Representative

I wanted to write one more post in this long series, about education, but I'm afraid I'm dry.  The basic idea was to educate your players how to be dungeon masters, in the sense of driving them to make their own adventures out of the guidelines provided by the game, but somehow I can't centre my thoughts on the subject.  I'll have to pick it up later.

At present, I'm a bit frustrated by the American election, especially at what's "passing" for journalism ... as in, "toilet."   I'm stunned that so many well-paid, long-standing political pundits are able to spectacularly misread, or staggeringly misrepresent, what's happening.  A whackadoodle losing an election by a thousand votes is NOT "the country stepping back" ... it's factual evidence that the whackadoodles are ready to step up their game and win next time.  We certainly haven't seen evidence that "the Republican party has to return to its roots now."  I mean, wtf.  For the record, the Democrats have LOST.  Even if it turns out they keep the house and senate by paper-thin margins, if this is the best you can do with two years of running the country after an attempted coup by the other side ... fuck.  I mean, um ... fuck.  Some days, I just want to scream and scream and scream.  Everyone lost.  Especially the country.

Changing the subject.  I haven't a post of my own, so I'll steal one.

I'm reading a book by Michael Lewis that follows the work of Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who proposed the term "heuristics" in the 1970s, around the time D&D was born.  It's a fascinating read and utterly misrepresented by the wikipedia article, which seems to have been written by someone who hasn't read the book.  The first five pages suggests the words, "revisits Lewis' interest in market inefficiencies," but since the next 190 do absolutely nothing to discuss this subject, I suspect foul play.

Essentially, the theme of Tversky's and Kahneman's work (they switched their names around with every paper) is that we don't know what we think we know.  That is because we base our guesses about people and events and things on what we think is true, which in fact leads us to be wrong about everything.  I'll quote briefly from the book:

"When people make judgments, they argued [Kahneman & Tversky], they compare whatever they are judging to some model in their minds.  How much do those clouds resemble my mental model of an approaching storm?  How closely does this ulcer resemble my mental model of a malignant cancer?  Does Jeremy Lin match my mental picture of a future NBA player?  Does that belligerent German political leader resemble my idea of a man capable of orchestrating genocide?  The world's not just a stage.  It's a casino, and our lives are games of chance.  And when people calculate the odds in any life situation, they are often making judgments about similarity — or (strange new word!) representativeness.  You have some notion of a parent population: 'storm clouds' or 'gastric ulcers' or 'genocidal dictators' or 'NBA players.'  You compare the specific case to the parent population."

What happens is that, in fact, we don't really know storm clouds or ulcers or players as well as we think we do.  This ends up in our making a decision about something that sounds absolutely dead on to us, but is completely, totally wrong in practice.  For example ...

Once you played with someone who fudged dice and the games were pretty good.  You caught the DM fudging and the explanation you got back sounded "reasonable."  The game was, like I said, "pretty good."  You made the connection that "pretty good" = "dice fudging" ... and this was supported by meeting other interesting and cool people who also fudged dice and for the same reason.  You never actually played in any of their campaigns, but you assume from your representativeness that their games were probably also pretty good.

So, you fudge dice yourself.  Because that's how your best representative DMs in your past did it.  You have no actual knowledge if your game is "pretty good," but you assume it must be since you fudge dice.  But then one day, for no specific reason, people drift away from your game and it ends.  Why?  Well, you make up reasons based on your past experience with players.  Players are busy, you tell yourself.  Players have other things to do.  Sometimes, players don't stay around.  People quit the game all the time.  You absolutely DON'T question any of the practices you maintain as a DM, because those are the practices that other DMs — whom you don't play with anymore, for reasons — used.  It never occurs to you that one of your players discovered that you were cheating and decided to tell the others when you weren't there.  And because they found the behaviour so disingenuous and repulsive, they decided not to confront you.

But you're fine.  You're telling yourself now that Alexis is a person too, and makes judgements based on his representativeness, which is obviously wrong, because he's just basing his opinions on what he thinks is true, based on HIS past.  That has nothing to do with your past.

I admit, it's frustrating ... but this is why the book about Tversky and Kahneman is interesting.  It challenges us to think through the difference between making a decision based on reality and one based on judgement.

[notice: when I quote the American book, I spell the word "judgment," but when I write in the King's English, I spell the word "judgement"; I've done it both ways over the last fifty years and I've finally decided I'm a Canadian.  That's why I spell it "realise," "armour" and "manoeuvre" now]

Let me give you a simple example, one not fraught with arbitrary Alexis-bullshit judgements.  I'll continue to use examples I haven't found in Lewis' book, but I've only reached page 190.

Suppose that you're doing a very difficult multiple choice exam ... and although you've studied, it's very difficult and many of the questions and answers have been deliberately designed to mislead you.

About halfway through a four-hour exam, starting with question #117, you start to notice that every correct answer is (a).  You start to notice when it's four in a row, and soon enough it's eight in a row and then twelve in a row.  What's going on?  Glancing over each question, you're never quite certain of which is the exact right answer, because in many cases throughout the whole test, it really could be the choice you didn't pick.  And now you've stopped and looked at this list of 12 (a)'s in a row and you're seriously questioning your judgement.  Why?

Because, basically, if you were making a multiple choice test, it wouldn't occur to you to make 12 answers in a row all be (a)'s.  You'd mix them up.  You wouldn't decide to make every answer an (a) like this.  Which means, since you wouldn't do it, obviously, neither would the professor, or the tester.  Multiple choice exams just are done this way.  Right?

Is it right?  Is it logical to go back over your answers for the last twelve questions, wasting time, and making sure that you're absolutely correct with every one?  Is it logical to change your answers on some of them just to break the streak.  Is that good thinking on your part, or is it bad thinking?

Are you protecting yourself, or are you fucking yourself?

Who's to say the prof wouldn't put the string of (a) responses there just to screw with you?  The answer to that is plain.  You're there.  And you're sure the prof, whom maybe you like, or maybe you respect, wouldn't pull a rotten trick like that.  Only ... is it a "trick?"

You're supposed to know the right answer.  If you know it, then what difference does it make how many times it comes up (a)?  Isn't knowing the answer what we're testing you for?  The only reason why you'd want to go back and doubt yourself is because you don't, in fact, know the right answer.  You're guessing.  And the pattern that your guessing is creating is what's stumped you.  Not the test and not the prof.

For me, this is the quintessential underlying basis of Kahneman and Tversky's work.  I haven't read this yet but I'm certain (representativeness) that it's coming.  It's not just that we guess wrong when we're asked to make a judgement, it's that we're certain we're right.  We don't evaluate the possibilities beyond our immediate gut-judgement.  "That's a storm," we say, even though we're talking out of our ass, and when the storm fails to materialise, we ignore it.  Usually, we think, we're right.  But are we ... "usually"?  Or is it just that we want to be usually right?  Because judging by the work I'm reading, I think we decide what we are usually and then ignore any expectation of living up to that claim.

So when I tell you that more people play 5th edition than any other, you think in your head and say, "Yeah, that's probably true."  But what's that based on?  The people you've met?  If, like me, you meet people who actually play D&D, it happens in very specific places like game stores and promoted events.  BUT ... what sort of players show up at game stores and promoted events?  All of them?  I don't know.  Because I don't know how many people actually play this game.  Nobody does.  I have numbers from the company, and from journalists who talk to the company, but the company HAS reasonably expected ulterior motives.

I'm not saying that 5th edition isn't the most popularly played edition.  I AM saying that, statistically, we have absolutely no idea whatsoever.   Because we haven't got statistics.  We've got judgements based on seeing a particular group of people participating in a particular game space ... which is deliberately organised to appeal to that particular group of people.  As such, factually, we have nothing.

But that doesn't keep us from stating as though it is a fact that 5th edition is the most popular.  And because it's stated as a fact online rather continously, it sounds like a fact.  But this doesn't make it one.  After all, it's easy to find hundreds of comments by people who say they don't play 5th any more, or that they never played 5th.  Are we sure that number isn't higher than the number who say they do play 5th?

I don't know.  I have reason to doubt either answer.

We live in an age where we're expected to give an opinion about things and where we expect that opinion to be (1) treated as accurate, based on our "knowledge," and (b) respected.  Most of the time, if we quote a source for that opinion, it's someone else's opinion ... and often the "someone else" is plainly someone who knows nothing for certain.  If we're not treated as knowledgeable and if we're not respected, we get mad, we block the other and we go looking for people who agree with us.

Thanks to the internet, these can be easily found.  Most of the time.

I see no particular reason why anything I say should be treated as "knowledge."  I have no source material for anything I write about D&D.  I cannot for certain say that when a firefighter learns to deal with complex situations through pattern recognition, that's also what a dungeon master is doing.  I feel fairly certain the firefighter's pattern recognition is real, since respected firefighters give lectures to other firefighters and not the general public.  In other words, their knowledge about what they're doing isn't merely representative, it's demonstrable.

That's key.  What I say means zip compared to what another DM says, who has applied my methods and discovered they either work or don't work.  And this is interesting.  My inbox is NOT stuffed with people who've tried what I said and come back to me with, "Yep, tried it, and you don't know shit Alexis."  What I occasionally get is, "I'm not going to try that, because it won't work."

But what I most often get is, "I finally tried it ... and wow.  My players love it."

Is that an ego-boost for me?  Sure.  I'm human.  Does it mean I'm always right?  NO.  It doesn't even mean I'm ever right.  It means I'm valuable as a resource enough of the time to make others examine my words for value.  Others are bringing their own judgements to my words and they're carrying out the experimentation.  I don't know what they're actually doing at their tables.  I'm not there.  As such, how can I ever be "right" in a sense that's reliable?

I know that what I'm doing works for me.  I'm outlining for others why it works, how it works, what I've done to make it work and what I plan to do.  The rest, as ever, is for others to DO.

So I'm not certain I'm right.  I could very well be wrong.  The only thing I'm certain of is that everyone who thinks I'm wrong is ALSO wrong ... for other reasons.

I'm trying to be right.  They're trying to be representative.