Hello again. Last time, we talked a little about what fairness might look like in the context of a competitive game's ratings. From that we stated two conditions that raise red flags for unfairness:
1) Small skill advantages leading to excessively large rewards;
2) Large skill advantages leading to excessively small rewards.
We then talked about someone in the position of, say, Bill Gates, where the reward seems to be massively larger than the skill difference between him and his peers would justify. That isn't to pick on Bill Gates, whom I have nothing against, nor I am suggesting any remedies for this situation quite yet; I'm just observing the situation as it first appears to us.
Today I'll give a hypothetical, very simplified example of the second condition: large skill advantages leading to very small rewards. With any number of caveats about the assumptions we're making with the labels, here are our four friends for today:
First we have Lousy Larry. Larry makes bad decisions almost all the time. He doesn't work hard, he's not motivated at all to get an education, he has little impulse control. His best hope is to find a situation where he can get into a rhythm with a low-level job well enough to get by and maybe build a little momentum or security and not screw himself over too hard. He's almost entirely dependent on luck and outside help for this.
Next, meet Mediocre Mike. Unlike Larry, Mike isn't a bum, not at all. The quality of his decisions and habits is a mediocre mix of good and bad. Two steps forward, two steps back. He can do all right at a job that doesn't ask him to lean in too hard, but sustaining much upward momentum is unlikely at best.
Then we have Good Greg. Greg makes good decisions most of the time; he's maybe in the 75th percentile for that. He works pretty hard, he stayed in school and got good grades, he doesn't crawl into the bottom of a whiskey bottle very often. He would make a fine employee or manager in most companies; he could start a business and have a reasonable chance of success. He couldn't go from a cardboard box to CEO in five years, but he's doing things mostly right.
Finally, we have Heroic Hal. Hal is the inspirational figure that appears in Reader's Digest profiles and seventh-grade reading standardized test passages. He has tons of motivation, discipline, vision, and perseverance. He's a winner. There are very few Heroic Hals out there (though many more might claim to be, but we'll get to that some other time). Even he could find himself overmatched if the circumstances were bad enough, but it would take a whole lot.
***
How these guys will fare depends an awful lot on the surrounding conditions for upward mobility; no mystery there. Let's say they're dealing with a recently introduced condition that sharply reduces the likelihood of movin' on up - it could be an economic downturn, it could be a change in government policy, whatever you like.
Such a trend would be very difficult to identify in our culture early on, I would say. The most easily visible effect would be that fewer Lousy Larrys get the sort of breaks they depend on. Larry desperately needs someone to take a chance on him, or else he would have no opportunity to prove that maybe he's not so lousy after all. And in this environment, those who could do that for Larry are much less willing to take that sort of risk. But we won't see it - indeed, Larry has always been invisible to us. He has no power and no credibility, as far as we know. He'd probably fail no matter what anyone does for him. We can always say he did this to himself and thus not feel bad about turning him away.
As the effects of the condition advance, we'll start to see more and more Mediocre Mikes in trouble next. In better times, Mike has honest work and a stable base on which to build a life if he doesn't make some catastrophic mistake. But he's pretty easy to outcompete, and a condition where upward mobility is more difficult means that competition is much increased. Worse yet, his margin for error shrinks - Mike makes some bad decisions, and now those can cost him a lot more. But how bad do we feel for Mike? We don't quite feel comfortable calling him a bum, because he's not one. But he makes enough mistakes that we can still say, well, you could have done much more. You could have worked harder, you could have kept your nose cleaner, you could have coasted less than you did. "Mediocrity" is a dirty word in our world, and we never allow it as an excuse, even though most of us are mediocre far more often than we'd ever admit. And so we can still comfortably deny what's happening, if we're the sort that feels better when we do that.
The condition marches on; upward mobility gets harder and harder, and as we've chosen not to see it so far, having little or no empathy for whom it hurts, we've done nothing to arrest it. We need a canary in the coal mine, and Good Greg is it. Greg followed the rules. He worked hard, kept his wits about him and kept his nose clean. His only sin is not being a superstar. And now lots of Good Gregs are found in jobs and situations that used to be the province of Mediocre Mikes. (And Greg has student loan debt that Mike doesn't have…) Can we really blame Greg if he wonders what the point of playing by the rules was? Maybe he would have been Good Greg in any case, but by having Greg at a lower rung of the ladder, both he and we lose out on a large part of the contributions his work and education could have provided us. But we wish him well. Though even then some might still point to Heroic Hal and tell Greg, see, you should have been like that guy. A consistent 10-6 isn't good enough; you have to win the Super Bowl or you're a loser. That stupid, poisonous idea isn't most of us, though, and by the time Good Gregs start scuffling too much, we might start identifying the problem as a problem.
***
Back to the second of the original statements: we raise red flags when we see large differences in competence given too-small rewards. And that's what we have here. Good Greg's decisions are consistently better than Mediocre Mike's, and a world better than Lousy Larry's. But in a condition where upward mobility is too hard to come by, what we see is a blurring of the distinctions between Greg and Mike, and between Mike and Larry. This has been true in most places throughout human history, which should tell us that it is the natural progression of things: without countermeasures, we have always and will always end up with few winners and many losers, and if you're a loser in that scheme, it matters less and less whether you were pretty good but not good enough or whether you were awful. It all tastes the same after a long enough time.
This hypothetical also assumes that we're living in a meritocracy, that it is proper or ennobling to conceive of people's life outcomes as a competitive game, and that people's categories of ability are fixed, all of which are dubious claims at best - but maybe we'll get to that next time.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Friday, February 21, 2014
Fairness, part 1
I've found myself thinking a lot about fairness lately. Most of us would agree that fairness, as we define it, is among our core values; we react viscerally to what we perceive as injustice - yes, in particular injustice done to ourselves or those we care about, but I'd like to think most of us are more broad-minded than that. Very few of us would not like to see a fairer world, and while we're here, we'd like to make the world a little fairer if we can. But there are so many definitions of "fairness", and of related ideas such as "justice", that we have a hard time coming to any sort of consensus about how to resolve complex situations fairly.
So what I'd like to do, if I find the time, is write a few entries examining fairness in different arenas and from different perspectives, to help me (and perhaps you the reader) frame some of the many questions related to the idea of fairness. We'll see what I get to; I have a lot going on these days, even as part of me feels it isn't enough. I'm sure you can relate.
I'll start in the world of games, since I know that world better than I know many others - in particular, games that are competitive and attempt to rank individual players, such as chess or Scrabble. What do we as players want from our competitive environment? We want it to reflect the relative abilities of the players, with as much fidelity as possible. That means we want small differences in ability to lead to small differences in winning percentage and rating and large differences in ability to lead to large differences in those things, roughly on a proportional scale. We want the best players to be identified as best over a sample of games large enough to feel right to us.
Chess uses what's called the Elo rating system, which assigns a numerical rating to players based on their winning percentage adjusted for the strength of their opposition. Scrabble also does this, though it sets the curve a bit differently, taking into account the variance in the quality of tile draws in the game. To illustrate, if Player A is rated 350 points higher than Player B in Scrabble, the rating formula expects player A to win about three out of four games. In chess, a 350-point difference means that the higher-rated player is expected to win about seven out of eight. Why is chess not eight out of eight, you may wonder; after all, there's no luck involved in chess. Shouldn't the superior player always win? Well, a 350-point difference in Player A's favor does not mean that Player A will always play better than Player B does. Abilities aren't static - they fluctuate. Player A might play like a 2200 player in one game, and more like a 1600 player in the next, particularly if the first game offers themes and positions that Player A is much better at solving than the second. Or maybe Player A didn't have enough caffeine or rest in game two, or has some sort of inferiority complex with certain opponents; humans are weird.
Is it inherently unfair that an inferior player might win a game? In Scrabble, you'd better get used to it. No one would deny that 350 points of rating represents a significant difference in skills. If you took a bunch of 2000-rated players - there are about 15 players in North America rated that high - and evaluated them on word knowledge, anagramming, board vision, strategic skill and ability to handle tournament pressure, every 2000 player would come out ahead of every 1650 player in every area almost all the time. But the 1650 player will win a quarter of the time, the chance of flipping two heads in two coin flips. Easy to do once or twice, but the more games in the event, the more difficult it becomes for the lower-rated player. A 1650 player, assuming the rating is accurate, wouldn't be expected to win the U.S. Nationals (31 games) given a million tries. So while on some level Scrabble is "unfair", a large enough sample restores the fairness, and if you look at who has finished in the top five of a Nationals over the years, you're not going to find anyone there who isn't at least 1850 strength or so, and in most cases the top five will be 1950 or better. But on the other hand, every year there are surprises in the top 20. (The size of the top-division field at Nationals has varied over the years, but is usually about 100.) I take both of these as good signs.
I think Scrabble achieves the balance pretty well now, though maybe there are ways to improve it. I play about 150 tournament games a year, and my rating range over the past eight years has been somewhere between 1875 and 2025. Unless I'm atypical (don't think so), it's reasonable to assume that I'm a 1950 player. That feels fair, even when I'm busy losing a game to a 1200 player or beating 2250-rated Nigel Richards (I've done both). It's true that in chess, were I similarly skilled, I'd just about never lose to the 1200 player, but I'd just about never beat the Nigel Richards of chess, either. I'm not sure we can say that one scheme is fairer than the other - in fact, I'd say both are appropriate. If you want to reduce the luck involved in Scrabble, or increase it in chess, there are ways to do that. But again, what we want to avoid - because it feels unfair to us - is either of two situations: where small differences in ability yield excessively large advantages, or large differences in ability yield too-small advantages.
What am I on about here? Real life is a hell of a lot more complex than a game like Scrabble or chess is, and the luck factor is self-evidently MUCH larger. Bill Gates might be ten thousand times as rich as your local successful infotech entrepreneur, but he's not a hundred times as skilled, or diligent, or smart, or anything of the sort, and I'm sure he'd admit as much. He's more of all of those things, maybe, but not TEN THOUSAND TIMES more by any reasonable method of measurement. Most of the wealth difference is attributable to circumstances outside of Gates's control. (Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" makes this point, to some degree.) Which brings us to a fundamental of fairness: do we not bristle when players are rewarded or penalized for things they didn't have control over? This is not to begrudge Gates his success - I see no reason to say he shouldn't be at the top of the mountain. It's the size of the mountain that's in question. Even a fivefold advantage in skill shouldn't lead to hundredfold rewards, and when it does, shouldn't our alarm bells be going off? But in our culture such disproportionate rewards happen all the time. I'm not suggesting we should do anything draconian to fix this, but we need to recognize that it's a feature of our Monopoly world - that minor advantages in skill can snowball into massively dominant positions in a hurry, which tend to ossify over time. According to the idea of fairness we talked about above, that's not ideal; a 51-49 or even 60-40 advantage in skill shouldn't ever end up as winner take all - rather, it should be reflected as the ratio it is, or at least closer to it than our society now manages. The problem with the just world theory behind laissez-faire, ultimately, is that it's fatalistic. We end up rewarding good fortune more than we reward anything else, and to me, that's not sensible.
So what I'd like to do, if I find the time, is write a few entries examining fairness in different arenas and from different perspectives, to help me (and perhaps you the reader) frame some of the many questions related to the idea of fairness. We'll see what I get to; I have a lot going on these days, even as part of me feels it isn't enough. I'm sure you can relate.
I'll start in the world of games, since I know that world better than I know many others - in particular, games that are competitive and attempt to rank individual players, such as chess or Scrabble. What do we as players want from our competitive environment? We want it to reflect the relative abilities of the players, with as much fidelity as possible. That means we want small differences in ability to lead to small differences in winning percentage and rating and large differences in ability to lead to large differences in those things, roughly on a proportional scale. We want the best players to be identified as best over a sample of games large enough to feel right to us.
Chess uses what's called the Elo rating system, which assigns a numerical rating to players based on their winning percentage adjusted for the strength of their opposition. Scrabble also does this, though it sets the curve a bit differently, taking into account the variance in the quality of tile draws in the game. To illustrate, if Player A is rated 350 points higher than Player B in Scrabble, the rating formula expects player A to win about three out of four games. In chess, a 350-point difference means that the higher-rated player is expected to win about seven out of eight. Why is chess not eight out of eight, you may wonder; after all, there's no luck involved in chess. Shouldn't the superior player always win? Well, a 350-point difference in Player A's favor does not mean that Player A will always play better than Player B does. Abilities aren't static - they fluctuate. Player A might play like a 2200 player in one game, and more like a 1600 player in the next, particularly if the first game offers themes and positions that Player A is much better at solving than the second. Or maybe Player A didn't have enough caffeine or rest in game two, or has some sort of inferiority complex with certain opponents; humans are weird.
Is it inherently unfair that an inferior player might win a game? In Scrabble, you'd better get used to it. No one would deny that 350 points of rating represents a significant difference in skills. If you took a bunch of 2000-rated players - there are about 15 players in North America rated that high - and evaluated them on word knowledge, anagramming, board vision, strategic skill and ability to handle tournament pressure, every 2000 player would come out ahead of every 1650 player in every area almost all the time. But the 1650 player will win a quarter of the time, the chance of flipping two heads in two coin flips. Easy to do once or twice, but the more games in the event, the more difficult it becomes for the lower-rated player. A 1650 player, assuming the rating is accurate, wouldn't be expected to win the U.S. Nationals (31 games) given a million tries. So while on some level Scrabble is "unfair", a large enough sample restores the fairness, and if you look at who has finished in the top five of a Nationals over the years, you're not going to find anyone there who isn't at least 1850 strength or so, and in most cases the top five will be 1950 or better. But on the other hand, every year there are surprises in the top 20. (The size of the top-division field at Nationals has varied over the years, but is usually about 100.) I take both of these as good signs.
I think Scrabble achieves the balance pretty well now, though maybe there are ways to improve it. I play about 150 tournament games a year, and my rating range over the past eight years has been somewhere between 1875 and 2025. Unless I'm atypical (don't think so), it's reasonable to assume that I'm a 1950 player. That feels fair, even when I'm busy losing a game to a 1200 player or beating 2250-rated Nigel Richards (I've done both). It's true that in chess, were I similarly skilled, I'd just about never lose to the 1200 player, but I'd just about never beat the Nigel Richards of chess, either. I'm not sure we can say that one scheme is fairer than the other - in fact, I'd say both are appropriate. If you want to reduce the luck involved in Scrabble, or increase it in chess, there are ways to do that. But again, what we want to avoid - because it feels unfair to us - is either of two situations: where small differences in ability yield excessively large advantages, or large differences in ability yield too-small advantages.
What am I on about here? Real life is a hell of a lot more complex than a game like Scrabble or chess is, and the luck factor is self-evidently MUCH larger. Bill Gates might be ten thousand times as rich as your local successful infotech entrepreneur, but he's not a hundred times as skilled, or diligent, or smart, or anything of the sort, and I'm sure he'd admit as much. He's more of all of those things, maybe, but not TEN THOUSAND TIMES more by any reasonable method of measurement. Most of the wealth difference is attributable to circumstances outside of Gates's control. (Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" makes this point, to some degree.) Which brings us to a fundamental of fairness: do we not bristle when players are rewarded or penalized for things they didn't have control over? This is not to begrudge Gates his success - I see no reason to say he shouldn't be at the top of the mountain. It's the size of the mountain that's in question. Even a fivefold advantage in skill shouldn't lead to hundredfold rewards, and when it does, shouldn't our alarm bells be going off? But in our culture such disproportionate rewards happen all the time. I'm not suggesting we should do anything draconian to fix this, but we need to recognize that it's a feature of our Monopoly world - that minor advantages in skill can snowball into massively dominant positions in a hurry, which tend to ossify over time. According to the idea of fairness we talked about above, that's not ideal; a 51-49 or even 60-40 advantage in skill shouldn't ever end up as winner take all - rather, it should be reflected as the ratio it is, or at least closer to it than our society now manages. The problem with the just world theory behind laissez-faire, ultimately, is that it's fatalistic. We end up rewarding good fortune more than we reward anything else, and to me, that's not sensible.
Friday, February 7, 2014
My take on "Other People's Views"
(Wow, been forever since I've written here…)
Just read this column in the New York Times, by David Brooks:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/opinion/brooks-other-peoples-views.html?src=me&ref=general&_r=0
Brooks presents four situations and asks to what degree we should consider the views of others in making our decision. He later gives his own advice on these situations; let's see whether I agree with him.
1) Let’s say you’re turning 40 and you realize you want to leave accounting and become a hip-hop artist. People will say you’re having a pathetic midlife crisis, but should you do it anyway?
Brooks: First, the hip-hop artist question. Here it might be best to defer to public opinion. People tend to make poor decisions at moments of life transition, so at these moments, lean in the direction of respecting to the wisdom of the crowd. Have a midlife crisis, but in less stereotypical form.
Me: I think Brooks' analysis is far too superficial. "People tend to make poor decisions at moments of life transition": citation needed, for starters, but even if we grant the truth of that, it's such vague advice as to be unfollowable - should someone turning 40 stop taking risks in every facet of life until the transitional moment is safely in the rearview mirror? Surely we wouldn't say that. Turning 40 makes you look around and wonder; it doesn't make you incompetent. And it's different for everyone. The key thing we don't know here is what reason someone might have for making this decision. We don't know whether he's been honing his craft for 10 years, has researched the market and has decided it's time to give it a try, or whether he's on a manic episode and just thought of this idea a few weeks ago. I do agree with the notion that if you suspect a lot of wise people would question a major decision of yours, you might want to double and triple check it. There's an implication here that being a hip-hop artist is somehow beneath a 40-year-old, and I don't care for that at all. Yes, hip-hop is a young man's game, but there's nothing less dignified about being a hip-hop artist true to his craft than being an accountant true to his. Would Brooks have answered the question differently if the accountant wanted to become a country singer? I hope not. It's not easy for a 40-year-old to hit it big as a new artist in country, either.
2) Let’s say you’re on the phone in a crowded place and you want to tell your buddy a dirty joke, which may offend the people around you. Should you tell it?
Brooks: Then, the question of the dirty joke. This is a question of manners. Here, too, it’s probably a good idea to give priority to other people’s views. The manners and mores of a community are a shared possession. When you violate social norms, you are not only being rude to people around you, but you are making it more likely that others will violate the norms in the future. You are tearing the social fabric.
Me: Mostly agree. We need to know how dirty the joke is, how likely the people nearby are to overhear, and how sensitive they are. A little dirty is probably no big deal, but yeah, don't be that guy. "Tearing the social fabric" is a bit melodramatic, but you are fraying it, so cut that shit out.
3) Let’s say you have religious or political beliefs that make you unpopular. Should you hide or change them?
Brooks: Then the question of the unpopular belief. In this case, it is clearly wrong to sacrifice some of your conviction for immediate popularity. Basically you are trading in something deep for something shallow. Most of our core beliefs originated with some great figure from the distant past. These ideas, creeds or faiths were then nurtured by generations of other people, who are also now mostly dead. They created a transcendent tradition, which we embrace and hope in turn to pass along to generations as yet unborn. No sensible person would ever be happy betraying the approval of the admired dead just to win some passing approval in the here and now.
Me: Hmm. Some religious or political beliefs make one unpopular because they're either poorly thought out or mean-spirited. Brooks employs some high-flown rhetoric here…problem is, while many of the ideas embedded in creeds and faiths of old remain useful today, some of them do not, even to the point of being hurtful. One shouldn't get safe harbor for indefensible beliefs just because they're deeply held or have a tradition or culture attached to them. Brooks seems to be talking here about only one kind of religious or political stance that could be unpopular - the traditionalist in a room full of people with less traditional views. What about the reverse? My religious and political opinions (I'm not very traditional) would make me unpopular in certain rooms, but I come by those opinions just as honestly as the traditionalists he's talking about have. Would Brooks stick up for me here, too? But I'd agree with him in the sense that we should be true to ourselves and not give up deeply considered opinions for shallow reasons.
4) Let’s say you are deeply in love with a person your friends dislike. Should you dump that person?
Brooks: Finally, the question of the unpopular fiancé. This is tricky because it depends on what kind of feedback other people are offering. If they are talking about your boyfriend’s status (he’s too ugly; he’s got a bad job) then outside opinion doesn’t matter. But they may be observing something about the internal nature of your relationship that you are too blinded by passion to see. Maybe they can discern that he hurts you in this way or that. In this case, outside advice is not about approval; it’s about wisdom at a time when your emotions are clouding your judgment.
Me: Can't imagine anyone else's answer to this would be very different. Few things are worse than seeing a friend or loved one unable to walk away from someone who's mistreating them, and it happens all too often. It's a sickness. But as long as the person you're in love with is respecting you and treating you right, yeah, other people's penny-ante observations shouldn't matter in the least.
Just read this column in the New York Times, by David Brooks:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/opinion/brooks-other-peoples-views.html?src=me&ref=general&_r=0
Brooks presents four situations and asks to what degree we should consider the views of others in making our decision. He later gives his own advice on these situations; let's see whether I agree with him.
1) Let’s say you’re turning 40 and you realize you want to leave accounting and become a hip-hop artist. People will say you’re having a pathetic midlife crisis, but should you do it anyway?
Brooks: First, the hip-hop artist question. Here it might be best to defer to public opinion. People tend to make poor decisions at moments of life transition, so at these moments, lean in the direction of respecting to the wisdom of the crowd. Have a midlife crisis, but in less stereotypical form.
Me: I think Brooks' analysis is far too superficial. "People tend to make poor decisions at moments of life transition": citation needed, for starters, but even if we grant the truth of that, it's such vague advice as to be unfollowable - should someone turning 40 stop taking risks in every facet of life until the transitional moment is safely in the rearview mirror? Surely we wouldn't say that. Turning 40 makes you look around and wonder; it doesn't make you incompetent. And it's different for everyone. The key thing we don't know here is what reason someone might have for making this decision. We don't know whether he's been honing his craft for 10 years, has researched the market and has decided it's time to give it a try, or whether he's on a manic episode and just thought of this idea a few weeks ago. I do agree with the notion that if you suspect a lot of wise people would question a major decision of yours, you might want to double and triple check it. There's an implication here that being a hip-hop artist is somehow beneath a 40-year-old, and I don't care for that at all. Yes, hip-hop is a young man's game, but there's nothing less dignified about being a hip-hop artist true to his craft than being an accountant true to his. Would Brooks have answered the question differently if the accountant wanted to become a country singer? I hope not. It's not easy for a 40-year-old to hit it big as a new artist in country, either.
2) Let’s say you’re on the phone in a crowded place and you want to tell your buddy a dirty joke, which may offend the people around you. Should you tell it?
Brooks: Then, the question of the dirty joke. This is a question of manners. Here, too, it’s probably a good idea to give priority to other people’s views. The manners and mores of a community are a shared possession. When you violate social norms, you are not only being rude to people around you, but you are making it more likely that others will violate the norms in the future. You are tearing the social fabric.
Me: Mostly agree. We need to know how dirty the joke is, how likely the people nearby are to overhear, and how sensitive they are. A little dirty is probably no big deal, but yeah, don't be that guy. "Tearing the social fabric" is a bit melodramatic, but you are fraying it, so cut that shit out.
3) Let’s say you have religious or political beliefs that make you unpopular. Should you hide or change them?
Brooks: Then the question of the unpopular belief. In this case, it is clearly wrong to sacrifice some of your conviction for immediate popularity. Basically you are trading in something deep for something shallow. Most of our core beliefs originated with some great figure from the distant past. These ideas, creeds or faiths were then nurtured by generations of other people, who are also now mostly dead. They created a transcendent tradition, which we embrace and hope in turn to pass along to generations as yet unborn. No sensible person would ever be happy betraying the approval of the admired dead just to win some passing approval in the here and now.
4) Let’s say you are deeply in love with a person your friends dislike. Should you dump that person?
Brooks: Finally, the question of the unpopular fiancé. This is tricky because it depends on what kind of feedback other people are offering. If they are talking about your boyfriend’s status (he’s too ugly; he’s got a bad job) then outside opinion doesn’t matter. But they may be observing something about the internal nature of your relationship that you are too blinded by passion to see. Maybe they can discern that he hurts you in this way or that. In this case, outside advice is not about approval; it’s about wisdom at a time when your emotions are clouding your judgment.
Me: Can't imagine anyone else's answer to this would be very different. Few things are worse than seeing a friend or loved one unable to walk away from someone who's mistreating them, and it happens all too often. It's a sickness. But as long as the person you're in love with is respecting you and treating you right, yeah, other people's penny-ante observations shouldn't matter in the least.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
From the archives: write anythings
So I did this sort of micro-meme maybe a year and a half ago called "write anything", wherein I updated my Facebook status every hour or so with sequentially numbered fragments of prose. No central theme or anything, just words for the hell of it. A few others took up the gauntlet as well, so my FB feed looked for a few days like a random assemblage of quasipoetic something or other. Fun. I wrote about a hundred write anything statuses over the course of a week or so; most of them are likely lost in the ether somewhere, but I did stumble on a file with seventeen of them, so here's what they looked like.
1.
observe filter reorganize
rephrase redefine sequence
initialize rotate apportion
cleanse install truncate
position track display
Mayan dancing color bands
Three spins, four spins
***
2.
***
3.
Wosbird wosbird, snowbird...kettle-bird; kettle-bind? Look, Blue, it's late - just talk to the man!
***
4.
Speak the sacred names inasmuch, and only inasmuch, as it pleaseth thy tongue.
***
5.
Toward a truer pixelwork:
Point pointillism
The Euclidean echo
Unity structure negating rockbound fallacy
Archiflexing within and without in small coils
***
6.
to talk about the work is to lay down on the job the work is music
***
7.
We were well into the fourth deck of cards and
***
8.
Ace child
A rampaging star king
Driver of seven red chariots
Casts his I Ching in fountains of stone withholden
***
9.
10.
1.
observe filter reorganize
rephrase redefine sequence
initialize rotate apportion
cleanse install truncate
position track display
Mayan dancing color bands
Three spins, four spins
***
2.
***
3.
Wosbird wosbird, snowbird...kettle-bird; kettle-bind? Look, Blue, it's late - just talk to the man!
***
4.
Speak the sacred names inasmuch, and only inasmuch, as it pleaseth thy tongue.
***
5.
Toward a truer pixelwork:
Point pointillism
The Euclidean echo
Unity structure negating rockbound fallacy
Archiflexing within and without in small coils
***
6.
to talk about the work is to lay down on the job the work is music
***
7.
We were well into the fourth deck of cards and
***
8.
Ace child
A rampaging star king
Driver of seven red chariots
Casts his I Ching in fountains of stone withholden
***
9.
***
10.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Royce White and anxiety disorder
Just read a very good article on the basketball player Royce White, who has anxiety disorder, written by a sportswriter who also has dealt with it:
http://www.sbnation.com/longform/2013/5/9/4312406/royce-white-living-and-working-with-anxiety-disorder
For more background, here's another article on Royce White, written earlier, with a somewhat different perspective: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8890734/chuck-klosterman-royce-white
And here's his Wikipedia page, which outlines the many ups and downs of his life and career so far (and he's only 22): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royce_White
Royce White is a fascinating and polarizing figure in the NBA, and these articles explain his situation better than I could. He's apparently a hell of a basketball player when he's right - a player that good without White's disorder and past probably gets chosen in the top 10 picks, and everyone knew the Rockets were taking a risk drafting him. Strictly from the view of a team deciding whether to pick a player like this, I think you'd have to view the risk as similar to drafting someone with an extensive injury history. (This is also why most people who have these things know to never, ever mention them in a job interview or the early stages of employment.)
Though physical health issues and mental health issues, in many ways, *aren't* comparable, chiefly because of the body parts affected by them. Our legs are unique to us, as all our parts are, but the variance between legs isn't that wide - if you break your leg, the treatment plan, rehab and expectation of recovery will be roughly the same as if I broke mine.
Mental health issues are as far from that model as it gets. Our brains are unique and dizzyingly complex, billions of times more complex than our legs. It's amazing that we know even as much as we do about them, but what we know about how to treat psychological disorders is still in its infancy and will be there for a long time yet. And brains are extremely sensitive to environmental factors, that is, life experiences: what we refer to as mental disorders are adaptations by the brain that don't help us live happy, productive lives. This means that, though millions of people have these things to some degree, no two instances of anxiety or depression or OCD can be seen alike. The similarity starts and ends with the symptoms. I've dealt with anxiety and depression off and on throughout my life and always will, and so I can relate to what the first article describes very well. I won't elaborate here, but if you can't, believe me, you're glad you can't. It can royally fuck up your life. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But I have scarcely any more insight into Royce White than anyone else, and even if I knew him personally, I still wouldn't. His anxiety is the adaptation of *his* brain to *his* environment. We can never know what we'd do in his shoes, because we'll never be in them.
So I won't judge the guy, though that doesn't mean I agree with everything he's saying or that I assume his approach to his situation is ideal. When I was 22, my approach to anxiety or life itself sure wasn't. (It's not now, for that matter.) If he can't play, he can't play, but from these articles it doesn't seem to me that the Rockets aren't trying to work with him. Why wouldn't they? It's a wasted draft pick if they don't. There's a limit to how far the team can go, just practically: the Rockets aren't a mental wellness organization, but an NBA team trying to make money and win games. They should treat him the best they can, but they're well within their rights to let him go if it doesn't work out, just as the other teams were well within their rights not to draft him. Talent by itself guarantees you nothing. And just because you have a mental disorder does not mean you can't also be arrogant or obnoxious or uncoachable or not someone that a team wants to hassle with. People dealing with mental health issues aren't the bums and fakers they're often and ignorantly judged to be, but they're not saints, either. Nor are they merely labels, merely the sum of their disorders. They're just people.
It does take guts to speak out, and I'm glad Royce White has done that, and I hope it contributes to a future where people with these issues are treated more humanely - they sure as hell haven't been for almost all of our history, and they very often still aren't. It sucks, and we need to do better. But it's as bad to fail to be grateful for the fact that there are lots of caring, supportive people and organizations who are trying their best to help. When you have a psychological disorder and your life is rocky as a result, it's very tempting to feel like the whole world's against you - indeed, it's often part of the disorder to feel that way. You only hear the sour voices in the chorus. Doesn't mean it's true.
http://www.sbnation.com/longform/2013/5/9/4312406/royce-white-living-and-working-with-anxiety-disorder
For more background, here's another article on Royce White, written earlier, with a somewhat different perspective: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8890734/chuck-klosterman-royce-white
And here's his Wikipedia page, which outlines the many ups and downs of his life and career so far (and he's only 22): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royce_White
Royce White is a fascinating and polarizing figure in the NBA, and these articles explain his situation better than I could. He's apparently a hell of a basketball player when he's right - a player that good without White's disorder and past probably gets chosen in the top 10 picks, and everyone knew the Rockets were taking a risk drafting him. Strictly from the view of a team deciding whether to pick a player like this, I think you'd have to view the risk as similar to drafting someone with an extensive injury history. (This is also why most people who have these things know to never, ever mention them in a job interview or the early stages of employment.)
Though physical health issues and mental health issues, in many ways, *aren't* comparable, chiefly because of the body parts affected by them. Our legs are unique to us, as all our parts are, but the variance between legs isn't that wide - if you break your leg, the treatment plan, rehab and expectation of recovery will be roughly the same as if I broke mine.
Mental health issues are as far from that model as it gets. Our brains are unique and dizzyingly complex, billions of times more complex than our legs. It's amazing that we know even as much as we do about them, but what we know about how to treat psychological disorders is still in its infancy and will be there for a long time yet. And brains are extremely sensitive to environmental factors, that is, life experiences: what we refer to as mental disorders are adaptations by the brain that don't help us live happy, productive lives. This means that, though millions of people have these things to some degree, no two instances of anxiety or depression or OCD can be seen alike. The similarity starts and ends with the symptoms. I've dealt with anxiety and depression off and on throughout my life and always will, and so I can relate to what the first article describes very well. I won't elaborate here, but if you can't, believe me, you're glad you can't. It can royally fuck up your life. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But I have scarcely any more insight into Royce White than anyone else, and even if I knew him personally, I still wouldn't. His anxiety is the adaptation of *his* brain to *his* environment. We can never know what we'd do in his shoes, because we'll never be in them.
So I won't judge the guy, though that doesn't mean I agree with everything he's saying or that I assume his approach to his situation is ideal. When I was 22, my approach to anxiety or life itself sure wasn't. (It's not now, for that matter.) If he can't play, he can't play, but from these articles it doesn't seem to me that the Rockets aren't trying to work with him. Why wouldn't they? It's a wasted draft pick if they don't. There's a limit to how far the team can go, just practically: the Rockets aren't a mental wellness organization, but an NBA team trying to make money and win games. They should treat him the best they can, but they're well within their rights to let him go if it doesn't work out, just as the other teams were well within their rights not to draft him. Talent by itself guarantees you nothing. And just because you have a mental disorder does not mean you can't also be arrogant or obnoxious or uncoachable or not someone that a team wants to hassle with. People dealing with mental health issues aren't the bums and fakers they're often and ignorantly judged to be, but they're not saints, either. Nor are they merely labels, merely the sum of their disorders. They're just people.
It does take guts to speak out, and I'm glad Royce White has done that, and I hope it contributes to a future where people with these issues are treated more humanely - they sure as hell haven't been for almost all of our history, and they very often still aren't. It sucks, and we need to do better. But it's as bad to fail to be grateful for the fact that there are lots of caring, supportive people and organizations who are trying their best to help. When you have a psychological disorder and your life is rocky as a result, it's very tempting to feel like the whole world's against you - indeed, it's often part of the disorder to feel that way. You only hear the sour voices in the chorus. Doesn't mean it's true.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
First Church of...
This article has made the rounds lately: http://www.salon.com/2013/04/28/dont_stop_believin_do_atheists_need_a_church/
Fair-to-middling Salon clickbait, what else is new, but to the point...eh, this doesn't sound at all like my vibe, though the question is worth asking. It's true that unchurched people like me don't get the social benefits that churches provide: fellowship, moral support, community engagement. I don't know that the folks in the article are doing anything novel, though - there have long been ethical humanist societies and charities and other endeavors that afford nonbelievers a suitable happy place. If I and many of my fellows are habitual non-joiners despite this, that's on us...the Unitarian Universalists, I've wondered about. They say they're hospitable to atheists, though that hospitality seems to vary depending on the leadership of any given UU church. I'm not looking to join such a group - I don't identify as "spiritual but not religious" either - but I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. I grew up in church, and though as an adult I've never seen any need or reason to believe, that doesn't mean there aren't noble and edifying aspects to life in the congregation. (If I had kids, would I take them to church? No, but again, I can point to good things from my own time there as a child, and I would look for other ways to give my children those things.)
The notion of self-described atheist churches makes me queasy, though. It does no service to atheism or anything else if these atheist churches end up with the same problems that keep me away from regular churches. I understand the human psychological attraction to ritual, and it's not by any means all bad. But if that becomes a need for spectacle, or a need to be told what to think, or a need to feel more like "us" by excluding "them", or a focus on attaining the money, power and charisma needed to broadcast the message far and wide...then to me that more than negates the benefits of fellowship. And it's not atheism. Atheism isn't a religion and has no proper business behaving like one; atheism isn't anything in itself, merely the absence of a thing. To make atheism into a brand of any sort is to betray it. I don't need anyone to agree with me - I sleep well at night. I just need people to respect me as a good-hearted, rational person, which I usually am and you probably are as well, and to not look down on or attempt to marginalize me merely for coming to a different view. I think most atheists feel the same way.
But like you, I do need friends, and fellow travelers, and encouragement toward a life of virtue and love and fulfillment. I want the world to be better and the people I encounter to be happier for my presence, and when I do fall short, when I show my ass, which is more often than I'd prefer, I need a path to forgiveness and atonement, a return to right living. Doesn't everyone want those things? Surely most of us do. We are interdependent, no matter what we believe or whether we believe at all; we're a community whether we feel like it or not. Wherever I can find that community and grow with it is a good thing. That community doesn't have to be explicitly religious, though. I can take a walk on a sunny day, play a game of Scrabble, eat a breakfast taco, pick up my 4-year-old nephew from Montessori school each Tuesday and take him to a car wash and see the happiness and wonder spread across his face, grieve for the horrible things in the news and exult over the brave and wonderful things, watch a ballgame with my dad, fill the dog's water bowl, read Wikipedia for an hour, get sick, get well, compete in a spelling bee wearing devil horns, read a good book, crack a bad joke, email back and forth with a dear old friend, attempt to play along with Rush's "Territories" with my little brother, agonize over nonsense large and small. Embrace the uncertainty, embrace the struggle, live and work alongside our fellows. Who are we to demand more?
Fair-to-middling Salon clickbait, what else is new, but to the point...eh, this doesn't sound at all like my vibe, though the question is worth asking. It's true that unchurched people like me don't get the social benefits that churches provide: fellowship, moral support, community engagement. I don't know that the folks in the article are doing anything novel, though - there have long been ethical humanist societies and charities and other endeavors that afford nonbelievers a suitable happy place. If I and many of my fellows are habitual non-joiners despite this, that's on us...the Unitarian Universalists, I've wondered about. They say they're hospitable to atheists, though that hospitality seems to vary depending on the leadership of any given UU church. I'm not looking to join such a group - I don't identify as "spiritual but not religious" either - but I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. I grew up in church, and though as an adult I've never seen any need or reason to believe, that doesn't mean there aren't noble and edifying aspects to life in the congregation. (If I had kids, would I take them to church? No, but again, I can point to good things from my own time there as a child, and I would look for other ways to give my children those things.)
The notion of self-described atheist churches makes me queasy, though. It does no service to atheism or anything else if these atheist churches end up with the same problems that keep me away from regular churches. I understand the human psychological attraction to ritual, and it's not by any means all bad. But if that becomes a need for spectacle, or a need to be told what to think, or a need to feel more like "us" by excluding "them", or a focus on attaining the money, power and charisma needed to broadcast the message far and wide...then to me that more than negates the benefits of fellowship. And it's not atheism. Atheism isn't a religion and has no proper business behaving like one; atheism isn't anything in itself, merely the absence of a thing. To make atheism into a brand of any sort is to betray it. I don't need anyone to agree with me - I sleep well at night. I just need people to respect me as a good-hearted, rational person, which I usually am and you probably are as well, and to not look down on or attempt to marginalize me merely for coming to a different view. I think most atheists feel the same way.
But like you, I do need friends, and fellow travelers, and encouragement toward a life of virtue and love and fulfillment. I want the world to be better and the people I encounter to be happier for my presence, and when I do fall short, when I show my ass, which is more often than I'd prefer, I need a path to forgiveness and atonement, a return to right living. Doesn't everyone want those things? Surely most of us do. We are interdependent, no matter what we believe or whether we believe at all; we're a community whether we feel like it or not. Wherever I can find that community and grow with it is a good thing. That community doesn't have to be explicitly religious, though. I can take a walk on a sunny day, play a game of Scrabble, eat a breakfast taco, pick up my 4-year-old nephew from Montessori school each Tuesday and take him to a car wash and see the happiness and wonder spread across his face, grieve for the horrible things in the news and exult over the brave and wonderful things, watch a ballgame with my dad, fill the dog's water bowl, read Wikipedia for an hour, get sick, get well, compete in a spelling bee wearing devil horns, read a good book, crack a bad joke, email back and forth with a dear old friend, attempt to play along with Rush's "Territories" with my little brother, agonize over nonsense large and small. Embrace the uncertainty, embrace the struggle, live and work alongside our fellows. Who are we to demand more?
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Hey, you're a musician, am I right?
Well, yeah. Though I haven't recorded any new stuff in a while. Plenty of ideas there, just need to get in there and work some of them out.
The good news is that my brother and I just got a new kickass home studio setup which will expand the recording capabilities of the house quite a bit once we learn it well. Exciting. (My brother is a musician also - he's the bass player in a band called Aperture.) So I've got my marching orders for this year - the two big things are learning the new setup and improving my vocal performances and recordings. Probably not too many new songs, though I'm bound to want to get after some of them. What I want to do is re-record the pile of songs I've already got and do them better. At least I've gone through the process with these songs already, so I have a good idea of what I'm shooting for. And by the end of it I'm sure I'll be sick of them! Nah, that's normal. Whenever I complete a project, my tendency is to listen to it for a week or two a whole lot and be happy it's completed (however I define completeness in that case) and then go months without listening to it much at all. If I manage to see all this through, I'm looking at maybe 18-24 months. What happens then? I'll put the finished stuff out on the Internet, of course, try to build a modest audience. Forming a band to play the stuff would be fun with the right players, though maybe more trouble than I'd feel like going to - the style of music isn't one where you can just grab a few buddies and bash it out, so lots of rehearsal time would be involved...but either way, I'm sure I'd just keep writing and recording.
(If you want to hear what I do and haven't yet, get on YouTube and go to the channel "tremblesoffortune". There you will find demo versions of 29 original songs (and a few quickie covers I did last year) - basically three album projects: "Sacraria" from 2012, "Don't Let One Pin Drop" from 2011, and "Sucker In The Promised Land" from way back in 1995.)
Saturday, April 6, 2013
The banality of fringe belief
Eh, I've probably talked about this sometime before, but it's on my mind at the moment...conspiracy theories and fringe beliefs have a certain fascination for me, but going the other way: I'm aggressively skeptical of anything like that. Or at least I *think* I am - but wait a minute...
If I *did* harbor such a belief, would I be aware that it was one? I think so; it's not hard to know that almost everyone who's studied a particular issue disagrees with whatever the fringe belief is. But I'd also have powerful reasons to deny that fact to myself, to surround myself with only the voices of other true believers, to understate the consensus or overstate the degree to which there's any real controversy about the issue. If you think the HIV-AIDS link is a lie cooked up by the evil medical establishment and antiretroviral drugs are a sham, you can always find a hundred other people online with the same need to believe as you do, and together you'll work to come up with explanations that sound really plausible...to you, anyway. Maybe you're just ahead of the curve? Well, yes, that's a more pleasant thing to think. Hey, people have been ahead of the curve before, proven the establishment wrong before - maybe you're one of them in this instance. Some people are better at defending against this than others, but no one's as good at it as he or she thinks, and the most confident are often the ones who know the least (the Dunning-Kruger Effect).
What always strikes me about people who harbor fringe beliefs is that most of them *aren't* particularly weird or unreasonable otherwise. There's some tendency that way - people naturally drawn to fringe beliefs probably won't stop at just one or two - but when not talking about how 9/11 was an inside job or the earth is 6,000 years old, these folks are often as well-adjusted, knowledgeable and successful as anyone else. Which is kind of unsettling, but only in the way that any truth is unsettling: it might be far more comforting for skeptics to believe that everyone who holds a fringe or poorly defended belief is crazy or stupid through and through, but we do not have that luxury.
This does not mean, however, that when confronted with someone trying to convince me that the moon landings were faked, intellectual honesty requires me to give their opinions a full hearing or act as if there are two reasonable sides to the argument. We can't be expected to spend all our time refuting every crackpot idea we come across. But wherever I would draw this line is unavoidably arbitrary and self-serving: I have to decide which theories are crackpot and which are not, and I can't possibly do so without referring to what I already accept, nor can I be aware of or weed out every cognitive bias I have no matter how scrupulous I might be. And I'm as prone to wanting to be right as anyone else is.
Is there a point in here somewhere...oh, yeah: No matter how bizarre someone's beliefs or opinions are, we can't allow ourselves to disrespect them as people on that basis - we're all capable of believing bizarre things given enough internal and external motivation to do so. This doesn't mean the bizarre belief itself has to be respected, merely the humanity of the person who holds it. That sounds simple, but it's very, very difficult to do, in that people (myself included, I'm sure) identify themselves closely with their beliefs and opinions and will often take it personally if you tell them you think they've wandered off the reservation, even if you're as nice as possible about it. And it's just as difficult to bite your tongue when you're surrounded by what you're sure is nonsense, particularly if it's prejudiced or hurtful nonsense - not speaking up feels like you're condoning what's being said.
So we change the subject and move on, or register a light agree-to-disagree, to keep the peace. Sometimes it's just the best we can do. As a society, we can try to model and teach rationality and civility and hope that over time more and more people come to value and exercise it. That's evolution, though, not revolution.
If I *did* harbor such a belief, would I be aware that it was one? I think so; it's not hard to know that almost everyone who's studied a particular issue disagrees with whatever the fringe belief is. But I'd also have powerful reasons to deny that fact to myself, to surround myself with only the voices of other true believers, to understate the consensus or overstate the degree to which there's any real controversy about the issue. If you think the HIV-AIDS link is a lie cooked up by the evil medical establishment and antiretroviral drugs are a sham, you can always find a hundred other people online with the same need to believe as you do, and together you'll work to come up with explanations that sound really plausible...to you, anyway. Maybe you're just ahead of the curve? Well, yes, that's a more pleasant thing to think. Hey, people have been ahead of the curve before, proven the establishment wrong before - maybe you're one of them in this instance. Some people are better at defending against this than others, but no one's as good at it as he or she thinks, and the most confident are often the ones who know the least (the Dunning-Kruger Effect).
What always strikes me about people who harbor fringe beliefs is that most of them *aren't* particularly weird or unreasonable otherwise. There's some tendency that way - people naturally drawn to fringe beliefs probably won't stop at just one or two - but when not talking about how 9/11 was an inside job or the earth is 6,000 years old, these folks are often as well-adjusted, knowledgeable and successful as anyone else. Which is kind of unsettling, but only in the way that any truth is unsettling: it might be far more comforting for skeptics to believe that everyone who holds a fringe or poorly defended belief is crazy or stupid through and through, but we do not have that luxury.
This does not mean, however, that when confronted with someone trying to convince me that the moon landings were faked, intellectual honesty requires me to give their opinions a full hearing or act as if there are two reasonable sides to the argument. We can't be expected to spend all our time refuting every crackpot idea we come across. But wherever I would draw this line is unavoidably arbitrary and self-serving: I have to decide which theories are crackpot and which are not, and I can't possibly do so without referring to what I already accept, nor can I be aware of or weed out every cognitive bias I have no matter how scrupulous I might be. And I'm as prone to wanting to be right as anyone else is.
Is there a point in here somewhere...oh, yeah: No matter how bizarre someone's beliefs or opinions are, we can't allow ourselves to disrespect them as people on that basis - we're all capable of believing bizarre things given enough internal and external motivation to do so. This doesn't mean the bizarre belief itself has to be respected, merely the humanity of the person who holds it. That sounds simple, but it's very, very difficult to do, in that people (myself included, I'm sure) identify themselves closely with their beliefs and opinions and will often take it personally if you tell them you think they've wandered off the reservation, even if you're as nice as possible about it. And it's just as difficult to bite your tongue when you're surrounded by what you're sure is nonsense, particularly if it's prejudiced or hurtful nonsense - not speaking up feels like you're condoning what's being said.
So we change the subject and move on, or register a light agree-to-disagree, to keep the peace. Sometimes it's just the best we can do. As a society, we can try to model and teach rationality and civility and hope that over time more and more people come to value and exercise it. That's evolution, though, not revolution.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Defeatism, responsibility, cognitive biases, you know, stuff
I was thinking about a recent Scrabble game I lost, in which there were two notable turning points:
1) I had a solid lead through the midgame, despite my opponent outbingoing me 2 to 1. I had a clunky rack, something like BEEGKIR, and a choice to either play something like IRE to block an open bingo line at the top of the board or play KEG for about the same score down low, improving my rack and hampering a less dangerous line. I had reason to think my opponent had good tiles and possibly the last remaining blank, but the line wasn't the only one on the board, and I decided that playing through the BEGK leave was asking for trouble. So I played KEG, and my opponent played TRAVOISE with a blank for 83. So I was kicking myself for that, at the time...I was behind a pace after the bingo, with maybe 20-25 tiles left in the bag.
2) I was able to battle back to almost even a couple of turns later. The tile pool was looking grim, but I was keeping the right stuff - low-point consonants to cope with the vowels I expected to draw. What I really needed was the H, since there was a 35ish spot for it. With seven tiles left in the bag, I got the H, and I had the tiles for the 35-point play. If I make this play, the only way I can lose is if my opponent bingos from an S. The pool is now AAEFINOPTUUV. If she doesn't have SANATIVE, SAPONITE or SUPINATE, I win. If I don't make the H play right away, but instead block the bingo line for about 5 points, and she plays where the H goes, I'll be really struggling, especially since my rack won't be good. She might not play there, particularly if she doesn't have the P to form UP, but it was a pretty obvious scoring spot...but she just exchanged four. Okay, so she kept something like ENT, EAT...doubt she'd keep P on an exchange there. Probably threw back OUUV or something awful. But even if I pick that junk myself, my 35-point H play will be enough - she has to bingo. So I play the 35-point play. And she had SANATIVE, so I lost.
I haven't taken a close look at the probabilities here, and I don't know what she kept when she exchanged, but that's not what I'm on about today. After the game, my first thought was, jeez, two big mistakes and a loss to a player rated much lower than I am. Whenever that happens, you always tend to think that sort of thing at first. Upon reflection, though, my first decision above wasn't wrong - there were other places to bingo, with words she probably would have found, and crippling my rack to block would have been incorrect. And the second...I could come up with ways to maybe justify blocking for 5 points, maybe it was some Nigel-like think outside the box deal, but I suspect not. I think I'd take the 35 and pray again. Sometimes decisions like that backfire, right or wrong; that's just the game.
But what I'm interested in here is the feeling I got when I realized that my plays hadn't been grievous mistakes. There was that sense of "well, there's nothing I could have done - if she's going to draw like that, I was going to lose no matter what I did" - and the weight lifted, of course: now I'm not responsible for what happened. (That isn't true in this case or in most, by the way, and I accept it now: I'm sure that I made some other decision in the game that might have been suboptimal. I almost never play a game without some leakage somewhere. You never can say what would have happened if you'd played optimally unless the evidence shows you did, so you can never know for 100% sure that a lost game was unwinnable, even though some almost surely are and this one might have been.) It's the sense of vanishing responsibility I experienced in the moment that I'm thinking about.
***
And how it applies to daily life. Life isn't a discrete series of matches - my decisions in this game had no effect on the game after it (which I won against the top seed, thank you very much), but in life, your decisions can and often do have that power. This is how an enduring sense of futility builds up: you lose a lot over time (insert your own definition of "losing at life" here), and it often seems like it wasn't anything you did or didn't do, and you perceive that that's the way the table tilts, and so when you make questionable choices you don't penalize yourself the same way. This is defeatism at its essence - I'm going to lose in the long run anyway, so I might as well do what makes me most comfortable or costs the least effort right now, even if the long-term expected value is negative. What difference does it make?
I've heard this described as "poor people thinking" - if you're poor and have no reason to think you won't be anytime soon, when you come across $5, you say, hell with it, I want a 40 and a bag of Doritos, and that's exactly what I'm going to get, even though I know why I shouldn't, because it's so damn rare I get even the smallest and most fleeting satisfactions. Doesn't matter how much you lose by if you know you're gonna lose. A rich person would never think that way - he or she might want the beer and chips and might get them if compelled enough in the moment, but the beer and chips don't offer near the same short-run stress relief, so it's much easier to make the decision to forgo the immediate gratification for larger ends.
That's the chicken or the egg. Are unsuccessful people - in any area, not just talking about money - unsuccessful because they've always thought in the ways that unsuccessful people do, or did a steady diet of losing encourage them to develop that mentality? I think it has greatly to do with the relative cost of mistakes. Everyone growing up makes plenty of mistakes, but if you're in a successful, optimistic, supportive environment, the cost of your mistakes will be minimized. Some of them will be papered over, and if that's not possible, people willing and able might bail you out, and if *that's* not possible, well, boys will be boys. You'll have room to flail until you get it right, and you'll have lots of good advice along the way.
If you're in an unsupportive, negative environment, though, your mistakes are going to cost a WHOLE lot. One night of mischief as a 17-year-old and you might find yourself homeless or behind bars for ten years, if you're unlucky enough. People won't stand up for you or whisper helpful hints in your ear, the education system will fail you, employers won't hire you, judges won't grant you leniency. Is it possible to overcome this? For a determined enough person, yes. Could most people couched in favorable circumstances pull off such a miracle if they suddenly had to? No, whether or not they're willing to admit it. But even if you start out up against it, if you get a couple or three good breaks, you might make out okay. You grow up needing too many of those turns of a friendly card to get by, and it's natural to develop the idea that you're always at the mercy of whatever comes your way - because, well, you pretty much are, in a way that people in more positive environments cannot understand. (Yeah, life isn't fair, duh, but that's something to acknowledge and work to alleviate the pain therefrom, not celebrate.)
People need at least some quantity of hope to operate - and establishing that hope is far more difficult for people whose circumstances disserve them. And in the absence of that hope, it's understandable how people develop defeatist habits of mind. It's a self-perpetuating machine. Once a Scrabble or poker player goes on "tilt", as it's called, they start not investing their energy in making wise decisions, because they've come to believe their decisions won't affect the outcome. I might as well complete this game with 20:37 left on my clock, since I'm screwed anyway. I might as well get that 40 and a bag of Doritos. So their decisions get worse, and their outcomes get worse, and they despair more, and they don't try as hard, and their decisions get worse, and their outcomes get worse...but what's the benefit of that, you ask? Well, if you start from the assumption that you're screwed no matter what, you no longer have responsibility for the decisions you make. If you feel trapped by that responsibility - with the sense that you're doing all the work for none of the reward - defeatism provides you a way out of the trap. People aren't stupid. If they see no benefit to playing ball, why would we expect them to do it? Defeatism looks completely illogical, but it is often a logical response to an illogical situation, as the defeatist is able to see it.
Which admittedly has little to do with the game I discussed before - wherever I might be defeatist, Scrabble isn't it, and I was plenty optimistic and dialed in until the loss was assured. But as important as it was for me to recognize that a great many games people think are sure losses are winnable by better players - and I think this one probably was, somewhere in there - it's just as important for me to recognize that it's a lot harder to win some games than others. That one was tough. Giving yourself, or someone else, too little credit is just as bad as giving too much.
And while Scrabble luck tends to even out in the medium-to-long run, life luck is much more complex and it's absurd to think it's anywhere close to even over as short a span as a lifetime. So while we don't want to enable bad luck as an excuse for repeated losing - if you take that approach with your Scrabble game, you'll keep losing, trust me - we can at least try to ease the worst snowball effects of bad circumstances (that is, keep people from going on tilt, as we are able) and stop blaming or crediting personal qualities so much for people's successes and failures. I think we make this mistake because humans are very narrative-driven and it's a much more engaging story if someone's a hero or zero because of what's inside him; it lets us explore these qualities, motivate ourselves with them, know ourselves through them. If it's a roll of the dice, we don't get to do any of that. Of course life isn't *totally* a roll of the dice, but this bias would lead us to underestimate how much of a roll of the dice it is. This bias might help us aim high, but it also makes us unfair as hell to each other. I'm not sure we're coming out ahead there - we might be better off accepting and working with the uneven ground rather than denying it.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
The 1970 Milwaukee Brewers
Sometimes I like to pick out some random baseball team from the past on baseball-reference.com and figure out what their story was - how and why they won or lost, what the past and future must have looked like from their point of view. And it's usually some team no one ever talks about, since there's more to discover.
***
The 1970 Brewers were a second-year expansion team, but it was their first season in Milwaukee - the year before, they had been the ill-fated Seattle Pilots. Milwaukee had had the Braves from 1953 to 1965, before their move to Atlanta, but the fans there had to go only four years without major league baseball, as it turned out.
The Pilots were about as good as you'd expect an expansion team to be - they went 64-98. The new Brewers would improve on that mark...by one measly game. Not all bad teams are created alike; some shipwrecked teams start out mildly promising and are laid low by bad breaks or bad management, while others just don't have the talent to begin with. The Brewers were in the second group. Almost no one on the 1970 roster had much of a past or a future in the major leagues. The team was surprisingly old for a bad team - most bad teams play lots of youngsters, trying to sort out who might help them in the future. The Brewers' average age was 29.2, and almost no one was under 26. About everyone was a short-term solution, at best. (The Brewers went on to have poor records every year until they exploded on the league all at once in 1978; 1978 to 1983 was the best run of success the Brewers have ever had.)
The manager was Dave Bristol, who had had moderate success as the manager of the Reds before being let go in favor of Sparky Anderson. Bristol was an old-school disciplinarian type; not sure how that affected the team here, but he clashed with his players a lot during his later tenure with the Giants. Bristol managed the Brewers in 1970 and 1971, getting fired early in the 1972 season when the team started slowly once again.
The team was about equally bad in all respects. They scored 63 runs fewer than the league average and gave up 75 more than the average. From the looks of it, they weren't a good fielding team either.
***
Because the move to Milwaukee wasn't final until right before the season, the Brewers had to play the Pilots' schedule. This meant unusually long strings of home games and road games. This seems to have hurt the team - or at least their road record was a disastrous 27-55, while their home record was an almost-average 38-42. They started the year 3-3...and then lost 17 of 19, most of them on the road. They didn't have a winning month until September...unbelievably, they finished tied for fourth in their six-team division; the second-year Kansas City Royals had the same 65-97 record, and the White Sox really stunk out the joint, going 56-106. (The White Sox don't look near as bad as the Brewers at first glance; wonder what happened there, but that's another article.)
***
The 1970 Brewers regulars:
Catcher: Gene Roof (age 29). Had mostly started for three seasons for other teams. Very weak hitter, though he hit somewhat better in 1970 than in other years. Was a backup for the rest of his career.
First base: Mike Hegan (age 27). From the Yankees system, but never established himself there. The Pilots picked him up, and he was fantastic in 1969 in part-time play. 1970 was his only year as a true regular, and it wasn't one of his better years (.244, 11 homers). He bounced around the league for many years after that as a platoon player, and hit decently in that role.
Second base: Ted Kubiak (age 28). Played 158 games for the Brewers in 1970, but was never more than a part-time player otherwise, though he did spend ten years in the majors as a light-hitting utility infielder.
Shortstop: Roberto Pena (age 33). Barely played in the majors at all until he was 31; started for two different teams before he got to Milwaukee. Seems to have been a marginal player, a typical weak-hitting shortstop without the glove to make up for it. Played part-time with the Brewers in 1971 and was finished.
Third base: Tommy Harper (age 29). The 1970 Brewers' best player by far. A really strange career. He was mostly an outfielder; 1970 was the only year in which Harper was primarily a third baseman. (The year before with the Pilots, he'd even played second base for part of the year, though not very well.) Harper was very fast, and he had led the league with 73 stolen bases in 1969 - striking, in that he usually stole about 25 a year before then. His steals fell back to 38 for the Brewers...but he hit 31 homers, after hitting single-digit numbers of homers each of the preceding four years. His .296 average was also well above his norm - he made the All-Star team and even finished sixth in the MVP voting. The season was a huge outlier; Harper was just ordinary in 1971, and then he went to the Red Sox and had a couple of okay seasons before his career wound down.
Left field: Danny Walton (age 22). The most interesting story here. Walton had been a high draft pick by the Astros, and in 1969 he was the Minor League Player of the Year while playing in Oklahoma City. The Pilots traded former batting champ Tommy Davis to Houston to get Walton...he didn't hit well in limited action in 1969, but during the first two months of 1970, he set the league on fire, hitting near .300 and among the leaders in home runs and RBI. Walton fell into a terrible slump in June and July, but was starting to turn it around when he severely injured his knee in a late August game. He came back in 1971 but was traded to the Yankees after struggling early, and he wasn't any better there; Walton never hit as high as .200 again. You see his 1970 season and think, okay, here's a good prospect - he strikes out kind of a lot, but he's already hitting for solid power and getting on base, and he's only 22...he might become one of those young stars you build winning teams around. You'd never guess that he'd have more at-bats in that season alone than in the entire remainder of his career.
Center field: Dave May (age 26). The Brewers rescued him from the Orioles, where he wasn't going to get any playing time. He never hit in Baltimore, and he didn't hit for the Brewers in 1970 either, but it does look like he was a good athlete, some speed and power there, and good athletes naturally get more chances to find themselves. He hit well in 1971, regressed in 1972, hit REALLY well in 1973 (.303, 25 homers), stunk in 1974; an on-year, off-year pattern. Was gone from Milwaukee after that and never started again.
Right field: Bob Burda (age 31). Not really a regular, just 78 games, 222 at-bats - it was more of a committee arrangement. Burda was an extremely marginal player. His entire career was just 634 at-bats long, and he hit .224 with 13 homers, which would explain why his career was 634 at-bats long.
Starting pitchers: Marty Pattin (age 27) was the only successful regular starter, going 14-12 with a 3.39 ERA. He would go on to have a few more okay years as a starter, followed by a decent stretch as a spot starter/long man for the late 70s Royals...Lew Krausse (age 27) had been a spot starter for the A's; 1970 was his only full year in the rotation. He wasn't good in '70, was a little better in '71 with less work, and he was done after that. Skip Lockwood (age 23) was the only guy you'd call a prospect here. He was a rookie in '70 and not completely awful, and gave the Brewers three more decent years. Lockwood later had success as a middle reliever with the late 70s Mets. Bobby Bolin (age 31) had been successful for the Giants in the 60s, but was through as a starter by the time the Brewers got him (though he would rise from the dead to give the Red Sox a couple of good relief years later). The wonderfully named Gene Brabender...well, he went 6-15 with a 6.02 ERA, so that was that.
Closer: Ken Sanders (age 28). A happier story here. Sanders couldn't find his control before the Brewers got him, but in 1970 he did, and he would give the Brewers three excellent years. Didn't do much after that.
The rest of the bullpen were veterans of no particular distinction. Except for Bob Locker - he had a good relief career, though he pitched only 31 innings for the Brewers.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Crescent City Cup game summaries
Day 1
Game 1
vs. Chris Lipe (1940 rating)
W 437-284 (1-0 +153 so far)
Me: FLIRTEd (+5; FLIRTED formed DROOK#), LOnGSOME
Chris: none
I had ugly racks early and was down 81-49 after 3, but ZONDA# (48) put me 17 up after turn 6, then FLIRTED/DROOK# for 90 and QUA for 41 followed while Chris was struggling to get his rack in shape, which never came to be. Up by 90 after turn 11 and then bingoed with the second blank.
Game 2
vs. Dave Koenig (2002 rating)
L 455-367 (1-1 +65)
Me: TEASERS
Dave: MARVIEr# (104), ROaDSIDE
I was 30 up after turn 6, though Dave had just made a fishing play and opened up a triple lane. His MARVIEr# for 104 came down in that lane; TEASERS scored 81 and got me back even, but ROaDSIDE for 80 and my post-bingo draw of BCEGLNU finished me off.
Game 3
vs. Phil Kretschman (1643 rating, but clearly stronger than that; he would gain 71 points in this event)
L 400-303 (1-2 -32)
Me: none
Phil: LAXATORS#, TRENISE#
First-time opponent. Down 204-71 after four turns, as Phil followed LAXATORS# with ZOOEA# for 69 more. After TRENISE# on turn 8, I was down 339-166, and while I held a blank, the game was effectively over by that point. Near the end I played WAVE to set up the AWAVE# hook and then WAQf# for 56 to limp to 300.
Game 4
vs. Shelley Ubeika (1293 rating)
W 549-405 (2-2 +112)
Me: PINKERS, REAMENDS# (+5; triple-triple for 163), STRIATED
Shelley: BoHEMIaN (double-double for 102), TAILING
On turn 2 I scored well with PINKERS for 86; I chose that instead of PERKINS# to slot an I in the 2x2 lane instead of an E, which backfired when Shelley hit her 2-blank bingo through the I right away. I was down 200-181, and then Shelley played MOBILE for 25, slotting the M in the triple lane, and my triple-triple put me up by about 90. Shelley's second bingo got her sort of close, but I was able to respond with another bingo myself.
Game 5
vs. Evans Clinchy (1902 rating)
W 475-433 (3-2 +154)
Me: AEROTONE#, NIMmERS#
Evans: BRACERO, PENNIES, MATTErS
I opened with CUTTO#, Evans responded with BRACERO, I followed with AEROTONE# on turn 2 and ZA for 62 on turn 3, but Evans bingoed again. The game was pretty even until NIMmERS#/QIN# went down the bottom triple lane. Evans's third bingo cut my lead to 27, but I had a good flow of mid-point consonants down the stretch to hold the lead with.
Game 6
vs. Tony Claitor (1581 rating)
L 531-395 (3-3 +18)
Me: RIDLEYS (blank L)
Tony: VIOLENT, GRANULES, ShOUTERS (triple-triple for 113)
First-time opponent. Tony jumped out to a lead with an opening ZEALOT and his first bingo. With a blank in hand, I played PELT slotting the T in a triple lane. He played elsewhere, and I had DEIRSY? - I couldn't find any bingos with the T (there are none), so I played RIDLEYS. Tony followed with GRANULES for a double-double, so being behind, I didn't block the still-available T...and then Tony triple-tripled. Oh well.
Game 7
vs. David Whitley (1790 rating)
W 496-454 (4-3 +60)
Me: ATONIEs, MELENAS, LATERAL
David: ESTRONE, BReVIERS
David opened up with YU#, and my first rack was the peculiar ADKOQU? (no sevens or eights in there). I played QUAD/AYU# for 40, but given David's fish I might have done better with KO# overlapping for 27. David had to fish again, I couldn't usefully block the S/QUAD hook, and ESTRONE came down for 93. Tie score in the bottom of the 8th, I got down MELENAS, but he responded with BREVIERS to take a small lead. Earlier I'd made a play forming AZO, leaving the LAZO# hook to the top row (keeping an L). I now had three L's in a weak rack, so I made a small play; David responded with the X. But I got a miracle 2-A draw, giving me LATERAL/LAZO# for 87. Whew.
Game 8
vs. Dave Wiegand (2019 rating; top seed)
W 518-476 (5-3 +102)
Me: TONIGHT, REARMOST, PROBInG, SAN(TA)LINS# (+5), AFFAIRE
Dave: EGOTISED#, AiGUILLE (triple-triple for 131)
I bingoed on turn 2 but drew dreck afterward, while Dave cashed the X and then bingoed on turn 3. On turn 5, REARMOST got me back even, and I picked the first blank and played PROBInG on turn 7, slotting the G. Dave then triple-tripled, as you see - yes, the third 3x3 we've had in 8 games so far. My post-bingo draw of AILNNSS looked problematic at first, but happily it played through TA. But Dave's ZIN meant I was still down 30, and I had QVY to contend with. Very late, I played off YI(N) to score and soak up the hottest remaining spot, keeping AEFIR. Seemed unlikely that I'd draw into a bingo or pull the game out if I didn't, but I picked AF and that did it. Five bingos, and I needed every last one of them.
Day 2
Game 9
vs. Thomas Stumpf (1420 rating)
W 442-376 (6-3 +168)
Me: SALFERN#, OUVRAgE#
Thomas: EMITTER
First-time opponent. Got off to a good start, 82-39 after 3, but had to deal with a couple of bad draws and Thomas cut the gap on a tight board. I was able to use the lone S-hook for SALFERN, and I drew a blank after that but kept getting clunky consonants with it. But other than ZIGS for 53, he wasn't narrowing the gap too much. I finally bingoed with OUVRAGE#, and Thomas bingoed back but I was still up by 50. Two esses and a blank were still out, so he had a shot, but he got them all too late to help.
Game 10
vs. Bradley Whitmarsh (1794 rating)
W 542-472 (7-3 +238)
Me: RUCTIONS (triple-triple for 122), ANEMONE, CARLINES
Bradley: cHARLIE, DOULEIAS#, RULIEST
Bradley bingoed with cHARLIE on turn 3, slotting the C in a triple lane. I scored well in reply with CHARLIER#/ROUPED, but DOULEIAS# for 80 came down. Oh no...oh yes. RUCTIONS for 122 to get me back even - that's now four 3x3's, two for me and two against me. After that, I came into a good scoring run: BOWAT# (42), ANEMONE and CARLINES back-to-back, DEXY for 53. Brad had scored some too, and his RULIEST made it 459-419 my way, but I had the last blank and shut it down with VaWARD for 48 more.
Game 11
vs. John O'Laughlin (1994 rating)
W 416-373 (8-3 +281)
Me: TERaPH(I)M (out bingo)
John: LASsOED, CYTOSINE
Pretty closed board much of the way, with both of us having to manage tricky racks. I'd built a small lead with RAJ for 55 and WAZIR# for 40, but both blanks and two S's were still unseen to me. No bingos until the bottom of the 9th, when John played LASSOED to go up by 43. I played BEAUT to clean up the rack and open things a little more, and I got the blank, but with BLIHMQ. (There was an open U, and I was SO wishing my B was an E or U at that point. UMQUHILE#!) Took me a bit to see QIBL(A) for 51, but yay, there it is...but John then bingoed with CY(T)OSINE. This emptied the bag, and I had EMPHRT? to go most likely through an I. Saw HEMIPTER right away, but it didn't fit. Took me a couple of trips through the alphabet to spot the out bingo - TERAPHIM I've had trouble seeing sometimes. Glad I had a lot of time on my clock.
Game 12
vs. Evans Clinchy (2nd time)
L 400-364 (8-4 +245)
Me: AtABRIN#
Evans: NIObOUS
My bingo was on turn 3 and got me out in front, but Evans scored well for two turns and then bingoed himself and was up by 20. I had bingo-ish tiles that wouldn't play, but then Evans played KEX for 39 forming MIX hanging one spot above the bottom center TWS. There were four T's out, but Evans had two of them and so he went with the high-risk, high-reward play. Fortunately I had a T, so I could play TOEING for 63 (good luck ever doing that again!). Looking much better, but Evans returned with an elegant J(ET)PORT for 34. QSSZ were still unseen, and Evans' next two plays were ZAS/JETPORTS for 53 and QIS for 35. I was angling for a needed bingo but couldn't get the rack together before Evans shut the board down for good.
Game 13
vs. Dave Koenig (2nd time)
W 469-378 (9-4 +336)
Me: ORDINARS#, ERrINGS# (plus 5, challenged DICHTS# formed by the play)
Dave: ARENITE
Dave bingoed on turn 2, but I was scoring well enough with plays like AIZLE# and QU(IN)S to keep up. I got my first bingo down on turn 6 to go up 40 and got a blank, though with clunky consonants. Dave kept the pressure on by scoring well, and he led 295-285 at turn 9. I'd played DICHT# one short of a triple lane, being about 95% sure of the S-hook and wanting to open it for my S and blank in hand (though the other blank was still out; I needed to beat Dave to the spot, or hope he wasn't sure on the hook.) I got the rack I needed and bingoed, and got the other blank in my post-bingo draw so my lead was safe.
Game 14
vs. Dave Wiegand (2nd time)
W 499-407 (10-4 +428)
Me: ALIFORM (opening rack), pETUNTSE (triple-triple for 133, forming ANNOYERS with the S)
Dave: ANNOYER, BRAISED, EXtINCT
Opened with the bingo, but Dave's ANNOYER on turn 3 evened it. My HNSTTU? didn't bingo, so I played off HUT, putting the T in the bottom row; ANNOYER was one short of the row, so a play there with the S would have to have TS in it...and I drew into another triple-triple! Glad he didn't block it. That's now FIVE trip-trips, three for and two against. Dave didn't go away, bingoing in reply right away, but my tiles cooperated with WAZIR for 54 and TOYS for 50 to give me a 110-point lead. I went to make a blocking play for what I thought was the most dangerous line, but chose the wrong word to do it, and Dave hooked my play of LOVE with CLOVE/EXtINCT for 92 to pull to within 40. But I had the good vowels from then on while Dave didn't.
Game 15
vs. John O'Laughlin (2nd time)
L 472-439 (10-5 +395)
Me: LESIONS, GRACIOSO, LARIATED
John: DOCTORAL, POsITIVE, LEnGTHEN
My first two racks were ugly, while John bingoed and followed with FIQH# for 38. A fine draw turned into LESIONS for 88, but John bingoed again. I got to use the POSITIVER hook for TROUTY for 42, but John came back with FIX for 52...I made WHAP/WEX#/other stuff for 56 and got close. John played his third bingo, slotting the L in the top row. My rack of ACGIORS is balanced...another 3x3? Nope, nothing in there with the L, so GRACIOSO elsewhere, and we were about tied. But John got the J for JUMBO (57) and the Z for ZA (35), and I was down to fishing off a tile for a bingo that almost surely wouldn't be enough, and it wasn't. Not counting my one-tile out play, the game had just 10 turns. Tough to score 43 a turn and lose.
Game 16
vs. Phil Kretschman (2nd time)
W 439-407 (11-5 +427)
Me: IN(JO)INTED# (+5), DECLiNAL#
Phil: SPOUTErS, SIRLOIN
Small plays to start, and on turn two my DEIINNT didn't have anywhere to go...oh, wait, yes it does! I wasn't 100 percent on it, but was sure enough to take the chance. But Phil came back with a double-double blank bingo and a 43-point MAX and took the lead. KUEH# for 42 helped my cause, but the game stayed even until turn 8, when Phil fished off a couple of consonants for 11 while my AC(Q)UI(R)E for 38 put me a pace ahead. I'd just used a lot of vowels, though, and the unseen pool was really consonant-heavy. I was able to stay up by 40 while Phil couldn't get a playable bingo - he finally did with SIRLOIN on turn 11, but I'd just drawn the second blank and could respond with DECLINAL# to go ahead by 50 with the bag empty. Phil didn't have an out bingo, so that was that.
Day 3
Game 17
vs. Chris Lipe (2nd time)
W 635-371 (12-5 +691)
Me: CIRROSE (opening rack), DATARIES, CoXSWAIN (110), TOLTERED#, FORMATE, sOUNDLY
Chris: MILESIAN, PETERING
I'd been lamenting my lack of spread up to this point - I'd maintained a one-game lead on the field through most of day two, but with five or six players breathing down my neck, a loss or two could knock me way, way down. No real autopilot games yet...until now. Bingo to start, another on turn 3 with a post-bingo draw of AAFISX? (no sevens or eights, only one nine), fished off FA and drew CW, and oh my god, Chris just gave me an N. Scored 27 and 45 the next two turns, then bingo-bango-bongo TOLTERED#, FORMATE, and sOUNDLY. Six bingos and 617 points in the first 10 turns. Exactly the kind of game you want to start a day if you've been indulging the night before.
Game 18
vs. Bradley Whitmarsh (2nd time)
W 578-295 (13-5 +974)
Me: FAERIES (opening rack; I went 2nd but Bradley changed 3 to open), BRUCINES, (S)A(I)NTLIER (blank L)
Bradley: RAVIOLIs
Yes, let's do keep fixing that little spread problem. Thank you, tile bag! FAERIES for 78, AZO for 71, FLAN for 42, XU for 50, THRESH for 45, PENANGS double-double for 40, IWI# for 6 (yeah, I know I'm disturbing the groove here, but I had three I's and I was messing with a newly open bingo lane), BRUCINES for 78...410-174 after 8 turns. The blank bingo at the end was icing on the icing on the icing on the cake.
Game 19
vs. Evans Clinchy (3rd time)
W 401-393 (14-5 +982)
Me: ANDIRON, BArBITAl
Evans: TENTAGE (out bingo)
I'd just picked up about 550 points of spread in two games, but it wasn't over yet by any means. John O was a game behind with decent spread, and the top seed Dave Wiegand and Evans were two games back. I could lose the last two and not even be in the money, if I lost by enough. ANDIRON was turn 2, but Evans was scoring strongly to keep up. On turn 4 I briefly considered trying UN(RE)PUTED*; glad I chickened out and played PUDU# for 18 instead. Got a blank after that, but the board was getting really bingo-hostile and I kept having to take 20-point rack grooming plays. After 8 turns, it was 240-238 my way; I'd just played VOLED/MERLE for 41. I got the other blank and Evans' vowel dump of ALEUR(ON)E for 20 had opened the top of the board. BARBITAL was the scoring play, but opened up a TWS dangerously, so I considered the other bingo spot near the bottom of the board...but that would open up uncomfortable things too, so I went with the points. My next move was CARGO keeping LO, which blocked most bingos near the bottom but left some chance of JA(R)S or JO(R)S# coming back at me. Evans then made a nice setup play of RET; he held all the remaining front hooks. But I had the J and S and saw that JORS# would win by 8 even if Evans bingoed out, as he did. Good close game there.
Game 20
vs. John O'Laughlin (3rd time)
L 422-350 (14-6 +910; John finished at 14-6 +721 for second place)
Me: CRISPERS
John: OPTIONED, STADIUm
John had beaten Dave Wiegand in round 19, so I hadn't clinched yet, but I was up by a game and a big pile of spread. So as long as I didn't lose by 167 or more, I'd win the tournament. But you know, that's happened...and John's more than capable of beating me like that if he gets the stuff to do it. My mindset going in was not to sell out for defense - I'd be better off playing normally. I drew SSZ on turn 3, which I was happy to see because John wasn't going to get them, though SWIZ# for 29 was the best I could do. John had bingoed on turn 2 and was outpacing me early, and my draws started getting fugly. GRRLS# (!) keeping HRS, and drawing COQR...this is not good. John opened the board a little with YET, but it gave me YEH/TO/HOC#, which I was very happy to play despite keeping QRRS, because of its defense - HOC only takes a K and the K had been played already.
But John then played STADIUm, and I had three Rs and decided to just play (DO)RR for 7 to uglify the board further. Down 226-133. John then plays VA(ST) for 7 as a huge setup for AVAST on a TWS, and I held ILOQRST. Jeez...I went with (V)OLTI for 10, setting up a possibly huge spot for my Q - I figured he'd most likely take the AVAST spot for 50 something, and if I get an I it's 42 and no more Q (and if I get a four-letter Q word, 87!) John took the I spot instead, HAUF# for 51. If I hadn't drawn well after VOLTI, I really would have been sweating it. (LIVOR# instead, maybe? But that doesn't block so well either...) But I got an A and the other blank and gladly played QAt/AVAST for 58. Down 67 and the board is closed, so I'm feeling pretty good (of course I'd rather win the game outright, but I'll take what I can get - I'm basically up 100 on a closed board from the win-the-tournament angle.) I challenge off ALGIC*, groom my now two-ess rack, he plays CARVE (uh, I'm pretty sure SCARVE* isn't good, but if it is...), oh wait, it's all good, I have CRISPERS now to get to 16 behind. I couldn't do much the rest of the way, but the tournament win was safe. John finished second, having won his last six games.
Exchanges: 5 for me, 7 for opponents (that's kind of a lot for CSW)
Phonies challenged off: ALGIC* in game 20 was the only one; I didn't play or accept any phonies, I'm pretty sure
5-point challenge penalties: picked up 25 points, gave away none
Blanks: 21-19
Bingos: 45 for me (12 Collins-only), 38 for them (5 Collins-only)
Rating change: 1986 going in, 2009 now
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
A very short story
...after the last game of the little league baseball season, Coach gathered us round and announced that three of us would be selected to play in an all-star game against some older kids. He made the first two choices, and no one was surprised; they were our best. For the last spot, he nominated two other players and was going to have us vote on which one should go...I don't remember what everyone's names were, so we'll call them Scott and Ray. We were about to raise our hands to vote when Ray's older brother, we'll call him Mike, interrupted excitedly and nominated himself as well. Coach shrugged and said okay. All told there were eleven players in the circle. First up was Scott, and he got four votes, including his own of course. Next up was Ray, and he got six.
Okay, yeah, that was kind of embarrassing at the time.
New Year's Resol...er, um
So I dunno, you get to a certain age and
realize that your adventure probably won't change that much
I mean, you never know what crazy long-odds biz is coming,
and you're going to keep trying this and tinkering with that,
no point in resigning in a one-game tournament
but you are who you are;
that won't really change.
Yes, it is literally true that if you
put your mind wholly to something, forsaking all distractions
you can forge tremendous changes in yourself and maybe some of your world
we can all do this
but most years in most circumstances with most things most of us won't
so if we demand it inflexibly of ourselves we'll be disappointed most of the time
right? And that's no good;
once you become a Disappointed Person, you sink into disappointment like a warm bath
so at a certain age, we know that most advances and retreats henceforward will be small
we've seen this movie so many times we can quote half of it
and so if things stay the same...and they probably mostly somewhat frustratingly impenetrably will
can you be cool with that? well, what choice do you have.
realize that your adventure probably won't change that much
I mean, you never know what crazy long-odds biz is coming,
and you're going to keep trying this and tinkering with that,
no point in resigning in a one-game tournament
but you are who you are;
that won't really change.
Yes, it is literally true that if you
put your mind wholly to something, forsaking all distractions
you can forge tremendous changes in yourself and maybe some of your world
we can all do this
but most years in most circumstances with most things most of us won't
so if we demand it inflexibly of ourselves we'll be disappointed most of the time
right? And that's no good;
once you become a Disappointed Person, you sink into disappointment like a warm bath
so at a certain age, we know that most advances and retreats henceforward will be small
we've seen this movie so many times we can quote half of it
and so if things stay the same...and they probably mostly somewhat frustratingly impenetrably will
can you be cool with that? well, what choice do you have.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Contentment
Contentment is lovely, is a lovely word, is a choice that's at once easy and hard to make
Words spill out, circle around, stake out positions around the drain but
When finally the water clears and the suspended junk settles at the bottom then there's a decision to...decision to...
Worst thing is that we get taught about contentment in exactly the wrong way, right? Eat your veggies, there's kids starving in Africa. Quit being ungrateful. True, but the means undo the end. If all it does is make the recipient of this wagon-fixing lecture feel like a lout, then the message has failed. Because if you're told over and over that you're a lout and come to believe you're a lout even though you try to be good, how can you be content? (Sociopaths excluded) That's backward. You're not happy because you're comfortable or successful or virtuous or have less external suffering than some people halfway around the world you'll never meet. You're happy because you see the world and yourself that way. If you are conditionally content, you are not content.
Content doesn't mean sitting on your ass and turning away from the good fight, either. Of course we want things to be better, ourselves, others, the world as we can make it out - but if we can't ever appreciate what we have, then hello treadmill. No amount of goodies or ego affirmation will ever be enough
How to spin the code so the young ones have it tattooed?
Youth is dissatisfaction and hope mixed in confusion
Adulthood is the habits of youth blown up to battlecruiser size
More weapons for the light side, more weapons for the dark side, higher stakes
Therefore contentment cannot be a flag to plant; the ground
is shifting
constantly
so if ego is the enemy they say then do good works and self-sacrifice to the utmost
nothing bad to say about that of course
but we all know it's quite possible to be a compulsive do-gooder and a judgmental egomaniac at once
(and yes martyrdom is egomania, perhaps the ultimate egomania)
while those with much more modest contributions to the fund can have it sussed
nope, not that simple
why would it be?
This is the part where you illustrate some platitudes by weaving a tale about some farmer and his three-legged cow and the sun, writing with nouns and verbs in an established folk-narrative style. I say you'll have to do it, because I'm not into it at the moment
or crack a sunny joke, which I do a lot but mostly to myself and not always sunnily
Contentment, then, is not an objective but a practice;
Words spill out, circle around, stake out positions around the drain but
When finally the water clears and the suspended junk settles at the bottom then there's a decision to...decision to...
Worst thing is that we get taught about contentment in exactly the wrong way, right? Eat your veggies, there's kids starving in Africa. Quit being ungrateful. True, but the means undo the end. If all it does is make the recipient of this wagon-fixing lecture feel like a lout, then the message has failed. Because if you're told over and over that you're a lout and come to believe you're a lout even though you try to be good, how can you be content? (Sociopaths excluded) That's backward. You're not happy because you're comfortable or successful or virtuous or have less external suffering than some people halfway around the world you'll never meet. You're happy because you see the world and yourself that way. If you are conditionally content, you are not content.
Content doesn't mean sitting on your ass and turning away from the good fight, either. Of course we want things to be better, ourselves, others, the world as we can make it out - but if we can't ever appreciate what we have, then hello treadmill. No amount of goodies or ego affirmation will ever be enough
How to spin the code so the young ones have it tattooed?
Youth is dissatisfaction and hope mixed in confusion
Adulthood is the habits of youth blown up to battlecruiser size
More weapons for the light side, more weapons for the dark side, higher stakes
Therefore contentment cannot be a flag to plant; the ground
is shifting
constantly
so if ego is the enemy they say then do good works and self-sacrifice to the utmost
nothing bad to say about that of course
but we all know it's quite possible to be a compulsive do-gooder and a judgmental egomaniac at once
(and yes martyrdom is egomania, perhaps the ultimate egomania)
while those with much more modest contributions to the fund can have it sussed
nope, not that simple
why would it be?
This is the part where you illustrate some platitudes by weaving a tale about some farmer and his three-legged cow and the sun, writing with nouns and verbs in an established folk-narrative style. I say you'll have to do it, because I'm not into it at the moment
or crack a sunny joke, which I do a lot but mostly to myself and not always sunnily
Contentment, then, is not an objective but a practice;
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Twelve
I recently read some letters written by adults to their young selves. The first thing that struck me about the exercise (which I toyed with a while; might publish it, might not) is how difficult it is, assuming you don't let yourself give spoilers and you consider carefully how your 12-year-old self might have interpreted what you say. A 12-year-old is already well into a period of drastic, rapid change in life, with little or no experience. Nothing I could tell my 12-year-old self that he could have understood or known how to apply would have been anywhere near adequate preparation for what he would be going through. Just gotta live through it, kiddo, stormy as it often is, but while I'm here I can tell you some general things that might comfort and encourage you while you do.
And if we can't even do that very well for ourselves in hindsight...theoretically, we ought to be the ideal parents for our past selves. You know your 12-year-old self hundreds of times better than your parents ever could, and even the parents who are best at communicating with their kids still have to deal with having busy lives of their own. And I doubt any parent and child can ever really see the other outside of their roles. Parents love, manage and protect their children, but it doesn't follow from this that they know their children all that well, especially by the time the child gets to middle school. But in this hypothetical exercise, we have none of those barriers. It's not absolutely transparent, since our memories are distorted in various ways, but no parent or friend or spouse can ever know you anything remotely like you yourself do.
So we ought to pay attention to what grownups would tell their tweenage selves, because they above all would know. What do they tend to say? Most of the essays I read included one particular theme: you're a good kid, believe in yourself, don't let the nastiness of the world you're becoming aware of beat you down, hang in there, it's going to get better. No surprise there. I wrote those things when I tried the exercise, too. Being twelve is just hard.
I do think that our society gets so focused on preparing kids for the prosaic real world we know that we fail to prepare them to be happy or fulfilled. We prepare them to compete by teaching them to judge their worth wholly by comparison with others, to never give themselves credit merely for trying their best or being a good person. Because we have to have STANDARDS, you know. You can't just be happy, peaceful, content. You have to aspire to be someone richer, smarter, prettier, more athletic, more virtuous (by someone else's definition, invariably), more lovable. It's all a game that you either win or lose. You know who thinks that way? 12-year-olds. There's no age at which people are more jealous or insecure or competitive or desperate to be seen well than middle school. Those kids are learning the lessons of the society we brought them into, all right - in fact, they're learning them too well.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Project: Orlando
As longtime readers here know, my initial plan for 2012 was to (mostly) take the year off of Scrabble tournaments. Not from burnout or lack of enjoyment - just wanted to focus on some other things this year. Like music, which I've done a lot of lately.
But this year the Nationals, the annual premier tournament in North America, has added for the first time a division using the larger international word list (CSW - the smaller North American list is usually called OWL or TWL), and I decided last weekend that I really didn't want to miss that, so I signed up. I haven't been practicing the words much this year, so from here until a few days before the tournament will be a cram session. Can already tell I need the refresher - too many words and hooks and anagrams have slipped beyond my easy reach. But I'll be ready enough by August 11, when the tournament starts.
I'm not studying with any particular focus on the CSW-only words - by this point, CSW *is* my native book. I keep the # symbols on, doesn't seem to hurt anything and I do still play some OWL, but I don't pay much attention to them anymore. I usually know whether a word is in the smaller book or not, but it's nice to play CSW and not have to care. Outside of Austin/San Antonio one-days, I can't imagine when I would play another OWL tournament, though if it's just a club or friendly game I don't mind. (And as always, any tournament I direct will have a CSW division if four or more players sign up for it.)
The words are only part of what I'll need. There are the other parts of the game, the strategic elements, though my abilities there haven't really changed in the past few years and won't in the next few weeks. The biggest thing in an event where you compete all day for 4 1/2 days is staying relaxed, focused and confident so your mind can do what you've trained it to do. But trying to force yourself into some heavy-duty mind and body regimen, if you're not already living that way, to accomplish this doesn't make sense to me. I'm not the type to go to these things and ingest nothing but bean sprouts and mineral water and be in bed by 8:30 every night, then wake up and do calisthenics for an hour at 5 every morning. More power to you if you can do that, but it's not me. I do plan to try to go a little more lightly on the heavy meals (especially lunches) and beer, try to get more sleep (hard to do at tournaments, though), get a swim or two in, maybe try doing some studying during the tournament and see if it keeps my neurons better greased. I'm plenty Zen enough at tournaments even as is, so I'm not worried about that. I'll enjoy seeing everybody, as always.
But this year the Nationals, the annual premier tournament in North America, has added for the first time a division using the larger international word list (CSW - the smaller North American list is usually called OWL or TWL), and I decided last weekend that I really didn't want to miss that, so I signed up. I haven't been practicing the words much this year, so from here until a few days before the tournament will be a cram session. Can already tell I need the refresher - too many words and hooks and anagrams have slipped beyond my easy reach. But I'll be ready enough by August 11, when the tournament starts.
I'm not studying with any particular focus on the CSW-only words - by this point, CSW *is* my native book. I keep the # symbols on, doesn't seem to hurt anything and I do still play some OWL, but I don't pay much attention to them anymore. I usually know whether a word is in the smaller book or not, but it's nice to play CSW and not have to care. Outside of Austin/San Antonio one-days, I can't imagine when I would play another OWL tournament, though if it's just a club or friendly game I don't mind. (And as always, any tournament I direct will have a CSW division if four or more players sign up for it.)
The words are only part of what I'll need. There are the other parts of the game, the strategic elements, though my abilities there haven't really changed in the past few years and won't in the next few weeks. The biggest thing in an event where you compete all day for 4 1/2 days is staying relaxed, focused and confident so your mind can do what you've trained it to do. But trying to force yourself into some heavy-duty mind and body regimen, if you're not already living that way, to accomplish this doesn't make sense to me. I'm not the type to go to these things and ingest nothing but bean sprouts and mineral water and be in bed by 8:30 every night, then wake up and do calisthenics for an hour at 5 every morning. More power to you if you can do that, but it's not me. I do plan to try to go a little more lightly on the heavy meals (especially lunches) and beer, try to get more sleep (hard to do at tournaments, though), get a swim or two in, maybe try doing some studying during the tournament and see if it keeps my neurons better greased. I'm plenty Zen enough at tournaments even as is, so I'm not worried about that. I'll enjoy seeing everybody, as always.
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