Stuff You Should Know - Rock Paper Scissors: Decider of Things

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

Rock Paper Scissors is a child's game. But it's more than that if you can believe it, and it has a pretty cool history as well.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry Jerome Rowland, St. Jerome herself hanging out and this is Stuff You Should Know.

Just the three of us, we can make it if we try. I think we should detail what happened right before we re-recorded. It's very illustrative illustrative. Oh, I like the way you say it, Frenchie. Of this topic. I think you should share for sure. Well, we were debating on which episode to record first of our two. This one is about rock, paper, scissors. And as a joke, I said, why don't we use rock, paper, scissors to decide, but we don't use video. So we would just be throwing rock, paper, scissors and going on each other's word. And as soon as we did it, none of it felt right to

me. I shared what I shot and I was truthful. I know. And I stopped myself because A, I didn't throw anything because I thought we were kind of kidding. Oh, okay. But it just, and then you said that you thought that people, Jerry said, are you really doing this as an episode? And you said a lot of people might think the same thing. But I want to defend it out of the gate as a part of a two-part series that I came up with, of seeming children's games where there's a lot more there under the surface. And I'll go ahead and preview and say the next one will be followed followed is tug-of-war. Wait a minute. There's a third one. Isn't there? I thought you requested yet another one. No. I goofed up and when I sent Dave the idea, I accidentally sent tic-tac-toe.

Right. And he was like, there's not much on this after researching it for half a day. And I went, oh, dude, I meant to say rock, paper, scissors. I'm so sorry. Oh, no. Okay. Because there is a lot to rock, paper, scissors. I don't think there's as much with tic-tac-toe. No, no. Poor Dave. Okay, good. Got it. So tug-of-war and rock, paper, scissors. That's a winning combo, if you ask me. And apologies to Dave Ruse for the mid-game shift. Yeah. And many, many thanks to Mighty Dave Ruse for helping us out with these two. MDR. Better than the rooster, which remember how we were like, oh, yes, of course the rooster. And we talked to him about it. He's like, yeah, they've been calling me that since like first grade guys.

This is not new. So we're moved on. Now we're on to Mighty Dave Ruse. That's like someone saying up Chuck and then laughing as if it's original to me. That is genius. I've never called you that. No, of course not. Okay. So today, we're not talking about tug-of-war, Chuck. We're talking about rock, paper, scissors. And I feel like we should at least kind of explain, because unless you've been living under a rock or a sheet of paper or a giant pair of scissors, everybody knows what rock, paper, scissors is, right? Yeah. Should we do that? And then tell Dave's little story, because I think it's pretty fun. Sure. Yeah. Well, it's a game, a children's game, namely, although I would argue that if more adults decided some things this way, right, it would be a better

life for everyone. Agreed. Because I think kids don't bring emotion into decision-making like adults do, or then they don't write fight like adults do. So I think it can be a very egalitarian way to settle and something fairly easy. Totally. And quickly. Very quickly. But yeah, it's a game where you, some people count one, two, three, some people say rock, paper, scissors. And on that third beat, you each throw out a hand indicating a fist for a rock, a flat hand, palm down for a paper, or mimic a pair of scissors with your index and birdie finger. What finger? I always call it the birdie finger. Oh yeah, that makes sense. These are the birdie finger. Oh, sure. Well, that too. The Bernie Sanders finger, because he's so well-known. Whenever he gets heckled on stage,

he just throws a couple of birds high up in the air and says, read them in weep. That's pretty good, Bernie. Thank you. That was actually my Phil Hartman doing Sinatra. I thought it was Larry David doing Bernie. No, no, but it works. But that's the game. And you generally do best of three, but that has to be agreed upon beforehand. Okay, so that is, and like this game is so basic and simple, but it's also so widely played around the world that there's variations to almost everything you just said. Like I've seen plenty of people who do it on the fourth count, rock, paper, scissors, shoot. If you were playing on a pro rock, paper, scissors tournament, you would not put your hand down, palm down. You'd have it palm out to the

left or the right, depending on what hand you're playing with. There's like all sorts of little variations, but ultimately the point of it is, is that for each one of those possible choices, those three choices you could possibly make, it has one it can beat and one it can lose to, which makes it incredibly thrilling. With just three little hand combinations, you can either win, lose, and it happens in the blink of an eye. It's a really great game. I'm with you totally. It is. And it's, I think generally to, to settle a dispute, not always, it does it, it never struck me as a kind of game. You would just sit around and play, you know? Oh, yeah. No, it's, yeah, I know. You're right. Maybe if you were practicing,

if you were a weird kid practicing your rock, paper, scissors, but yeah, nobody's just sitting around playing that, like they're playing cards or something. Right. And it's between two people, because if you have more than two people, you'll probably go with an Eenie Meenie, Monnie Moe, or an Injun Injun number nine. I don't think I've ever seen three people playing rock, paper, scissors before it wants. I don't think you can. That's the whole point. I don't know. We should try it. No wonder if the universe would crumble around us. Yeah, but who would, like you have to be matched up against a person. Otherwise,

I mean, I guess if two people did paper and one person did rock, you would eliminate that person. I think we're, I don't know, maybe you're onto something. I might be. I feel like I've just kind of upped the evolution of the human species. I think so too. So you mentioned a story Dave came up with, and you're talking about settling disputes. You can also use it to make decisions too, especially if your name is Takashi Hashiyama, who was a Japanese electronic firm, C-suite executive. I think maybe the CEO of one of those companies. And he used to like to use rock, paper, scissors to basically make important

decisions when everything else was essentially equal. And he ran into the same thing in 2005, didn't he? Yeah. And I guess it worked out for him if he was a C-level executive, if that's a measure of success to you. But he was an art collector and he had a about a $20 million art collection of some very noteworthy artists and was going to auction it off and said, should I choose Christie's or Sotheby's? They're both great. And I don't know what to do. So I'm going to make them play each other in rock, paper, scissors for the account. Yeah. Because that's what Japanese electronics executives of $20 million art collections do.

Yeah. They make other people play rock, paper, scissors for their own amusement. So apparently Christie's recruited a pair of 11 year old twins, Alice and Flora, who were the twin daughters of the international director of impressionist and modern art for Christie's. And the reason that they turned to these two 11 year old twins is apparently they were rock, paper, scissors, dynamos. They played all the time. And they also like understood the psychology behind it too. And it actually paid off in aces for Christie's turning to these two. Yeah. Because in the interview, I think the New York Times interviewed the girls and

Alice said, everyone knows you always start with scissors because rock is way too obvious and scissors beats paper. And I kind of laughed at that at first, like that's such a thing a kid would say. But rock, there may be something to an adult being an aggressive move with the rock. There may be something to that. So that's actually what they did. They started with scissors on the day of the whole rock, paper, scissors playoff to see who would host this auction of this $20 million art collection. Christie's went with scissors. And just like the twins predicted, Sotheby's went with paper because apparently they thought rock would be too obvious. And they

thought that rock that Christie's would go with rock. So they went with paper, but instead Christie's went with scissors. And that actually demonstrates what you were saying earlier that there's a lot more to rock, paper, scissors than meets the eye because it's these twins assertion that you would want to go with scissors every time first because the psychology of your opponent can be kind of relied upon. Other people say you would never want to go with scissors and so on and so forth. And there's actually like game theorists that study this. There's a whole lot to this topic. So I guess what I'm saying is good idea of picking this one because I don't know if I ever would have. Well, what I did think was interesting is, and what would have been a funnier ending to this

story is that he didn't have them actually play the game with their hands. He had them each write down the Japanese word for rock, paper, or scissors on a piece of paper. And I thought it just would have been funny if they didn't know that little hitch. And Christie's had someone who spoke Japanese so that he didn't. So they were like, ah, you win by default. Yeah, we forfeit. We don't know. But yeah, I think there's something about the simplicity of it that just, in the future tug of war episode that just grabs me because when you start talking game theory, and we'll get to that, I've wanted to do an episode on game theory forever, but it breaks my brain a little bit when you really get into it. I think it's made up. So I think this might

be a good way to just satisfy that. Good. Good thinking. These two topics grab you and say, let's play. As far as where this came from, you know, of course, anything like this, people are going to say came from ancient Egypt because you can look at almost any mural or set of hieroglyphics and say, this is what I think they were doing here. It's very vague. Hey, wait, I think that one's giving me the bird. And I think that's kind of what happened with the Benny Hassan burial murals, right? I don't know. I think that the scholars typically agree that they're doing something like what's called a finger flashing game, that there's something like that. It's not rock, paper, scissors. I don't believe scissors were invented yet.

But that doesn't mean, as we'll see, there's a lot of other games that aren't rock, paper, scissors. They don't have to be rock, paper, or scissors. You can kind of substitute just about anything for your hand gesture. And it's possible they were playing that. I think what keeps it from being definitive is that there's nothing in like that we figured out from transcribing hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone that said, hey, you guys of the future really missed out playing this finger flashing game that we didn't bother to really put down. But it's definitely the predecessor of rock, paper, scissors. There's nothing like that. So it's just kind of like it's possible it goes back that far. Yeah. And I couldn't, you know,

I looked like Dave did to try and find a picture of that specifically. And there were a lot of pictures of this mural or set of murals, but I saw a lot of wrestling. Yeah, a lot of wrestling going on, a lot of gaming type stuff. But I could not find the specific finger flashing game. There's also, did you ever do the even odd thing? I never really understood that one. What is that one? When you throw, you like go one, two, three, and you throw one, two, or three fingers. For what? To decide something. It's a finger flashing game. Oh, okay. So it's basically what we're talking about. It's basically the Dolard's version of rock, paper, scissors. Well, I don't know. It may be regional. Like they did it on Seinfeld, I remember. And it's like evens or

odds, but I never like no one I knew ever did that. No, that's odd. Or maybe old timing too, because I remember movies in the like set in the 50s and 60s, I feel like they did that some too. That's very weird, because I mean, by that time, from what I can tell, Rock, Paper, Scissors had made its way to the United States from Asia and had been around for a while. So why would you go from Rock, Paper, Scissors to something as boring as one, two, or three fingers? I don't know. And I think the thing with that game is you call even or odd beforehand, and then you put the two hands together and whichever wins, wins. Does that make sense? I'm probably explaining that poorly. I think that deserves its own episode. Like you would say even, I would say odd, we throw fingers,

I throw two, you throw one, and that's odd. So I win. Does that make sense? Oh, if you add them together, it's odd. Yeah, yeah. But then if you added any odd to any even, wouldn't it always be odd? Well, if we both did ones, that would be even. Oh, yeah. But no, but if I threw four and you threw five, like that would be odd. I think it's only three fingers. Okay. Huh. That's really, that's really interesting. You don't remember that from Seinfeld? It's when they were trying to decide on like a lane moving into one of their apartments or selling an apartment or something? No, I genuinely don't. Oh, well. Like I feel like I've slipped into an alternate reality here. But back to ancient Egypt, we agree that they either may or may not have, but if you go to

China during the Ming dynasty, they definitely played some sort of iteration of rock-paper-scissors. Yeah, it was called Xuxi Ling. And they, it appears imprint, like it's like what I was saying, the Egyptians didn't do. The 17th century Chinese in the Ming dynasty did that. They wrote history books and they said, we've been playing this game called Xuxi Ling, a finger flashing game, for at least 1400 years, maybe even longer than that. And so that is definitively like what we kind of understand as rock-paper-scissors finds its root, if not in ancient Egypt, at the very least in ancient China. Right. And then of course, that made its way to Japan. And they had a sort of a collection of hand-throwing games called Sen Tsukumi Ken,

very nice. Which means Ken's fists, san or san, is it san? Yeah, san. Is three or three ways in Tsukumi is deadlock. And they found a pretty fun translation of Sen Tsukumi Ken that is three are afraid of one another, which I think is kind of beautiful in its simplicity. I love it too. So we have like a delineation where these things started in ancient China, made their way to Japan. Japan said, I really like these. Let's make a bunch of different games. And one of them was called Mushi Ken, which is pretty awesome. And it demonstrates how it doesn't have to be rock-paper-scissors or just one, two or three fingers. Instead, in Mushi Ken, your thumb is a frog, or you could throw a pinky finger, or you could throw your index finger.

The pinkies is poisonous centipede in China, and it's a snake as your index finger. And by the time it made its way to Japan, the centipede had been translated apparently incorrectly into slug, because Chinese and Japanese share the same characters, but often they have completely different meanings. So in Japan, it was a slug instead of a centipede. Right. And in that game, frog beats snake, snake beats centipede or slug, and centipede beats frog, or slug beats frog. That didn't make as much sense. Snake would beat frog, I would think. I think snake would beat all of them. Unless that centipede sneaks up behind the snake, you know?

Yeah, but that's the thing. I mean, it doesn't work unless you've got one you can beat and one you can lose to, you know? That's right. And then there was another version called Kitsune-ken, and this was a two-handed game. And I guess it's just a little more complex. You did a supernatural fox, a village leader, or a hunter. Fox beats village leader, leader beats hunter, hunter beats fox. Yep. That's as the old saying goes. That's right. But we know that it didn't start anywhere besides China and then move its way to Japan and then eventually make its way to America. We know that we got it here in America from Japan or possibly Chinese immigrants, because as late as the 1920s, 1930s even,

I believe, if you read Western literature, Western reporting that mentioned this stuff, you'll find that the author feels compelled to explain what's going on and what the rules are with one of these sensekumi-ken games that they're describing, which clearly demonstrates that a Western audience wouldn't, you couldn't just say the kids were playing rock, paper, scissors and leave it at that. You would have to explain what they were doing and explain the rules because the Americans hadn't come across this yet. Right. And in the late 1800s, Japan was literally playing a game that looked exactly like rock, paper, scissors called John Kinpon. Yes, which they still play. I quizzed Yumi about this and I was like, did you ever play any sensekumi-ken games? And

she's like, no. I was like, what about kitsune-ken? No. It's like, what about jankinpon? She's like, jankinpo? Of course, of course. And just started playing with me. They definitely play it still. That's nice. Who won? She won. So, she did it and I thought this was interesting too. Remember how you were saying like you, when you throw, you throw on the third one and I said, well, some people throw on the shoot. Yeah. Like they go rock, paper, scissors, shoot. When she does it, she said that as a kid, she and her friends would say, ja, ja, jankinpo. And then would throw it on the po, but there was still four hits to the fist. You were hitting your, the palm of your hand with your closed fist that you were going to throw the sign on,

still hitting it four times, even though there's five syllables in there. I thought it was interesting. I've seen four more universally than I've seen three. Yeah. I think, I think we did it on the third and I definitely hit the other hand when I did it. I wouldn't just throw it out in the air. I gotcha. Yeah. Almost like there's a platform or stage or something for it. That's right. A little hand stage. Should we take a break? Our first break of the new year? That's right. Well, we come back. We'll see. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking,

this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you,

it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck. So we were talking about it finally ending up in the United States. And it seems like it probably came into the Pacific Northwest, possibly San Francisco, where there's long been

a strong Chinese and a strong Japanese immigrant community. And of course, these are two of the countries that have been playing these finger flashing games for centuries by the time they started arriving in the United States. And it also ties in with a kind of a linguistic, quizzical puzzle about why some people call it Rochambeau. They think those two things are tied together, the arrival of rock, paper, scissors, and the beginning of when it was called Rochambeau, which is a kind of a regional word for that game. Yeah, I had heard that word. I've never known anyone that called it that, I thought. And then until we did this research and I saw that it was sort of, you know, San Francisco is one of the

pockets. And so I texted our pal, Jesse Thorn, bullseye with Jesse Thorn and Judge John Hodgman and the Max Fun Network, because he's the only native San Franciscan I know. And I'll just read it to you. I said, we're doing an episode on rock, paper, scissors. Did you do you call it Rochambeau? Yes. Are you passing this along to your children? He lives in Los Angeles now. So I know this paints him, but his children are technically Angelinos. Are you passing this on to your children? Can I reference all this in the episode? Yes and yes. And then he went, Rochambeau with exclamation points. So I think they did it like Yumi does it. And he says, none of this one, two, three shoot nonsense. So I think they call it Rochambeau in South Park. That's where I've heard it predominantly

too. Oh, interesting. That's Colorado, right? Yeah, which is technically West. It's a Western state, I think. It's still influenced by... It seems to be really regionalized to Northern California. Yeah, but I've heard it outside of that. I've spent a few nights in San Francisco, but not enough to pick up that the kids call it Rochambeau there. So I'm almost positive. I've only heard it from like South Park or whatever. Sound like you were writing a song there for a minute. Spent a few nights in San Francisco. So yeah, have you ever heard that John Denver song Saturday night in Toledo, Ohio? Geez, I don't think so. Oh man, it's hilariously mean. He said, you can go to the park and watch the grass die. Like he just talks about all the just boring,

stupid stuff you can do in Toledo. Sure, if you go in November. No, no, don't defend Toledo. Thank you for the gesture, but it's true in a lot of ways. But it's a really cute, funny song that's worth going and listening to. It's catchy too. All right, I'll check it out. But anyway, like linguists still today are like, why you stupid kids? Were you calling it Rochambeau? And why didn't you explain to anybody why you were calling it Rochambeau? Because it's a linguistic mystery still to this day. Yeah, I mean, some people say it's from the real life person from history. How do you pronounce that first name? What is it? Compte? The comp, the count. Okay. De Rochambeau, the Frenchman who fought alongside the Patriots in the Revolutionary

War. And interestingly, that may hold a little bit of water because there was a book called The Handbook for Recreational Leaders, where they literally spelled it as Rochambeau and not how he spells his name. And that book was published in Oakland. Yeah. I don't know what that means, though, just because it was published there, it doesn't mean it was like a regional book. Or maybe it was. Yeah, I mean, I could see the author living there. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I don't know. But I think it's a kind of interesting that it is that that Recreational Leaders book was published in Oakland at about the right time. I think it was a 1936 book. And it was about the time in the 1930s when they think that school

kids started picking this up in San Francisco. That makes sense. And you know what? Now that I look at the title of the book, Handbook for Recreation Leaders, not recreational. So it was probably like a handbook for local rec centers. Right. Instead of being like, are you a leader? Only recreationally. I don't take it seriously. Weird. But they think it's actually... Well, some people think it's from the original Japanese name, right? Yeah, either Jack Hippo. So you apparently just barely pronounced the N on the Jan in the poem. So it's Jack Hippo. And then in Chinese, it's Jing Zhang Bo. Jing Zhong Bo. Either way, there's that hard Bo or Po sound on the end of it. And they think maybe American kids in San Francisco who

were meeting these Chinese and Japanese school kid immigrants, were just kind of turned it into something else that sounded vaguely familiar, which to me, that's what my money's on. I think the Brits and the Aussies call it paper scissors stone or paper scissors rock. And then weirdly, if you live in Manchester, first of all, you're a Mancunian, which is kind of weird. Secondly, you don't clap, except at the very end of a show. Yeah, we performed live there. They enjoyed it, but they were quiet about it. Right. And then apparently they call this either zip pop brick or cis pop brick, just in Manchester. Yes, but they have all sorts of cool made up words around

that place. Okay. So the point is Roshan Bo, it's still, it's still and probably will forever be a mystery exactly where it came from. That's right. Should we talk about game theory? I don't see how we can get around it, Chuck. I really tried to figure out a way, but I don't think we can. Well, maybe you can embrace it as like, this is the kind of game theory that like, war games was about. Sure. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, game theory. At its most basic level, we're talking in this case about the Nash Equilibrium, or a Nash Equilibrium, and that's from John Nash of a beautiful mind fame. And sort of the simplest way to say it, they found a pretty good definition, which is a set of strategies,

one for each player, such that no player has an incentive to change their strategy, given what the other players are doing. In other words, it's a game where you reach an equilibrium because there's no strategy, essentially, that will get a better outcome. Right. Well, yeah, we'll put. Equilibrium is a really important term because it's a kind of a, even though you're in an adversarial situation where you're competing against somebody, it also has a sort of like cooperativeness that naturally trickles up from that gameplay. And there's not a pure Nash Equilibrium in Rock, Paper, Scissors, in the Prisoner's Dilemma, which is a famous game theory kind of thought experiment. There's a pure Nash Equilibrium

where it's like, this one choice is the thing to do. It's not quite the case in Rock, Paper, Scissors. Instead, what happens is that if you eventually choose, if your strategy is to choose doing each Rock, Paper, Scissors one third of the time, 100%, you can plan on over the course of hundreds of games to finally shake out to winning 33% of the games. And that is the best you can hope for, so long as everybody else is cooperating or acting rationally throughout the whole thing. But that's a mix that's called a mixed Nash Equilibrium. And it doesn't really count. And there's a lot of problems with applying or trying to apply a Nash Equilibrium to Rock, Paper, Scissors. Yeah, I mean, humans play it. And when they play it, they do two out of three

usually, or just one. So you're not doing it hundreds of times to let this play out. And also, humans are humans. So we have instincts. We have psychological tendencies that play. We have biases, unconscious and conscious biases, even with a silly game like this. And that one thing like might be better, even though one really isn't like they all have an equal chance of equally losing or winning. Right. So the Nash Equilibrium, I mean, it applies. It's not like you just can't make sense of it in the terms of Rock, Paper, Scissors. It's just as far as explaining a Rock, Paper, Scissors strategy goes. It's not your best strategy, because the best you could hope for is to win 33.33% of the time as long as you stuck to your guns

and played that same, that's one, two, three every single time. There's another strategy called a conditional response that they've studied, that actually produces a winning, like an overall winning score, 10% more often than a Nash Equilibrium will. Yeah. So this came from a study in China in 2014, where they did kind of the largest study on Rock, Paper, Scissors ever done, where they got 360 students, divided them up. They each had to play, I think, 300 rounds a piece. So you ended up a lot of rounds of Rock, Paper, Scissors. And the pattern they discovered, the conditional response was as humans, we instinctively, and it makes sense, we instinctively stick to something that wins, and we change it when it loses. So if you lose

on Paper, you're probably not going to go throw Paper right again afterward. And if you win with Rock, you're instinctively going to want to at least throw Rock as the next one. And this played out in the experiment. Yeah. And so with that, they found that the conditional response, you can actually, if you use that strategy where if you win with one thing, throw it again the next time, if you lose with one, switch to the next one. And apparently also, people follow the pattern depending on how you say the name of the game. Like if you call the game Rock, Paper, Scissors, if you switch in a conditional strategy, if you lose with Scissors, if you lose with Rock, you'll go to Scissors. If you lose with Scissors, you'll go to Paper. Like you'll follow the pattern

of the name of the game too, which is pretty interesting. I think you flopped that, but yeah. Rock, Paper, Scissors. So you lose with Rock, go to Paper. Oh, yeah, you're right. You're right. But I think everyone gets it. Okay. So you don't want me to just start over and completely explain again? No, I don't think we need to retake that. So, but all that combined kind of really points out how humans aren't rational actors and we don't pick things at random. And we do kind of fall into patterns and that that can be kind of used to your advantage if you're like really paying attention to this kind of thing, depending on who you're playing with. Well, yeah, I mean, if you want to follow that model and give and technically give yourself a

statistical advantage, you would know what they won or lost with, obviously. And then what their instinct to follow would be. And then you would combat that then with the appropriate gesture. Right. But here's the thing. It's a fast game. And part of the reason this game works is because you don't sit there and go, all right, let's think about what we're going to do here. And let's throw on five. Like, you just go quickly. So you got to be really, really fast to, I think, remember what they did or see what they did, remember what's next, then combat it. And that's in that second, I think. Right. Like to consider your opponent's psychology in that fast of a time span, like gifted is the word I think you're looking for. I think so. Or maybe professional.

And should we take a break? Sure, let's take a break. All right. Because people do this, maybe not for a living, but there are tournaments. And we'll talk about that right after this. come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen.

So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangeh Shatikathar. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on

this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So I spilled the beans. There are not professional rock, paper, scissors players. But in the 2000s, especially the mid-2000s, there were tournaments sponsored by sponsors that had prize money at hand. Yeah. And actually, I think the prize money got up to like $50,000 when you're at the peak of 2006 or 2007. Not bad. Yeah, that's not bad for playing rock, paper,

scissors. And one thing that we should kind of preface this with when we're talking about the world of professional rock, paper, scissors players is that it is a really facetious tongue-in-cheek self-siterical world. And they make up a lot of stuff that is just absolutely not true. And it's really tough to figure out, like to separate, you know, truth from fiction when you're talking about it. And in fact, one of the sources Dave sent was a blog post of a linguist who was posting about the origin of like the rock, paper, scissors world society, I think, and how they actually were founded in 19th century London. And all of this was totally made up and didn't realize it until some of the commenters on her blog post was like, hey, this world is not real. Like they

make up a lot of stuff. And she had to go back and revise the post. So if we accidentally say something that is not true, and we say it credulously, then apologies ahead of time. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of fun. They make up a lore. Supposedly, the first one was in a bar in Toronto, in 2002. But whether or not that's lore, like once the media starts covering something and Bud Light starts sponsoring it, then it is a real thing. And that's exactly what happened. And, you know, they would make up fun names. Sean Wickedfinger Sears was one of the players, unless that's completely made up. But it was all very tongue-in-cheek. Yeah. Another good example of it being tongue-in-cheek is there's this great article from Alex

Miyasi on Priceonomics, where they were talking about how very frequently on forums and just basically hangouts for Rock, Paper, Scissors aficionados. They'll mention the book, The Trio of Hands, by Voyek Small Soa. And that it's basically like the Bible about Rock, Paper, Scissors and, you know, wisdom about Rock, Paper, Scissors. And I've seen that Small Soa is compared to Laut Zoo. And he was just this great Rock, Paper, Scissors kind of champion, I guess. And this person is totally made up. The book is made up. None of it exists, but yet you'll find it everywhere. So it's almost like they wove this kind of alternate universe, hilarious alternate universe, to kind of make Rock, Paper, Scissors more important than it possibly could have ever been.

Yeah. And see, now I'm looking at these preplanned throws and wondering if this is all a joke too. I don't think so because they actually make sense. And I was watching one of the tournaments and they were doing it like that. Okay. Well, the idea is that you can't just stroll in there as a an 11 year old girl and say Rock is obvious. So you always start with scissors. That's, you know, that's playground level stuff. So apparently the pros in the tournament will sort of like an NFL team will prescript their first drive a lot of times on offense and just go with these plays. And then they start calling the plays by gut or whatever. They have pre eight preset gambits that they are going to play. And I guess they mix them up. I mean, obviously not everyone's

playing the same order. Oh, I'm sorry. So I think these are real, but I'm not sure they're real. I thought you were talking about the actual way that you're supposed to hold your hand. Oh, no, no, no. We'll talk about that in a second. But I don't know. It makes sense. It makes sense. They got great names. Yeah, for sure. Should we take through these? Yeah. There's the avalanche, which is rock, rock and rock, right? Of course. I love it. What about the bureaucrat? The bureaucrat is paper, paper, paper. Makes sense. We have scissor, scissor, scissor, which is the toolbox. Yeah. I like this one. Fistful of dollars, paper, rock, paper. It's like you got

money sticking out of each side of your hand, your fist. Okay. I like the scissor sandwich, paper, scissors, paper. Yeah. And the point is, is like, if you are playing and you kind of do your three tries out of this, because you play best two out of three, and then in a tournament, that best two out of three, so it's game and then match. It's best two out of three games, and then best two out of three match. So I guess you could play a whole game with just one of those gambits, depending on as long as there's no draws. Right. But what you were talking about earlier with the way they do it, it is different. And you mentioned it at the beginning of the episode. When you throw paper, you don't turn your wrist and go palm down. You just go straight out like

you would rock or scissors with your hand. Because if you were really, really, really fast and intuitive, you could technically probably see someone moving their wrist in such a way to give yourself a slight advantage on paper. Yeah. Your biggest tell is if you're throwing paper and you are throwing your paper horizontal, so palm down. Look at your elbow when you're doing that. It's off to the side. Now throw paper with your palm to the side, like vertically. Your elbow is still at your side. So you would be a chump to try to throw it palm down because your elbow is going out and they'd be able to see it every time. That's interesting. I can throw it with my elbow at my side. Really? Sure. I mean, I can, but it

looks like I don't have use of my shoulder any longer. I mean, I guess I could do it like that. And if I were playing for $50,000, I would do it like that, but it's much easier to just play, to just throw the paper sign vertically. And then the point of it all is, all of it comes from that one rock fist. So you've got the rock and then you stick out all four fingers. You've got the paper. You stick out just your index and birdie finger. You've got the scissors, but it's all generally the same thing. And the motion is just in your fingers rather than your whole hand and maybe your elbow. Right. And they programmed a robot to actually be so fast that it could see these micro moves. And this robot was perfect. There's no way to beat this

thing. If you watch a YouTube of just Google or put in YouTube a robot, I almost said tic-tac-toe, throw shampoo. And this thing has a high speed camera and it can see their little micro move and it can change their thing so quickly. It's kind of a frustrating watch, actually, because they're doing it really fast and the foot just wins every time, no matter what the person does. Yeah, because it's cheating. It's watching that movement and then throwing a sign that's going to beat it. So there's actually human players, like you were saying, who say, you know, people have tells, you can see what they're going to do. And again, all of it happens way too fast for my puny brain to keep up with and, you know, throw a sign that's going to

beat what I think they're about to do. But there's been studies that suggest that actually, we do pick up on what other people are going to throw and that a lot of times that probably explains draws, that we're actually mimicking them. There's something called automatic imitation. And they think that it has to do with the fact that we have a complex of mirror neurons, which we've talked about years and years and years ago, that where our motor cortex basically sees what somebody else is doing and makes us do the same thing, mirror neurons, that that accounts for draws. And some researchers in London actually blindfolded some study participants. Hopefully it wasn't the same poor kids who had to play 300 rounds in the Chinese experiment.

And now they're just kind of like pigeonholed into rock, paper, scissors experiments. Hopefully a whole new batch of people, but they blindfolded some of them. And the blindfolded ones, if both participants were blindfolded, they drew, they had a draw both through the same sign, like 33% of the time. But if one of the participants wasn't blindfolded, the draws went up to like 36%, right? Well, what do you do for a living? I do rock, paper, scissors studies mainly. Right. I didn't want to. I kind of fell into it. Pays not great, but you know, it's cool. They mentioned this on stuff you should know. Yeah, they exactly what you would think happened, happened. The Nash equilibrium

sort of play out when they were all blindfolded, it was 33.3%. And then when it wasn't, how much did it kick up? 3.3% to a draw? Yeah, which is statistically significant. Say that again. It is statistically significant. Oh, goodness. It certainly is. So I think we got to finish on the side blotch lizards because this is just amazingly cool. Yeah. To me, this was like, what a way to end. It's kind of the perfect thing because there is, in nature, sort of an evolutionary game of rock, paper, scissors being played out in front of our human eyeballs. And the, what is it, the side blotch lizard? Because the three,

there are three varieties with the color of their throat. The males have either an orange, a yellow, or a blue throat. And each of them have their own advantages and disadvantages, which we're going to go over. But none of them have won out over time, as far as evolution is concerned. So they switch, like the dominant species switches out. Is it yearly or just like every few years? It seems like over a very long spans of time. Right. It plays out because there's not one advantage over the other. And I just think this is super awesome. Yeah. Because just like in rock, paper, scissors, one can defeat the other, but is defeated by the third one and vice versa. So in this, in this kind of evolutionary game of rock, paper, scissors that these,

these lizards are locked into, orange-throated ones are dominant over blue-throated males. But yellow-throated males are dominant over orange-throated males and blue-throated males are dominant over yellow. So each one has a foil and one that it can conquer, which is not so amazing. But with orange males, they're super dominant. They're super aggressive. They defend their territory to the death. And so they command large territories with lots of females that the orange-throated males mate with like frequently all the time. They can't stop. But they, so you would think, well, then why wouldn't the orange-throated males have taken over and there only be orange-throated males? My friend Chuck is going to explain that part. Are these the yellows?

Yeah. I think the yellows. Okay. Yeah. You got your yellow-throated males. They are, well, I think it's interesting. It's sort of like a picture of humans in a way. The orange-throated, I think we should mention the blue-throated, they have smaller territories, but only one female and they all work together to get things done and to defend against attack. So these are two different, really different societies. And then you've got your yellow-throats. They don't have any territory. They are mercenaries and rogues. They don't have any females to call their own. But their evolutionary trait was they evolved to be able to sneak into enemy territory and secretly mate with the females. Right. So for the yellow ones, if the orange ones are dominant,

that's good for a yellow-throated male because there's plenty of territory and plenty of females to sneak in and mate with. And so over time, the yellow-throated males start to outnumber the orange-throated males because they've snuck in and mated with so many of the orange-throated males' mates. Pretty awesome, right? So the orange numbers shrink and the yellow numbers grow up. But the yellow tend to be shrunk. The numbers are shrunken by the blue because the blues cooperate with one another to defend other blue-throated males against yellows that sneak in. And so blues do best when there's a lot of yellows. Yellows are most successful when there's a lot of oranges because they can sneak in. And then orange does best when there's a lot of blues around because

they're defending the oranges territory inadvertently from those sneaky yellow guys. That's right. And I think the perfect end of this is in 100,000 years, they'll go to study these and they will just see a wasteland of orange, blue, and yellow-throated males dead on the ground with all the female side blotch lizards standing there having figured out how to reproduce without sex for males. That's right. I think that's a grime song. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, everybody, that was Rock, Paper, Scissors, and again, good pick, Chuck. Thank you. Thank you, Dave. If you want to know about Rock, Paper, Scissors, go play some Rock, Paper, Scissors or Jaquempo or whatever you want to call it.

And in the meantime, I say it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this a funny mispronunciation, so we got to cover this because we got a lot of emails about that cookie. Most ever. Hello from Smithers, BC. I'm a big fan, guys. Can't get enough random knowledge squeezed into my brain. Even bought myself your trivial pursuit game for Christmas. Very nice. Which hopefully will be back on shelf soon, by the way. End of January, I think they're saying. Okay, great. I had a good laugh the other day listening to the Cookies episode. I think it was Josh had the most hilarious unique pronunciation of, well, I think it's the

Nanaimo cookie is correct, right? Yes. What did you say? Nanaimo. Okay. Well, well, it's got a Japanese flair to it. That makes sense. It was a very non naive way of putting. Side note, I don't think bars are cookies. They're bars, especially if they have different layers. I had to think for a second about what he was trying to say even. This bar is named after the city on Vancouver Island. It's pronounced Nanaimo. Nanaimo city. I guess you can put that in the list of funny Canadian names, only Canadians know how to say, like Saskatchewan, Mississauga, and took to Yachtook. Very nice. I'm sure you nailed all three of those. Sure, I did. That is from Anna Zeigler or Zeigler. Thanks a lot, Anna. One of those two. If you

have a nice, gentle correction like Anna did, we love to hear those kind of things and you can send it to us via email. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody,

yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Shtigler, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your

podcasts.