Tag: Writing

The Hand of My Dreams

JulianLeave a comment

If the logic doesn’t follow, keep going. Don’t go back.

This actually happened earlier today: 

The Setup

Two guys had run out of money in the poker game. One of them – the host – had lost angrily. He was displeased with two other people at the table, and responsible for the other broke-guy’s buyin. The host said, “And if we’re down by $54 and we send $50, what will you do…” 

Then he told us, “You’ll take it and be grateful and not hound us for the other $4.” 

A while later – minutes or hours, I don’t know – the final three of us were playing double-handed omaha. 8 cards per person, split into two hands. The board was A99Q. I had AAxx in one hand for the over-full: the second-best possible hand. Even better: my two aces were both spades. 

The Opponents

The woman on my left – an Asian girl from my highschool – had KKxx for the kings-over full house. (The board now contained A99QK, with still the final card to be dealt.) In her other hand, she had 99xx for quads, but also definitely did not have quads. 

The woman on my right – a different Asian girl from my highschool – had 8cTcJc spread across her 8 cards, which went with the 9c, Qc, and Kc on the board to make a straight flush. Fortunately for me, the cards were separated across her hands so she didn’t actually have a straight-flush despite having the cards. 

The Accounting

We were already all in. I performed the accounting. The hundred-dollar chips were exhausted, so we used the silver bracelets each valued at $200. 

The pot totalled around $1500. We hadn’t all contributed equally. I wasn’t concerned since I had so much equity. 

The Broken Protocol

We agreed to run the river three times. 

We clicked my computer mouse to run the first river. It dealt an entire new board. We tried again. Same issue. I suggested we should use the same physical deck we were already playing with to run the river (duh!). 

The Showdown

I awoke.

The Game Is Over Our Head

JulianLeave a comment

To win, position. To position, OODA: Observe → Orient → Decide → Act.

Despite what my enemies tell you, I am not the enemy.

Between 3:52 and 6:15 pm today, I played 2 games of Catan with friends I met a couple of weeks ago. One guy clearly saw me as a threat, so he tried to stifle me. He missed the importance of rallying others (i.e. an embargo against the leading player), so he failed.

He observed correctly, but he failed to orient. (To orient is to figure out what your observation actually means. He saw I was a threat: Observing. He missed that the answer was rallying others against me: poor Orienting.)

Almost all skillful game behavior is about positioning. Positioning means observe and orient, then repeat (and repeat…) before you decide and act.

Chess: Literally “Proving It”

Most high-level chess matches end in resignation, not checkmate. In these situations, chess is not played to win, but played to superior position.

At the highest levels, a player sometimes resigns before your average (ie 1500-rated) chess player even understands why. It’s not even “Player A is now ahead by a knight.” It’s “Player A would be ahead by either a knight or two pawns in 4 moves and they both know it.”

High-level positional chess games are almost incomprehensible to your average observer, just as a fighter pilot saying “Is the humidity 45% or 46%?” wouldn’t mean anything to me. I don’t even know if humidity is relevant to a fighter pilot! That’s the point.

Even better for me and my point and the puns in this post: in chess, they literally call the process of someone playing an advantage to its victorious end “proving it.” The positioning is the game; the proof is execution. 

OODA? Ooh! Duh!

Speaking of fighter pilots (“What a segue! This guy can really write!”), in the early 1970s, US Air Force Colonel John Boyd established the OODA loop as a decision-making framework for his pilots.

In an OODA loop, one Observes, Orients, Decides, then Acts.

Four moves. Three are about positioning.

Pair the OODA loop with my favorite fighter pilot quote (“How many fighter pilots does this guy know?”): 

  • “A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid situations which require the use of his superior skill.”

The process becomes:

  1. Get good enough at the skills, so
  2. you understand how the skills work, and therefore
  3. don’t have to use the skills anymore, because
  4. you’re dodging the danger.

(Can you imagine how much of a fighter pilot’s practice is Observing and Orienting? Reminds me of my brother-in-law!)

The Games Behind the Pokerface

In The Count of Monte Cristo (my current tome; spoilers incoming), our hero escapes from prison and is picked up by a nearby boat. The prison fires off a cannon shot. Immediately, the boat’s captain asks, “What does that cannon mean?”

Our Hero calmly states, “A prisoner has escaped from the Chateau d’If [prison], and they are firing the alarm gun.” 

Our Hero’s nonchalance convinces the captain that Our Hero isn’t the escapee. Your average person might feign ignorance. But Our Hero – by his claimed background – would know what the cannon means. This move may appear more dangerous, but it’s much safer.

Our Hero’s OODA loop is beautifully speedy: not only does he observe and orient quickly, but he also decides and acts speedily, all while not appearing to be doing so.

This approach is also true for game experts. Many poker players win games in ways you don’t even realize they’re playing:

  • Getting invited to the softest games
  • Table selection
  • Position at a table relative to both good and bad players
  • Talking with fellow players before any cards are dealt to learn their psychology and therefore their leaks.

Stop Acting

(Note to self: find some subtle way to mention to the reader that this section title has a double meaning.)

I am quite skilled at a particular tactic my mother describes as “Baffle them with bullshit.” It’s all Acting, and no OOD. I recognize the pattern → Act. It lacks… a certain elegance.

Relaxing and contemplating (Observe and Orient) have historically been my weaknesses.

To be fair, it’s live Observe and Orient that’s my weakness. I’ve stored plenty through years of preparation, which is why those around me say I’m skilled at games. But Pattern-Match → Act is just stored OO at hyperspeed. In known scenarios, this works. Live execution in novel territory is a different animal.

My poker game has won thousands of dollars despite my complete lack of poker face.

I wish I could install an old turntable in my brain. It would Observe, then Orient, then Observe again… until sufficiently positioned, then Decide and Act. The beauty of the turntable: it’s stuck in the OO grooves (“Ooooooooooo”). I’d have to thunk it on the side to shake it into DA.

As my new Catan group improves at the game, each player will develop our own approach. My Catan-enemy will either improve at his orientation or continue being shot down.

It’s like that key rule everyone knows in the game of real estate: Position, Position, Position.

A Game You Can’t Decline

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The goal of the game is to play well. You play well by knowing you’re playing.

Last night, friends came over. They’d baked cookies. They brought the cookies in a Tupperware container. As they were leaving, Partner went to retrieve the Tupperware and hand it back at the door.

I winced internally. I should have said something. 

Here’s the game I saw and Partner didn’t: you don’t return the Tupperware at the door. You keep the Tupperware. Eventually, you need to return it – which means you’ll see them again, which means there’s an open thread between you. The Tupperware is a mild promissory note. Yes, we’ll have you over, or you’ll invite us, or we’ll see you at the thing – because also, here’s your Tupperware.

Returning the container at the door closes the loop transactionally. Everyone walks away even. But the loop is what builds the relationship. Even is not what you want when starting a relationship if the other person would find you returning the tupperware weird.

When I mentioned it to Partner afterward, she got it instantly. She’d just never thought of it that way. We also agreed that it isn’t logical. Of course they want their Tupperware back. The whole thing is illogical. Most social dynamics games are.

I’m reminded of a buddy of mine this past summer. A woman had stayed over at his apartment. Now, she wanted her ring back. He told her to retrieve it from his roommate. No, buddy! She left it so you have to see her again! 

I once had a 9 AM appointment with a doctor. Due to a series of errors made by his office and lab, my appointment ran until 2:30 PM. Around noon, I mentioned wanting to grab a sandwich. He gave me cash and offered to pay for mine as well.

Something felt wrong. I bought both sandwiches and gave him the cash back.

I suspect he didn’t even register the move. But Partner had the same instinct I did when I told her: pay for his sandwich, refuse the cash. The discomfort was real and shared, even if neither of us could immediately articulate why.

Here’s why: the cash created an obligation flow that didn’t match the relationship. He had spent five and a half hours of my day on his office’s mistakes. The appropriate flow was him owing me. His offer to buy me lunch was a way to pay down his debt of guilt. But not an appropriately-sized one.

Buying the sandwich, refusing the cash, was the right move. It accepted the kindness implicit in offering food while refusing the implicit power-move. Imperfect, but instinct steered correctly. 

And as we left his office, he apologized at least 8 times for the delay. By the end, he said, “I’m done apologizing. If I apologize again, hit me.” That’s the appropriate obligation for someone who’s wasted 5 hours of your day. 

Recently, I made a friend who pocket-vetos any activities that are emotionally intense for him. He only plays the games he wants to play, in the ways he wants to play them.

It’s no surprise this correlates with power and resources. As friends have gotten more powerful, more of them have developed this stance. No explanation, no apology, no negotiation. Generally no answer, not even a “No”. 

If you’re young and broke and unattractive and awkward, you can’t pull this off. People stop inviting you. Every social interaction has to be navigated, every gift has to be reciprocated, every obligation has to be honored. The poverty of optionality forces you to play every game offered. 

As you accumulate power and resources, you can decline games without consequence. People still invite you. People still want you around. They accept this trait because you’re still worth it. Like the celebrity who’s notorious for being prickly in interviews, the rudeness becomes a feature: a filter mechanism.

Three observations: 

1. Refusing to play is itself a move. 

  • A recurring claim of this blog. It holds here.

2. Not-playing a game requires winning sufficiently in other games, or people will stop playing games with you entirely. 

  • The friend’s pocket-vetos work because the rest of his social game is in order. He’s not refusing because he doesn’t understand the games; he’s refusing because losing this game doesn’t matter for him anymore. If Warren Buffett never set a schedule, only meeting with people willing to show up at his offices in Omaha, people would still gladly sit in his office for hours, waiting for the possibility to talk with him. 

3. Winning generally comes from choosing which game is being played and at what level. 

  • Most of us learn how to act in specific spots in specific games. That’s a fine level one, but it misses out on level two (shifting the odds in your favor) and level three (dictating the battlefield). 

One more thing: the move I should have made about the Tupperware was overruling Partner in real time. I saw the game. I knew the right move. I let her make the suboptimal one because I didn’t want to interrupt.

That’s a habit of mine – letting people make moves I see as wrong, then discussing afterward if it matters. The discussion-afterward version doesn’t recover the move. It just generates retrospective alignment for next time.

Sometimes the right move is to interrupt. Saying wait, I’m gonna eat all those in the moment would have been weird. It also would have been the right move. Weirdness is sometimes the price of playing well.

[It’s late. I’ve read this one too many times to like it. The daily-publishing game is hard tonight. I hope I like this post in the morning. Sigh.]

Do Fewer

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You win by making the right move. You make the right move by waiting for it.

Before my jaw surgery in 2018, I made too many moves.

I underwent a sleep study at a facility that allowed me to sleep on my stomach. Obstructive sleep apnea is positional. Bad medical care.

A dentist prescribed an oral appliance and lied to me about its potential side effects. I wore it. The side effects were bad. 

A surgeon told me I’d need to fix my deviated septum, so I might as well do it now. Unnecessary surgery. I’d later have maxillomandibular advancement, which would necessitate a septum fix at that point anyway. I had mis-sequenced, again due to bad advice from doctors.

Six doctors mis-diagnosed or mis-treated me before I found the world’s expert in obstructive sleep apnea. Not himself a surgeon, he sent me to the only surgeon he liked. I had the surgery. It went wonderfully. 

One quality move would have saved me ten years and six bad doctors, one bad surgery, and one damaging oral appliance.

I had an insufficient respect for quality.

A friend has spent the last decade on a large legal case about a contract violation. Ten years, about ten moves. He says most of his days are spent staring at a wall thinking. The hardest part hasn’t been any single move. It’s been the waiting between them — the part where you’re not doing anything visible. 

It’s easy to get antsy. But the right move at the wrong time is the wrong move. And the wrong move, just to do something is even worse. 

That’s not laziness. That’s respect for quality.

Recently, two optometrists told me I should get corneal crosslinking. The pattern-matching said I needed it. Something didn’t smell right. 

So I went to the actual experts — the ones who’ve seen thousands of patients who look like me over the past thirty years and done seven hundred-plus surgeries on people with my eyes. 

At the end of this month, I’m flying to France to install permanent contacts. The pattern-matchers were wrong. The real experts were right. The move they suggested would have been unnecessary.

Refusing a move is also a move. Sometimes it’s the best move.

When I started freelancing, I asked everyone for client referrals. I had to. I didn’t know who would say yes, what worked, what my rate was, or who my buyer was. This was the explore phase. More information was better.

By my third set of clients, the machine started carrying itself. My hourly rate was higher than many lawyers’. Inbound exceeded what I wanted.

The shift on calls was exponential. I had good pre-call materials. I had good post-call follow-ups. The call itself was mostly listening and repeating back what the client had said.

One call, I was sitting at a kitchen table on mute, pulling funny faces while my then-partner pointed at the phone whisper-yelling, “Pay attention! Focus!” The client stopped talking. I unmuted. I said five words. I re-muted. The client said, “Wow, you really get it!” Then-partner was floored.

I would tell early-Julian to keep investing in the process. And not to abandon it when he got tired of it — to keep investing, just in a new way. The work shifts from doing more to doing fewer, better. Respect the elegance. 

Flailing is not testing.

When I hired my contractor, I went for volume — got fifteen quotes, narrowed them down. The cost of each one coming by was low — just some of my time — so I figured why not. But I wasn’t systematic. A bit more research upfront — learning how the process works, what the categories of contractor are, what the right questions to ask are — would have produced a faster result with fewer visits. 

Getting a lot of information systematically is a research strategy. Getting a lot of information randomly is flailing. The two feel similar from inside. They aren’t.

Closing on this apartment took eight months. The required topics ranged from negotiation to financing to weird legal processes to printing documents at 11 PM in rural France. About ten major moves in total.

Once the incentives were aligned — me, my broker, the seller’s broker — the rest clicked pretty smoothly. The eight months were spent making the right moves slowly, not many moves quickly. And about half of the key moves were me saying no to other people’s requests. At least two of those would have ruined the deal. 

It’s not about doing less. It’s about doing fewer, where each one is more elegant. Build the system that reduces the steps. Invest in infrastructure. Make the right move when the right move presents itself.

If “fewer” ever becomes zero, that’s a different problem. This approach won’t fix that one. But it does need fixing.

Life is full of games. Games require moves. Don’t do less. Do fewer. 

Forced Play

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You can lead a human to a game, and you can make them play. 

In his seminal work Finite and Infinite Games, James P Carse posits that mandated play is not play: 

  • “There is no finite game unless the players freely choose to play it. No one can play who is forced to play. It is an invariable principle of all play, finite and infinite, that whoever plays, plays freely. Whoever must play, cannot play.” (End of his section 2) 
  • In other words: Play is only play when it is voluntary. 

I think this position is wrong. 

Carse is using “game” to mean something more specific than a structural definition. He mandates a specific quality (voluntary play). I think he’s wrong to exclude from the category of “game” things that share the structure but lack the voluntariness. In short: Carse’s definition is too narrow because games are structural, not single-trait-necessitating. 

Okay, so what about some concepts that are unquestionably games? 

  • Commerce is a game. It contains points, players, and rules regulating play, semi-arbitrarily defined
    • It is also *real* in that you cannot avoid playing it regardless of your culture. (I suppose the archetypical “mountain man” could avoid playing it by homesteading all his resources, alone. We could say he has shifted to playing commerce with nature, but I think that’s a step too far.)

Either Carse is correct and this is not a game, or there is a slice of “game” uncovered by his articulation. 

Carse has a light, airy definition of game. Like many writers, he intuits that a game feels like child’s play. Carse would claim wargames are games while war is a not-game. 

I don’t buy this. 

Imagine someone playing chess against an opponent. These two are unquestionably playing a game. Now, imagine that the pieces represent actual movers on the field of battle: each time player one moves his rook, an actual cannon shifts its position on a real-life battlefield. (Perhaps the pieces contain some sort of location-sensing technology that walkie-talkies directly to the pieces.) Are these two no longer playing a game? If the stakes of the game involve only one of them living (as, when one is surrounded, he surrenders and yields his kingdom), is that activity no less of a game? 

War is a game. To the people playing it, its practice is essentially indistinguishable from chess. Yet war is also, unquestionably, profoundly real and with the highest stakes imaginable. 

Why does this distinction matter? 

Well, sometimes people disparage games. A teacher will tell a student to “stop playing games in the classroom”. A CEO will say to their underlings, “We’re not here to play games”. A general could yell to his troops, “War is not a game!”

What they mean is take this seriously. And seriousness can be important. But it is not at odds with playing games. The teacher who demands focus is using that comment as a move in the authority-and-attention game they spend most of their day playing. The CEO is fanning the flames of the motivation game. The general is moving a piece in the morale-and-culture game. And then he returns to his nice, safe bunker where he pretends that those peons are chess pieces. 

Abstracting a game into its constituent pieces – players, goals, win conditions, rules – does not diminish the significance of the game itself any more than defining the goal of a war diminishes the significance of the war. Quite the opposite: by abstracting, we can often remove some of the demotivating emotion that prevents us (the players) from ideal movement. 

While you may naturally freeze when faced with a knife-wielding attacker, I would instead recommend avoiding that knife. Have you considered moving somewhere they cannot attack you? Perhaps one step to the side, because pawns can only attack diagonally. 

Top-Secret Games: Trader Joe’s

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The goal of the game is to win the games. The hard part is noticing they exist.

I was in the Trader Joe’s in Santa Cruz, California, standing between two checkout lines. Both stations had a cashier. Neither line had people waiting. I was deliberately ambiguous about which line I was in.

A shopper arrived behind me. She asked which line I’d chosen. I answered slowly: whichever one finishes first.

She found this unacceptable. She appealed to the Trader Joe’s gods — that is, the cashier. The cashier ruled against me. You have to pick a line. I hemmed and hawed to buy myself time and picked. 

About two years later, I was shopping with a friend at that same Trader Joe’s. My friend performed the exact same hedge. A person asked which line we were in. My friend answered the same as I had. Once again The Gods smote us. So I stood in one line and she in the other. Whichever line finished first: our group re-combined there. 

It’s like the old saying: “Everyone is playing a game that you know nothing about.” 

Here are my Trader Joe’s games: 

The dual-line straddle. If you stand at the right angle between two lines, you can commit to whichever one moves faster. This is optimal play — it’s an option you should always exercise when the structure permits it. It’s also widely considered rude, for reasons that truly make no sense to me. I’m there first; I deserve to be served first. This is a queueing theory problem: one line is more fair, BUT people also feel more annoyed that they’re in a longer line. (And here’s the thing: the person directly behind me isn’t actually the one harmed by my slowness. The person farther back is — the one whose checkout would have opened up if I’d committed earlier. We’re all glaring at the wrong people.)

The tag-team shop. Often, I stand in line while Partner grabs more items. The line moves; I advance; she rejoins. We’ve doubled our throughput. In the US, this is fine. In France, it’s a violation — my sister once spoke to me in a bakery line outside Paris and the woman behind us made it clear: this is a faux pas. Different country, different rules. (And yes, it’s perfectly reasonable to permit joining, or to restrict joining, or to permit joining but without an item, or to permit a direct substitution of equal numbers of people for equal numbers of people / equal items for equal items. If you can think of it, I can justify it.) 

The end-of-line dash. Partner’s specialty. As we approach the register, Partner likes to make a mad dash for one final item. Discussing this game, she was the most beamingly radiant I’ve seen her in a while. It has all the traits of a good game: clearly-defined, time-pressured, skill-based, some luck to keep you on your toes, low-stakes if you lose. Sometimes she meets me after the checkout emptyhanded. Sometimes she brings the stracciatella we don’t actually need but ends up being delicious with a little honey and salt. That’s not the point. The point was the game.

Here’s the secret: Trader Joe’s is also playing a game.

Their queueing system isn’t optimized for throughput. There isn’t always a central queue, no take-a-number system, no signal from the register that they’re almost ready for the next customer (so the next customer can start walking). When I asked where the bathroom was, the employee walked me halfway across the store rather than pointing. They’ve decided their game is warm experience, not minutes per customer.

Which means the friction I keep running into at Trader Joe’s isn’t accidental. It’s the residue of a different optimization. They’re playing for one thing; I’m playing for another; the shopper behind me is playing for a third (presumably their personal, egotistical perception of fairness powered by a deontological backing of the inefficient rules of Trader Joe’s (because it sure as hell ain’t actual fairness; actual fairness means the first arrival gets to checkout first)). All three of us are right, given our games. We’re just not playing the same one.

Most disagreements about etiquette aren’t moral disagreements. They’re disagreements about which game everyone thinks they’re playing. 

In serious situations, I’ve heard people say, “I’m not here to play games.” 

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that they always say that angrily. 

What If It Were Easy?

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The goal of the game is to do. You do by removing friction. 

A few years ago, a shaman watched me explain something I was struggling with. Then he asked, “What if it were easy?”

The friend with me said, before I could answer: “Julian associates difficulty with value.” 

He wasn’t wrong. I think most people do. We assume that if something is hard, it must matter; if it’s easy, it can’t be the real thing. Cultures everywhere reinforce this: no pain, no gain; if it burns, it’s working. 

But sometimes a thing is hard because it’s valuable, and sometimes it’s hard because of friction. Both feel difficult. They’re worlds apart. 

I notice the difference most clearly with games.

When I’m playing a game I love, three things happen: 

  1. I pay attention without effort. 
  2. I want to improve. 
  3. When it ends, I want more. 

This feeling – total absorption, no friction between me and the activity – is rare and precious. Most activities require me to push myself to do them. Games don’t. They grab me by my noggin and suddenly I’m along for the ride. 

A movie buff once told me he loves movies for the immersion. I experience immersion with movies sometimes. With books and theater, sometimes. With games, almost always. That’s information about me, not about games. Games are my art form.

This week I made a list of things in my day I find unenjoyable. Except for the entries about physical pain, every entry was a type of friction: either current or future. Some friction is necessary as a means to an end (waiting on hold with a doctor’s office). But some of it is inherited assumptions about how a life is supposed to feel.

If the shaman asked me again today, I’d answer: I think more of it is supposed to be easy. Not all of it. But more than I’ve been letting it be.

I’m game. 

The $10.125 Sandwich

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The goal of the game is selling sandwiches. You sell sandwiches by making it fun. You make it fun by taking fun seriously. 

I bought a sandwich today. The sandwich shop offers a cute promotion: from 3 to 6 pm, if you call a coin flip correctly, you pay half price. 

It’s fun, it’s attractive, and they net 75% of the normal retail price. 

But the experience is broken. 

First, you don’t pay until after the flip. So I, who sees loopholes without trying, am instantly aware that I could order the sandwich, flip the coin, and walk if it lands the wrong way. How would they even develop a process to stop me? I pay full price and then the flip determines my refund?

Second, the coin. It’s some B.S. commemorative coin — one side is the restaurant name, the other the logo — where neither side is obviously heads or tails. So the cashier has to tell me, and presumably every patron between 3 and 6pm, “this side is heads.”

Third, the flip. Less a flip than a half-spin. He calls it whichever way it lands in his hand. Not even the catches-it-and-slaps-it-onto-the-back-of-his-other-hand move that’s standard on any schoolyard.

What happened to the good ol’ quarter?
Why are we making this more complicated than it needs to be?
Why can’t the customer flip the coin onto the counter, where it would be easily visible?
Why not call the sides “name” and “logo” instead of heads and tails? 

The sandwich was good. It satisfied my basic need – fuel after the gym so I’m not grumpy. It wasn’t $13.50 good. It’s definitely $6.75 good. It’s probably also $10.125 good (the expected cost). 

Here’s what bugs me. The promotion could have been theater. A customer walks in, gets drawn into a small moment of drama, calls it in the air, wins or loses, laughs either way, tells their friends. Instead it’s a transaction with a dice roll bolted on. The cashier is phoning it in. The coin is wrong. The flip is wrong. The ritual isn’t a ritual.

The fun version costs them nothing. Same margin, same coin-flip odds, same sandwich. Just a real coin, a real flip, and a cashier who understands he’s running a tiny game show for thirty seconds a day. 

And sure, if there are people in line behind me, by all means do the quick version. But the main reason they’re doing this promotion at all is because they don’t have many patrons between 3 and 6pm. 

If they fixed it, I’d come back. If they fixed it, I’d bring people. The half-time half-price is nice; the experience could also have value. 

Also, I called heads and it landed tails. 

Content is what you know. Method is how you think. 

JulianLeave a comment

To play well, you must find the method. To find the method… well, that’s part of the method. 

Today I met a cabinet rep who knew, off the top of his head, that the tambour door came in 24, 28, 32, and 36 inches. That’s the content, and, as one data point, it’s not yet impressive. But the fact he can rattle off seemingly every dimensional trait for multiple different cabinet styles and product lines across multiple brands? That’s beautiful. It’s like showing a chess master the opening few moves of a historical game and seeing him place it precisely. 

But content you can find in a book. Trivia is by its nature trivial. What you can’t find in a book: method. 

Repeatedly, he heard our proposals and improved them. He looked at a 79-inch space, listened to what I’d planned (two 36-inch cabinets, side by side), and proposed: a 30 and two 24s. Total: 78 inches. Gives you 6 more inches of cabinets. 

After he did this a few times, I isolated his method: 1) Map the dimensions of the space. 2) Subtract standard sizes from total length. 3) Find the combination that leaves the minimum remainder.

The content — knowing the sizes — is the raw material. The methods — including “subtract to find the minimum remainder” — is what makes him good at it.

A chess-master friend of mine thrives in certainty but buckles when he arrives at probabilities. Since I grew up playing poker, I rarely see certainty but am comfortable making positive-expected value bets. These games teach different skills. For him, it’s the detailed, factual, calculation-heavy process of walking a specific position to its end. (It’s no coincidence he’s now in law). For me, it’s staying afloat until I see a spot with an edge; then pouncing on it. 

Having spent many years ghostwriting for top Silicon Valley founders, executives, and investors. I’ve enjoyed living in brilliant minds. One thing I’ve noticed: 

Experts can usually describe their content in detail, but most can’t articulate their method. A surgeon could tell you every action in her procedure. But she might not know that she’s left-handed and therefore angles every screw slightly off from where a right-handed surgeon would. That left-leaning screw is just something she does, and she might even recognize it as hers. But ultimately she knows more than she can say. 

Most people hire for content. What do you know? What’s on your resume?
Some hire for good method, assuming you’ll acquire content fast.

The worst are the ones who confuse content for method. They’ve memorized the right answers for the common cases. But they can’t handle a new scenario. 

Yesterday’s post in fewer words: 

  • Pattern-matchers have content without method.
  • Scientists have method that generates content. 
  • When I’m hiring a doctor, I want a scientist. 

The cabinet rep impressed me with his content. But we also shouldn’t ignore some of the other points of his method. “You sure you don’t want a panel on the side of the fridge? You’re gonna want to look at the wires and the side of fridge every time you enter your kitchen for the rest of your life?” 

The honest answer? Yeah, I’m game.

The Surgeon Who Quoted Standard Practice

JulianLeave a comment

You win the game by assembling the right team. In medicine, the right team thinks. 

Before my sleep apnea surgery, I interviewed surgeons the way you interview contractors. Notebook in my pocket, questions prepared, specific concerns about specific structures, specific tradeoffs, and speculation about areas outside of the medical literature. 

After ten years of complaining about sleep to at least a half-dozen doctors, I finally met a surgeon who lit up when I pulled out the notebook. We were in a teaching hospital; his students were in the room. He went question-by-question with me. He enjoyed the questions the way an expert juggler enjoys a bowling ball being thrown at his head. I pushed him hard. He juggled the chainsaws. We became friends.

The second surgeon, at a different and widely respected teaching hospital, wore a very nice lab coat and said things like “the standard practice in this scenario is…” She said it several times. When I pressed on specifics, she returned to standard practice. She was pleasant. She was credentialed. She was a pattern-matcher. She wanted me to use a CPAP for the rest of my life. 

Doctors are often pattern-matchers. You go in with symptoms, they recognize the pattern, they prescribe the standard response. Most of the time this works, because most symptoms are common. The pattern holds.

The problem is that pattern-matching is indistinguishable from competence until you’re the edge case. And then it’s catastrophically different.

A real scientist notices when the pattern doesn’t fit. A pattern-matcher doesn’t notice, because noticing would require understanding the mechanics rather than seeing the pattern. The failure is perceptual, not moral. The pattern-matcher isn’t lying and usually isn’t careless — they don’t understand the mechanics of the machine, so they follow the owner’s manual. 

This is why “they didn’t intend to be malicious” is such a weak defense of anyone in a professional role. Nobody intends malice. Bullies don’t intend malice — they perceive attacks where there aren’t any. Cruel people don’t intend cruelty — they mis-observe what cruelty is (often by thinking they’re acting righteously). The failure of perception is the failure. 

Optimism is a specific, dangerous version of this. The optimist sees only what’s going right. If their own work is the problem, they can’t see it — and they can’t hear it when other people raise it, because the pattern in their head is: my work is fine. 

I don’t want a doctor. I want a scientist who practices medicine. Even better: a philosopher who uses science to practice medicine.

A test: can you break your surgeon in conversation? If they can be broken – if your uneducated mind can throw questions that cause them to buckle – are you really going to trust them cutting into your unconscious body? If a surgeon can’t handle intensity well, do you really trust them with your surgery? 

After my first six doctors mis-diagnosed or mis-treated my sleep issue, I now attack the ideas of every doctor who consults on my case. If they can’t hack it, I want a different doctor. I didn’t even go to medical school, and you can’t handle me? 

I may irk some competent doctors who are unwilling to tolerate my approach. I accept this rate of false negatives, since I am happy to travel the country to find a doctor. If I had limited options, I would behave differently. 

It’s lonely to keep searching for a new doctor over and over again. For one recent medical topic, I’m on six consults and counting. 

When it’s not a big deal, I don’t fight this hard. But when it is, I’ll keep attacking your ideas, methodology, and approach until I dismiss you or I trust you. 

Most people fall into the first category. The second category is how I befriended my surgeon. 

Game on.