Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions. I'm Maria Kanikova and.
I'm Nate Silver. We have a very risky business cluster of topics. I would say. We're going to talk about an asteroid that may or may not hit Earth in a few years. The odds are improving, our guess declining, which is good for us.
Then we will give you a little poker drama content with one of the world series of poker and one of its most famous faces, Phil Hellmuth, and his decision not to play the main event and what this means for poker strategy, skill, mental game and all of those fun things.
And then we'll talk about what I call rock paper scissors, but what snobs call roch You vote, Oh.
I love that you labeled me a snob, Nate immediately, So let's get going and start with existential risks, which we love talking about on this podcast. And yes, we have some going on in political events, but we are going to be talking about asteroids falling from the sky. So people who for people who weren't aware, a few weeks ago, there was a story that started getting bigger and bigger about an asteroid twenty twenty four y are
four that was on a potential collision course with the Earth. Now, when the story first came out, the chances that it was going to hit Earth were around two percent, and then end of last week they had gone up to over three percent, three point one percent, and that has changed over the weekend. But that's when we decided that this would be an interesting story to do, because NATE three point one percent is not zero.
I don't believe it was ever three percent. It was it was No, NASA was wrong. It can't have been. It can't have been three percent before an er point one oh point oh one seven percent now.
So yes, it's something is thinky. So let's talk about the nature of uncertainty.
Right, No, I because I build models, right and like so a model should change when you're toward the end of an event. Right at the end of an NBA basketball game, then a player missing a free throw has a large effect on you know, the New York next
win probability. Right, we are now in twenty twenty five, Although it feels like we're accelebrating different ways, this pertains to an asterid that would hit the Earth in twenty thirty two And it's a fairly linear system, right, It's like, you know, it's just kind of basic physics and gravity and things like that, right, So why did these calculations like change by because like three percent and oero point zero, let's just run it to zero point oh two percent.
They might sound similar, but that's like one two three, that's like four orders of magnitude, like one thousand x Like that seems to.
Me, like, so there is an answer to this. So I'm obviously not an astrophysicist, so I looked at what some astrophysicists said about this change. So NPR actually did a segment where they talked to Paul Chodas, who's uh the director of NASA's JPL Center for Aneo Studies, and when he when he looked at this, he said, you know, we actually often have these changes from one percent to three percent, you know, all over the place in just
a few weeks and sometimes days. Because the observations are incredibly challenging, and they do their best, but they're not actually looking at the asteroid, right, they're looking they're measuring the projections of the asteroid, and so every single night, what they're doing is estimating where the asteroid is, and then they're adjust to be able to make those observations.
And so it's incredibly difficult even for the strongest telescopes that we have because, you know, because it's an asteroid, and as he said, you know, they actually need to try to build in all of these projections, all of these assumptions to try to catch it before it moves out of range, because it will move out of range and then they won't be able to make any more
observations for the next few years. And so that's why this can change so much, not because there was something wrong with the model, but just because unlike a basketball team, where you know, you can see the team, you can see the players, everything is here. Because of the nature of the observations, it's actually incredibly difficult to get the data.
And they do their best, but then it's like with any data analysis, you know, when you are sampling and then you figure out, okay, no, we need to change the parameters. We need to change it again. And so they're doing their best in a very very limited window of time, which is the time when they can actually make these observations. It's a critical period, but.
They have seven years look I love astrophysicists. I had an uncle who worked at jp AL, that's the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. But like, I think it is the model, right, It's not like this asteroid hit a piece of debris and is now on a different trajectory, right, I know. I mean there's like kind of intrinsic model uncertainty, right.
One of the reasons that AI existential risk is hard to measures because it kind of is not actually a very well precedented situation, and various reasons, right, And like, in some ways, the fact that it's unprecedented, it might make you mix the variance higher and therefore increases the risk of doom in some ways. But like, I don't know, I think like physical uncertainty versus model uncertainty, I think is a slippery concept, but one that I don't know.
I don't know if we need like a big press panic where if it's necessarily even helpful to put a number on something, because again, three percent versus o two percent is a big change, right order of course.
Right, so three percent be worried point oh whatever percent, No, we're no longer worried at all. As poker players, we know that three percent equals worry.
Three percent is a fucking more than a two hour, right, that shit happens. Yeah.
Man, when it was that three I was like, oh shit, And then when it fell, I was like, Okay, We're good.
I mean my p doom from AI is higher than three percent. So like, I'm kind of feel like I'm living in a cloud anyway, right, And this is like not an existential risk, is it? No?
No, So this particular, this particular asteroid was what is called a city killer category. So that is basically, if it falls over city, right, if it falls over New York, new York's gone. But if it falls you know, somewhere in the ocean. You know, if it falls somewhere in Siberia, which is where the last asteroid that was approximately the size fell, you're relatively fine. Of course, there's going to
be a lot of impact. And it is projected that if this asteroid had actually hit the Earth, it would be more than five hundred times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. So it depends on where it is. But this is not a dinosaur level asteroid that's going to you know, wipe out seventy five percent.
There's a lot of Siberia, Maria. There's a lot more Siberia than New York. And you know what is it covered by oceans? So bad news for the whales, right, But like.
But even when it was at its worst, scientists were saying, you know, like even if it's headed you know, obviously it would be horrific if it were headed for New York or any major city, but they would know with enough lead time that if otherwise they couldn't change the trajectory, which they probably could, by the way, So assuming they were completely unsuccessful in the asteroid were actually going to hit let's just say New York, they would have enough
lead time where they'd be able to evacuate everyone. Obviously still not ideal, but no one, you know, presumably presumably it would be under control. But let's let's talk a little bit just in general, you know, how how we should think about these sorts of things. Obviously it does matter when we're talking about small probabilities of events with very high potential costs. You know, it's an interesting it's an interesting just lens to try to figure out, Okay,
how do we evaluate these risks? And we've talked about this before with p doom with E with AI, and I think that now it's incredibly important for people to understand how to look at these small probabilities because we have a lot of them. Right, There's a lot of uncertainty, and there are a lot of things in the news, not just with AI and asteroids, where it's important to understand these numbers. So how do we look at it and say, Okay, you know, why are we worried about
three percent? Why aren't we worried about point oh two percent? Right? Like, what are the thresholds? How do you think about it? And kind of how should we think about it when we have an outsized potential impact despite a small chance of something happening.
Yeah, I mean maybe you can calculate an expected value terms of course, I'd say that as a poker player kind of the theme of the show. Absolutely, Let's say that there is a five percent chance that if it hits, it wipes out a metro region of like ten million people. Multiply that by like three percent. What's the math here? Let me let me bring up the old trustee Google calculator.
Let's do it.
It's three hundred thousand people, right, But that assumes the astro would always kill ten mini people. Let's say they's just an zero point five percent chance of that. Sorry, I'm actually not very good at using a calculator, apparently.
Things that we learn on the Risky Business podcast date. I had no idea that calculators were not a strength of yours.
I do you want to know how many browser windows I have opened? Maria? No, No, I probably don't.
I'd probably have a heart attack in the middle of tay.
Okay, So that is, like, that's an expected value loss of fifteen thousand people. Now, okay, we can like displace them, we can send some rockets up there, we can nuke the asteroid. Might not be a good idea, but who knows, right, But like that seems actually fairly rational that like a fifteen thousand person expected displacement let's call it event, is worth planning for. Right, Yeah, that's now if you reduced by four then whatever, you know, whatever, whatever, Like not
that I don't care about it, like fifteen people. Like not that I don't care about fifteen people, but like we kind of brush aside risks like that.
All the all the time. Yeah, absolutely, I think that's actually that's an interesting way of looking at it. And I think that that makes sense. And by the way, that is the way that a lot of you know, insurance companies, et cetera look at things, right, And we've talked about like the cost of a human life, right, what's the risk premium you need to take on to take on risky jobs. So this, this type of calculation where you're looking at lives is actually one that a
lot of industries, a lot of industries look at. Fifteen thousand is huge. And now imagine this is just the life calculation. If we're doing a full expected value calculation, we'd also have to look at, you know, the loss of property, loss of infrastructure. Let's assume that some major major things are actually taken off the grid, right, like what is the overall cost? And now we are talking not just human lives, but there's a huge economic cost
as well. So it becomes very complicated and you realize, okay, yeah, we should probably be worried about something like that and about the risk of something like that happening. And that's when you realize that, you know, small numbers get multiplied out right, and they become much the impact becomes much larger when it's an event like this.
It's also kind of very visible. I'd guess you'd say, you know what I mean, like like it's going to slowly approach the Earth, and you know, I mean like which you know, Usually these more legible, tangible risks are actually things that society is better than dealing with. And it's very linear, right, Whereas, like if you read some scary AI scenarios, there might be some morning signs of AI being more becoming more adversarial or smarter or whatever else.
But it could just be that AI hatches a very very well kept secret plan to like destroy its human masters, right, you know, and that happens very efficiently quote unquote and very quickly, or a nuclear war. I mean, I remember it was my fortieth birthday on January thirteenth, nineteen to god, I'm dumb twenty eighteen. Right when the alert came out, I.
Was like, wait, wait, you did not try forty and nineteen something, or you look great twenty eighteen?
Is that right? Yeah? I'm showing my age. When the alert came out saying, oh, this is not a drill. There is a nuclear ICBM inbound toward Hawaii. I'm like, you know, I'm not sure if I feel greater. I have my birthday party on this day. It turned out to be a false alarm again, right, but like, but this is something we would have time to adjust to. Argument that makes it kind of better to actually moditor these situations.
I think that's Actually that's a really crucial point when
we're talking about risk. It's much easier for the human mind to latch onto something that's tangible and that's easy to observe, as opposed to something that's kind of more uncertain, that can be kind of more under the radar, and those risks are often much more dangerous, but it's much more difficult to convince people that it's dangerous because it's not something that you can easily look and uh and quantify and say oh uh huh, yep, we see that
it has gotten gone from this to this. An interesting example of this just you know, going going a little bit back in time, you know, when you're talking about climate change versus the ozone layer, right when when it was a hole in the ozone layer that shit, people banded together and we're like, oh my god, hole in the ozone layer. There was great collective action and like we did it right, Like we actually addressed that really quickly because it's you know, hole in the ozone layer.
You can see it. It's dramatic. It's kind of like an asteroid. You're like, oh, oh, I don't want a hole in my ozone layer. Whatever the world that means. So it actually kind of demonstrates I think that's an easy way of demonstrating how like something that's dramatic and easy to observe can be much easier to communicate the risks than something that is much more difficult to visualize to quantify, and that is more nuanced and has more factors at play.
You know what I cover myself with about the AI stuff. Right, So if AI accelerates to general intelligence, super intelligence produces much more rapid economic growth and like displaces people from useful work. Probably really good for live poker, right, all of a sudden, All of a sudden, you have people are really rich and they have a shit at of time on their hands. Right, it's fucking I'm going to do some great apocalyptic poker games. Maria.
Well, on that note, Nate, do you want to take a break from the apocalypse and actually talk about some pre apocalyptic poker?
Yes, Maria.
After a quick break.
We're going to.
The World Series of Poker is still a ways away, right, it starts at the end of May. But we have had some news in the last few weeks, and especially in the last week. So the schedule was released, as it always is around this time of year, and Nate not everyone liked the schedule. No.
Phil Hellmuth one of the most accomplished poker players in world history. He has how many World Series voices?
I hil nineteen?
Right, I am reliably informed by one of our wonderful producers that it's actually seventeen bracelets. WHOA and I.
Had guessed nineteen. So Phil Hellmuth should be thrilled when listening to our podcast that I overestimated his bracelets by two, not one, but two, Phil, You know all time bracelet holding great.
Will he reach twenty No, oh my god. I think he's a favorite to reach twenty, you know. And he's a somewhat polarizing figure. He's very I don't know, Braddy, He's the thing, the poker bratt. He once threatened to burn the effing plays down because of I know, was it bad lucker like a flow ruling? He disagreed with I forget which exactly. He has a heart of gold, some would say, but that doesn't come through in the demeanor. But one thing Phil really loves is the World chairce
Poker in general, in particular the Main Event. He won the Main Event in nineteen eighty nine, one of the first kind of young whipper snapping kids to do. So you know his style. He plays kind of a small ball style. Right. So small ball means in some sense, playing smaller pots. It's also tactical. It's a patient approach. You're letting other people make mistakes, right, But it's meant to minimize variance, to prioritize long term survival in the tournament.
Sometimes Nate sometimes he plays a small ball style. Phil Helmeth likes to mix it up, but please continue.
Yeah, but in general, this is an event that you played to his strengths.
Right.
There are a lot of amateurs in the event, and those amateurs give off reads, which Phil is I'm not sure you'd call him. I mean, he's very good at picking up on like physical reads. He calls it like white magic. Right. His style is a little bit more to engage in table banter. That works to his advantage. He's played out a lot of round where you're needling people, you see how they react and you're trying to like, so probably more verbal than physical tales, although I'm sure
he's actually excellent at the fyscal tales stuff too. Kind of a savant actually, and people can't understand why he's been so successful display all these seconds flaws. Right, However, I guess I guess he's running out of white magic in the tank because Phil said he's not going to play the main event because it's too long, which it's a long tournament.
So let's let's talk a little bit. So the main event the World's Years of Poker Main Event, single biggest poker tournament of the year, right, and I think everyone would agree.
Like this is the single most life far, there's no other. I mean, the win ten k is good, but like this is by far, this is the by far, the best tournament, biggest.
Poker event of the year. And you know, it's a bucket list item for a lot of people, you know, lifetime dream to play in the main event. It's a ten thousand dollars buy in, and it has a unique structure that no other tournament has, which is two hour long levels. So that means that it's an incredibly it's a slow structure where you start very deep and people, you know, people love this and the person who wins becomes the world champion, right the champion of the world,
and holds that title for one year. And it was you know, it's a really really big deal to play, and a lot of people just you know, they save up and just want their whole lives to play this event. And obviously to go deep in it to cash, to make you know, make a deep run, to make the
final table to win is just absolutely the dream. And this is the event that Phil Hellmuth has always traditionally been the most excited about, and he always comes in with a huge entrance as someone who has been playing during his entrances. I actually am hoping that there will not be a Phil Hellmuth entrance this year because this really disrupts everything.
Right.
He likes to come in with music and dancers and he dresses up as characters. Anyway, he really you know, hams it up to the greatest extent possible for the for the main event. And now he says, I Am not going to play because I am too old, and the structure is such that we just do not have enough of a break. I'm exhausted, you know, if this should not be happening. This is not fair. Makes it to an endurance contest rather than a skilled contest, and that is not fair. So I'm not going to play.
That's the essence of the Phil Hellmuth rant against the main event this year. And I have thoughts. I'm sure you have thoughts, Nate. Before we get into our thoughts, what are the odds that Phil Hellmuth actually will miss the main event? I put those at not zero, but like less than one percent.
He's going to play less than one percent. Yeah, it's gonna like with their asteroids, Maria, a little little overconfident.
I'm very overconfident with this one.
I would say there's a I don't know. I mean, he said he wasn't going to play, right, I would Nate, how many times has Phil seed and feel to play the main event? At minus one fifty?
Okay, so you still think he's going to play. That's good.
I mean you're at one percent. I think you for ninety nine percent. You kind of fucked up, mikel I. I know I'm trying to anchor to you a little bit. I think we clearly have some type of bet here, We will.
We can think about some type of bet here. But I just do not believe that Phil Hellmuth will skip the main event. It's just too much of a thing for him. And I think that he did this to draw attention to some important points, also to draw attention to himself. And I do, I actually do agree that a lot of structures these days do make it very
difficult to play your best game. You know, there should be changes made, Like I think all tournaments I completely agree with this, should have like a twelve hour period between playing, right from when you bag your chips to when you have to sit back down. It is totally not okay to bag your chips at three am and to have to restart at eleven, which happens all the time, so that I agree with. I'm assuming you agree with that as well.
Yeah, well, I mean do the well, I think I agree with the provisional mentioned later, right, But yeah, let's say you bag your chips at three and then you have to get back at eleven, right, so it's eight hours. But like, let's be honest, it's gonna take half an hour each way to get there and back. It's an hour, right, probably takes a little while to wind down. Right, You're
gonna have whatever you tea or whiskey or whatever you have. Right, you have to eat breakfast in the morning if you're doing any studying at all, Right, if you're trying to get a few steps in or a little quick workout or something like that. And then if you're like me or you Maria, then you probably also have some non poker work that you also have to do, even if it's just kind of running emails, postponing things because you
made a deep run. So yeah, you wind up kind of either sleeping no more than five hours or not eating or not exercising, which can take a toll over the course of the day. Right, So it's yeah, it's it's it's it's a challenge. Now, what I would say is that this is a simulation of life in certain ways, and when I'm covering an election or other busy projects or things like that. Right, But you don't necessarily get Davis. I mean, this is kind of how real world decision
making often works. And because it's like a unique event. Yeah, and look, by the way, I don't think the one thing that I kind of like disagree with is like, and I'm forty seven pil sixty, right, maybe the notion that like that age necessarily all that much a factor. As you get more experienced in poker, I think actually things get easier, so you have like less mental strain.
That was a point before about like I'm not so sympathetical like saying, yeah, you're physically more tired when you get older, but like a lot more poker in life experience thing with stress, one would hope. Right, Whereas the first time you play the main event, then it seems super high if you're not used to playing ten thousand dollars tournaments, right, it seems it's very intimidating and things like that.
Yeah, totally a great and So for the record, while I think that in general, I think that poker structures have gotten to the point where like we end days way too late and restart too early, and there should just be some sort of norm about that. So that aside, I actually think the main event doesn't have this problem. Usually the main event, you're not bagging up chipset three
in the morning. Usually it happened to me once, but usually in the main event that does not happen, and I actually think that the main event structure should not be changed. So i'm i'm, I agree that this is a unique event and when people you know, maybe you can add one additional rest day somewhere deep in there. I don't know, but that would be the only thing that I would potentially look at. Maybe don't have a dinner break some days, right, so that you can end earlier.
But what I most fundamentally disagree with what Phil said is he said that it changes it from a skill game to an endurance contest. I think that the endurance is actually part of the mental game that is actually a skill that is absolutely part of the skill of
life and of playing poker. And as you know, like I've talked a lot about the fact that I think mental game is one of the most important things and one of the things that truly sets the elite players apart, right, and your ability to actually figure out how to deal with this, to deal with the stress, deal with like not sleeping enough, deal with all of this, and actually come in with a good mindset and be able to
still make good decisions. Sure, decision quality deteriorates as you get more tired, but it does for everyone, and that is a skill that's not you know, that is actually something that you can also work on, and that is also an important part of success, both in poker and in life. So that's where I actually I fundamentally disagree with Phil, Like it's a skill to get through these and it should be hard to be the world champion.
It should actually be really really hard. This should be marathons are hard.
To give one point of a couple points of context. And by the way, and by the part of the skill is actually learning how to budget your mental bandwidth, right, absolutely, Like one thing I'll do sometimes is like we do both of this, I think is like right down every hand I played to review maybe with my coach, made on my own later, right, And that's great in some ways,
it kind of forces you to be very attentive. It also means you lack all that downtime, right, So sometimes I get to a point where it's like, Okay, I just want to play in flow now, right, I want to play in flow and focus instead on things like physical reads or thinking in it, you know, because now I'm at a point where the stakes are high enough where it's worth paying attention constantly and like and this
is just a distraction to the point contents. So, for one thing, as the event gets bigger every year, it's been over ten thousand players the last two years, it does get longer and longer. Right, It just takes longer to eliminate all but one player when you have more players in the tournament. There's no kind of like easy
way around that, so you know. But also they've also made adjustments where like there are now events going on simultaneously all the way to like the very end of the World Series of Poker, Right, So if you're gonna play the main I don't think you have to assume that you're gonna go to like the second week of the event, right, But what you should do, I strongly, strongly recommend, right is a siner you're gonna make it through like day five, right, if you don't make it
today five, and odds are strongly against you making it today five. There are lots of other, often very juicy World Series tournaments where people are a little tilty. Those are often pretty good events. So block out a week for it or don't play, because the mentality we're like, oh, if I make day three, I'm going to have to reschedule my expensive flight and cancel all these meetings and
piss off my significant other. Like that's that I think actually is very taxing, and you'll kind of commit suicide.
You'll find out, No, it's not good once again for your mental game. That is not a good way of doing it. And I think that you make your point about day five, I think is a good balance. I never play a tournament at all if I can't make the final table, right like I actually, but this is a little bit different for the main event. So I'm not saying if you make the final table of the main event, your boss will understand, I hope, or you will actually have enough money to quit your job, so
don't worry about it. But everything else, I always look at the schedule, and I never ever will play an event if I have a conflict and you cannot go into it with the mentality of, oh, well, it's incredibly
unlikely that I'm going to go that far. It's incredibly unlikely that I'm going to make the final table, because that, you know, that's self defeating, because you want to put yourself in the mind frame of course I'm going to win, right, even though you know that that's not likely at all, but you still need to be there mentally, and you need to plan for it because you do not want to be taking the time to rearrange your flight, to
change your hotel reservations to do this. To do that, you want your brain to have to focus on the important things and not to distract it too much, because yes, this is exhausting, Yes it will take a lot out of you. So use those precious mental resources for the good stuff. And I think this is true of all life decisions. Right, plan in advance so that you free up the mental bandwidth for the important things bottom line,
you know. I think Phil Hellmuth has made a good point about structures broadly speaking, I think that it's completely misapplied when it comes to the main event, and I think that his point about what is and is not a scale is just flat out wrong.
Yeah, I mean, look, people propose cutting the tournament to ninety minutes, but like I mean, it is, like I mean, you have a whole different things that happen, you know, because it's so slow the structure when you get to the bubble, when the last player is eliminated before the payout,
which I guess is like fifteen thousand dollars now or whatever. Right, Like people have like really big stacks, right, you never get at any other tournament, and like, you know, there are some people that kind of specialize in the main event.
I have exactly one really deep run and no other cashes than like eight tries or something, right, So I don't know which category I fall into, but like, but like getting deep in a deep stack tournament is a very cool thing, and you know, self evaned buy that. I'm mean, look at the fucking scoreboard. Ten thousand people are entering this tournament. It's insane and not only paying
ten thousand dollars. But like, I'm sure people are busy lives, and they're saying, I'm willing to take like two weeks of my time to blow up my schedule to play this event because I love it so much. And so don't don't fix what isn't.
Broken, Nate, Will you be playing the main event this year?
Certainly? Think so? Yeah, this is a a The year after the election is a year where I can do a relatively large quantity of World Series of Poker.
All right, So here's to both of us having exhaustion problems because we are running so deep in the main event.
Absolutely, let's take a quick break and go from poker to rock paper scissors.
Hey, when is the first time you ever played rock paper scissors? Do you remember or at least when you found out it was a thing?
I felt like I've always I felt like I was innately born with that knowledge.
Yeah, right, that's I think that's how we all feel. It is something that is pretty universal. So I I was born in the Soviet Union, and I my first rock paper scissors experience was in Russian, right, which is also called rock paper scissors. And it's a game that I think kids play all over the world, and it's a really fun way of looking at game theory. So on the show we talk about the prisoners still on my gun. You know, it's a very kind of that's
a very common game theoretical thing. But rock paper scissors is a very different type of game. It's a game of cyclic dominance, right, So that means that there are multiple equilibria and they cycle, and so there's actually no strategy that is a dominant strategy. There's no stable strategy to this game. Because for people, if anyone listening to
this show has not played rock, paper scissors. Right, You can throw out three things rock, paper, or scissors, and you should theoretically do so with one third probability one third frequency for each one, because rock is beaten by paper, right, but beats scissors. Paper beats rock, but is beaten by scissors, and scissors beats paper but is beaten by rock.
And Russia, it's also rock. It's not like potato.
No, it's not potato.
It's not potato potatosia.
It's also it's a it's also rock paper scissors or in Russian kimanomaga, So that actually goes, uh, rock scissors, paper is how you say it in Russian. That's the that's the order. But yes, it's a really interesting game theoretical challenge because you know, how like, how do you play right? What's your optimal strategy if they're really if there's if there is this sort of cyclic equilibrium and
not a dominant strategy, How do you randomize? How do you actually make sure you're playing with the correct frequencies? And these are things that we think about a lot in poker. How do you try to exploit your opponent because nobody randomizes correctly? And they're actually competitions, right, they are world competitions of rock paper scissors or row shambo, as the World Federation calls it, where where there are people.
Who are really really good at it.
How do you become good at rock paper scissors? How do you actually become a world champion at something like this where the game theory equilibrium is as it is now?
They're like computers that plague in humans and win like the humans. Like, only are you supposed to win one third of the time if you just guess at random? Right, And like the humans only win like twenty five percent of the time, which is like really really bad. You must to be trying to be that bad. I mean, yeah, look, randomization is hard. Do you randomize when you play poker?
I do randomize sometimes, but not always, just to be perfectly honest. So I'm not the person who always randomizes, right. There are people who like every decision like they'll, you know, flip a they'll you know, toss their chip, look at the clock, do something like that. I don't do it always, but in some close spots I will randomize.
I've been more into the randomization lately, I think, although I don't treat it as deterministically. I treat it as like an input. You know what I mean?
Yep, Oh, I know exactly what you mean, Nate. For listeners of the show who've been listeners since the beginning, we remember a segment where Nate had a list and he was going to randomize, and he didn't like what he randomized too, so then he changed his mind. And I tried to make the point that the point of randomization is you have to do what the random what the randomizer told you to do. So, yes, Nate, we know that you only take it as as one point of input.
No, it's a I mean, look if if I roll a number, a high number, that says, oh, this is chance a time when I should bluff, right, But then I get a bad vibe from the player I was planning on bluffing. Something about the way she or he puts their chips in feels strong like that's a good job, right, because like what game theory, this is the whole principle of like why you want to randomize? Right? In game theory, it's a mixed strategy, meaning you're indifferent between rock, paper
and scissors. Therefore you should make each throw one third at the time, right, they all have the same exact expected value. If that's true, then like tiny, tiny small things matter, right, whatever slight vibe you get nless, you actually have negative value on your tells, right, unless you're actually like worse when you have like a vibe or a game flow situation. So if you're indifferent, a doesn't matter.
But it doust been to that very small things lead you to like making the same decision over and over and over again.
Yeah, for sure. So I think that the this actually gets to my other point of how are their champions? Right, And it's the same reason why computers can beat humans at rock paper scissors, which is that randomization is hard, right, And random is hard, and when you're playing a game of rock paper scissors, especially in a competitive setting, you don't get to actually have a randomizer with you.
Right.
It's not like you get to be holding a phone with a random number generator and you know that like one to thirty three I throw rock, right, Like, you don't get to do that, right, It's all in your brain. And it's really really really difficult to randomize correctly and actually do one third one third one third, and to do it in not in a predictable right, I can totally randomize to do to one thirds if I do
rock pay per scissors, rock pay per scissors. But then Nate, if you're playing against me, you're gonna crush me, right because I'm it's not random. Yes it's one third, but it's in a predictable pattern. So you have to be
doing both of these things. And so I think that the people who are really good at rock paper scissors are the ones who actually can perceive your deviations, right, who are very who are good and can do that pattern recognition and figure out how you are randomizing incorrectly and putting randomizing in quotes because it's not actually randomizing, right, Because if.
You play the mixed strategy, the other thing is you can't lose and you can't win, right. Someone can play rock every time and you can say, well, I want to be game theory optimal, so I'm gonna mix. Right, even against the most particular player in the world, you'll only win one third, tie one third, and lose one third.
And so you have to like be willing to exploit people in order to you know, at the risk of being a splayed to yourself it's a perfect illustration of the basic concept in poker strategy.
Absolutely so just a funny aside. I went on Twitter this morning and saw that one of the poker players in my orbit, Neil Ferrell are otherwise known as Feraldo, had tweeted about rock paper scissors. It was very funny and a very funny illustration. At this point, he says, tap my son, rock paper scissors, and now it's the deciding factor for him tidying up his toys or going to bed. At bedtime, he flat out refuses to ever
throw rock. However, there are going to be some tough lessons learned about balanced rangers in the Fareale Household over the next year. So that, I mean, that's very funny. Right, you have a little kid who sort of understands the game, but for some reason doesn't like rock and refuses to do that. So as a parent, it becomes incredibly easy to just get your kid to do whatever you want.
But you know, I actually like it is really interesting to look at how kids' brains work about the work when it comes to this, because that's what you know, that's what our human brains do as well, right, we are not random, even though we think we are, we can't randomize well and recognizing patterns and trying to like read your opponents. Think that's a huge part of the game and why it's so interesting and why it's such an interesting model for human behavior.
I don't have kids to you unless you've been hiding some children like Elon or you know, half the population has apparently.
Yeah, apparently, I feel like, but I'm not one of them.
Also, a little randomizing things can like avoid these super annoying decisions about I should we get Italian food or Thai food or whatever else. Right, if you're in a relationship and trying to negotiate something, your two kids are disagreeing on something, randomize right. Yeah, it probably doesn't matter, but that at least kind of creates an opportunity for
resolving an animportant thing. Yes, or indifferent things. It can be you can be indifferent between two important options because they're both equally good or bad.
But yeah, exactly so. I think Rock Paper Scissors is a beautiful illustration of the importance of randomization and the difficulty of randomization.
We should probably do a throw. Okay, let's do a throw. Okay, ready, yeah, one, two.
Three, I don't see what you have. I have paper scissors. Nay, you win the championship of Rock paper Scissors for our show. What did we say about gloating? What did we say about congrats?
Fist trophy?
Take it down, HIV and we will see you next time for the rematch of the Rochambeau championshefs on Risky Business. Let us know what you think of the show. Reach out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot fm. And by the way, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber, we have some bonus content for you. We'll be answering a listener question each week that's coming up right after the credits.
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Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kannakova.
And by me Nate Silver. The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isabel Carter. Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Sally Helm is our editor and Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruguer.
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