Give Politicians a Raise, Smuggle Smartphones into School, and go Full Donk! Cautionary Questions with Risky Business

Summary

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford: Episode Summary
Episode Title: Give Politicians a Raise, Smuggle Smartphones into School, and go Full Donk! Cautionary Questions with Risky Business
Release Date: May 30, 2025
Host/Author: Pushkin Industries
Description: In this episode, Tim Harford teams up with Nate Silva and Maria Konnikova from the Risky Business podcast to delve into a series of intriguing questions from listeners. They explore topics ranging from the impact of game theory on decision-making to the complexities of modern governance and the subtle strategies within competitive sports.

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1. The Influence of Game Theory and Decision-Making

The episode opens with Tim Harford introducing his co-hosts, Nate Silva and Maria Konnikova, setting the stage for a deep dive into the mechanics of decision-making influenced by game theory.

• Maria Konnikova emphasizes the role of game theory in both life and games like poker. She states, “Game theory is kind of the most important variable there and game theory plays a very large role in poker” (04:53).

• Nate Silva elaborates on game theory's foundational principles using the classic example of rock, paper, scissors, explaining the necessity of randomizing strategies to avoid predictability (05:42).

• Tim Harford adds a psychological dimension, highlighting Danny Kahneman's theories on cognitive biases and heuristics. He remarks, “Even if you know that those biases and heuristics exist in theory, in practice, you still exhibit them” (06:19).

Tim Harford (06:19): “Poker is an environment where you can really sample thousands and thousands of decisions, sample correctly... In real life, not the poker table, we never sample correctly. Right. So that's where a lot of these biases come from.”

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2. The Role of Board Games in Strategic Thinking

A listener, Drew, inquires about the application of poker strategies to board games.

• Maria Konnikova expresses a competitive edge in board games, noting, “If I'm playing, it's like other people who... I tend to figure out the strategy pretty quick and win” (08:04).

• Tim Harford shares his personal aversion to board games, humorously rejecting popular games like Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride while advocating for poker as a superior strategy game (08:38).

Nate Silva (09:50): “You can know somebody their whole lives and play a game with them, and you will see something that you have never seen.”

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3. Data-Driven Decision Making in Government

Listener Kerry (Carrie) poses a question regarding the UK's productivity gap and the potential need for a dedicated government data department versus concerns of surveillance akin to a "1984" scenario.

• Nate Silva critiques the current state, mentioning the limitations of the Office for National Statistics, which focuses on traditional statistics rather than modern, messy data sets. He raises concerns about data being underrated and at risk of disappearing, stating, “Data is so powerful, it's so important... it gets overlooked” (11:15).

• Maria Konnikova highlights the balance between collecting data and respecting privacy, referencing historical data collection like the Doomsday Book and the pitfalls of relying solely on digital repositories that can become inaccessible (12:56).

Tim Harford (15:20): “There were rules in place to keep those data sets separate for a reason, for privacy protections... Now the government is trying to roll back those rules and collect and de-anonymize the data.”

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4. Tariffs and the Stability of US Treasury Rates

A Risky Business listener questions the implications of a spike in the 10-year Treasury rate from 4% to 4.5%, pondering the risk of the United States defaulting on its debt.

• Maria Konnikova discusses the role of deficits and the market's perception of US debt as "too big to fail," expressing skepticism about potential default scenarios (19:49).

• Nate Silva counters by explaining that the US can always print more dollars, suggesting that a default would be a deliberate choice rather than a necessity. He introduces the acronym "TACO" (Trump Always Chickens Out) to imply trust in the current administration's decisions (21:58).

Nate Silva (20:25): “You can always print more dollars. I mean, it could be that U.S. government debt gets less attractive, it could be that inflation takes off, it could be there are all kinds of problems, but there's never a need to default.”

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5. The Debate Over Smartphones in Schools

Listener Jack raises concerns about bans on mobile phone usage in Australian schools, arguing that such restrictions are ineffective as children find workarounds and are already engaged with technology.

• Nate Silva voices his disapproval of widespread phone usage, criticizing adults for setting poor examples and emphasizing the need for better self-control and executive function development in children (23:38).

• Maria Konnikova acknowledges the challenges of enforcing phone bans and the temptation for teenagers to bypass restrictions, highlighting the collective action problem inherent in such policies (26:27).

Tim Harford (26:11): “There's emerging research, but now we have a few decades' worth of what phones do to developing brains... You retain more information, you learn better.”

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6. Learning Poker as an Adult

A listener from Quebec shares insights from Maria Konnikova's book, The Biggest Bluff, focusing on the challenges and rewards of learning poker in adulthood.

• Tim Harford recounts his first meeting with poker legend Eric Seidel, emphasizing the intrigue of teaching someone with no prior knowledge and the psychological aspects of poker training (28:11).

• Maria Konnikova discusses the balance of reading skills, mathematical prowess, and discipline in becoming a successful poker player, noting the importance of emotional control and strategic adaptability (29:17).

Maria Konnikova (30:38): “It can be a lot of different formats of it, but like, no one always plays their A game... it's a very interesting experiment to... what can he do with me?”

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7. Game Theory in Soccer Penalty Kicks

Listener Jordan inquires about the strategies goalkeepers use during penalty kicks, questioning whether goalkeepers who never move can influence the strikers' behavior.

• Tim Harford explains the recursive nature of game theory in sports, using poker as an analogy to illustrate how players adapt to each other's strategies (40:03).

• Nate Silva describes the concept of equilibrium in mixed strategies, where both strikers and goalkeepers employ randomized tactics to remain unpredictable (43:08). He references a real-world example involving English keeper Jordan Pickford’s pre-randomized strategy during a penalty shootout (44:17).

Nate Silva (43:08): “There's always an equilibrium, but that equilibrium will involve a randomized mixture of strategies.”

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8. Underhanded Free Throws in the NBA

Listener Caleb questions why NBA players don't adopt underhanded free throws despite potentially higher success rates.

• Maria Konnikova speculates on the psychological and social aspects, suggesting that strategies perceived as emasculating or embarrassing are often overlooked despite their effectiveness (46:37).

• Tim Harford introduces the concept of "donk betting" in poker as an analogous strategy that is technically correct but socially stigmatized, highlighting the tension between optimal play and perceived social norms (47:35).

Tim Harford (47:35): “Sometimes you have to fold when you've already put a lot of money in the pot... It was just an embarrassing play to make in the moment.”

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9. Increasing Politicians' Salaries to Curb Corruption

Listener Mark proposes a radical idea: significantly increasing politicians' salaries while restricting donations and favors to reduce corruption and improve governance.

• Tim Harford critiques the proposal as naive, pointing out existing loopholes like PACs and lobbying that could undermine the intended effects (34:46).

• Nate Silva discusses the complexities of implementing such a system, emphasizing that increased salaries alone might not eliminate bribery or corruption due to the inherent personal discretion politicians hold (35:32).

• Maria Konnikova acknowledges the potential benefits of higher salaries in attracting a diverse pool of candidates but remains skeptical about completely eliminating corrupt practices (36:21).

Tim Harford (35:15): “There are ways around [increasing salaries and restricting donations], right? There are PACs... People would get around these incentives very easily, just like they do today.”

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Notable Quotes

• Maria Konnikova (04:53): “Game theory is kind of the most important variable there and game theory plays a very large role in poker.”

• Tim Harford (06:19): “Even if you know that those biases and heuristics exist in theory, in practice, you still exhibit them.”

• Nate Silva (11:15): “Data is so powerful, it's so important... it gets overlooked.”

• Tim Harford (15:20): “There were rules in place to keep those data sets separate for a reason, for privacy protections... Now the government is trying to roll back those rules and collect and de-anonymize the data.”

• Nate Silva (20:25): “You can always print more dollars... there's never a need to default.”

• Maria Konnikova (26:27): “I think you have to have some type of consistent enforcement in the rules.”

• Nate Silva (43:08): “There's always an equilibrium, but that equilibrium will involve a randomized mixture of strategies.”

• Tim Harford (35:15): “There are ways around [increasing salaries and restricting donations], right? There are PACs...”

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Conclusion

In this engaging episode, Tim Harford, Nate Silva, and Maria Konnikova navigate a spectrum of cautionary questions that shed light on the intricacies of decision-making, governance, and strategic behavior in various facets of life and society. Through insightful discussions and expert analysis, they provide listeners with a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms that shape our world.

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Timestamp References:

• Time markers (e.g., 04:53) indicate the point in the transcript where each quoted segment occurs.

Transcript

[Tim Harford]

Foreign this is an iHeart podcast.

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[Justin Richmond]

This is Justin Richmond from Broken Record. The three things I love about summer are pool days, blaring, all the new summer songs that come out, and and endless refreshing iced drinks from Starbucks. Even better, my favorite summer drink has returned to Starbucks. The Summer Berry Refresher is available now. A mix of berry flavors shaken with ice and poured over raspberry flavored pearls. It's light, vibrant and just as refreshing as the summer fun you'll be having. So queue up your playlist and head over to Starbucks to check out their summer menu. There's something for everyone. From creamy cold brews to ice cold refreshers, your Summer Berry Refresher is ready at Starbucks.

[Nate Silva]

There are so many mattresses out there, and for ethical shoppers, it's not always clear what exactly you're buying. Naturepedic makes it simple. They use real natural materials such as organic cotton and wool instead of polyfoams and fiberglass. Plus they're certified by organisations such as EWG and Gotz, so you know they're the real deal. Speaking of deals, you can save 20% on organic sleep for your whole family when you shop Naturepedic's Memorial Day sale. Use code [e-mail] Tales to Save Today and Sleep Better Tonight. Hello and welcome to another episode of Cautionary Questions where I team up with clever people to answer your clever questions. And this time I'm joined by Nate Sales Silva and Maria Konnikova. They are the hosts of the Risky Business podcast and they are here to answer questions from both sets of listeners. Nate is a political analyst, he's the author of on the Edge and Maria is the best selling author of the Biggest How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself and Win. They're both fantastic books. Both Nate and Maria are also journalists and they are both high stakes poker players. I'm a journalist too, and an undercover economist and I'm not much of a poker player, but between us we should have some good answers for all of the smart questions that You've been sending in. We will be tackling smartphones in schools, tariffs, and how to use game theory to win at sports. Nate, Maria, welcome to Cautionary Tales.

[Maria Konnikova]

Thank you, Tim.

[Tim Harford]

Thanks so much, Tim.

[Nate Silva]

Well, should it be cautionary Business or Risky Tales?

[Maria Konnikova]

Risky. Risky. Caution.

[Tim Harford]

Risky Caution. That's good. That's good.

[Nate Silva]

You've been podcasting for how long?

[Tim Harford]

About a year.

[Maria Konnikova]

About a year. Yeah. We're coming up on the World Series of Poker begins in every May, and so, yeah, we launched it just about a year ago and we're coming up on our second World Series season.

[Nate Silva]

Excellent.

[Tim Harford]

When Nate and I are both at the final table of the main event, that'll be really great for our Risky Business podcast audience growth.

[Nate Silva]

Would you be podcasting from the World Series if you're on the final table?

[Tim Harford]

Not at the final table since there are no phones allowed.

[Nate Silva]

But we'll find a way.

[Maria Konnikova]

I mean, we do have these long dates where we both have real jobs, and then maybe you'll do several hours of real work, quote unquote, and then play poker for 12 hours and then it's fine, your 2am Mexican food hangout or something. But they're long days. We do not get vacation when we're in Vegas, basically.

[Tim Harford]

No, we do not.

[Nate Silva]

Right, enough poker chat. Let us get into the virtual post bag after we listen to the theme music for Cautionary Tales. I am here with Nate Silva and Maria Konnikova. And here is a good question to start with from from listener Alex. Alex asks, have any personal experiences or academic theories really shaped your decision making? Let me put this one to Nate first, and I'd love to hear what both of you think.

[Maria Konnikova]

I would say my experience with risk taking and decision making is very hands on for the most part. Right. When I was a kid, we would play fantasy baseball and have little NFL betting pools and things like that. Obviously, poker, there's good instructional material, but, you know, most people are ultimately kind of largely self taught. You know, in my book on the Edge, then game theory plays a really large role. And game theory plays a very large role in poker. There are now computer programs called solvers that literally have solved the Nash equilibrium for poker. If you've seen A Beautiful Mind, a lot of things in life is like, what's the game theory equilibrium of? Like what traffic patterns look like in New York or how often you should eat one type of cuisine versus another or any type of competitive situation where there are lots of optionality. I'd say game theory is kind of the most important variable there and game.

[Nate Silva]

Theory, we should say, is really the use of mathematical equations to model strategic interactions. So a very simple example of game theory is the game of rock, paper, scissors. Now, if I play rock, you're going to play paper and beat me. If I play paper, you're going to play scissors and beat me. And so game theory says rock, or you have to randomise. You have to have a 1/3 chance of playing each strategy. I mean, that's kind of obvious. Game theory can be used to model much more complex situations, including famously, because it inspired one of the creators of game theory, poker.

[Tim Harford]

Yeah, I would second Nate on game theory. It was one of the pinnacles of my academic work. And I'd also say the psychological theories of Danny Kahneman have been hugely influential in how I think about decision making. He was an absolutely brilliant man who really unearthed a lot of the ways that our brains misprocess. I don't think that's a word, but I'm going to make it one. Mis process information and the biases and heuristics that we're up against. And it's incredibly powerful because even if you know that those biases and heuristics exist in theory, in practice, you still exhibit them. Right. You have the game theory kind of that mathematical side and then the psychological side of Kahneman and poker, in my mind, is the life experience that has cemented these more than anything else in my brain and has made me internalize how this actually works in reality and how you can try to decide optimally and then take that from the poker table to real life. Because poker is an environment where you can really sample thousands and thousands and thousands of decisions, sample correctly. And as you know, Tim, that's incredibly important when it comes to learning and trying to get a sense of probabilities. And in real life, not the poker table, we never sample correctly. Right. So that's where a lot of these biases come from. So I think poker is a very powerful teaching tool to help cement these theories into practice.

[Nate Silva]

Okay, I've got a great question from Drew. Loyal listeners to cautionary tales know I'm a big fan of board games. And Drew wants to know Maria and Nate, do you play board games? If you play board games, do you bring a poker lens to the table or is it a different vibe?

[Tim Harford]

So I hate board games. I do not play board games. My sisters, a little over six years older than I am, and she always loved board games. They bored me. Ha ha. They're just not interesting. And you know, when someone brings out, you know, Settlers of Catan or anything like that. I'm like, oh, God, no, no, no, no, please. Ticket to Ride is a favorite in my family, and I just want to die. You know, for me, if there's game night, please let it be poker. Otherwise, please don't make me play and let me read my book on the side and cheer you on while you play.

[Maria Konnikova]

Yeah, I mean, look, some of the games get quite advanced, and so it's like, where do you go from a game that takes 10 hours to learn to something that's kind of a broken, overly simple game? Right. But like, yeah, I like games because I'm very competitive. Right. If I'm playing, it's like other people who, like, don't have that background in games or poker, then I'm just going to be honest, I tend to figure out the strategy pretty quick and win.

[Tim Harford]

You crush them, Nate. You crush their souls and their dreams, and they wish they'd never asked you to play. Nate, to your point about the complexity, there's a New Yorker cartoon that I absolutely love, and it's a group of people sitting around a table, and one of them is reading a game instruction manual. And the rest of them are all skeletons, he says, and so those are the rules. Shall we start playing?

[Maria Konnikova]

I love it.

[Nate Silva]

I had the privilege of interviewing Klaus Teuber, the creator of Settlers of Catan. And he said something that really stuck with me, which I suspect will resonate with you poker players. He said, you can know somebody their whole lives and play a game with them, and you will see something that you have never seen.

[Tim Harford]

That's wonderful. And actually that's how I feel about poker. Your character comes out. And by the way, I do have a very strong interest in games for my next book when it comes to cheating. So I'm interested in, like, what kind of a person, you know, cheats up Monopoly at home game night.

[Nate Silva]

People who want to win.

[Tim Harford]

It's just totally, like, mind boggling to me that you would. That you would do that. But. But there you have it. Yep.

[Maria Konnikova]

My partner is also very competitive, but his main objective is making sure that I don't win. Right. He'll go out of his way to lose himself if it's a murder suicide mission, basically. Which changes the strategy quite a bit, I feel.

[Nate Silva]

Seen.

[Tim Harford]

That's amazing.

[Maria Konnikova]

So here's one for you, Tim. This question is from Kerry. K E R R I E. I don't know if it's Irish or something, Kerry, but anyway. Hi, Tim and team. I worry that a big Problem with the productivity gap in the UK is a lack of high quality data and data driven decision making. I see a lot of investment in data that is overseen by technical experts in a given domain, but very little consultation of data scientists. Company and organizational boards also seem to lack the sort of expertise which is often rolled into a catch all IT function. I work in the public sector and so I have framed my question accordingly. Should we have a government department devoted to data or is it all a bit 1984? Best wishes, Carrie.

[Nate Silva]

Well, I love the question. And we do kind of have a government department devoted to data. It's called the Office for National Statistics, but it's focused on very old school statistics rather than modern data science. And old school statistics tends to focus on smaller data sets, very well behaved, well formatted data sets. For example, you might go out and do a survey rather than just say, hey, well, we're going to just draw administrative data, or we're going to look at data that's coming out of people's smartphones, which, you know, there's a lot more information in there, but it's a lot messier, to be honest. What really concerns me at the moment is that data is systematically underrated by governments. I think they don't realize how powerful it can be, they don't realize how dangerous it can be. And it tends to be given a low political priority or misused. So at the moment, in the U.S. for example, we've got this sort of sudden disappearance of all these government websites. It's unclear how much data has permanently disappeared. Or is it just that it's temporarily gone down? Is somebody archiving it? Will the archives work or not? Archives don't always work. Are we going to have interrupted data sets? It's very unclear what's gone and what hasn't happen. So that's a particularly extreme example. But generally, I mean, I'm working on a history of data at the moment. It's so powerful, it's so important. It is the foundation of our health systems, it's the foundation of many of our economic activities, it's the foundation of science. It's also the foundation of some terrible abuses of human rights in the past. And yet it's kind of boring and it's kind of geeky and so it just gets overlooked. And that's what really worries me.

[Maria Konnikova]

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you have one partisan faction in the US that seems to think that less data is better instead of having better data. Right. And some types of data you can go back and recollect. But some things you can't. Right. The UK for example, has a data set of economic statistics like GDP that goes back like almost 1000 years or something. Right. Because they were collecting records for tax purposes and estate purposes and everything in real time.

[Nate Silva]

Yeah. Well, we got The Doomsday Book, 1086. I'm old enough to remember the 900th anniversary of the Doomsday Book. There's an interesting little cautionary tale there. So for the 900th anniversary of the Doomsday Book, which was in 1986, the BBC organized this kind of a proto Wikipedia. They said, we're going to encourage this project where school kids across the country are going to act as citizen journalists. They're going to go around, they'll interview people, they'll gather data, they'll write little essays. We've got maps, we'll have photographs, and we'll put it all on a laserdisc. Remember laserdisc?

[Maria Konnikova]

Oh, wow.

[Nate Silva]

You could see the problem.

[Maria Konnikova]

Right.

[Nate Silva]

And we've got these highly sophisticated, expensive computer systems. They're going to be accessible in every school. And it was called Doomsday 1986. I think it was super cool. I remember it really well. And then by about 1998, it was just impossible to even read the laserdiscs. So this whole project just went offline. Meanwhile, by the way, the original Doomsday books from 1086 still available.

[Tim Harford]

Yeah. Paper has a certain appeal and has lasted for centuries for a reason. You know the flip side, Tim, of what you were saying about what's happening in the US and kind of to address the 1984 element of the question is so, you know, yes, a lot of data is disappearing and then data that was never meant to be aggregated and linked and personalized is being shared and profiles of people, of US citizens and non citizens are being created that should have never been created. Right. There were rules in place to keep those data sets separate for a reason, for privacy protections. And now the government is trying to roll back those rules and collect and de anonymize the data that was shared by people with the assumption that that would never happen.

[Maria Konnikova]

That's really bad.

[Tim Harford]

Right. So. So there kind of dystopian thing going.

[Nate Silva]

On and there's history here. I mean, this has happened before. This happened in the 1940s.

[Tim Harford]

It's not good. 1940s was not a good time in history, if people remember.

[Nate Silva]

No, I think we can all agree on that one. Thank you very much, Nate and Maria. We will be answering more of your questions after this short break.

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[Nate Silva]

We are back. I'm here with Nate Silva and Maria Konnikova of Risky Business and we have an interesting question from a Risky Business listener who asks one thing that happened during the tariffs which didn't get much attention, is the 10 year treasury rate spiked from 4 to 4.5%. I should say, by the way, I work for the Financial Times, we were paying a lot of attention to that. But understand that outside geekland, it was ignored. That basically means, the listener continues, there is less belief that US Debt is a safe bet. It probably means somebody cough China cough issued a sell order for a large amount of U.S. treasury with the intent to move the interest rate as retaliation for tariffs. To cut to the chase, the listener asks, I would be extremely interested in hearing what are your thoughts on the likelihood of the United States defaulting?

[Tim Harford]

Nate, this one's you.

[Maria Konnikova]

I used to know more about credit default swaps and things like this. I mean, look, the US Runs up very large deficits. Neither party has any interest in doing what it would take to cut those deficits potentially. Right. We got lucky in kind of the financial crisis and Covid era of lower interest rates where you can borrow very cheaply. That's no longer true. Now. In fact, borrowing is getting more expensive and so I trust the market's fairly efficient here. But I guess the US Is still a bit too big to fail.

[Nate Silva]

Well, normally when we say too big to fail, we're referring to things that the US Is going to bail out if necessary. Right?

[Maria Konnikova]

Yeah.

[Nate Silva]

The US Is too big to save. That's your problem.

[Maria Konnikova]

You know, the world has profoundly been affected by Trump's second term in a way it wasn't in Trump's first term. Our neighbors to the north, Canada, had an election that was entirely upended. The liberals wound up back in power even though Trudeau had been very unpopular. Right. I would argue that the election of the new pope was in part a response to Trump and the changing geopolitical world. Right. And say, okay, we want to have some influence on the United States, have a figure who's not Trump, it can balance him out somehow. And so, yeah, we're in a different world. And I suppose I trust markets and investors are intelligent about that. And I'm not sure it's China so much as the fact that we're in a new regime.

[Nate Silva]

Yeah I certainly agree. I don't think China needs to do anything to make the U.S. treasury rate spike. When the rate spikes, by the way, it means people are selling US government debt. When they sell it, the price goes down, the interest rates go up. But, yeah, plenty of people willing to do that without any coordinated action from China. I mean, there is absolutely zero need for the US government to default because the US government can always print more dollars. I mean, it could be that U.S. government debt gets less attractive, it could be that inflation takes off, it could be there are all kinds of problems, but there's never a need to default. I think the decision to default would be just that. It would be a decision the US Government would have to actively decide. We want to stiff our creditors. So you just have to look at the President and say, does this look like a man who stiffs his creditors? I don't think so. I don't think so. That doesn't sound like Donald J. Trump to me.

[Maria Konnikova]

This is President Trump we're talking about, Tim.

[Nate Silva]

Yeah. In the ft, we have a new acronym. It's Taco. Taco stands for Trump Always Chickens out. So the bet is that he will not, in fact default, even though he's talking about various things that already look like default, because the consequences would be so catastrophic that he would look at the consequences and he would back away. But that doesn't mean that he couldn't do some damage. So fingers crossed.

[Tim Harford]

All right. So listener Jack wants us to explore the thorny issue of cell phones in school and writes, Australia has been running an experiment with New South Wales banning mobile phone use in all schools from October 2023. This is following the implementation of a ban in Victoria in 2020, which itself cites research from England and other justifications. So this listener has kids in school. This is not where I thought the question was going to go. Actively helps the 14 year old subvert this ban. So they have an old phone in a locked pouch and their actual phone in their bag. This is because they must use their phone to hotspot the Internet to their laptop. Jack writes, my opinion is the whole thing is stupid, as most kids have some kind of workaround and are on their laptops all day anyway. If parents are on their phones all the time, why are we expecting kids not to be? I still see teachers in playgrounds face and phone and all the injustices and hypocrisy of my own school days come flooding back. I mean, I know I'm asking this question, I have so many thoughts, but I'll Open it up to you guys first.

[Nate Silva]

I also have thoughts. I think the hypocrisy thought is real. I have three children myself. My oldest child is 21, the youngest is 13. They see me being distracted by my phone all the time and of course they're going to be influenced by that. I think that this is an evil device, useful, but evil that we all of us need to fight together because it's capable of ruining all of our lives. I feel like I should set a good example and I don't feel that the fact that the grown ups are being distracted by the phones is particularly a good reason to say the kids should have the phones too. I mean we would never say, hey, I see the grownups drinking vodka and smoking, so why. Surely it's fine for the nine year olds to also drink vodka and smoke. I mean, I don't think that follows.

[Tim Harford]

But it's hypocritical, Tim. It's hypocritical that you do not let your child.

[Nate Silva]

Yeah, well I think it suggests that maybe the grown up shouldn't drink so much vodka and shouldn't smoke so much rather than the other way around. But anyway, yeah, we are setting an example whether we like it or not.

[Tim Harford]

I completely agree with that. And to add to it, the use of screens in general, it's very different depending on your age. There's emerging research, but now we have a few decades worth of what phones do to developing brains and kind of the habits that you create from a young age. So being on the phone as an adult who grew up without that kind of access is very different from growing up and actually constantly being connected to a screen. By the way, there's also research that shows that taking notes by hand is much more powerful than taking notes on a laptop. Right. You retain more information, you learn better. Because there's a brain link between the hand and the brain that does not exist when you're typing. It would be better. I totally agree with you, Tim. Adults should be on their phones much less often. I write about this. I think it's actually really great practice to not have your phone. I've sometimes left my phone at home on purpose to kind of have a day for without cell phones. I have programs that turn the Internet off on my computer because I lack willpower if I don't forcibly kind of have it turned off to try to have some deep concentration, deep writing time. This is all kind of related to our executive function, our self control ability, our ability to learn our memory. All of these things are interconnected and don't you want your child to actually emerge as a kind of smart adult who's capable of all of these things as opposed to someone who is constantly distracted?

[Nate Silva]

Nate strikes me as A3 screens at once guy. Nate, any thoughts?

[Maria Konnikova]

You know, I just have my laptop. People think I have some big, elaborate monitor setup. I just have my little laptop, actually. Yeah. Look, is it paternalistic to tell kids they can't use their phones? I mean, yeah, but they're kids, right? So you're allowed. You're allowed to be paternalistic toward them. And, I don't know. I mean, I guess the one caveat I have is I was chronically pretty bored in school, right. And so I'm sympathetic to the kids that are like, okay, I'm bored. I'm learning things I already know. But, like, it is a situation where I think you have to have some type of consistent enforcement in the rules. But when you're in school, blame your teachers for not making you interested, but don't blame them for not letting you be on Instagram while you're supposed to be learning algebra.

[Nate Silva]

I think it might also be a collective action problem.

[Maria Konnikova]

Yes.

[Nate Silva]

I think it's perfectly possible that. That you've got teenagers who would be quite happy if nobody in the school had Instagram or nobody had Snapchat. But if other people are using Snapchat to communicate, to arrange to meet up, well, then I need Snapchat too. And just talking to teenagers, I think that viewpoint is not unusual. Some of them are like, please, can you just ban everybody from using it? And then I'll be happy. Yeah. Okay, let's move on, because I've got a question specifically from Maria from a long time longtime listener from Quebec. They would like to hear Maria talk about a particular point of her book, the Biggest Bluff, where she describes the breakfast she had with her mentor. You were trying to find somebody who would teach you to play poker so that you could write a book about learning to play poker. He only became interested when he realized, you don't know anything at all about this subject. You don't even know how a deck of cards works. And our listener says, I am 65 years old, and I went through a couple of career changes, and I find this story very moving and so true about what it means to learn something and to teach something. So what are your thoughts on that?

[Tim Harford]

Yeah, I think so. This conversation took place the first time I ever met Eric Seidel, who is a legend of the poker world. And he had never taken on a poker student before. And what stood out about me was that I was a complete blank slate. I didn't have any bad habits. I didn't have any habits. Right. I didn't know anything. And so for him, I think it was a very interesting experiment. Just like for me, it was an interesting experiment from scratch. You know, what can he do with me? Given my background in psychology in a short period of time these days, when you've got all these math wizards and solvers and all of these things, is kind of psychology, hard work kind of my background, is it enough? Right. Could I do well? And so if I could, that would be an amazing hit of proof of concept for the way that he thinks about the game. And so I think to him, that's what made this interesting and that's what made it appealing.

[Nate Silva]

Nate, why is Maria so good at poker? Is it the coach? Is it her training as a psychologist? Is it something else?

[Maria Konnikova]

I think it's her and not the coaching. Although Maria is a wonderfully well connected person who has access to some of the best poker minds in the world. But, yeah, look, it's the balance of the people reading skills and the mathematical skills and the discipline, really. You know, it's rare to see Maria tilt. I'm sure she does it right, but I think she's playing more than I am, frankly.

[Nate Silva]

Tilting is basically where you get emotional and it affects your decisions.

[Maria Konnikova]

Tilt doesn't have to be anger, right? It can be like, oh, I've had a great day, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna not fight for this pot that you're supposed to bluff for. It can be a lot of different formats of it, but like, you know, no one always plays their A game, right? But if you're always playing your B game or better, and you're really smart in lots of different ways and read people well and maybe defy stereotypes a little bit too, maybe are more aggressive than people are expecting. So, yeah, I would say she's a well rounded poker player, by the way. It's part of, like learning the game later is that you might wind up being a little bit more well rounded. When I used to play for a living back, God, 20 years ago, now I'm getting old. I played a game called Limit Holdem, which the same amount is bet on every hand, whereas a no limit, you can bet anywhere from one chip to the entire size of your stack. And it's a much different game. And so I had to spend a lot of time unlearning habits from limit holdem, which can be bad habits in no Limit. Hold' em.

[Nate Silva]

We've got more questions coming up, but first, let's take a quick break.

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[Nate Silva]

Welcome back to Cautionary Questions with me, Tim Harford.

[Tim Harford]

And me, Maria Konnikova.

[Maria Konnikova]

And me, Nate Silver. So here's a question from Mark. Mark asks, it's no secret that political donations are tied to political favors, legislation benefiting the highest donors, and so forth. If the politicians are the machine and the machine runs on money, what if we tweaked the source of the money? What would happen if by some stroke of magic, Congress received vastly larger salaries, increasing with years of service? But with one big caveat. Politicians cannot accept any donations, gifts, speaking fees or favors in any form other than direct money donations from constituents up to the federal limits without forfeiting their public service salary. So put simply, what if public service was a bigger, more valuable incentive? Could it even out compete the current incentives? Would governing change for the better or for the worse? And why?

[Nate Silva]

I like it.

[Tim Harford]

It's a good question, but it's slightly naive in the sense that we already have rules against politicians accepting all sorts of things that Mark wants them not to accept. And there are ways around them, right? There are PACs, which are political action committees which you can donate to. There's ways that you can lobby and influence people. People would get around these incentives very easily, just like they do today.

[Nate Silva]

This may be a naive observation, but I would have thought there was a difference between donations to a campaign for the purposes of spending money on adverts to get reelected versus just donations to a politician's bank account. There should be a bright line between the two of them. I mean, Nate, you're the expert on this.

[Maria Konnikova]

The answer is you are supposed to report to the Federal Election Commission every dollar that you spend. So you definitely run a risk of expenses being scrutinized if they're not legitimate. But of course there are a million things, a tranche of expenses that are ambiguous between personal and business expenses, right? You can also shuffle money to consultants and pay them maybe more than they're worth in exchan exchange for, who knows, favors later on and so forth. I think it's probably a good idea to pay members of Congress more. I think it might help recruit some people who are not already wealthy to enter Congress. I think in general, top performing government employees should be paid more too. And make it easier maybe to fire the poor performers. Although I don't, I don't understand why anyone would want to go into politics. It sounds like miserable to me to be a member of Congress. My lizard brain can't grok those incentives necessarily.

[Nate Silva]

It is worth directing some attention to politicians latitude to do things that people might want to bribe them to do. So the more personal discretion a politician has, the more it's worth bribing them. So one of the interesting things about tariffs is that if you put a large tariff on importers, it's then worth a great deal of money to particular importers to be exempt from that tariff. I mean, it keeps changing, but there was this huge tariff on electronic goods coming from China and then it's like, oh, actually we're not going to levy that on iPhones. So Apple benefits from that. And I'm not saying oh, Apple bribed the president. I don't have any particular reason to believe they did. But the point is that when you've got that sort of personal discretion, it becomes hugely valuable and those interest groups are willing to pay a lot of money. And so there's the temptation for bribery.

[Tim Harford]

One of the big differences between first world and third world countries is how prevalent bribery is kind of in, in the way that governments function. And yet a lot of so called first world countries and second world countries, there's a lot of bribing and corruption and cheating that goes on no matter what. So sure, it would be amazing if somehow we could create the incentive structure where that doesn't happen. But I don't see from a psychological standpoint how the same type of personality that wants to become a politician and who's successful as a politician, who kind of wheels and deals as a part of what they did to get there, how they would ever be totally above everything and rise to the heights of government needed to exert real influence. It's a very cynical take, but that's how I see it.

[Nate Silva]

Maria, you mentioned developing countries. This was perceived as being a particular problem in Africa, both for historical reasons and because a lot of sub Saharan African countries were very, very poor. And so this amazing African entrepreneur called Mo Ibrahim, who made a huge amount of money in telecommunications in the 1990s, became a billionaire. He announced the Mo Ibrahim Prize he was going to give. It was millions to any African leader who surrendered power after losing a democratic election. This is about 20 years ago. I was googling around. I think the price has been paid at least once, but I haven't been able to find any survey of whether it's made a difference. But I just think it's a clever idea whether or not it worked in practice. It's a clever idea.

[Maria Konnikova]

Didn't Sam Bankman Fried want to pay or bribe Donald Trump, like a billion dollars not to run for reelection or something like that?

[Nate Silva]

Just because Sam Bankman Fried wanted to do it doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

[Maria Konnikova]

Now, it might color my priors a little bit. I. I'd say fair.

[Nate Silva]

Fair.

[Tim Harford]

Sometimes, you know, a broken clock is right twice a day. Let's take another question now from Jordan, and this one was directed to you, Tim. So, first, Jordan loves your podcast and has listened to every episode you've put out.

[Nate Silva]

Good to hear.

[Tim Harford]

So keep up the great work and thank you. Jordan is a dedicated phantom. It's a lot of episodes.

[Nate Silva]

I like it, I like it.

[Tim Harford]

I love your podcast too, but I've missed some, I have to admit.

[Nate Silva]

They're all available on Catch Up. So what is Jordan's question?

[Tim Harford]

Yes, it's about penalty kicks, so if you don't move, you're more likely to save them. I wonder about that, since if a goalie never moves, then wouldn't the kicker behave differently and make it easier to save shots that don't go down the middle? I was just thinking about it and was wondering how that was controlled for.

[Nate Silva]

Actually, you two are the perfect people to answer this question because it's about game theory, optimality and trying to exploit suboptimal behaviour in a soccer penalty. Basically, you've just got a striker trying to score a goal. You've got the goalkeeper standing there and they can kind of guess they can dive to the left or they can dive to the right and that's really a 50 50. They'll guess right. Or they could just kind of not dive at all and stand in the middle, which makes them look passive and like they're not even trying. However, it turns out that because goalkeepers don't stand in the middle because it makes them look passive, some strikers have figured out, oh, if I just boot the ball straight at the goalkeeper, they are guaranteed to dive to the left or right and I'm going to kick where they were anyway. So Jordan's question is, well, hang on, if the strikers figure that out, aren't the goalkeepers also going to figure it out? So it's really a question of people adapting to each other's strategy and the optimal mix of strategies. And who better than you two to explain the details here?

[Tim Harford]

I mean, that is such a fascinating Element of game theory that Nate and I talk about quite often, which is kind of this recursive element of it, right? If I know that you know that I know that you know. And in poker, this happens all the time where you're trying to figure out, how do I adjust to my opponent. If we're both playing, playing gto, game theory, optimal poker, then technically, you know, we're. We're both executing a strategy perfectly. But humans aren't computers, and that doesn't happen, right? So if I figure out, for instance, that Nate is calling too often, then I should start, you know, changing my strategy away from gto. So even if in this particular spot, game theory says that I should check because my hand is a little too weak to bet for value, I'd bet again because I know that Nate is going to call me again with a worse hand because he over calls, right? So I'm kind of adapting to his behavior. Now, Nate is a smart guy who also knows a lot about game theory. So what if Nate then figures out that I'm doing this, right? Because we get to showdown and he's like, maria, how did you bet three times with bottom pair? This is crazy. You were right. You won. But Nate figures out that, oh, I'm over calling. So now she's actually playing differently. So now I'm going to change my strategy to adjust to that. So next time I actually try to do that, Nate ends up having just the nuts, right? The best hand ever. And when I have a good hand, you know, he folds, right? So he's now adjusted. And I say, oh, wait, wait, wait. Okay, he's changed. So now I need to change. And with two good players, this process can go on indefinitely. And sometimes you psych yourself out and you start getting into mind games, and sometimes you end up overthinking and just making the wrong decision. Also, you're making assumptions about the other person, right? And how the other person is seeing you and how they're adjusting. Now, I'm talking about poker because I know poker and I don't know soccer. But this is exactly kind of the problem that you have in this soccer question.

[Nate Silva]

In theoretical terms, as an academic would analyze it, you get to an equilibrium, and the equilibrium is a mixed strategy where it's unpredictable. So, for example, the striker might go left 45% of the time, go right 45% of the time, stick it down the middle 10% of the time, and the goalkeeper might stay in the middle 20% of the time and go left 40% and go right 40%. But the point is they can't be predictable. If they were predictable, that could be exploitable. And they can't just be unpredictable in a foolish way. So it's like, oh, I could dive to the right 50% and to the left 50% and never stand up in the middle. Well, that's unpredictable, but it's also not smart because actually I need to keep the striker honest and sometimes stand up.

[Tim Harford]

Absolutely.

[Nate Silva]

There's always an equilibrium, but that equilibrium will involve a randomized mixture of strategies.

[Tim Harford]

Right, but in practice. So this is called randomization. Right. The human brain is very bad at randomizing randomly. Most humans will end up having a pattern and will end up actually doing one thing more than they're supposed to, doing another thing less than they're supposed to, because they're not optimal game theoreticians.

[Nate Silva]

There was actually a recent example where the English keeper Jordan Pickford, in a high stakes penalty shootout had a water bottle with a list of every player on the opposing team and whether he should dive to the left or to the right or stand up for that player. So they had previously analysed the play. His coaches had basically pre randomized.

[Maria Konnikova]

It's a little risky.

[Nate Silva]

So as long as nobody finds your water bottle ahead of time, you, you can pre randomize. And I think he saved some goals and England won that particular penalty shootout, which is very un English.

[Tim Harford]

That's great.

[Maria Konnikova]

If you don't think that athletes are thinking about this stuff, professional athletes, then then you're wrong. Right. They may have their coaching staffs encouraging them to do it. They may talk amongst themselves, they may even do some of the stuff like fairly intuitively. Right. In an NBA game, you have five players and 24 seconds on the shot clock. So it's kind of a game of like trying to maximize your expected value with the best shot you can. But the defense is trying to minimize your expected value. And like the decisions these players make are usually pretty smart about like, it's not quite worth taking this shot. But now time's running out and now I need to, you know, I think a lot of them are actually quite high iq, frankly. There's a lot of money and competitive pride on the line in making the right decisions.

[Tim Harford]

Yeah, so. So Nate, actually Caleb has been thinking about underhanded free throws in the NBA. Here's what he says. From what I understand, some, if not most players could hit a higher free throw percentage if they practiced an underhand technique. Honestly, I respect basketball pros less after learning that they don't use underhanded free throws because they think it looks goofy. It's not a winning mentality. So, Nate, should NBA players switch to underhanded free throws?

[Maria Konnikova]

Yeah, look, there probably are some equilibriums where strategies that are considered emasculating. Right. Or embarrassing somehow might be pursued a bit less. Right. Although maybe that changes too. Right? You've now seen a thing in the NBA where it's a lot more flopping than there once was. Meaning that when guys get fouled, they'll exaggerate the magnitude of what actually happened to them. Right. It used to be something people associate with soccer. It's migrated into the NBA as well. But yeah, sometimes to take strategies that would be seen as embarrassing, there's expected value there. If you don't care about the embarrassment.

[Nate Silva]

I'm curious, guys, is there an example in poker of a strategy that is positive expected value, but everyone thinks it's just embarrassing and only an idiot would do it?

[Tim Harford]

Yeah, there's one that has turned out to be much better than people thought. And it's called donk betting, which is leading into the pre flop raiser. And so the reason it's called donk betting is because people thought you were a donk, a donkey if you did it right. Because the established wisdom is you always check to the pre flop raiser. And once we got more advanced game theory, it turns out that no, actually there are some spots where you should.

[Nate Silva]

Lead what is leading into a pre flop razor.

[Tim Harford]

Betting first. Right. Instead of checking your options so that letting the other person act, you act first, you bet first. To this day, though, even though it's now accepted, if someone does it right away, it still feels donkeyish even when it's not. Right. It's very hard to kind of wrap your mind around the fact that this might actually be the correct play.

[Maria Konnikova]

One other play that can be hard to make is folding when you've already put a lot of money in the pot and there's just a little bit more to put in and see the showdown. But still, sometimes you maybe do have a fold potentially. You know, I played one unusual hand at a tournament a couple of months ago where I raise, a second player called and a third player reraise. And if I was going to call, I was committing about half my stack, right? Which means ordinarily what you're supposed to do is either fold or go ahead and go all in. However, I had a hand that I wanted to encourage the third player to enter the pot. So I just called and I'm like, well, I'll have a lot of good flops and if I don't have a good flop, then I can get away if it's a bad flop. And anyway, so, yeah, so I miss the flop, which is the first three cards in poker. He bets and I fold. Getting three and a half to one odds. Like, what are you doing, man? You're not allowed to fold there. Right. Which indicated, I think, that he had a good hand and was hoping that I continued. Right. But like, you know, I ran the math later and I'm like, actually, this is the right play by a couple of percentage points. It was just an embarrassing play to, to make in the moment.

[Nate Silva]

So I have learned no donk betting for me. And I've also learned from Nate that sometimes you have to quit whether or not you are ahead. We have to quit. We're out of time, Nate. Maria, this has been such fun.

[Maria Konnikova]

Thank you so much, Tim.

[Tim Harford]

Thank you for having us, Tim.

[Nate Silva]

I always love listening to Risky Business. And thank you so much for joining us on Cautionary Questions.

[Maria Konnikova]

Thank you, Tim. We'll do it again sometime.

[Nate Silva]

Thank you. I will be back next week with another cautionary tale. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fiennes and Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional sound design is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio. Ben Nadaff Haffrey edited the scripts. The show features the voice talents of Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembrough, Sarah Jopp, Misea Munro, Jamal Westman and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohn, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brodie, Christina Sullivan, Keira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardour Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review. It really makes a difference to us. And if you want to hear the show ad free, sign up to Pushkin plus on the show page, on Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin fm. Plus, there are so many mattresses out there. And for ethical shoppers, it's not always clear what exactly you're buying. Naturepedic makes it simple. They use real natural materials such as organic cotton and wool instead of polyfoams and fibreglass. Plus, they're certified by organisations such as EWG and Gotts, so, you know, they're the real deal. Speaking of deals, you can save 20% on organic sleep for your whole family when you shop naturepedic's memorial day sale use code [e-mail] tales to save today and sleep Better tonight While others are.

[Maria Konnikova]

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[Nate Silva]

Of state students, success is within reach. Ferris State University.

[Maria Konnikova]

Unleash your potential. Register [e-mail] that's Ferris.edu in the fall.

[Justin Richmond]

Of 1986, Ronald Reagan found himself at the center of a massive scandal that looked like it might bring down his presidency. It became known as the Iran Contra Affair.

[Tim Harford]

The things that happened were so bizarre.

[Maria Konnikova]

And insane I can't begin to tell you.

[Nate Silva]

Please do.

[Justin Richmond]

To hear the whole story.

[Maria Konnikova]

Story.

[Justin Richmond]

Listen to Fiasco Iran Contra wherever you get your podcasts.

[Tim Harford]

This is an I Heart podcast.