the behavior of others.