June 24, 2025 • 43 mins
Can game theory be used to win a world cup? Can you pay the way out of political corruption? And are there winning strategies in life we don't use because we're too embarrassed?
We're sharing this special episode of Cautionary Tales in which Nate and Maria make an appearance to answer listener questions with CT host Tim Harford.
For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hey everybody, Nate here, I'm dropping into your feed on
a Tuesday because Marie and I were recently guests on
Cautionary Tales. Normally, on that show, economist Tim Harford tells
us stories of real world mistakes, things like the Birmingham
Lab League and the Tenrife air disaster, and what lessons
we can learn from them. When Marie and I appeared,
Tim had us answer questions from Cautionary Tales and Risky
(00:46):
Business listeners. They're smart, they're fun, and we're excited to
be sharing the full episode with you today. Hope you
enjoy and be sure to check out the rist of
Cautionary Tales wherever you're listening to this.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Cautionary Questions. I
team up with clever people to answer you clever questions,
and this time I'm joined by Nate Silver and Maria Konnikova.
They are the hosts of the Risky Business podcast and
they are here to answer questions from both sets of listeners.
Nate is a political analyst. He's the author of On
(01:24):
the Edge, and Maria is the best selling author of
the Biggest Bluff. How I Learned to Pay attention master
myself and win both fantastic books. Both Nate and Maria
are also journalists, and they are both high stakes poker players.
I'm a journalist too and an undercover economist, and I'm
not much of a poker player. But between us, we
(01:45):
should have some good answers for all of the smart
questions that you've been sending in. We will be tackling
smartphones in schools, tariffs, and how to use game theory
to win at sports. Nate, Maria, welcome to Cautionary Tales.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Thank you, Tom, Thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Tom.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Well, should it be cautionary business or risky tales, risky
risky cars, risky cassion. That's good. You've been po casting
for how long?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
About a year?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
About a year? Yeah, we're coming up on the World
Series of Poker begins in every May, and so yeah,
we launched it just about a year ago. When we're
coming up in our second World Series season, excellent, When
Nate and I.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Are both at the final table of the main event,
that'll be really great for our Risky Business podcast audience growth.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Would you be podcasting from the World Series if you're
on the final table?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Not at the final table? Since there are no phones allowed, but.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
We'll find a way.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I mean, we do have these long days right where
we both have real jobs and then maybe you'll do
several hours of real work quote unquote, and then play
poker for twelve hours and then it's fine your two
am Mexican food hangout or something. But they are long days.
We do not get vacation when we're in Vegas.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Basically we do not. Right enough poker chat, let us
get into the virtual postbag. After we listened to the
theme music for Cautionary Tales. I am here with Nate
(03:32):
Silver and Maria Konikova, and here is a good question
to start with from listener Alex. Alex asks, have any
personal experiences or academic theories really shaped your decision making.
Let me put this one to Nate first, and I'd
love to hear what both of you think.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I would say, my experience with risk taking and decision
making is very hands on for the most part. Right
when I was a kid, we would play Fantasy Baseball
and have little NFL betting pools and things like that. Obviously,
poker there's good instructional material, but you know, most people
are ultimately kind of largely self taught, you know, in
my book On the Edge. Then game theory plays a
(04:13):
really large role, and game theory plays a very large
role in poker. There are not computer programs called solvers
that literally have solved the Nash equilibrium for poker. If
you've seen a beautiful mind. A lot of things in
life is like what's the game theory equilibrium of, Like
what traffic patterns look like in New York, or how
often you should eat one type of cuisine versus another,
or any type of competitive situation where there are lots
(04:35):
of optionality. I'd say game theory is kind of the
most important variable there.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And game theory, we should say, is really the use
of mathematical equations to model strategic into actions. So a
very simple example of game theory is the game of
rock paper scissors. Now, if I play rock, you're going
to play paper and beat me. If I play paper,
you're going to play scissors and beat me. And so
(05:01):
game theory says, oh, you have to randomize, you have
to have a one third chance of playing each strategy.
I mean, that's kind of obvious. Game theory can be
used to model much more complex situations, including famously, because
it inspired one of the creators of game theory poker.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, I would second Nate on game theory. It was
one of the pinnacles of my academic work. And I'd
also say the psychological theories of Danny Conneman have been
hugely influential in how I think about decision making. He
was an absolutely brilliant man who really unearthed a lot
of the ways that our brains misprocess. I don't think
(05:42):
that's a word, but I'm going to make it one
misprocess information and the biases and heuristics that we're up against.
And it's incredibly powerful because even if you know that
those biases and heuristics exist in theory, in practice, you
still exhibit them. Right, You have the game theory kind
of that mathematical side, and then the psychological side of
(06:03):
Cooman and Poker, in my mind, is the life experience
that has cemented these more than anything else else in
my brain and has made me internalize how this actually
works in reality and how you can try to decide
optimally and then take that from the poker table to
real life, because poker's an environment where you can really
(06:23):
sample thousands and thousands and thousands of decisions, sample correctly.
And as you know, Tim, that's incredibly important when it
comes to learning and trying to get a sense of
for probabilities and in real life, not the poker table,
we never sample correctly right. So that's where a lot
of these biases come from. So I think poker is
a very powerful teaching tool to help cement these theories
(06:44):
into practice.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Okay, I've got a great question from Drew loyal listeners
to caution me tales. Now, I'm a big fan of
board games, and Drew wants to know Maria and Nate
do you play board games. If you play board games,
do you bring a poker lens to the table or
is it a different vibe?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So I hate board cames. I do not play board games.
My sisters a little over six years older than I am,
and she always loved board games. They bored me. Haha.
They're just not interesting. And you know when someone brings out,
you know, sellers of Katan or anything like that, I'm like,
oh God, no, no, no, no, please to get to
(07:24):
ride as a favorite in my family and I just
want to die, you know, for me, if there's game night,
please let it be poker. Otherwise, please don't make me
play and let me read my book on the side
and cheer you on while you play.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah. I mean, look, some of the games get quite advanced,
and so it's like, where do you go from a
game that takes ten hours to learn something that's kind
of a broken, overly simple game, Right, But like, yeah,
I like games because I'm very competitive.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
If I'm playing, it's like, oh, people, we're like, don't
have that background in games or poker. Then I'm just
gonna be honest. I tend to I tend to figure
out the strategy pretty quick. And when you.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Crush them, you crush their souls and their dreams, and
they wish they'd never asked to play. Day to your
point about the complexity, there's a New Yorker cartoon that
I absolutely love and it's a group of people sitting
around a table and one of them is reading a
game instruction manual and the rest of them are all skeletons.
He says, and so those are the rules? Shall we
(08:24):
start playing?
Speaker 3 (08:26):
I love it. I had the privilege of interviewing Klaus Toyber,
the creator of Settlers of Katan, and he said something
that really stuck with me, which I suspect will resonate
with you poker players. He said, you can know somebody
their whole lives and play a game with them and
you will see something that you've never seen that's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And I actually that's how I feel about poker. Your
character comes out. And by the way, I do have
a very strong interest in games for my next book
when it comes to cheating, so I'm interested in, like,
what kind of a person you know cheats a monopoly
at home.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Game night, people who want to win.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
It's just totally like mind boggling to me that you
would do that. But but there you have it.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, my partner is also very competitive, but his main
objective is making sure that I don't win, right, He
will go out, You'll go out of his way to
lose himself if it's a murder suicide mission basically, which
changes the strategy quite a bit.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I feel. See that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
So here's one for you, Tim. This question is from
Carrie k E r ri E. I know Irish or something, Carrie,
but anyway, Hi Tim and team. I worry that a
big problem with the productivity gap in the UK is
a lack of high quality data and data driven decision making.
I see a lot of investment in data that is
overseen by technical experts in a given domain, but very
(09:53):
little consultation of data scientists. Company and organizational boards also
seem to lack the sort of expertise which is often
rolled into a catch all it function. I work in
the public sector, and so I have framed my question accordingly.
Should we have a government department devoted to or is
it all a bit nineteen eighty four? Best wishes, Kirie.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Well, I love the question, and we do kind of
have a government department devoted to data. It's called the
Office for National Statistics, but it's focused on very old
school statistics rather than modern data science, and old school
statistics tends to focus on smaller data sets, very well behaved,
well formatted data sets. For example, you might go out
and do a survey rather than just say, hey, well,
(10:37):
we're going to just draw administrative data, or we're going
to look at data that's coming out of people's smartphones,
which you know, there's a lot more information in there,
but it's a lot messier, to be honest. What really
concerns me at the moment is that data is systematically
underrated by governments. I think they don't realize how powerful
it can be, that they don't realize how dangerous it
(11:00):
can be, and it tends to be given a low
political priority or misused. So at the moment in the US,
for example, we've got this sort of sudden disappearance of
all these government websites. It's unclear how much data has
permanently disappeared, or is it just that it's temporarily gone down.
Is somebody archiving it? Will the archives work or not?
(11:21):
Archives don't always work. Are we going to have interrupted
data sets? It's very unclear what's gone and what hasn't.
So that's a particularly extreme example, but generally, I'm working
on a history of data. At the moment. It's so powerful,
it's so important. It is the foundation of our health systems.
It's the foundation of many of our economic activities. It's
(11:42):
the foundation of science. It's also the foundation of some
terrible abuses of human rights in the past. And yet
it's kind of boring and it's kind of geeky, and
so it just gets overlooked, and that's what really worries me.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you have, you know,
one partisan faction in the US that seems to think
that less data is better instead of having better data, right.
And some types of data you can go back and recollect,
but something as you can't.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
The UK, for example, has a data set of economic
statistics like GDP that goes back like almost a thousand
years or something, right, because they were collecting records for
tax purposes and estate purposes and everything in real time.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah. Well, we call the doom Doomsday Book eighty six.
I'm old enough to remember the nine hundredth anniversary of
the Doomsday Book. There's an interesting little caution retail there.
So for the nine hundredth anniversary of the Doomsday Book,
which was in nineteen eighty six, the BBC organized this
kind of a proto Wikipedia. They said, we're going to
(12:44):
encourage this project where school kids across the country are
going to act as citizen journalists. They're going to go around,
they'll interview people, they'll gather data, they'll write the little essays.
We've got maps, we'll have photographs, and we'll put it
all on a laser disc. Remember laser disc. You can
see the problem, right. And we've got these highly sophisticated,
(13:05):
expensive computer systems they're going to be accessible in every school.
And it was called Doomsday nineteen eighty six. I think
it was super cool. I remember it really well. And
then by about nineteen ninety eight, it was just impossible
to even read the laser discs. So this whole project
just went offline. Meanwhile, by the way, the original Doomsday
books from ten eighty six still available.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Paper has a certain appeal and has lasted four centuries
for a reason. You know, the flip side tim of
what you were saying about what's happening in the US
and kind to address the nineteen eighty four element of
the question is so, you know, yes, a lot of
data is disappearing, and then data that was never meant
(13:48):
to be aggregated and linked and personalized is being shared,
and profiles of people of US citizens and non citizens
are being created that should have never been created.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
There were rules in place to keep those data sets
separate for a reason, for privacy protections, and now the
government is trying to roll back those rules and collect
and de anonymize the data that was shared by people
with the assumption that that would never happen. That's really bad, right,
So there's this kind of dystopian thing going on.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
And there's history here. I mean, this has happened before.
This happened in the nineteen forties.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
It's not good. Nineteen forties was not a good time
in history if people remember.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
No, I think we can all agree on that one.
Thank you very much, Nate and Maria. We will be
answering more of your questions after this shortbreak. We are back.
I'm here with Nate Silver and Maria Konikova of Risky Business,
(14:55):
and we have an interesting question from a Risky Business
listener who asks, one thing that happened during the tariffs
which didn't get much attention, is the ten year treasury
rate spiked from four to four and a half percent.
I should say, by the way I work for the
Financial Times, we were paying a lot of attention to that,
but understand that outside geek land it was ignored. That
(15:18):
basically means, the listener continues, there is less belief that
US debt is a safe bet. It probably means somebody
cough China, cough, issued a cell order for a large
amount of US treasury with the intent to move the
interest rate as retaliation for tariffs. To cut to the
(15:38):
chase the listener asks, I would be extremely interested in
hearing what are your thoughts on the likelihood of the
United States defaulting? Nate?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
This one's yere.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
I used to know more about credit default swaps and
things like this. I mean, look, in the US runs
up very large deficits. Neither party has any interest in
doing what it would take to cut those deficits potentially. Right,
we got lucky in kind of the financial crisis in
COVID era of lower interest rates where you can borrow
very cheaply. It's no longer true now, In fact, borrow
he's getting more expensive. And so, you know, I trust
(16:12):
the market's fairly efficient here. But I guess the US
is still a bit too big to fail.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Well, normally, when we say too big to fail, we're
referring to things that the US is going to bail
out if necessary. Right, Yeah, the US is too big
to save. That's your problem.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
You know. The world has profoundly been affected by Trump's
second term in a way it wasn't in Trump's first term.
Our neighbors to the north, Canada, had an election that
was entirely upended. The Liberals wound to back in power,
even though Trudeau had been very unpopular.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
I would argue that the election of the new pope
was in part a response to Trump and the changing
geopolitical world, right, and say, Okay, we want to have
some influence on the United States. Have figure who's not Trump?
It can balance them out somehow, And so yeah, we're
way a different world. And I suppose I trust markets
and investors are intelligent about that. And I'm not sure
it's it's China so much as the fact that we're
(17:06):
in a new regime.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Yeah, I said in the agree, I think China needed
to do anything to make the US treasury rate spike.
When the rate spikes, by the way, it means people
are selling US government debt. When they sell it, the
price goes down, the interest rates goes up. But yeah,
plenty of people willing to do that without any coordinated
action from China. I mean, there is absolutely zero need
for the US government to default, because the US government
(17:30):
can always print more dollars. I mean, it could be
the US government debt gets less attractive, it could be
that inflation takes off, it could be there all kinds
of problems, but there's never a need to default. I
think the decision to default would be just that it
would be a decision the US government would have to
actively decide we want to stiff our creditors. So you
just have to look at the president and say, because
(17:50):
this looked like a man who stiffs his creditors, I
don't think. I don't think. So how long does sounds
like Donald J. Trump to me?
Speaker 2 (17:57):
This is President Trump, which I candect him and the ft.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
We have a new acronym. It's Taco. Taco stands for
Trump always chickens out. So the bet is that he
will not in fact default, even though he's talking about
various things that already looked like default, because the consequences
would be so catastrophic that he would look at the
consequences and he would back away. But that doesn't mean
(18:22):
that he couldn't do some damage. So fingers crossed, all right?
Speaker 1 (18:27):
So listener Jack wants us to explore the thorny issue
of cell phones in school and writes Australia has been
running an experiment with New South Wales banning mobile phone
use in all schools from October twenty twenty three. This
is following the implementation of a ban in Victoria in
(18:48):
twenty twenty which itself cites research from England and other justifications.
So this listener has kids in school. This is not
where I thought the question was going to go. Actively
helps the fourteen year old subvert this ban, so they
have an old phone and a locked pouch and their
actual phone in their back. This is because they must
(19:10):
use their phone to hotspot the internet to their laptop.
Jack writes, My opinion is the whole thing as stupid,
as most kids have some kind of workaround and are
on their laptops all day. Anyway, if parents are on
their phones all the time, why are we expecting kids
not to be. I still see teachers in playgrounds face
and phone, and all the injustices and hypocrisy of my
(19:32):
own school days come flooding back. I mean, I know
I'm asking this question. I have so many thoughts, but
I'll open it up to you guests first.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I also have thoughts. I think the hypocrisy thought is real.
I have three children myself. My oldest child is twenty one,
the youngest is thirteen. They see me being distracted by
my phone all the time, and of course they're going
to be influenced by that. I think that this is
an evil device useful but evil that we all of
(20:01):
us need to fight together because it's capable of ruining
all of our lives. I feel like I should set
a good example, and I don't feel that the fact
that the grown ups are being distracted by the phones
is particularly a good reason to say the kids should
have the phones too. I mean, we would never say, hey,
I see the grown ups drinking vodka and smoking, so
(20:22):
why surely it's fine for the nine year olds to
also drink vodka and smoke. I mean, I don't think
that follows.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
It's hypocritical term.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
It's hypocritical that you do not like your child.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, well, I think it suggests that maybe the grown
up shouldn't bring so much vodka and shouldn't smoke so much,
rather than the other way around. But anyway, yeah, we
are setting an example, whether we like it or not.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
I completely agree with that. And to add to it,
the use of screens in general, it's very different depending
on your age. There's emerging research, but now we have
a few decades worth of what phones do to developing
brains and kind of the habits that you create from
a young age. So being on the phone as an
adult who grew up without that kind of access is
(21:07):
very different from growing up and actually constantly being connected
to a scream. By the way, there's also research that
shows that taking notes by hand is much more powerful
than taking notes on a laptop. Right. You retain more information,
you learn better because there's a brain link between the
hand and the brain that does not exist when you're typing.
It would be better. I totally agree with you, Tim,
(21:29):
Adults should be on their phones much less than I
write about this. I think it's actually really great practice
to not have your phone. I've sometimes left my phone
at home on purpose to kind of have a day
without cell phones. I have programs that turn the Internet
off on my computer because I lack willpower if I don't,
forcibly kind of have it turned off to try to
(21:51):
have some deep concentration, deep writing time. This is all
kind of related to our executive function, our self controllability,
our ability to learn, our memory. All of these things
are interconnected. And don't you want your child to actually
emerge as a kind of smart adult who's capable of
all of these things as opposed to someone who is
constantly distracted.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Nate strikes me as the three screens that wants going
nate anything.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
You know, I just have my laptops. If people think
I have some big, elaborate, minor setup, I just have
my little laptop. Actually, yeah, Look, is it paternalistic to
tell kids they can't use their phones? I mean, yeah,
but they're kids, right, so you're allowed, You're allowed to
be paternalistic toward them. And I don't know. I mean,
I guess the one caveat I have is I was
(22:36):
chronically pretty bored in school, right, and so I'm sympathetic
to the kids that are like, Okay, I'm bored. I'm
learning things I already know. But like, it is a
situation where I think you have to have some type
of consistent enforcement in the rules. But when you're in school,
blame your teachers not making you interested, but don't blame
them for not letting you be on Instagram while you're
(22:56):
supposed to be learning algebra.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
I think it might also be a collective action problem. Yes,
I think it's perfectly possible that you've got teenagers who
would be quite happy if nobody in this pool had
Instagram or nobody had Snapchat. But if other people are
using Snapchat to communicate to arrange to meet up. Well,
then I need Snapchat too, and just talking to teenagers,
(23:21):
I think that viewpoint is not unusual. Some of them
are like, please, can you just ban everybody from using
it and then I'll be happy? Yeah, Okay, let's move
on because I I've got a question specifically from Maria
from a long, long time listener from Quebec. They would
like to hear Maria talk about a particular point of
her book, The Biggest Bluff, where she describes the breakfast
(23:45):
she had with her mentor. You were trying to find
somebody who would teach her to play poker so that
you could write a book about learning to play poker.
He only became interested when he realized you don't know
anything at all about the subject. You don't even know
how a deck of cards works. And our listener says,
I'm sixty five years old and I went through a
couple of career changes and I find this story very
(24:05):
moving and so true about what it means to learn
something and to teach something. So what are your thoughts
on that?
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (24:13):
I think so.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
This conversation took place the first time I ever met
Eric Sidell, who is a legend of the poker world,
and he had never taken on a poker student before.
And what stood out about me was that I was
a complete blank slate. I didn't have any bad habits.
I didn't have any habits, right, I didn't know anything.
And so for him, I think it was a very
(24:34):
interesting experiment, just like for me, it was an interesting
experiment from scratch. You know, what can he do with
me given my background in psychology in a short period
of time these days, when you know I've got all
these math wizards and selvers and all of these things,
is kind of psychology hard work. And if my background
(24:55):
isn't enough, right, could I do well? And so if
I could, that would be an amazing, hittive proof of
concept for the way that he thinks about the game.
And so I think to him, that's what made this
interesting and that's what made it appealing.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
And why is Maria so good at poker? Is it
the coach? Is it her training as a psychologist? Is
it something else?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
I think it's her and not the coaching, although Maria
is a wonderfully well connected person who has access to
some of the best poker minds in the world. But yeah, look,
it's the balance of the people reading skills and the
mathematical skills and the discipline. Really, you know, it's rare
to see Maria tilt. I'm sure she does it right,
but I think she is playing more than I am.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Frankly, Tilting is basically where you get emotional and it
affects your decisions.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Tilt doesn't have to be anger, right. It can be like, oh,
I've had a great day, so I'm gonna not fight
for this pot that you're supposed to bluff for a thing.
It can be a lot of different formats of it.
But like you know, we know one always plays their
A game, right. But if you're always playing your B
plus game or better, and you're really smart in lots
of different ways and read people well and maybe defy
stereotypes a little bit too, maybe are more aggressive than
(26:05):
people are expecting. So yeah, I would say she's a
well rounded poker player. By the way, It's part of
like learning the game later is that you might wind
up being a little bit more well rounded. When I
used to play for a living back god twenty years ago,
now I'm getting old. I played a game called limit
Hold Them, which the same amount as bet on every
hand or as a no limit you can be anywhere
(26:27):
from one chip to the entire size of your stack,
and it's a much different game. And so I had
to spend a lot of time unlearning habits from limit
hold them, which can be bad habits in no limit holding.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
We've got more questions coming up, but first let's take
a quick break. Welcome back to caution me questions with me,
Tim Harford.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
And me Maria Kannakova and me, Mate Silver.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
So here's a question from Mark. Mark asks, it's no
secret that political donations are tied to political favors, legislation
benefiting the highest owners, and so forth. If the politicians
are the machine, and the machine runs on money, what
if we tweaked the source of the money. What would
happen if, by some stroke of magic, Congress received vastly
larger salaries, increasing with years of service. But with one
(27:24):
big caveat, politicians cannot accept any donations, gifts, speaking, fees,
or favors in any form other than direct money donations
from constituents up to the federal limits without forfeiting their
public service salary. So put, simply, what if public service
was a bigger, more valuable incentive. Could it even outcompete
the current incentives? Would governing change for the better or
(27:47):
for the worse? And why I like it?
Speaker 1 (27:50):
You know, it's a good question, but it's slightly naive
in the sense that we already have rules against politicians
accepting all sorts of things that Mark wants them not
to accept. And there are ways around them, right There
are packs which are political action committees which you can donate,
There's ways that you can lobby and influence people. People
(28:14):
would get around these incentives very easily, just like they
do today.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
This maybe is a naive observation, but I would have
thought there was a difference between donations to a campaign
for the purposes of spending money on adverts to get
re elected, versus just donations to a politician's bank account.
There should be a bright line between the two of them.
I mean, ate, you're the experts on this.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
The answers. You are supposed to report to the Federal
Election Commission every dollar that you spend, so you definitely
run a risk of expenses being scrutinized if they're not legitimate.
But of course there are a million things a tranch
of expenses that are ambiguous between personal and business expenses. Right,
you can also shuffle money to consultants and pay them
maybe more than their worth, in exchange for who knows
(28:58):
favors later on and so forth. I think it's probably
a good idea to pay members of Congress more. I
think it might help recruit some people who are not
already wealthy to enter Congress. I think in general, well
tap performing government employees should be paid more too, and
make it is you're made to fire the poor performers.
I don't I don't understand when we want to go
into politics. It sounds like miserable to me to be
(29:19):
a member of Higuras. My lizard brain can't crack those incentives.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Necessarily, it is worth directing some attention to politicians' latitude
to do things that people might want to bribe them
to do. So, the more personal discretion a politician has,
the more it's worth bribing them. So one of the
interesting things about tariffs is that if you put a
(29:46):
large tariff on importers, it's then worth a great deal
of money to particular importers to be exempt from that tariff.
I mean, it keeps changing, but there was this huge
tariff on electronic goods coming from China, and then it's like, oh, actually,
you know, we're not going to levy that on iPhones.
So Apple benefits from that. And I'm not saying, oh,
(30:06):
Apple bribed the president. I don't particular reasons to believe
they did. But the point is that when you've got
that sort of personal discression, it becomes hugely valuable, and
those interest groups are willing to pay a lot of money,
and so there's the temptation for bribery.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
One of the big differences between first world and third
world countries is how prevalent bribery is kind of in
the way that governments function, and yet a lot of
so called first world countries and second World countries there's
a lot of bribing and corruption and cheating that goes
on no matter what. So sure, it would be amazing
(30:42):
if somehow we could create the an incentive structure where
that doesn't happen. But I don't see from a psychological standpoint,
how the same type of personality that wants to become
a politician and who's successful as a politician, who kind
of wheels and deals as a part of what they
did to get there, how they would ever be totally
(31:04):
above everything and rise to the heights of government needed
to excert real influence. It's a very cynical tick, but
that's how I see it.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Maria, you mentioned developing countries. This was perceived as being
a particular problem in Africa, both for historical reasons and
because a lot of Sub Saharan African countries are very,
very poor. And so this amazing African entrepreneur called mo Ibrahim,
who made a huge amount of money in telecommunications in
the nineteen nineties, became a billionaire. He announced the mo
(31:36):
Ibrahim Prize he was going to give. It was millions
to any African leader who surrendered power after losing a
democratic election. This is about twenty years ago. I was
googling around. I think the prize has been paid at
least once, but I haven't been able to find any
survey of whether it's made a difference. But I just
think it's a clever idea. Whether or not it worked
(31:57):
in practice, it's a clever idea.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Didn't Sam Bankman Freed want to pay your bribe Donald Trump,
like a billion dollars not to run for reelection or
something like.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
That, just because Sam Bankmanfreed wanted to do it. It
doesn't mean it's a bad idea of it.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Might it might color my priors.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
A little bit.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
I'd say fair fair Sometimes you know a broken clock
is right twice a day. Let's take another question now
from Jordan, and this one was directed to you, Tim.
So first, Jordan loves your podcast and has listened to
every episode you've put out. Good to hear, so keep
(32:35):
up the great work and thank you. Jordan is a
dedicated phantom. It's a lot of episodes it I like it.
I love your podcast too, but I've missed some. I
have to admit.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
They're all available on cat shop. So what is Jordan's question?
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yes, it's about penalty kicks, so if you don't move,
you're more likely to save them. I wonder about that,
since if a goalie never moves, then wouldn't the kicker
behave differently and make it easier to save shots that
don't go down the middle. I was just thinking about
it and was wondering how that was controlled for.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Actually, you two are the perfect people to answer this
question because it's about game theory, optimality and trying to
exploit suboptimal behavior in a soccer penalty. Basically, You've just
got a striker trying to score a goal. You've got
the goalkeeper standing there, and they can kind of guess.
They can dive to the left, or they can dive
to the right, and that's really a fifty to fifty
(33:28):
they'll guess right, or they could just kind of not
dive at all and stand in the middle, which makes
them look passive and like they're not even trying. However,
it turns out that because goalkeepers don't stand in the
middle because it makes them look passive, some strikers have
figured out, oh, if I just boot the ball straight
at the goalkeeper, they are guaranteed to dive to the
left or right, and I'm going to kick where they
(33:49):
were anyways. So Jordan's question is, well, hang on, if
the strikers figured that out, aren't the goalkeepers also going
to figure it out? So it's really a question of
people adapting to each other's strategy and the optimal mix
of strategies, and who better than you two to explain
the details here.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
I mean, that is such a fascinating element of game
that Nate and I talk about quite often, which is
kind of this recursive element of it. Right, If I
know that you know that I know that you know.
And in poker this happens all the time, where you're
trying to figure out, you know, how do I adjust
to my opponent. If we're both playing GTO game theory
(34:29):
optimal poker, then technically, you know, we're we're both executing
a strategy perfectly. But humans aren't computers and that doesn't happen, right.
So if I figure out, for instance, that Nate is
calling too often, then I should start, you know, changing
my strategy away from GTO. So even if in this
particular spot, game theory says that I should check because
(34:53):
my hand is a little too weak to bet for value,
I bet again because I know that Nate is gonna
call me again with a worse hand because he overcalls, right,
So I'm kind of adapting to his behavior.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Now.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Nate is a smart guy who also knows a lot
about game theory. So what if Nate and figures out
that I'm doing this right, Because we get to show
down and he's like, Maria, how did you bet three
times with you know, bottom pair? This is crazy? You
were right, you won. But Nate figures out that, oh,
I'm overcalling, So now she's actually playing differently, So now
(35:26):
I'm going to change my strategy to adjust to that.
So next time I actually try to do that, Nate
ends up having just the nuts right, the best hand ever.
And when I have a good hand, you know, he
folds right. So he's now adjusted, and I say, oh wait, wait, wait, okay,
he's changed, so now I need to change. And with
two good players, this process can can go on indefinitely,
(35:49):
and sometimes you psych yourself out right and you start
getting into mind games, and sometimes you end up overthinking
and just making the wrong decision. Also, you're making assumptions
about the other person, right, and how the other person
is seeing you and how they're adjusting. Now I'm talking
about poker, because I know poker and I don't know soccer.
But this is exactly kind of the problem that you
have in this saga question.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
In theoretical terms, as an academic would analyze it, you
get to an equilibrium, and the equilibrium is a mixed
strategy where it's unpredictable. So for example, the striker might
go left forty five percent of the time, go right
forty five percent of the time, stick it down the
middle ten percent of the time. And the goalkeeper might
(36:31):
stay in the middle twenty percent of the time and
go left forty percent and go right forty percent. But
the point is they can't be predictable. If they were predictable,
that could be exploitable, and they can't just be unpredictable
in a foolish way. So it's like, oh, I could
dive to the right fifty percent and to the left
fifty percent and never stand up in the middle. Well,
that's unpredictable, but it's also not smart because actually I
(36:52):
need to keep the striker honest and sometimes stand up. Absolutely,
there's always an equilibrium, but that equilibrium will involve a
randomized mixture of strategy, right.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
But in practice, so this is called randomization. Right, The
human brain is very bad at randomizing randomly. Most humans
will end up having a pattern and will end up
actually doing one thing more than they're supposed to doing
another thing less than they're supposed to, because they're not
optimal game theoreticians.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
There was actually a recent example where the English keeper
Jordan Pickford, in a high stakes penalty shootout, had a
water bottle with a list of every player on the
opposing team and whether he should dive to the left
or to the right, or stand up for that player,
So they had previously analyzed the play. His coaches had
(37:41):
basically pre randomized. It's a little risky, So as long
as nobody finds your water bottle ahead of time, you
can pre randomize. And I think he saved some goals
and England one that particular penalty shootout, which is very
un English. That's great.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
If you don't think that athletes are thinking about the
stuff professional athletes, then you're wrong.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
They may have their coaching staffs encouraging them to do it,
they may talk about themselves. They may even do some
of the stuff like fairly intuitively. Right, In an NBA game,
you have five players and twenty four seconds on the
shot clock, so it's kind of a game of like
trying to maximize your expected value with the best shot
you can, but the defense is trying to minimize your
expected value. And like the decisions these players make are
(38:22):
usually pretty smart about, like it's not quite worth taking
this shot, but now time's running out and now I
need to you know, I think a lot of the
actually quite high IQ. Frankly, there's a lot of money
and competitive pride on the line in making the right decisions.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, so, Nate. Actually, Caleb has been thinking about underhanded
free throws in the NBA. Here's what he says. From
what I understand, some of not most players could hit
a higher free throw percentage if they practiced an underhand technique. Honestly,
I respect basketball pros less after learning that they don't
use underhanded free throws because they think it looks goofy.
(38:56):
It's not a winning mentality. So, Nate, should NBA players
switch to underhanded free throws?
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Yeah? Look, there probably are some equilibriums where strategies that
are considered emasculated, right or embarrassing, somehow it might be
pursued a bit less right, although maybe that changes too. Right,
You've now seen a thing in the NBA where there's
a lot more flopping than there once was, meaning that
when guys get foul, they'll exaggerate the magnitude of what
(39:25):
actually happened to them. Right, It used to be something
people associated with soccer. It's migrated into the NBA as well.
But yeah, sometimes to take strategies that would be seen
as embarrassing, there's expected value there if you don't care
about the embarrassment.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
I'm curious, guys, is there an example in Poka of
a strategy that is positive expected value but everyone thinks
he's just embarrassing it. Only an idiot would do it.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Yeah, there's one that has turned out to be much
better than people thought, and it's called dunk betting, which
is leading into the preflop raiser. And so the reason
it's called dunk betting is because people thought you were
a dunk donkey if you did it right, because the
established wisdom is you always check to the preflop raiser.
(40:09):
Once we got more advanced game theory, it turns out
that no, actually there are some spots where you should lead.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
What is leading into a preflup raiser.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Betting first, right, instead of checking your options so that
letting the other person act, you act first, you bet first.
To this day, though, even though it's now accepted, if
someone does it right away, it still feels donkeyish even
when it's not right. It's very hard to kind of
wrap your mind around the fact that this might actually
(40:36):
be the correct play.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
One other play that can be hard to make is
folding when you've already put a lot of money in
the pot and there's just a little bit more to
put in and see the showdown. But still sometimes you
maybe do have a fold potentially. You know, I played
one unusual hand at a tournament a couple of months
ago where I raise, a second player called, and a
(40:59):
third player reraise, and if I was gonna call, I
was committing about half my stack, right, which means ordinarily
what you're supposed to do is either fold or go ahead,
go all in. However, I had a hand that I
wanted to encourage the third player to enter the part,
so I just called, and I'm like, well, I'll have
a lot of good flops and if I don't have
a good flop then I can get away. It's a
(41:20):
bad flop and anyways, so yeah, like, so I miss
the flop, which is the first three cards in poker.
He bets and I falled, getting three and a half
two one not. She's like, what are you doing, man?
You're not allowed to fall there, right, which indicated I
think that he had a good hand and was hoping
that I continued right, But like, you know, I ran
the math later and I'm like, actually, this is the
right play by a couple of percentage points. It was
(41:41):
just an embarrassing play to make in the moment.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
So I have learned no donk betting for me. And
I've also learned from Nate that sometimes you have to quit,
whether or not you are ahead. We have to quit.
We're out of time, Nate, Maria. This has been such fun.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Thank you so much, Tim, Thank you for having us.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Tim, I always love listening to Whiskey Business, and thank
you so much for joining us on Cautionary Questions. Thank you, Tim.
We'll do it again sometime. Thank you, Thank you. I
will be back next week with another cautionary tale. Cautionary
Tales is written by me Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright,
(42:22):
Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilly. It's produced by Georgia Mills
and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are
the work of Pascal Wise. Additional sound design is by
Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio. Bend A Dafh Haffrey
edited the scripts. The show features the voice talents of
Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembrough, Sarah Jubb, Mas Sam Monroe,
(42:47):
Jamal Westman, and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have
been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Gretta Cohene,
Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey
and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.
It's recorded at Wardoor Studios in London by Tom Barry.
(43:10):
If you like the show, please remember to share, rate
and review. It really makes a difference to us and
if you want to hear the show, add free sign
up to Pushkin Plus on the show page on Apple
Podcasts or at pushkin dot Fm, slash plus
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hey everybody, Nate here, I'm dropping into your feed on
a Tuesday because Marie and I were recently guests on
Cautionary Tales. Normally, on that show, economist Tim Harford tells
us stories of real world mistakes, things like the Birmingham
Lab League and the Tenrife air disaster, and what lessons
we can learn from them. When Marie and I appeared,
Tim had us answer questions from Cautionary Tales and Risky
(00:46):
Business listeners. They're smart, they're fun, and we're excited to
be sharing the full episode with you today. Hope you
enjoy and be sure to check out the rist of
Cautionary Tales wherever you're listening to this.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Cautionary Questions. I
team up with clever people to answer you clever questions,
and this time I'm joined by Nate Silver and Maria Konnikova.
They are the hosts of the Risky Business podcast and
they are here to answer questions from both sets of listeners.
Nate is a political analyst. He's the author of On
(01:24):
the Edge, and Maria is the best selling author of
the Biggest Bluff. How I Learned to Pay attention master
myself and win both fantastic books. Both Nate and Maria
are also journalists, and they are both high stakes poker players.
I'm a journalist too and an undercover economist, and I'm
not much of a poker player. But between us, we
(01:45):
should have some good answers for all of the smart
questions that you've been sending in. We will be tackling
smartphones in schools, tariffs, and how to use game theory
to win at sports. Nate, Maria, welcome to Cautionary Tales.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Thank you, Tom, Thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Tom.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Well, should it be cautionary business or risky tales, risky
risky cars, risky cassion. That's good. You've been po casting
for how long?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
About a year?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
About a year? Yeah, we're coming up on the World
Series of Poker begins in every May, and so yeah,
we launched it just about a year ago. When we're
coming up in our second World Series season, excellent, When
Nate and I.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Are both at the final table of the main event,
that'll be really great for our Risky Business podcast audience growth.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Would you be podcasting from the World Series if you're
on the final table?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Not at the final table? Since there are no phones allowed, but.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
We'll find a way.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I mean, we do have these long days right where
we both have real jobs and then maybe you'll do
several hours of real work quote unquote, and then play
poker for twelve hours and then it's fine your two
am Mexican food hangout or something. But they are long days.
We do not get vacation when we're in Vegas.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Basically we do not. Right enough poker chat, let us
get into the virtual postbag. After we listened to the
theme music for Cautionary Tales. I am here with Nate
(03:32):
Silver and Maria Konikova, and here is a good question
to start with from listener Alex. Alex asks, have any
personal experiences or academic theories really shaped your decision making.
Let me put this one to Nate first, and I'd
love to hear what both of you think.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I would say, my experience with risk taking and decision
making is very hands on for the most part. Right
when I was a kid, we would play Fantasy Baseball
and have little NFL betting pools and things like that. Obviously,
poker there's good instructional material, but you know, most people
are ultimately kind of largely self taught, you know, in
my book On the Edge. Then game theory plays a
(04:13):
really large role, and game theory plays a very large
role in poker. There are not computer programs called solvers
that literally have solved the Nash equilibrium for poker. If
you've seen a beautiful mind. A lot of things in
life is like what's the game theory equilibrium of, Like
what traffic patterns look like in New York, or how
often you should eat one type of cuisine versus another,
or any type of competitive situation where there are lots
(04:35):
of optionality. I'd say game theory is kind of the
most important variable there.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And game theory, we should say, is really the use
of mathematical equations to model strategic into actions. So a
very simple example of game theory is the game of
rock paper scissors. Now, if I play rock, you're going
to play paper and beat me. If I play paper,
you're going to play scissors and beat me. And so
(05:01):
game theory says, oh, you have to randomize, you have
to have a one third chance of playing each strategy.
I mean, that's kind of obvious. Game theory can be
used to model much more complex situations, including famously, because
it inspired one of the creators of game theory poker.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, I would second Nate on game theory. It was
one of the pinnacles of my academic work. And I'd
also say the psychological theories of Danny Conneman have been
hugely influential in how I think about decision making. He
was an absolutely brilliant man who really unearthed a lot
of the ways that our brains misprocess. I don't think
(05:42):
that's a word, but I'm going to make it one
misprocess information and the biases and heuristics that we're up against.
And it's incredibly powerful because even if you know that
those biases and heuristics exist in theory, in practice, you
still exhibit them. Right, You have the game theory kind
of that mathematical side, and then the psychological side of
(06:03):
Cooman and Poker, in my mind, is the life experience
that has cemented these more than anything else else in
my brain and has made me internalize how this actually
works in reality and how you can try to decide
optimally and then take that from the poker table to
real life, because poker's an environment where you can really
(06:23):
sample thousands and thousands and thousands of decisions, sample correctly.
And as you know, Tim, that's incredibly important when it
comes to learning and trying to get a sense of
for probabilities and in real life, not the poker table,
we never sample correctly right. So that's where a lot
of these biases come from. So I think poker is
a very powerful teaching tool to help cement these theories
(06:44):
into practice.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Okay, I've got a great question from Drew loyal listeners
to caution me tales. Now, I'm a big fan of
board games, and Drew wants to know Maria and Nate
do you play board games. If you play board games,
do you bring a poker lens to the table or
is it a different vibe?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So I hate board cames. I do not play board games.
My sisters a little over six years older than I am,
and she always loved board games. They bored me. Haha.
They're just not interesting. And you know when someone brings out,
you know, sellers of Katan or anything like that, I'm like,
oh God, no, no, no, no, please to get to
(07:24):
ride as a favorite in my family and I just
want to die, you know, for me, if there's game night,
please let it be poker. Otherwise, please don't make me
play and let me read my book on the side
and cheer you on while you play.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah. I mean, look, some of the games get quite advanced,
and so it's like, where do you go from a
game that takes ten hours to learn something that's kind
of a broken, overly simple game, Right, But like, yeah,
I like games because I'm very competitive.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
If I'm playing, it's like, oh, people, we're like, don't
have that background in games or poker. Then I'm just
gonna be honest. I tend to I tend to figure
out the strategy pretty quick. And when you.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Crush them, you crush their souls and their dreams, and
they wish they'd never asked to play. Day to your
point about the complexity, there's a New Yorker cartoon that
I absolutely love and it's a group of people sitting
around a table and one of them is reading a
game instruction manual and the rest of them are all skeletons.
He says, and so those are the rules? Shall we
(08:24):
start playing?
Speaker 3 (08:26):
I love it. I had the privilege of interviewing Klaus Toyber,
the creator of Settlers of Katan, and he said something
that really stuck with me, which I suspect will resonate
with you poker players. He said, you can know somebody
their whole lives and play a game with them and
you will see something that you've never seen that's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And I actually that's how I feel about poker. Your
character comes out. And by the way, I do have
a very strong interest in games for my next book
when it comes to cheating, so I'm interested in, like,
what kind of a person you know cheats a monopoly
at home.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Game night, people who want to win.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
It's just totally like mind boggling to me that you
would do that. But but there you have it.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, my partner is also very competitive, but his main
objective is making sure that I don't win, right, He
will go out, You'll go out of his way to
lose himself if it's a murder suicide mission basically, which
changes the strategy quite a bit.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I feel. See that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
So here's one for you, Tim. This question is from
Carrie k E r ri E. I know Irish or something, Carrie,
but anyway, Hi Tim and team. I worry that a
big problem with the productivity gap in the UK is
a lack of high quality data and data driven decision making.
I see a lot of investment in data that is
overseen by technical experts in a given domain, but very
(09:53):
little consultation of data scientists. Company and organizational boards also
seem to lack the sort of expertise which is often
rolled into a catch all it function. I work in
the public sector, and so I have framed my question accordingly.
Should we have a government department devoted to or is
it all a bit nineteen eighty four? Best wishes, Kirie.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Well, I love the question, and we do kind of
have a government department devoted to data. It's called the
Office for National Statistics, but it's focused on very old
school statistics rather than modern data science, and old school
statistics tends to focus on smaller data sets, very well behaved,
well formatted data sets. For example, you might go out
and do a survey rather than just say, hey, well,
(10:37):
we're going to just draw administrative data, or we're going
to look at data that's coming out of people's smartphones,
which you know, there's a lot more information in there,
but it's a lot messier, to be honest. What really
concerns me at the moment is that data is systematically
underrated by governments. I think they don't realize how powerful
it can be, that they don't realize how dangerous it
(11:00):
can be, and it tends to be given a low
political priority or misused. So at the moment in the US,
for example, we've got this sort of sudden disappearance of
all these government websites. It's unclear how much data has
permanently disappeared, or is it just that it's temporarily gone down.
Is somebody archiving it? Will the archives work or not?
(11:21):
Archives don't always work. Are we going to have interrupted
data sets? It's very unclear what's gone and what hasn't.
So that's a particularly extreme example, but generally, I'm working
on a history of data. At the moment. It's so powerful,
it's so important. It is the foundation of our health systems.
It's the foundation of many of our economic activities. It's
(11:42):
the foundation of science. It's also the foundation of some
terrible abuses of human rights in the past. And yet
it's kind of boring and it's kind of geeky, and
so it just gets overlooked, and that's what really worries me.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you have, you know,
one partisan faction in the US that seems to think
that less data is better instead of having better data, right.
And some types of data you can go back and recollect,
but something as you can't.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
The UK, for example, has a data set of economic
statistics like GDP that goes back like almost a thousand
years or something, right, because they were collecting records for
tax purposes and estate purposes and everything in real time.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah. Well, we call the doom Doomsday Book eighty six.
I'm old enough to remember the nine hundredth anniversary of
the Doomsday Book. There's an interesting little caution retail there.
So for the nine hundredth anniversary of the Doomsday Book,
which was in nineteen eighty six, the BBC organized this
kind of a proto Wikipedia. They said, we're going to
(12:44):
encourage this project where school kids across the country are
going to act as citizen journalists. They're going to go around,
they'll interview people, they'll gather data, they'll write the little essays.
We've got maps, we'll have photographs, and we'll put it
all on a laser disc. Remember laser disc. You can
see the problem, right. And we've got these highly sophisticated,
(13:05):
expensive computer systems they're going to be accessible in every school.
And it was called Doomsday nineteen eighty six. I think
it was super cool. I remember it really well. And
then by about nineteen ninety eight, it was just impossible
to even read the laser discs. So this whole project
just went offline. Meanwhile, by the way, the original Doomsday
books from ten eighty six still available.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Paper has a certain appeal and has lasted four centuries
for a reason. You know, the flip side tim of
what you were saying about what's happening in the US
and kind to address the nineteen eighty four element of
the question is so, you know, yes, a lot of
data is disappearing, and then data that was never meant
(13:48):
to be aggregated and linked and personalized is being shared,
and profiles of people of US citizens and non citizens
are being created that should have never been created.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
There were rules in place to keep those data sets
separate for a reason, for privacy protections, and now the
government is trying to roll back those rules and collect
and de anonymize the data that was shared by people
with the assumption that that would never happen. That's really bad, right,
So there's this kind of dystopian thing going on.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
And there's history here. I mean, this has happened before.
This happened in the nineteen forties.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
It's not good. Nineteen forties was not a good time
in history if people remember.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
No, I think we can all agree on that one.
Thank you very much, Nate and Maria. We will be
answering more of your questions after this shortbreak. We are back.
I'm here with Nate Silver and Maria Konikova of Risky Business,
(14:55):
and we have an interesting question from a Risky Business
listener who asks, one thing that happened during the tariffs
which didn't get much attention, is the ten year treasury
rate spiked from four to four and a half percent.
I should say, by the way I work for the
Financial Times, we were paying a lot of attention to that,
but understand that outside geek land it was ignored. That
(15:18):
basically means, the listener continues, there is less belief that
US debt is a safe bet. It probably means somebody
cough China, cough, issued a cell order for a large
amount of US treasury with the intent to move the
interest rate as retaliation for tariffs. To cut to the
(15:38):
chase the listener asks, I would be extremely interested in
hearing what are your thoughts on the likelihood of the
United States defaulting? Nate?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
This one's yere.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
I used to know more about credit default swaps and
things like this. I mean, look, in the US runs
up very large deficits. Neither party has any interest in
doing what it would take to cut those deficits potentially. Right,
we got lucky in kind of the financial crisis in
COVID era of lower interest rates where you can borrow
very cheaply. It's no longer true now, In fact, borrow
he's getting more expensive. And so, you know, I trust
(16:12):
the market's fairly efficient here. But I guess the US
is still a bit too big to fail.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Well, normally, when we say too big to fail, we're
referring to things that the US is going to bail
out if necessary. Right, Yeah, the US is too big
to save. That's your problem.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
You know. The world has profoundly been affected by Trump's
second term in a way it wasn't in Trump's first term.
Our neighbors to the north, Canada, had an election that
was entirely upended. The Liberals wound to back in power,
even though Trudeau had been very unpopular.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
I would argue that the election of the new pope
was in part a response to Trump and the changing
geopolitical world, right, and say, Okay, we want to have
some influence on the United States. Have figure who's not Trump?
It can balance them out somehow, And so yeah, we're
way a different world. And I suppose I trust markets
and investors are intelligent about that. And I'm not sure
it's it's China so much as the fact that we're
(17:06):
in a new regime.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Yeah, I said in the agree, I think China needed
to do anything to make the US treasury rate spike.
When the rate spikes, by the way, it means people
are selling US government debt. When they sell it, the
price goes down, the interest rates goes up. But yeah,
plenty of people willing to do that without any coordinated
action from China. I mean, there is absolutely zero need
for the US government to default, because the US government
(17:30):
can always print more dollars. I mean, it could be
the US government debt gets less attractive, it could be
that inflation takes off, it could be there all kinds
of problems, but there's never a need to default. I
think the decision to default would be just that it
would be a decision the US government would have to
actively decide we want to stiff our creditors. So you
just have to look at the president and say, because
(17:50):
this looked like a man who stiffs his creditors, I
don't think. I don't think. So how long does sounds
like Donald J. Trump to me?
Speaker 2 (17:57):
This is President Trump, which I candect him and the ft.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
We have a new acronym. It's Taco. Taco stands for
Trump always chickens out. So the bet is that he
will not in fact default, even though he's talking about
various things that already looked like default, because the consequences
would be so catastrophic that he would look at the
consequences and he would back away. But that doesn't mean
(18:22):
that he couldn't do some damage. So fingers crossed, all right?
Speaker 1 (18:27):
So listener Jack wants us to explore the thorny issue
of cell phones in school and writes Australia has been
running an experiment with New South Wales banning mobile phone
use in all schools from October twenty twenty three. This
is following the implementation of a ban in Victoria in
(18:48):
twenty twenty which itself cites research from England and other justifications.
So this listener has kids in school. This is not
where I thought the question was going to go. Actively
helps the fourteen year old subvert this ban, so they
have an old phone and a locked pouch and their
actual phone in their back. This is because they must
(19:10):
use their phone to hotspot the internet to their laptop.
Jack writes, My opinion is the whole thing as stupid,
as most kids have some kind of workaround and are
on their laptops all day. Anyway, if parents are on
their phones all the time, why are we expecting kids
not to be. I still see teachers in playgrounds face
and phone, and all the injustices and hypocrisy of my
(19:32):
own school days come flooding back. I mean, I know
I'm asking this question. I have so many thoughts, but
I'll open it up to you guests first.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I also have thoughts. I think the hypocrisy thought is real.
I have three children myself. My oldest child is twenty one,
the youngest is thirteen. They see me being distracted by
my phone all the time, and of course they're going
to be influenced by that. I think that this is
an evil device useful but evil that we all of
(20:01):
us need to fight together because it's capable of ruining
all of our lives. I feel like I should set
a good example, and I don't feel that the fact
that the grown ups are being distracted by the phones
is particularly a good reason to say the kids should
have the phones too. I mean, we would never say, hey,
I see the grown ups drinking vodka and smoking, so
(20:22):
why surely it's fine for the nine year olds to
also drink vodka and smoke. I mean, I don't think
that follows.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
It's hypocritical term.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
It's hypocritical that you do not like your child.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, well, I think it suggests that maybe the grown
up shouldn't bring so much vodka and shouldn't smoke so much,
rather than the other way around. But anyway, yeah, we
are setting an example, whether we like it or not.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
I completely agree with that. And to add to it,
the use of screens in general, it's very different depending
on your age. There's emerging research, but now we have
a few decades worth of what phones do to developing
brains and kind of the habits that you create from
a young age. So being on the phone as an
adult who grew up without that kind of access is
(21:07):
very different from growing up and actually constantly being connected
to a scream. By the way, there's also research that
shows that taking notes by hand is much more powerful
than taking notes on a laptop. Right. You retain more information,
you learn better because there's a brain link between the
hand and the brain that does not exist when you're typing.
It would be better. I totally agree with you, Tim,
(21:29):
Adults should be on their phones much less than I
write about this. I think it's actually really great practice
to not have your phone. I've sometimes left my phone
at home on purpose to kind of have a day
without cell phones. I have programs that turn the Internet
off on my computer because I lack willpower if I don't,
forcibly kind of have it turned off to try to
(21:51):
have some deep concentration, deep writing time. This is all
kind of related to our executive function, our self controllability,
our ability to learn, our memory. All of these things
are interconnected. And don't you want your child to actually
emerge as a kind of smart adult who's capable of
all of these things as opposed to someone who is
constantly distracted.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Nate strikes me as the three screens that wants going
nate anything.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
You know, I just have my laptops. If people think
I have some big, elaborate, minor setup, I just have
my little laptop. Actually, yeah, Look, is it paternalistic to
tell kids they can't use their phones? I mean, yeah,
but they're kids, right, so you're allowed, You're allowed to
be paternalistic toward them. And I don't know. I mean,
I guess the one caveat I have is I was
(22:36):
chronically pretty bored in school, right, and so I'm sympathetic
to the kids that are like, Okay, I'm bored. I'm
learning things I already know. But like, it is a
situation where I think you have to have some type
of consistent enforcement in the rules. But when you're in school,
blame your teachers not making you interested, but don't blame
them for not letting you be on Instagram while you're
(22:56):
supposed to be learning algebra.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
I think it might also be a collective action problem. Yes,
I think it's perfectly possible that you've got teenagers who
would be quite happy if nobody in this pool had
Instagram or nobody had Snapchat. But if other people are
using Snapchat to communicate to arrange to meet up. Well,
then I need Snapchat too, and just talking to teenagers,
(23:21):
I think that viewpoint is not unusual. Some of them
are like, please, can you just ban everybody from using
it and then I'll be happy? Yeah, Okay, let's move
on because I I've got a question specifically from Maria
from a long, long time listener from Quebec. They would
like to hear Maria talk about a particular point of
her book, The Biggest Bluff, where she describes the breakfast
(23:45):
she had with her mentor. You were trying to find
somebody who would teach her to play poker so that
you could write a book about learning to play poker.
He only became interested when he realized you don't know
anything at all about the subject. You don't even know
how a deck of cards works. And our listener says,
I'm sixty five years old and I went through a
couple of career changes and I find this story very
(24:05):
moving and so true about what it means to learn
something and to teach something. So what are your thoughts
on that?
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (24:13):
I think so.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
This conversation took place the first time I ever met
Eric Sidell, who is a legend of the poker world,
and he had never taken on a poker student before.
And what stood out about me was that I was
a complete blank slate. I didn't have any bad habits.
I didn't have any habits, right, I didn't know anything.
And so for him, I think it was a very
(24:34):
interesting experiment, just like for me, it was an interesting
experiment from scratch. You know, what can he do with
me given my background in psychology in a short period
of time these days, when you know I've got all
these math wizards and selvers and all of these things,
is kind of psychology hard work. And if my background
(24:55):
isn't enough, right, could I do well? And so if
I could, that would be an amazing, hittive proof of
concept for the way that he thinks about the game.
And so I think to him, that's what made this
interesting and that's what made it appealing.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
And why is Maria so good at poker? Is it
the coach? Is it her training as a psychologist? Is
it something else?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
I think it's her and not the coaching, although Maria
is a wonderfully well connected person who has access to
some of the best poker minds in the world. But yeah, look,
it's the balance of the people reading skills and the
mathematical skills and the discipline. Really, you know, it's rare
to see Maria tilt. I'm sure she does it right,
but I think she is playing more than I am.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Frankly, Tilting is basically where you get emotional and it
affects your decisions.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Tilt doesn't have to be anger, right. It can be like, oh,
I've had a great day, so I'm gonna not fight
for this pot that you're supposed to bluff for a thing.
It can be a lot of different formats of it.
But like you know, we know one always plays their
A game, right. But if you're always playing your B
plus game or better, and you're really smart in lots
of different ways and read people well and maybe defy
stereotypes a little bit too, maybe are more aggressive than
(26:05):
people are expecting. So yeah, I would say she's a
well rounded poker player. By the way, It's part of
like learning the game later is that you might wind
up being a little bit more well rounded. When I
used to play for a living back god twenty years ago,
now I'm getting old. I played a game called limit
Hold Them, which the same amount as bet on every
hand or as a no limit you can be anywhere
(26:27):
from one chip to the entire size of your stack,
and it's a much different game. And so I had
to spend a lot of time unlearning habits from limit
hold them, which can be bad habits in no limit holding.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
We've got more questions coming up, but first let's take
a quick break. Welcome back to caution me questions with me,
Tim Harford.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
And me Maria Kannakova and me, Mate Silver.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
So here's a question from Mark. Mark asks, it's no
secret that political donations are tied to political favors, legislation
benefiting the highest owners, and so forth. If the politicians
are the machine, and the machine runs on money, what
if we tweaked the source of the money. What would
happen if, by some stroke of magic, Congress received vastly
larger salaries, increasing with years of service. But with one
(27:24):
big caveat, politicians cannot accept any donations, gifts, speaking, fees,
or favors in any form other than direct money donations
from constituents up to the federal limits without forfeiting their
public service salary. So put, simply, what if public service
was a bigger, more valuable incentive. Could it even outcompete
the current incentives? Would governing change for the better or
(27:47):
for the worse? And why I like it?
Speaker 1 (27:50):
You know, it's a good question, but it's slightly naive
in the sense that we already have rules against politicians
accepting all sorts of things that Mark wants them not
to accept. And there are ways around them, right There
are packs which are political action committees which you can donate,
There's ways that you can lobby and influence people. People
(28:14):
would get around these incentives very easily, just like they
do today.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
This maybe is a naive observation, but I would have
thought there was a difference between donations to a campaign
for the purposes of spending money on adverts to get
re elected, versus just donations to a politician's bank account.
There should be a bright line between the two of them.
I mean, ate, you're the experts on this.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
The answers. You are supposed to report to the Federal
Election Commission every dollar that you spend, so you definitely
run a risk of expenses being scrutinized if they're not legitimate.
But of course there are a million things a tranch
of expenses that are ambiguous between personal and business expenses. Right,
you can also shuffle money to consultants and pay them
maybe more than their worth, in exchange for who knows
(28:58):
favors later on and so forth. I think it's probably
a good idea to pay members of Congress more. I
think it might help recruit some people who are not
already wealthy to enter Congress. I think in general, well
tap performing government employees should be paid more too, and
make it is you're made to fire the poor performers.
I don't I don't understand when we want to go
into politics. It sounds like miserable to me to be
(29:19):
a member of Higuras. My lizard brain can't crack those incentives.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Necessarily, it is worth directing some attention to politicians' latitude
to do things that people might want to bribe them
to do. So, the more personal discretion a politician has,
the more it's worth bribing them. So one of the
interesting things about tariffs is that if you put a
(29:46):
large tariff on importers, it's then worth a great deal
of money to particular importers to be exempt from that tariff.
I mean, it keeps changing, but there was this huge
tariff on electronic goods coming from China, and then it's like, oh, actually,
you know, we're not going to levy that on iPhones.
So Apple benefits from that. And I'm not saying, oh,
(30:06):
Apple bribed the president. I don't particular reasons to believe
they did. But the point is that when you've got
that sort of personal discression, it becomes hugely valuable, and
those interest groups are willing to pay a lot of money,
and so there's the temptation for bribery.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
One of the big differences between first world and third
world countries is how prevalent bribery is kind of in
the way that governments function, and yet a lot of
so called first world countries and second World countries there's
a lot of bribing and corruption and cheating that goes
on no matter what. So sure, it would be amazing
(30:42):
if somehow we could create the an incentive structure where
that doesn't happen. But I don't see from a psychological standpoint,
how the same type of personality that wants to become
a politician and who's successful as a politician, who kind
of wheels and deals as a part of what they
did to get there, how they would ever be totally
(31:04):
above everything and rise to the heights of government needed
to excert real influence. It's a very cynical tick, but
that's how I see it.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Maria, you mentioned developing countries. This was perceived as being
a particular problem in Africa, both for historical reasons and
because a lot of Sub Saharan African countries are very,
very poor. And so this amazing African entrepreneur called mo Ibrahim,
who made a huge amount of money in telecommunications in
the nineteen nineties, became a billionaire. He announced the mo
(31:36):
Ibrahim Prize he was going to give. It was millions
to any African leader who surrendered power after losing a
democratic election. This is about twenty years ago. I was
googling around. I think the prize has been paid at
least once, but I haven't been able to find any
survey of whether it's made a difference. But I just
think it's a clever idea. Whether or not it worked
(31:57):
in practice, it's a clever idea.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Didn't Sam Bankman Freed want to pay your bribe Donald Trump,
like a billion dollars not to run for reelection or
something like.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
That, just because Sam Bankmanfreed wanted to do it. It
doesn't mean it's a bad idea of it.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Might it might color my priors.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
A little bit.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
I'd say fair fair Sometimes you know a broken clock
is right twice a day. Let's take another question now
from Jordan, and this one was directed to you, Tim.
So first, Jordan loves your podcast and has listened to
every episode you've put out. Good to hear, so keep
(32:35):
up the great work and thank you. Jordan is a
dedicated phantom. It's a lot of episodes it I like it.
I love your podcast too, but I've missed some. I
have to admit.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
They're all available on cat shop. So what is Jordan's question?
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yes, it's about penalty kicks, so if you don't move,
you're more likely to save them. I wonder about that,
since if a goalie never moves, then wouldn't the kicker
behave differently and make it easier to save shots that
don't go down the middle. I was just thinking about
it and was wondering how that was controlled for.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Actually, you two are the perfect people to answer this
question because it's about game theory, optimality and trying to
exploit suboptimal behavior in a soccer penalty. Basically, You've just
got a striker trying to score a goal. You've got
the goalkeeper standing there, and they can kind of guess.
They can dive to the left, or they can dive
to the right, and that's really a fifty to fifty
(33:28):
they'll guess right, or they could just kind of not
dive at all and stand in the middle, which makes
them look passive and like they're not even trying. However,
it turns out that because goalkeepers don't stand in the
middle because it makes them look passive, some strikers have
figured out, oh, if I just boot the ball straight
at the goalkeeper, they are guaranteed to dive to the
left or right, and I'm going to kick where they
(33:49):
were anyways. So Jordan's question is, well, hang on, if
the strikers figured that out, aren't the goalkeepers also going
to figure it out? So it's really a question of
people adapting to each other's strategy and the optimal mix
of strategies, and who better than you two to explain
the details here.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
I mean, that is such a fascinating element of game
that Nate and I talk about quite often, which is
kind of this recursive element of it. Right, If I
know that you know that I know that you know.
And in poker this happens all the time, where you're
trying to figure out, you know, how do I adjust
to my opponent. If we're both playing GTO game theory
(34:29):
optimal poker, then technically, you know, we're we're both executing
a strategy perfectly. But humans aren't computers and that doesn't happen, right.
So if I figure out, for instance, that Nate is
calling too often, then I should start, you know, changing
my strategy away from GTO. So even if in this
particular spot, game theory says that I should check because
(34:53):
my hand is a little too weak to bet for value,
I bet again because I know that Nate is gonna
call me again with a worse hand because he overcalls, right,
So I'm kind of adapting to his behavior.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Now.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Nate is a smart guy who also knows a lot
about game theory. So what if Nate and figures out
that I'm doing this right, Because we get to show
down and he's like, Maria, how did you bet three
times with you know, bottom pair? This is crazy? You
were right, you won. But Nate figures out that, oh,
I'm overcalling, So now she's actually playing differently, So now
(35:26):
I'm going to change my strategy to adjust to that.
So next time I actually try to do that, Nate
ends up having just the nuts right, the best hand ever.
And when I have a good hand, you know, he
folds right. So he's now adjusted, and I say, oh wait, wait, wait, okay,
he's changed, so now I need to change. And with
two good players, this process can can go on indefinitely,
(35:49):
and sometimes you psych yourself out right and you start
getting into mind games, and sometimes you end up overthinking
and just making the wrong decision. Also, you're making assumptions
about the other person, right, and how the other person
is seeing you and how they're adjusting. Now I'm talking
about poker, because I know poker and I don't know soccer.
But this is exactly kind of the problem that you
have in this saga question.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
In theoretical terms, as an academic would analyze it, you
get to an equilibrium, and the equilibrium is a mixed
strategy where it's unpredictable. So for example, the striker might
go left forty five percent of the time, go right
forty five percent of the time, stick it down the
middle ten percent of the time. And the goalkeeper might
(36:31):
stay in the middle twenty percent of the time and
go left forty percent and go right forty percent. But
the point is they can't be predictable. If they were predictable,
that could be exploitable, and they can't just be unpredictable
in a foolish way. So it's like, oh, I could
dive to the right fifty percent and to the left
fifty percent and never stand up in the middle. Well,
that's unpredictable, but it's also not smart because actually I
(36:52):
need to keep the striker honest and sometimes stand up. Absolutely,
there's always an equilibrium, but that equilibrium will involve a
randomized mixture of strategy, right.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
But in practice, so this is called randomization. Right, The
human brain is very bad at randomizing randomly. Most humans
will end up having a pattern and will end up
actually doing one thing more than they're supposed to doing
another thing less than they're supposed to, because they're not
optimal game theoreticians.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
There was actually a recent example where the English keeper
Jordan Pickford, in a high stakes penalty shootout, had a
water bottle with a list of every player on the
opposing team and whether he should dive to the left
or to the right, or stand up for that player,
So they had previously analyzed the play. His coaches had
(37:41):
basically pre randomized. It's a little risky, So as long
as nobody finds your water bottle ahead of time, you
can pre randomize. And I think he saved some goals
and England one that particular penalty shootout, which is very
un English. That's great.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
If you don't think that athletes are thinking about the
stuff professional athletes, then you're wrong.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
They may have their coaching staffs encouraging them to do it,
they may talk about themselves. They may even do some
of the stuff like fairly intuitively. Right, In an NBA game,
you have five players and twenty four seconds on the
shot clock, so it's kind of a game of like
trying to maximize your expected value with the best shot
you can, but the defense is trying to minimize your
expected value. And like the decisions these players make are
(38:22):
usually pretty smart about, like it's not quite worth taking
this shot, but now time's running out and now I
need to you know, I think a lot of the
actually quite high IQ. Frankly, there's a lot of money
and competitive pride on the line in making the right decisions.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, so, Nate. Actually, Caleb has been thinking about underhanded
free throws in the NBA. Here's what he says. From
what I understand, some of not most players could hit
a higher free throw percentage if they practiced an underhand technique. Honestly,
I respect basketball pros less after learning that they don't
use underhanded free throws because they think it looks goofy.
(38:56):
It's not a winning mentality. So, Nate, should NBA players
switch to underhanded free throws?
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Yeah? Look, there probably are some equilibriums where strategies that
are considered emasculated, right or embarrassing, somehow it might be
pursued a bit less right, although maybe that changes too. Right,
You've now seen a thing in the NBA where there's
a lot more flopping than there once was, meaning that
when guys get foul, they'll exaggerate the magnitude of what
(39:25):
actually happened to them. Right, It used to be something
people associated with soccer. It's migrated into the NBA as well.
But yeah, sometimes to take strategies that would be seen
as embarrassing, there's expected value there if you don't care
about the embarrassment.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
I'm curious, guys, is there an example in Poka of
a strategy that is positive expected value but everyone thinks
he's just embarrassing it. Only an idiot would do it.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Yeah, there's one that has turned out to be much
better than people thought, and it's called dunk betting, which
is leading into the preflop raiser. And so the reason
it's called dunk betting is because people thought you were
a dunk donkey if you did it right, because the
established wisdom is you always check to the preflop raiser.
(40:09):
Once we got more advanced game theory, it turns out
that no, actually there are some spots where you should lead.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
What is leading into a preflup raiser.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Betting first, right, instead of checking your options so that
letting the other person act, you act first, you bet first.
To this day, though, even though it's now accepted, if
someone does it right away, it still feels donkeyish even
when it's not right. It's very hard to kind of
wrap your mind around the fact that this might actually
(40:36):
be the correct play.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
One other play that can be hard to make is
folding when you've already put a lot of money in
the pot and there's just a little bit more to
put in and see the showdown. But still sometimes you
maybe do have a fold potentially. You know, I played
one unusual hand at a tournament a couple of months
ago where I raise, a second player called, and a
(40:59):
third player reraise, and if I was gonna call, I
was committing about half my stack, right, which means ordinarily
what you're supposed to do is either fold or go ahead,
go all in. However, I had a hand that I
wanted to encourage the third player to enter the part,
so I just called, and I'm like, well, I'll have
a lot of good flops and if I don't have
a good flop then I can get away. It's a
(41:20):
bad flop and anyways, so yeah, like, so I miss
the flop, which is the first three cards in poker.
He bets and I falled, getting three and a half
two one not. She's like, what are you doing, man?
You're not allowed to fall there, right, which indicated I
think that he had a good hand and was hoping
that I continued right, But like, you know, I ran
the math later and I'm like, actually, this is the
right play by a couple of percentage points. It was
(41:41):
just an embarrassing play to make in the moment.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
So I have learned no donk betting for me. And
I've also learned from Nate that sometimes you have to quit,
whether or not you are ahead. We have to quit.
We're out of time, Nate, Maria. This has been such fun.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Thank you so much, Tim, Thank you for having us.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Tim, I always love listening to Whiskey Business, and thank
you so much for joining us on Cautionary Questions. Thank you, Tim.
We'll do it again sometime. Thank you, Thank you. I
will be back next week with another cautionary tale. Cautionary
Tales is written by me Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright,
(42:22):
Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilly. It's produced by Georgia Mills
and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are
the work of Pascal Wise. Additional sound design is by
Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio. Bend A Dafh Haffrey
edited the scripts. The show features the voice talents of
Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembrough, Sarah Jubb, Mas Sam Monroe,
(42:47):
Jamal Westman, and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have
been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Gretta Cohene,
Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey
and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.
It's recorded at Wardoor Studios in London by Tom Barry.
(43:10):
If you like the show, please remember to share, rate
and review. It really makes a difference to us and
if you want to hear the show, add free sign
up to Pushkin Plus on the show page on Apple
Podcasts or at pushkin dot Fm, slash plus
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
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