A Bit of Optimism - Intuition vs. Reason with poker champion Liv Boeree

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

When should we trust our gut and when should we depend on logic? Liv Boeree can actually answer that question.  She won the World Series of Poker before retiring from the game to explore big questions about game theory, competition, and how we can all find more win-wins.This is…a Bit of Optimism.For more on Liv and her work check out: https://livboeree.com/ 

I love talking to people who are smarter than me. And Liv Burry is a lot smarter than me. She is a retired champion poker player with a background, get this, in astrophysics. Now she's a media personality and podcaster who loves digging into topics like AI, game theory, and more. And that's what we talked about. A whole bunch of things. But the root was all about competition. And more importantly, how we can prevent our own desires to compete and excel

from actually working against us. This is a bit of optimism. How do you define yourself? Because you are a Jane of all trades. Yeah. I mean, I have here that I didn't even know this all about you. This is great. You were a guitar player in metal bands.

You were a cage dancer in clubs. You were a game show contestant, an astrophysicist, a professional poker player. Like the craziest path. I'll ask you the dreaded question. If you're at a bar and you meet somebody or sitting next to someone playing, Liv, what do you do? a healthier relationship with competition and more generate more win-win scenarios in the world and and also help figure out how we align the things that we do in our work with the good of the whole that tends to lead you down the path of things like ai safety um how to make business practices more aligned with you, what's actually sustainable for

humanity and so on. See, I can't answer the question. It's very, it's a very long winded thing. But basically, yeah, I'm, I guess I'm like a, I don't know, science communicator. Well, I'm going to come back to this. I'm not letting you off the hook. There's something that I find very interesting about you and how you describe yourself, which is, and I want to make sure that I get the word right, which is you call yourself pathologically competitive. Right? This is interesting to me because I am not that. I'm competitive in different ways.

I am curious, A, what does that mean and how you define that? And then we're going to go down this rabbit hole. Well, I should caveat that with I used to be pathologically competitive. Well, if it's pathological. You can cure pathologies or you can outgrow things. You can morph over time. People are changeable. So you used to be. Yes. From what age did this begin? The moment I could think and reason and speak and do, I think. So you wanted to be out of the womb quicker than all the other kids in the ward.

I had to be the first. I had to be the best. I was competitive in the classic sense. I wanted to win. But the pathological was that it was sort of like my default state of being. It would often manifest, I would say, in sort of unhealthy ways. Now that I've got this, like, the luxury of time and maturity and so on, I can look back and be like, yeah, you know what? That probably wasn't optimal.

Give me an example of when it was suboptimal, which is an ironic term to use when you're talking about pathological competitiveness. So when it would like manifest in things like jealousy. Give me an example. When I was like starting out in poker, I would feel literally, I mean, there's no better word for it, jealousy. When another woman who was of the same, like sort of, you know, if she was young, especially if she was kind of attractive, if she had a success in a tournament,

even though it made no difference to me, like I would feel this deep jealousy. And even- In a tournament you weren't even in. Well, yeah. Or I'd already busted out of or whatever. And I'd be like paying attention, like, oh God, I hope she doesn't make the final table, which is just like I look back on that. I'm like, what on earth? You know, and that's that was this like this unhealthy competitiveness. It was just like the reason why I would like this, this ego is this shitty part of my ego would feel threatened by her is because actually she fit the same demographic as me. If she was an older woman or like a dude, like I didn't feel any jealousy towards a dude when they won, you know, I bet like 98% of people in poker tournaments are men.

So was there an event that helped you overcome this pathology or was it more subtle or it was just age that, you know, you sort of at one point woke up and be like, that's like, you look back and be like, that was stupid. Or was there actually something that slapped you around that made you realize? No, there was no sudden like wake up. It was just over time as I got older, I was like, this doesn't seem, you know, and like speaking to performance coaches and people like that, you know, they're like, you know, focus on yourself. It's all about the process. The only person you should be competitive with, especially in poker is yourself. Right. How did I perform against myself two months ago, a year ago or whatever? It's all about the process. The only person you should be competitive with, especially in poker, is yourself. How did I perform against myself two months ago, a year ago, or whatever?

So all these little tidbits of general wisdom that I slowly started accumulating helped sort of mellow it. Also, then I got, you know, when I had more success, it made it a little bit easier. But even when I was like sort of peak of my poker career and success, it was still in there somehow. It was like this deep- Insecurity. Yeah, insecurity or something. I've talked about this and I've written about this as well. I can empathize almost to a T with what you're saying. There's somebody else who does what I do, who writes books, gives talks, all that stuff. And I would regularly log on to Amazon and check his book rankings.

And if he was ahead of me, I had an anger. There's no other way to describe it. I'd sit by myself staring at the Amazon ranking with anger, you know? And if I was ahead in the book rankings that arbitrary day that I happened to check, you know, I'd sort of be really full of myself, you know? They're sort of like, huh, there you go. That's correct, you know? All's that's correct you know all is right with the world all is right with the world justice order is

I'm clearly ahead in the rankings you know so was this guy also kind of in the similar realm to you yeah yeah we speak at the same conferences and we know each other

we were always very polite to each other same as you I never did anything to him nothing ever happened I never sort of said anything I never undermined him but like when people would bring up his name in polite conversation and I would see, like, I'd be like,

oh yeah, he's so smart. And inside I'd be like, you know, I would see at the very mention of his name. We were invited to speak at the same conference and, and not like me in the morning, him in the afternoon, but we were going to be interviewed together on the same stage. And the interviewer decided that instead of introducing us, we should introduce each other. And I went first. And I turned to him, and instead of telling the audience who he was,

I turned to him and I said, you make me really insecure. Wow. I said, you make me really uncomfortable. I said, every time your name comes up, I get really uncomfortable. And it's because all of your strengths are all of my weaknesses.

And he turned to me, he said, funny, I think the same about you. Interesting. It was in that moment that I learned that all of my anger, seething, contempt, pride, all of those had nothing to do with him. It had everything to do with me. It's his mere existence reminded me of my failings or my weaknesses. And it was much easier to take it out at him or on him than it was for me to simply deal and focus on myself. And like you in poker, like multiple

people can win multiple tournaments. It turns out people can buy more than one book. I'm competing against absolutely nothing. I'm competing against my imagination. But I have found that that pathological competition, which is when you're trying to beat someone in a running race, have at it. I mean, that is actually the goal, which is to outrun them. But when I'm trying to beat someone in a game that literally has no end, like promotions at work, compliments from boss, book sale, like literally there is no finish line and no one could ever be declared a winner. It's a stupid game. That is where I found a competitive spirit to be incredibly unhealthy. Yes. Because you can actually find yourself doing things to destroy them or destroy

yourself. It's a false zero sumness. It's a false zero sumness. Right. You're seeing something as a fixed pie that if they get a chunk of it, then that means less for you. But actually, in reality, especially in something like being an author or a speaker, it's such a you're literally creating something out of nothing. I love talking to you about things like competing in competition, A, because you are competitive and a high performer, but your opinions and points of view on competition I find really interesting. In particular, I've heard you talk about the changing nature of poker as computers and mathematics have been introduced to this.

And so what was poker like before computers showed up? Like who are the good poker players? What made them good? If you want to go really like back prior to online poker in any way, almost uniformly the best players, with the exception of maybe this guy Stu Unger, who was younger, and Phil Helmuth. The younger Unger?

Yeah, the ones who were celebrated as the best players were typically older they were very much kind of casino hustlers you know yeah cowboys sometimes they even look like yeah exactly like Doyle Brunson classic actual cowboy um or at least he always wore a cowboy hat and you know these were guys who had just spent so much time hustling in casinos playing playing against all different sort of characters. They developed really good intuitions about human behavior. And I think a lot of these sort of great plays they would make, I don't think they would even understand them themselves. They wouldn't be able to explain and break down through logic why they did the play they did.

They just had such good intuitions that that was sufficient to outplay everyone else. Right. But then once online poker came along and certainly a bit later on, sort of after 2010, we started seeing analysis software. So you can now run statistics. Exactly. Through the analysis and say, you should have played this hand or you should have waited or whatever. Right. You can see sort of like, oh, in the small blind, I tend to be losing more than expectation. I'm playing these positions well, but these ones not so well so you can start to pinpoint and then from 2015 onwards we then had what are called simulators basically you could input a sort of fictitious situation or a real situation actually and then press play and it would run for let's say eight

hours to find the optimal solutions wow this was a game changer because now you actually could find out what the mathematically optimal solutions are. And then whoever was willing to sit and memorize those could incorporate them into their game when they then go and play. So did you play gut or did you memorize the mathematics? I tried to do both. You can't really learn how to exploit your opponents unless you know what optimal play is in the first place. And so you need to know that stuff and then develop good understanding of what people do when they are deviating from that so that you can figure out how to exploit them. So I forgot which book it was, but there was a book that talked about like the imports of

experience and gut. And they gave a few different incredible examples. And I remember one of them, which was, and it's true, it was a true story as a. And I remember one of them, which was, and it's true. It was a true story as a case study of a group of firefighters, like I think they were sort of forest firefighters. And they were out in the field and one of them was the senior one, the older one, and the rest of them were, you know, young guys. And a wind had picked up and a wall of fire was burning the dry grass and approaching them at an incredible speed.

There was panic. They all dropped their equipment and started running. And they could just slightly outrun the fire if they ran at full pace. And the older guy, the problem was the older guy looked ahead and they were coming up to a hill. And he starts screaming at them, duck down, duck down, duck down, stop running, duck down. And they all ignored him because when there's a fire coming at you, stopping is not the thing you want to do. But the old guy stopped,

got on the ground, covered his head and just lay there. And the fire was going so quickly that it just ran right over him, rendering no damage to him, no harm to him. And when they started up the hill, the fire caught up to them and killed all of them. And no one taught them that. No one taught them how a fire works, that don't worry, it's burning so quickly that it

won't burn you. And this older guy, he was never taught it. It just occurred to him in the moment. He knew, the gut told him, this is what you have to do. And in this book, I just remember case study after case study of these kinds of things were experienced that something tells me that the data says this. And they gave examples of where the data said you have to do this. But I'm not going to trust the data. I'm going to follow my gut here. And so what I think is so interesting about the rise of algorithms, and let's be clear

what an algorithm is. I mean, the term is bandied about so much, right? It's simply a list of instructions. A recipe to bake a cake is an algorithm. And the algorithm says, if this, then that. That's all it is, is a list of instructions. But we become so obsessed with mathematics algorithms on all of this. Even the way that marketing used to be a gut thing, now it's just an algorithm thing.

You know, you'd A, B test something, and the decision's made. I don't care how experienced you are. What is the role of gut anymore when we can have computational speeds that are so quick? Like, do humans even get the chance to make a decision anymore in anything we do? Right. My theory is, and I don't know this for sure, and I don't think the science is at all accepted, but my theory is that just our brains are doing all kinds of, you know,

there's so much information going in all the time. And memories are laid down. You know, if you asked me what I did on January 14th, 2012, I would not be able to tell you. But if you showed me a picture of that day yeah suddenly i'm in and i can probably remember the day roughly something to do at least where i was i was like oh yeah that that thing right so those memories are in there we just don't seem to be able to access them my suspicion is when we have these like intuitive insights it is basically our brains

we've got all this data there and there's some kind of processing going on that we can't really access but then sometimes when it's just necessary it comes through one of the biggest challenges in poker frankly is knowing when to go with the maths what the math says like you know there have been many situations in poker where like very clearly the math says okay i have to fold my hand i have to fold my hand. I have to fold my hand. This is clearly I have a terrible hand, like given everything. But there's just something that my intuition, my gut is saying, they're bluffing you, Liv. I know you've got a crap hand, but you've got a call. Or vice versa.

And the challenge is knowing when to listen to your gut. Because it's not always right. Yeah, sure. And like certainly over my gut after 10 years of playing was much better than two years of playing. There have been times where I've ignored the maths and gone with my gut and it was absolutely right. And I felt like a superhero. And there have been times when I've ignored the maths, gone with my gut and I was dead wrong. And I felt like an absolute idiot.

And it's so, so hard. And what I found that, so that the fire, the fire thing, for example, like, and that's it. That's the fire thing for example like and that's that's the other thing i do think there's to a degree some sort of knowledge stored almost you know you know our nervous system goes through our body like i've been reading a bit about this idea of like somatic processing and like the body holding but you know but the body essentially holds knowledge in different ways you can't get anything more visceral than running for your life from a fire right so it wouldn't surprise me if like god knows what years of evolution and so on has been ingrained in our human bodies. And this guy was able to switch

off like his linear processing, you know, system two, the logic, whatever. The point is, in panic, I don't think our guts serve us very well. And I think we're always taught, stay calm, stay calm, because even though you're not quote unquote, thinking, but I think the ability to see patterns that you wouldn't ever be, because I think that's where gut operates. You know, mathematics deals with if this, then that. Right. It's linear. It's linear. Yeah. Whereas our guts are nonlinear and can find connections that the mathematics will miss. If fire is going at this pace and this type of grass, you know, burns at this rate, you need to run

at this pace to outrun the fire. Nowhere is going to say, just lie down. And I find this very interesting, which is we become so reliant on computers now, which is the role of experience, the role of wisdom, the role of time, the role of gut, I think is becoming underappreciated to a point where I think anybody who's of age and has been in the workforce for a while recognize that a young workforce that comes in is almost dismissive of age and experience. You're so obsessed with game theory and competition. Just wax philosophical with me on this, like going from someone who's pathologically competitive, who's now relaxed and no, you've,

you. No, I don't, I wouldn't go that far. Okay, fine. But you're dealing with the pathology. Yes. So what is your relationship with maths versus gut now? Versus before. So it's funny because in 2018, I gave a TED Talk where I talk about the role of, it was like one of these six minute super short ones. And I gave like three lessons that poker taught me. And the second lesson I talked about was don't overprivilege your gut instinct. Because I remember, you know, I was looking into it and every time I Googled intuition or instinct, all of the memes are like, your gut is always right. Never second guess it. Follow your heart. It alone knows the truth. Entrepreneurs say that all the time. Yeah. My secret was I followed my gut. Yeah.

Right, right, right. And it's every single meme was saying that and there was no balance to it and i was just like well this that's not my lived you know my lived experience in the term in poker sometimes my gut is right but sometimes it's wrong there's an error rate inherent in my in my intuition and we should maybe talk about that and i think this i can imagine this is the case with others as well and like let's not you know black and white this too much so in in that talk basically i wouldn't go so far to say as I was disparaging of the gut, but I called for moderation. You're raising a very, very difficult problem, which is a failure rate. Yes.

Of our gut. So now we're left standing going, well, then when do I trust my gut? And what you're making a case for is, well, trust the math. At least you know what the failure rate is. That's basically the case I made in that talk. Now I'd say I've swung back in the other direction again and think that there is some degree of like, I would even go so far to say, as I think there's value in some kind of shared knowledge going on that we can tap into. Like, I even made the joke in the talk. It's not like our intuitions come from some magical source of inspiration, you know, and I got a laugh and so on. But now looking back on it, I'm like, you know what?

I've had some moments where it literally felt magical of like, and once I became open to the idea that you can sort of almost tap into some borderline supernatural realm of inspiration, I've started having way more inspiration and insight. Okay. I got to go down this rabbit hole, right? If we're applying a mathematical theory to the playing of poker, for example, and the more data you collect, the more accurate your statistical knowledge, in other words, you know the failure rates of this hand versus that hand, right?

Or this gameplay versus that gameplay. And you're talking about failure rates of gut. That means that if you have enough data, you can mitigate failure rates or even reduce failure rates. So it raises the question, how do we make our guts stronger? How do we make our guts better to reduce the failure rate? So I think it starts with the same way we, you know, everyone's been talking about cognitive biases now for the last 20 years. It's a very popular topic. But they, again, you know, to use the sort of dichotomy of thinking fast and slow, you know, system one, system two, you know,

gut, logic, whatever you want to call it. Just tell people what that is. Yeah. So thinking fast and slow was Daniel Kahneman, right? And he won a Nobel Prize for it. Basically, his research seemed to show that we have two modes of thinking. We have our system one, which is the gut that we're talking about. It's like if I was to say, what's five plus five? You immediately know the answer is 10, hopefully. But if I ask you, what's 321 plus 75?

I have to think. Right. And that is your system two. So again, system two is like the linear like voice in your head you sort of think through this plus this plus this and system one is the thing that just like knows the answer so in certain situations one is better for the other and when you're playing poker like what i actually would do back you know i don't play poker anymore but in in the peak of my game the habit i developed was to you know like say someone makes a big bet i try and feel what my gut said in that like okay that was a bluff or

okay he's got a strong hand you would practice the feeling of gut yeah and try and practice that and like like what what was my it was my initial feeling as soon as the action was made make a mental note of it and then do the maths and so on and actually do the logic be like well okay when the king came on the turn he he thought for a while and then you know he had to think before he bet so that means that maybe it wasn't the easiest but then are you looking for things that may not exist and you could also they could also be screwing with your right they could be delaying things to screw with your attempt to read their tables. Sure, but you can factor that in. There's all of those.

There's error rate with everything, but you're just trying to sort of like sift through the noise and find the signal. So then once you've done your thinking through of the problem, now you have to try and see, okay, well, does the mathematical conclusion line up with what my initial gut feeling was? Hopefully they're aligned.

Great. It's when they're not is the tricky thing. But the trouble is, is that, you know, as we know, he has an error rate. And that error rate comes from, I think, biases. Same as like loss aversion can make us do funny things with our thinking in the system too. It can also, I think, bias our gut to coming to certain conclusions. What's so interesting about you and me is you are clearly a scientist, or at least you approach things with a scientific brain. I'm an artist, right? I'm just like chaos, happy, let's see where it goes, find a pattern, right?

pattern, right? And so when I think about how to make my gut stronger, my intuition says, fill it. Fill it with seemingly disconnected information. So for example, if I'm trying to make my gut stronger, let's say I'm a poker player. So I want to fill my gut. It's not by playing more poker. I'm going to do that anyway. I'm going to study the tables anyway. I'm going to go do things that make no sense. I'm going to go to the zoo and look at gorillas. I'm going to go to a dance performance. I'm going to go to rehearsal. I'm going to go watch a choreographer and how he makes a piece of dance and watch the dancers interact. I'm going to sit in a coffee shop and watch people interact, talk to each other, how they talk to the barista. Unbeknownst to me, see all these subtleties of human behavior. One of my favorite things to do to this day, I love going to a bar or a restaurant and guessing

when I look around the restaurant and bar, the couples, are they on a first date? Are they on a second date? Are they a couple already? It's really fun to do with just body language. Unbeknownst to me, quote unquote, what I'm studying is human behavior. What I'm studying are tells. What I'm studying is discomfort. What I'm studying is confidence. What I'm studying is insecurity. What I'm studying is hope, desires, dreams as manifested in a funny twitch or a mirroring

of our body language. Oh, that's the other fun thing, which is when they are in an early first or second date, is it going well? And it's actually really easy to tell. I'll just give you a quick, really funny one. I was on a, I was out for dinner with a friend and there's a couple sitting next to us. I could actually hear the conversation. So it was abundantly clear they were on a first date and you can tell from the body language, they were getting along great. You know, like they were laughing at the same time. They were mirroring each other's body language.

They were both leaning in. It was like really magical, right, to watch. They wanted to look something up. No problem. He pulled out his phone. No problem. They're both in on it. He typed something in.

They look it up. And then he sort of sends a quick text. You know, you can see the interaction. And then puts the phone on the table and all of a sudden the body language completely changes her arms are folded she's now leaning back they're not laughing at the same time anymore now he still thinks the date's going great but the body like the whole dynamic is completely changed i'm praying i'm like i hope she goes please go to the bathroom she gets up and goes to the bathroom and i lean over to him and go,

do you want a little input on your date? And he looks at me and goes, what? I'm like, put the phone away. Do you not see what's going on here? You were getting on great and you've completely screwed it up because you pulled your idiot phone out and you've destroyed everything.

Put your damn phone away. The date will go better. You know? And did he? Yes, he puts his phone away. And all of a sudden she comes back and like the whole thing works again. But the point is,

is like it's those subtleties. What I'm doing is making my gut stronger. Right. And so I think the way that we make our gut stronger is by doing things that make us uncomfortable or put us in unfamiliar situations.

And you said this because all that gets stored somewhere. Yes. And our bodies and our minds have the ability to recall that if it matters. And so I think there is a way to make a stronger gut, which is go out and do things that have nothing to do with your job. Certainly with anything that's reading people, body language, then it is all kinds of information is useful.

I think all kinds of information is useful, period. It's not about reading people. That's my interest. That's what I look for. If you're in manufacturing, I know what you do. You read all the manufacturing trades, which means all you're doing is reading about what somebody else has already done that you didn't think of, or they're ahead of you. So the best you can do is copy them and be a follower at best. How about stop reading your own trades and read the trades of other organizations and find out how other companies are solving problems

that may show up in your industry that nobody else has seen or thought of. Well, certainly giving space as well is incredibly important. If you're struggling with an issue, I mean, most of the famous breakthroughs of scientists have been when they actually, they were struggling, struggling, struggling,

but then they take a break and actually go and do something else. Right. The classic light bulb moment. Yeah. Eureka. Literally, he's in the freaking bathtub. Exactly.

Yeah. Your intuition, it can't really work all the while you're engaged in system two and you're doing the linear thinking and so on. You're a reformed pathological competitor. Competition and winning has been a theme throughout your life. You are now on an exploration to dispel the myth of the zero sum game that is oft applied where there is no zero sum and to find more win-win

opportunities, which sounds like world peace. And I mean that favorable. I mean, I'm not being cynical. Like if everything goes according to the way you're talking, then that is the eventual, that is the eventual outcome. Hopefully. Hopefully. Yeah. So what insight can you give us to help us better understand competition and how it can be healthy and how we can set ourselves on a path that we can have more win-wins in our life yeah so the main thing i've been musing on over the last year or so is this concept of what's called like a moloch trap moloch was this biblical demon uh supposedly there was this awful Canaanite cult who wanted to win at war so badly they would

literally sacrifice the thing they held most dear to this burning effigy of this this this god called Moloch they would sacrifice their children and it has this story that's obviously passed down through millennia as a kind of warning of like over-optimizing at winning at a narrow metric a narrow goal and through like popular culture over the last few decades um there was an amazing blog called meditations on moloch by scott alexander and i remember reading particularly that blog and it was just like a light bulb moment it was like borderline religious sort of awakening for me reading this because i was like this, this force of over-optimizing for a narrow metric, which makes you sacrifice all the other things that actually are important in order to win. This is the thing that is actually threatening our very existence on this planet.

So give me a practical example, a contemporary practical example of a mullock trap. Like in a stadium. So you go to a rock concert or something and everyone's sitting down and has the view they have, but a few people down the front want a slightly better view

so they stand up. That forces the people behind them to stand up and the people behind them until everyone is now standing up and because it's so loud, there's no way for everyone to sort of now coordinate

to sit back down again. So everyone's stuck standing for the rest of the show, even whether they want to or not. And no one's got a better view than they had before because everyone is just standing. It might even be worse. Might even be worse. Exactly. So everyone is now worse off than before, but there is no easy way for everyone to coordinate and sit back down again. So they're trapped in this like lower order state. Another good example I like of this is these beauty filters that are like now prolific everywhere on social media. For a while I was playing like the Instagram game trying to

grow. I've given up on that bloody platform. But, you know, I noticed that when I would post pictures, A, if I posted a picture that was like more scantily clad than clothed, that would get more likes. But then when these beauty filters started appearing where like with one click, it would just like tweak your features in really subtle ways But very effective ways if I used those I would get more likes But the thing is is that these filters They would make you hate the original picture like, you know, I'd maybe I would upload a picture I really liked of myself

But then I'd apply the filter to make it just a little bit better and now I no longer like the original would make me Feel ugly in fact and you're doing this under experimental conditions and it still had a psychological absolutely yeah well i well so a i was partly doing it for an experiment but b i was like well i'll try posting some of these because i do want to grow my instagram and this does seem to be more effective yeah and then i started thinking well if i'm doing it probably everyone else is doing it too right right, right, right, right. So there are these massive incentives, these short-term incentives to get, you know, a short-term get ahead to use these things. But long-term, it's not only bad for the individual using it, but it's bad for the whole. A, it's encouraging everyone else to do it too.

It's also making people not know what they can trust. Right. It just creates this like sea of like inauthenticity and like dopamine hijacking just to win at this short-term narrow game of getting more likes and followers. So to translate in my words, just so I'm clear, a Moloch trap, basically when you fall into a Moloch trap, you've lost the plot. You no longer understand the infinite game and you're now so obsessed with the finite game that you have to win at this thing at any cost. Yes, you end up sacrificing other really. Yes. You end up sacrificing other really important things. Sacrificing other things, sometimes your own mental health. Yes. Not realizing that it's happening because you're watching that short term

arbitrary, a very often metric, go up. The scary thing about a Moloch trap, and I think you're 100% right that exists, it's one thing for a person to fall into a Moloch trap. But what I think is even more insidious is when entire companies or corporate cultures fall into a Moloch trap. But what I think is even more insidious is when entire companies or corporate cultures fall into a Moloch trap. Or nations. Or nations fall into it. Or civilizations. Yeah.

Where the incentive structures are gaming our dopamine systems. They're incentivizing behavior that encourages everybody to get into the Moloch trap. encourages everybody to get into the Moloch trap. The outcome is putting chemicals in food or increasing the price of an essential drug 1,000%, 1,500%, so you can hit some number. And the ripple effects are at the minimum uncomfortable, but at worst, really devastating. Another phrasing you can use is negative sum games. In theory, a game is a constrained little thing, but in reality, there's always externalities. The question is, are the externalities Another phrasing you can use is negative sum games. In theory, you know, a game is a constrained little thing. But in reality, there's always externalities. The question is, are the externalities making the world better or making the world worse?

And like in the beauty filters, you know, everyone's playing the influencer game. But, you know, on net, it's probably making the world worse. The fact that this technology exists, you know, everyone's incentivized to use. Another example is the same Mllet trap that the media are currently in, you know, especially since, I mean, they've always been playing the sort of, if it bleeds, it leads game, you know, amplifying negative, particularly violent things more than probably they deserve to get ratings. But ever since, you know, now basically the competition dial has been turned up to the maximum with the internet, you know, new media, et cetera.

Old legacy media companies that used to basically, know they had a very cushy cushy life are now under pressure to do whatever they can to stay afloat and that right now the most rewarding thing is like play into the culture wars oh what's our user base our readership are all democrats or our readership are all republicans what can we do to rile them up to keep them coming back for more and more and more? It's the same like junk food type thing. It just happens to be news junk food. That's Moloch's game. Moloch loves it. There's only one person that's benefiting from that and that's Moloch. It's the demon eating your babies is the only one enjoying this. Exactly. Most of the journalists, they're not particularly happy about this either. Even the good faith ones are kind of stuck in this same game because if they don't do it,

then their company is going to fail. What you're talking about is awful because what happens when it is full-blown ethical fading, which is where people can then rationalize their behavior inside them. So they're in the Moloch trap, they're doing these things, but then they say things like, well, everybody else is doing it. I might as well anyway. If I don't do it, somebody else is going to do it. You know, I have to do it to get ahead. This is what my company asks me to do.

I mean, what choice do I have? Or my personal favorite, it's the system. And it's interesting because there is some truth to that, right? Like the system is screwed up. The incentives are whack. By it optimizing for the short term, it creates these bad outcomes. But it also for Moloch to really get a stranglehold on a situation it also needs the individuals to do

the short-term selfish thing so it's there's two points of failure which also means there's two points of success as well like a like redesign the system that's probably the easiest thing if possible redesign a system so that the incentives acting on the individual in the short term are aligned to the whole so we have to have the conversation even for a few minutes. Then how do you get out of a Moloch trap? Let's stick with some of our analogies here. So in the stadium, because I have an idea here, but I'm curious what you think. In the stadium, how do we get everybody to sit down for the greater good? Right. So there's one route, which is God's eye view. Have some kind of coordination mechanism, i.e. a tannoy system to go, OK, everyone, look, we're all standing up. We don't want this anymore. Do we? People at the front, please don't stand up again because look what you did.

Basically central coordination, some centralized power structure to be able to say, look, guys, this is the rule. Sit down. The show is not going to go on until everyone's sitting down. OK, good. Now we can carry on. That's one way. sitting down okay good now we can carry on that's one way the other way would be for everyone to sort of enough pockets of people to either become simultaneously enlightened to it'll be like well this is stupid you know what i'm going to sit down completely i won't even see the show but maybe my effects will have a ripple effect so some people to do like an actual sacrifice completely sacrificed and essentially quit the game right that's what you're doing by sitting down and now you can only see backs you're quitting the game of trying to see the show right that's the other competing to see the show of competing to see the show you're like just quitting the game entirely but it's actually coming at a real hit because now you're not going to see anything but you're like i'm just going to

do this out of like moral indignation in theory if enough people sort of do that that might have a ripple effect yeah yeah that's the other way now i don't know which one's more actual plot you know if we now sort of transpose this concept onto, let's say… Corporate culture. Corporate culture or farmers on the edge of the Brazilian rainforest, the Amazon rainforest, who are slowly eating into it, cutting it down because they need more land for their cows and they can turn that wood into money quickly. How do we get them to all simultaneously agree, you know what, we're not

going to do this. We're not going to see each other as competitors. We're going to find another form of business model that doesn't require us cutting down the rainforest. It's really hard. There's plenty of examples. I mean, the answer is it depends, right? So what you're talking about is some sort of authority figure saying, okay, stop, this is going to happen. It's for your own good. It's parental, it's governmental, however, whatever your bias is. And we know this is like when we ask people to wear seatbelts and they didn't. So the government passed a law that says everybody has to wear a seatbelt. And we hate it and we complain about it. But it turns out we all now wear seatbelts. And turns out that the loss of life in car accidents has dramatically declined because of safety features in cars and seatbelts.

The difficulty is, is that rules, you rules, if you have too much centralized control, that now leaves you vulnerable to tyranny and authoritarianism and all that nightmare. And also certain rules do just have error rates. I was kind of like, yes, centralized control is the way. And then we went through COVID and now I'm like kind of swinging in the other direction because it's just like, man, I've seen what happens when you have centralized control that was run by idiots and they made so many mistakes. Now it's like, okay, that's not the way either. So there's a great irony in this whole conversation, which is we're right back to

where we were talking before about the role between the mathematics and the gut, which is it's art and science. And the answer I think is, is it's not either or, it's the ability to understand and use both. And you said the answer I think is it's not either or, it's the ability to understand and use both. And you said it, I think you as a poker player is a perfect metaphor for how this works, which is I had to maximize my knowledge of the mathematics. At the same time, I had to maximize my knowledge of the intuition and the gut. And I became a better poker player as both skills improved. And I think it's finding that magical balance, which is imperfect, using authority appropriately, but at the same time, allowing people to sort of like

learn things themselves and sort of get community to be a part of it. Right. It's finding the balance between centralized and decentralized. It's top and bottom. Exactly. Top down and bottom up simultaneously. We need whatever system we move to has to be some kind of hybrid model of both and have the adaptability and wisdom to know which to lean more heavily on. Someone even described once that if you could try and distill the culture war down, all the various culture wars down into like, what is the generator function

inside of Moloch, which is like probably the thing that's like feeding it. But most of them are a battle between centralization and decentralization. Yeah. Yeah. a form of like as philosophy power structures yeah yeah as philosophies yeah and that's a whole new podcast yeah and and the reality is is that we need to find a hybrid model that takes the best bits of both correct no you're both right you're both wrong simultaneously yes now work together yeah okay i'm not letting off the hook i want to go back to the original question of what do you do like how do you define yourself and that discomfort? And for those of you who can't see Liv, she squirmed in her chair as she attempted to answer that question. Okay, so I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to make it, I'm going to try and help, if I may. your career and still many, many, many years ahead, we hope. Tell me something specific that you've done in your career. It doesn't matter in what job or what capacity. It doesn't matter if it was commercially successful or not. Those things are irrelevant. Something specific you've

done in your career that you absolutely loved being a part of. And if everything you did was like this one thing, you'd be the happiest person alive. These two short films i've made about moloch especially the first one the beauty wars one about these beauty filters i i made it in this garden shed in this house that we were staying in over the summer in oxford and i just like i probably went crazy frankly it was because i made everything in that film that feeling of like feeling like I've truly created something that did not exist before that I care about so much that I know like if people can feel what I felt I really think is going to help solve these issues that we're in that that moment when I press send and like when it was finished and I watched it back and watching it back and feeling just deeply proud of myself.

That was the moment. So you've done some amazing things in your career. You've won tournaments. You were a world champion in poker. You've outperformed others in school and other places. You've done things that you were proud of. What was it about this one thing that seems to stand out from the other things that were what others would say accomplishments? What stands out is it's actually touching on a fundamental

truth. The first thing that popped ahead to my mind when you mentioned that, asked the question was, oh, I won that big tournament in Europe. That was the highest high for sure. Unfathomable. I won $1.7 million. It was like a week of playing. It like catapulted me to stardom. I was having all these journalists wanting to take my picture, et cetera. That was like the highest dopamine imaginable, but man was the crash intense afterwards. But it didn't have, it didn't carry the same meaning.

Whereas like finishing this video that I struggled on for ages and ages and ages, but like I could then play it back and be like, this is really good piece of art that actually has really important meaning loaded in it. Okay. Was just this different type of satisfaction. Got it.

It was like, yeah, I don't know. It felt like eating a piece of really good broccoli. Said no one ever um tell me an early specific happy childhood memory something i can relive with you not like we went to my grandparents on the weekends just like something specific i can relive with you i was i had my friends staying over and i think we were like camping out in um the field out at the back of our house and we in the middle of the night we couldn't really see when we went up into the fields and I had my horse was

in the field I was very lucky that I had a horse as a kid we went and laid down on the ground just to look at the stars and my horse came over and just I just remember his eyes he looked like an alien leaning over us and you know there's always a rule like never be on the ground like never lie down next to a horse that's standing. They might stand on you. But we both trusted him so much. And he came and just like was nuzzling with us. And I don't know, I just remember his like, there was just so much joy and love in that moment.

What was it about this story that really makes you smile that you want to talk about it it was just so simple i wasn't thinking about sorry just bringing up a lot like thinking about childhood stuff because i my very good friend just found out they're getting a divorce and it's really, it's really, sorry, I'm speaking up a lot. No, it's fine. Take your time. It's just the simplicity of it where I wasn't thinking all day long about like, Moloch problems. Do you know the beauty of everything you just said?

From the story of making the film to the story you had with the childhood and even your friends whose marriage is collapsing. Think about that, which is somebody else's marriage has brought you to tears, right? It's the human relationship. And it's the beauty of little things and how we've overcomplicated our world so much that we've broken, hurt, eliminated, obfuscated, beautiful

little things that make us smile. What's important is that the story you told from your childhood wasn't about you lying in a field with the horse. It was about you lying in the field with your friend with the horse. It was this magical shared experience. And when I pushed you on the making of the film versus, you know, other things that you've accomplished in your life, you talk about the dopamine highs, which are pretty selfish. Look what I did. And where you really got excited to all the hard work that you may have done by yourself, but I'm sure there's other people involved that you talk to and bounce ideas off of, of course. But when you

said specifically, this is for other people, like the impact it has for other people. It felt, it's just like a very win-win-y thing. It's a very win-win-y thing that this's a very win-win-y thing. Yeah. That this is magical for everyone involved. And though there's danger, don't lie down with a horse. Though there's danger, this could be misperceived by others. Though there's danger, I'm going to get some flack for this. At the end of the day, the magic that is produced was worth it and is worth it. The failure of your friend's marriage is just, I think you're deeply, deeply in love with and

deeply, deeply protective of human relationships. And you're watching a world where human relationships are failing, whether they're formal relationships like a marriage, but more importantly, it's just our ability to interact with each other. And the whole concept and your obsession with win-win is literally just getting along. Like I want the person I'm negotiating my contract with to also succeed in this negotiation. Like that's what win-win is. I want my partner to be happy in this marriage. I want my friend to enjoy this magic.

We can't sleep. Let's go do something together. I want other people to have real life benefit. And when you talk about the Moloch trap, what you're talking about is compulsive selfishness. What drives you, your why is compulsive sharing, compulsive giving, compulsive friendship, relationships, all of these things. In an instant, I understand you better than when I started, which is you're a softie for love.

Yeah, I think it's just like, there's so much conflict. And, you know, there's so many systemic reasons that we can't coordinate. That when I see two people who, you know, yes, okay, maybe they're not the best match for each other. But when when I see that, you know, basically one party in this well both you know i'm sure there's a two-way street but one is choosing like the max pain route right now and it's so unnecessary yeah it's like there's so much conflict going in the world why add relationships fail it happens yes it happens but why not show up for this divorce to help the other person land on their feet right yeah as opposed to hurting them because you hurt me right and it's just like what is this thing inside us that makes

us go into like to choose the dark path yeah that's that's that's one of my favorite uh metaphors is like someone gets their armpit off by an alligator and then another person gets their arm cut off by an axe murderer, which of those two people do you think carries more trauma going through life? Usually you'd think, well, I think most people would select the person who had their arm cut off by the axe murderer. Why? Because, you know, no one blames an alligator. It's just doing what it does. Right. It's its nature. It's its nature. Whereas it doesn't have to be human nature to go for max pain, to like fight against each other, you know, see things as a zero sum competition or like hurt each other. Right.

And it's that act of when people choose to do that, that it like, it's like, oh, it hurts so much. So this is where when somebody says to you, what do you do? Right. Here's the answer. Right. You have a new answer. you do? Right? Here's the answer, right? You have a new answer. When somebody says, what do you do? And you can say, I'm obsessed with people getting along. I'm obsessed with people doing the right thing for those around them. And I have done many things in my life, all of which have taught me

the dangers of competition where we put ourselves before others and the magic of sacrifice where we put others before ourselves and striking the balance where we can just get along these days i'm working on a concept of blah blah blah right but i think that's where you that's where you play which is you really just want us to work realize that win-wins are possible and may even be the default order of things if we just like open our minds up to that possibility yeah live it's such a joy you are magical thank you sorry for crying please please no i never done that one before well you know it's been a day. But it's good.

It means that I think what's important to understand in that situation, which is, and I think it's a perfect metaphor. It's a perfect way to conclude what we're talking about. Competition is mathematical. It's about keeping score. It's about measuring. It's about weighing. It's about... It's about enforced constraints.

Enforced constraints, analyzing the person you're supposed to beat. And at the end of the day, you realize that I can only control so much in this thing called life. And at the end of the day, I have to learn to feel, I have to learn empathy, I have to learn love because the other one just won't work. And there's such this beautiful cadence to this whole conversation that ended, quite frankly, when you saw something that should be about relationship become about a competition.

Yes. And it's not about a competition. Right. Ironic, right? That you're obsessed with game theory, but it's really anti-game theory. Yeah, maybe. Well, that's the thing.

Competition is such a beautiful thing if we can do it in intended places. Exactly. Compete in the places we're supposed to compete, like in a game. Exactly. Voluntarily, we're going to play a game. Everybody agrees. Exactly.

We're competing for a scarce resource. We agree to the outcome. We agree to the finish line. Absolutely have a competition and exploit every opportunity and advantage you have to win in that competition within the rules. Right. Outside of the game, stop playing the game. Right. Just fucking get along.

And on that note, thank you. Thank you. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website, simonsynic.com, for classes, videos, and more. Until then, take care of yourself. Take care of each other.