"Stuck In The Middle With Bruce"

I'm going to take a stab at explaining/translating some of the examples from that article. The first is about "mana screw". In Magic: the Gathering, each player has a deck of 60 cards, of which about 2/5 are "land" or "mana", and the rest of which are "spells". Each turn, players draw one new card, put down one land card if they have it, and play spells whose total cost is less than or equal to the number of lands they have. Costs are typically distributed in a bell curve centered at about 3.5. If a player has too few lands relative to the cost of his spells, he can't play them; this is called "mana screw". If he has too many lands, he won't have spells to play with them; this is called "mana flood". Lands and spells also have color; to play a spell, some number of the lands used must be the correct color or colors.

At the start of the game, each player draws 7 cards, looks at them, and decides to either keep them or mulligan, which means he puts them back, reshuffles, and draws a new hand with only 6 cards. (If the 6 card hand is also bad, he can do it again, getting one less card each time.) If the initial 7 cards are worse than average (too few, too many, or the wrong color lands), then the player chooses between a small certain loss (one less card) and an uncertain large risk (you might not draw the lands you need, and be mana screwed). In practice, most players are strongly biased towards keeping hands they shouldn't, which means accepting the uncertain large risk over the certain small loss.

The second issue is "netdecking". Players can either choose the cards in their deck themselves, or get a deck from the internet, usually by looking at a recent tournament and copying the winner's deck, or if they're really serious about it, guessing which decks they're likely to face, choosing a pool of candidate decks, looking at win/loss statistics, and choosing the deck which gives the best chance. Copying a deck that's known to win is much more effective, but making a deck yourself is more fun. As a convenient side-effect, making your own deck gives an excuse for losing.

The third issue, which the article alludes to but doesn't tackle directly, is that MtG involves a large number of easy decisions, with a small number of hard decisions mixed in but not clearly labeled. Players who think too long about all of their decisions are chided for stalling; on the other hand, players who fail to slow down and think will often lose the game because of doing so. Most players can't tell the difference between a hard decision that requires thought, and an easy decision that can be made quickly; instead, they make all decisions quickly until they know they're on the verge of losing; then they switch to thinking carefully about every decision, but at that point it's usually too late.

I don't know how "Bruce-like" I am in issues of personal goals and so on -- probably about average. But I have a freakishly bad case of the Bruce when it comes to competitive games.

I don't win games. Ever. I played Catan every week for a whole summer -- never won. I haven't won a poker game since I was seven. You don't want to know what happens if I try Mario Kart. I used to go bowling a lot -- I never, ever won. I run slower in a race than when I time myself on my own. Come to think of it, I don't believe I've ever won an argument.

The variety of games I suck at is too broad for it to be a simple matter of lacking a skill: I lose at competitions of strategy, probability, hand-eye coordination, and fitness. No. I have some kind of hang-up against winning. I've won "competitions" that involve taking a test or mailing in an application, but I just can't win if I can see my opponent face-to-face. On some level, I really don't want to.

It's got to be psychological. I suppose the cure would be to find a "game" of something that I actually am skilled at, and defeat someone face to face. The weird thing is, that sounds terrifying. Unlike MOR:Harry, I know how to lose; I don't know how to win.

In another thread, PJEby wrote:

So, as of now, I'd say that story was one of the top 5 most valuable things I've gotten from LW.

Seconded.

There's one example of the Bruce Effect that immediately jumps at me because it

a)Has been incredibly active in my life

b)Squares so well with the adaptionist explanation of the Bruce Effect

My chief form of self sabotage has always been with the opposite sex. Someone will hit on me, or my own advances will begin to go somewhere, and I'll do something to bring things to a halt. On present reflection it feels very much like I'm afraid of the challenges that would follow - that flirting with someone I find really attractive feels like embarking on some terrifying balancing act, and the failure is a return to the natural order of things - reassuring and predictable. The kind of thinking that might lead someone to avoid seeking higher status within a peer group which he didn't feel capable of maintaining.

Damn, it appears I haven't read the off-topic thread where Magic players were sought after.

So let me state here that Magic was my number one passion between ages 14-20 or so. I sold my collection (including the Power Nine and other goodies) in order to donate to SIAI, though.

(Haven't regretted it, even though Magic is such a hugely fun game.)

Interesting connection here with "Breakdown of Will" (which I finally received and read yesterday): Ainslie hypothesizes (rather convincingly) that pain and negative emotion are also associated with a burst of "reward" -- i.e. attention and interest. This might be where "Bruce" comes from... not to mention other forms of drama addiction.

(I'm tempted to link to this article from my blog as well, but the jargon really does make it a tough read. Maybe I'll wait until it can supplement a more substantive Bruce-related post of my own.)

It's possible that naming the part of us that makes us lose is oversimplifying the problem. We can consciously come up with rationalizations for why achieving one result counts as a "win" and another result as a "loss". But clean win/lose states don't exist in real life, which is much more messy. Instead winning and losing is achieving different results.

Is it possible that Bruce is just playing a different game, rather than solely attempting to make "me" lose my game? Bruce may actually be the person who wants things that we can't easily rationalize that we (me and Bruce as one person) want.

I can play a game of bowling against a beautiful woman and tell myself "I want to win this game". However, if Bruce has reason to think that losing is going to help my cause with the woman more than winning, and Bruce knows he wants that woman, then he may try to win his game at the expense of me winning mine. My lazy brain can't come up with the reasons why Bruce want's to throw a gutter ball (to get the woman) and Bruce can't figure out why I'm trying to throw strikes (to achieve my conscious win-state). If Bruce wins then my conscious mind is mad at Bruce for causing the loss without understanding why he did it (my brain is too lazy to figure it out).

Maybe if I beat Bruce then he may similarly be able to make my victory bittersweet without me being able to rationalize the reason for it, thus giving more reason to cave to Bruce in the future.

Sorry, but Rizzo's writing style is absolutely awful, and the content is no better.

I have a Magic deck, but I don't often play. That's because Magic is not only an interesting game, its been carefully designed to continually suck more money out of your pocket.

Ever since it was first introduced (I happen to own a first generation deck) the game has been slowly increasing the power levels of the cards so that older cards are less and less valuable and one needs to buy ever more newer cards just to stay competitive.

Add to this the fact they regularly bring out new types of cards that radically shift the power balances in the game and one finds that it becomes a very expensive hobby to keep up with if you want to play with a random assortment of your friends.

So, like Warhammer 40K (another game known for being designed to be a money sink), I've deliberately stayed away from being competitive at. Oh, I have a few decks back from when the game was launched and recently was gifted another few by a friend who wanted to play, and I really do enjoy playing, but I'm not going to let myself get sucked in.

I removed the "Recommended Reading" part from the title; I feel this can be implied and I'd hate to see lots of "Recommended Reading" every time something was linked. Hope that's okay, if not you can always edit back.

Arguably, card games in general can be a good tool for learning rationality. I knew that there was no point to dwelling on inaccessible options before I learned cassino, but when I learned cassino, I got to see the good ten sitting on the table and a distinct lack of tens in my hand and really understand that there would be no ten of diamonds for me this time and I should focus on the spades or something.

@CronoDAS - I used to play a very long time ago, but attempting to keep up with the expansions became too expensive, so I let the hobby lapse. This decision was made when Ice Age came out, so... there's your timeline. However, I did manage to acquire the old 2004 "Shandalar" PC version, which has been delightful both tactically and strategically (the overland game - defeating NPCs and ganking their cards - may be even more enjoyable to me than the card game itself). While I haven't tried the more recent multiplayer video game version, I'd definitely be amenable. So let me know. I can be reached at DarianSentient@gmail.com if you prefer, or if anyone else reading this would like to reach out, as well.

I play magic. Well, at least I used to. Never competitively though, at least not in meatspace (or magic online, apprentice ftw). And I agree - there's a great connection to rationality. One problem with the game though: to truly enjoy it's dynamic nature, which is one of the great things that sets it apart from other games, it takes a significant continuous financial investment in new sets. It's the reason I never played competitively.

I'd wager that there's at least one other mtg player here. How many people are named Zvi?

There's a set of 3 (I think) articles on starcitygames that performed an act of reduction in magic theory. It was a great example that I kept going back to when reading Eliezer's stuff on reductionism. For those that know the terms, the author reduced tempo to a more general notion of card advantage. I'll try to track the articles down.

Edit: here are the articles. If you don't understand magic terminology... sorry. If you do, I think the articles are great from a theoretical perspective. However, from a practical perspective, the traditional notion of tempo may be more useful. I'm probably not a good judge of that, however. For one, I haven't read the articles in a while.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

This sounds like a case of "wrong" perspective. (Whoa, what?! Yes, keep reading pls^^)

Like someone believing (to believe) in Nihilism. To Nihilism, I haven't thought of a good and correct counter-statement, except:

"You are simply wrong on all accounts, but by such a small amount that it's hard to point to, because it will sound like »You don't have a right to your own perspective«", (Of course, I also would not agree with disallowing personal opinions (as long as we ARE talking about opinions, not facts).)

Granted, I haven't tried to have that kind of discussion since I really started reading and applying the Sequences. But that may be due to my growing habit of not throwing myself into random and doomed discussions, that I don't have a stake in.

But for Bruce, I think I can formulate it:

I am aware of the fact that I still don't allow myself to succeed sometimes. I have recently found that I stand before a barrier that I can summarize as a negative kind of sunk cost fallacy ("If I succeed here, I could have just done that ten years ago"), and I still haven't broken through, yet.*

But... Generalizing this kind of observation to "We all have this Negativity-Agent in our brain" feels incorrect to me. It both obscures the mistake and makes it seem like there is a plan to it.

If I think "Okay, you just detected that thought-pattern that you identified as triggering a bad situation, now instead do X" I feel in control, I can see myself progress, I can do all the things.

If I think "Damn, there's Bruce again!", not only do I externalize the locus of control, I am also "creating" an entity, that can then rack up "wins" against me, making me feel less like I can "beat" them.

It's not an agent. It's a habit that I need to break. That's a very different problem!

I assume that people will say "Bruce is a metaphor". But, provided I have understood correctly, the brain is very prone to considering things as agents (f.e. natural gods, "The System", The whole bit about "life being (not) fair", ...), so feeding it this narrative would seem like a bad idea.

I predict that it will be harder to get rid of the problem, once one gives it agency and/or agenthood. (Some might want an enemy to fight, but even there I take issue with externalizing the locus of control.)

[*In the spirit of "Don't tell me how flawed you are, unless you also tell me how you plan to fix it", I am reading through Fun Theory to defuse it (yes, first read, I am not procrastinating with "need to read more"):

For me it's: I don't want to do X, I want to do something enjoyable Y. And then, when I do Y, I drift into random things, that often aren't all that enjoyable, but just continue the status quo. All the while X is beginning to loom, accrue negative charge and triggering avoidance routines. But if I do X instead, I don't know how to allow myself to take breaks without sliding into the above pattern. So I intend to optimize my fun and expand the area of things that I find fun. That reorientation should help me with dosing it, too. (And yes, I do have adhd, in case you read it out of the text and were wondering if you should point me there ^^)

Also I recently discovered a belief (in...) that I like to learn. I realized that I really don't like learning. I like understanding, but what I call "learning" has a very negative connotation, so I barely do it. Will discover how to effectively facilitate understanding, too. ]

Finally i go to other site and read this long text. But i'm not sure about what it says. That you need to look not at step that divide you from win, but at steps that move and move you to lose? Or about when you know that it is wrong variant, but find who was cause of your lose, think how unhappen you are, and don't stop you wrong actions. When you want to win, but make and make obstacles in your path by your own hands.

The link is broken, but I found the article elsewhere on starcitygames.com: https://articles.starcitygames.com/premium/stuck-in-the-middle-with-bruce/

The link is broken. I was only able to find the article here, with the wayback machine.

I think you're overstating how rational Magic is. Maybe it was 10 years ago before Internet came along and changed everything, but these days everybody netdecks, brute force optimization of decks by playing a lot (online or not) beats any creativity, and number of viable deck types in a typical format got extremely limited (before JTMS/SFM ban, there was exactly 1 viable deck type in Standard, with everybody playing some variant thereof or losing).

The good old days of rogue decks stealing tournament wins are long gone. Feedback got way too fast for that.

Much larger monetary investment necessary to play competitively also stops people from doing funny things. Even the best rogue deck in Legacy needs $1000 worth of duals, FoWs, and whatnot or it will be beaten by differences in card quality - and few people are willing to spend that much on a wild shot at winning.

I'd say that these days Magic requires about as much thinking as go, chess, or any other game. Learn basics, practice a lot to avoid stupid mistakes, learn more, keep repeating until done.

There might be some lesson here. Or probably not.

The next time you lose a match you feel you should have won, or just lose any match, ask yourself if perhaps instead of thinking the entire combat math through you just said"screw it" and ran all your dudes in.

I am reminded of Robert E. Lee's uncharacteristic frontal assault at Gettysburg. I keep thinking that the pressure got to him, and he just convinced himself, "Screw it. My men can do anything!"

It would seem that Vince Lombardi is the Anti-Bruce.

I wonder if the underlying mechanism is something evolved for the regulation of groups? Is there some sort of winner/loser switch in our brains which is there to facilitate the leadership of a single winner?

Is this the reason for Biden's slip of the tongue, and for Al Gore's gracious capitulation?

Winning matches isn't necessarily the reason people take up card games like Magic: The Gathering.

It's not that difficult to imagine someone holding a purpose for playing that's at cross-purposes to building a more 'effective' deck. As a sort of trivial example, consider a person who has the resources available to exploit an infinite-power-loop that was unintentionally created when cards from the latest edition are combined with old cards from several editions back... and refuses to use that combination on the grounds that it makes the game less fun to play.

Slightly off topic, but I doubt Magic is especially good for teaching rationality compared to other board games. There are a lot of games besides Magic and Poker that are about decision-making under uncertainty, although most aren't nearly as popular. One way to measure ones progress in rationality might be to play a wide variety of these games and keep track of one's win/loss record.

If three different commenters ask me to do it, I'll go to the trouble of translating it into English. Anyone interested?

I remember liking the Bruce article when I first saw it linked here. I wish I remember why.

You sabotage yourself because you know that you shouldn't be allowed to succeed. You've heard"no!" since birth and had it confirmed throughout your entire life.

That's the author's thesis. Your persistent problems, he says, are due to a facet of your mind that wants to lose and suffer persistently; not to suffer for exhilaration, like a man who enjoys the occasional nipple clamp, but to suffer as penance to the cosmos for being a wretched, worthless person, a person who wouldn't ever win in a just world, and so shouldn't win in this one. You shouldn't be allowed to succeed, he says, and somehow we learn that from people telling us "no".

There are a few types of "no"s that we hear throughout our lives. There are proscriptive rules for your health, like "Don't drink from the sump pump hose" or "Don't play on the roof". There are proscriptive rules with a more social theme like "Don't take your pants off in the mall" or "Don't ask that woman about her nose ring". Finally, there is occasional advice of infeasibility like, "Don't invest all your saving in an Indonesian record company" or "You're probably not smart enough to make it as an actuary."

The last type plausibly limits people from taking the rare weird but weirdly effective life decisions. Maybe.

Anyway, there are lots of reasons why people have problems. You're poor, you're dumb, you're sick, you're ugly, you were raised in a culture without a strong work ethic, you were born in the wrong month and got grouped into a class with more developed peers, and so on. You can get around a lot of that with enough effort, but such circumstances are still not trivial. Putting at the top of your list "my strategic behavior opposed to having a nice life" is a bold choice, not least because it calls a human strategic.

I've had low self esteem. That's not the unusual part. I've also wanted to make up for my mistakes. I even kind of understand the appeal behind self critical thoughts or the denial of impulses. But the combination of those three, of wanting to make up for existing as a inferior person by losing on purpose, is so foreign to me, and so sad. Even when I've had thoughts of suicide, it was always because life was unpleasant, not because my existence was a moral affront to the rest of reality. That depth of shame is just startling.

So startling I'm just going to say no. People don't have Bruces in their heads. Humans have lots of external causes of problems and our brains don't always work right to solve them as much as we might. Some people might even act in a Brucey way if they've been convinced they're infected with Bruce Syndrome, like a counter placebo. But until I see some much stronger evidence that people have semi-conscious, self-defeating agency by default and that it's a persistent cause of their life problems, I'm just dismissing it. Bye, Bruce.

Hmm, didn't really get anything out of this. Maybe you need to be able to be competent at stuff in the first place to sabotage yourself?

I agree card games can be a decent training mechanism, but I think the efficacy increases with the games complexity. I played MTG in my youth and a number of other card games like L5R. In actuality I think MTG is one of the least complex card games in the market, lending to its wide popularity. Certainly it could be argued to be more complex in some ways then poker, but less then other games. At some point complexity makes a game overly convoluted or turns off more casual players if it reduces the ability for an average person to understand its basic facets (one advantage of games like chess/go is easily understandable basic rules, yet very complex and worthwhile strategical depth).

I tend to think any game can be construed as a means to train your thinking/brain, and in this case more specifically rationality, depending on the content. I also think things with a time metric allow more complex decision making due to the inherent time/thinking management issues. However, depending on the specific details of how our brain functions with respect to solving problems in specific games, it's hard to say what exactly is being improved unless tested.

An interesting fact is that I use to be an extremely competitive starcraft player, and some of the skills used in this game have a good correlate with games such as poker. A number of my fellow professional starcraft players moved on to poker where they now play for a living.