In this final appendix section, we walk more carefully through the connections between typical poker and the Poker Game of Life that evolution taught us all how to play.
The Disagreement and Differing Beliefs
• In typical poker, the disagreement is about who gets the “ante,” something of value placed in the pot before the betting begins. Nothing prevents the ante from even being zucchini bread! Mark thinks he should get the ante, and Tim thinks he should get the ante, and whoever has the better cards “should” get it. Said differently, Mark thinks he’s more confident that he has better cards (i.e., that he would win if the cards were flipped over), and Tim thinks he’s more confident that he has better cards.
• In the Poker Game of Life, the disagreement is about how to split the zucchini bread (the ante). Mark thinks he should get two-thirds of the bread, and Tim thinks he should get two-thirds. Said differently, Mark thinks he’s more confident he would get two-thirds if they were to fight (i.e., ask the owner, equivalent to flipping over their cards), and Tim thinks he’s more confident he would get two-thirds if they were to fight. In typical poker, it’s all or none, akin to Tim and Mark negotiating who should get the entire loaf if, say, Judy had wrapped it as a gift for the wife of one of them to open later at home. (But whose wife?!)
The Cards
• In typical poker, I’m dealt hidden (to others) cards. The better my cards, the greater my certainty that I have stronger cards. The cards are my reason for having the level of certainty that my cards are stronger.
• In the Poker Game of Life, Mark has some slight reason to believe that he should get more of the zucchini bread because he is the guest, whereas Tim knows Judy, the owner, and has experienced a similar situation before, so he has greater confidence. Tim’s cards are better than Mark’s. In the Poker Game of Life, my “cards” are inside my head (but still “visible” to me and invisible to you). My cards are the information I possess that gives me some level of certainty in my belief. Unlike in poker, these cards can’t simply be “flipped over” and compared to yours. And, without language, they can’t be communicated either. To “flip over our cards” in a real social disagreement amounts to a fight, which in the zucchini situation amounts to asking Judy, the ever-vacationing owner.
The Bets
• In typical poker, I usually bet money, signaling my level of confidence that my cards are stronger than yours.
• In the Poker Game of Life, Mark bets each time he disagrees with Tim about how much zucchini loaf he should get. Same for Tim. They are bets because the restaurant staff and café patrons are watching and will badly gossip later about who was right and wrong and how disagreeable each was. Unlike typical variants of poker, in the Poker Game of Life, Mark’s bets are divided into two parts (this is Mark’s response): one about his own confidence level and the other about Tim’s confidence level. And bets can also be negative, an unbet. In typical poker there is only one bet (per “move”), and it can only be positive. In that sense, traditional poker has a half-dimensional space of signals. In the Poker Game of Life, there are two dimensions, and each is a full dimension (positive and negative) rather than a half dimension.
The Match
• In typical poker, if I bet one hundred dollars, then in order for you to stay in the game you need to match my bet, i.e., bet an equal amount (and you can often bet even more). When I bet a lot, I thrust a large bet upon you as well.
• In the Poker Game of Life, the social currency in the pot at any point need not be contributed equally from both parties. Why? Because one party might be being more disagreeable than the other. Perhaps Mark keeps aggressively insisting that Tim should only get 40 percent, whereas Tim pushes less and less hard on each of his responses, willing to let Mark have more if it’s so damned important to him. Mark would have shifted the compromise in his favor but thereby put more reputation at stake than did Tim (and accordingly find it more difficult to back down). But I can still “thrust” larger bets upon you: I do so by expressing an emotion with serious as a component. In so doing, any disagreement you subsequently make requires a greater bet (or unbet).
The Fold
• In typical poker, if I fold, it means I agree, “Yeah, your cards are stronger than mine.” (Whether I truly believe it is another matter. I might just want to compromise and stop the betting and/or avoid a call.) The other player gets the ante they were arguing over in the first place, as well as the entire pot of bets.
• In the Poker Game of Life, Mark might fold to Tim’s most recent offer, which just means Mark agrees to it. (Just as for typical poker, whether Mark truly believes it is fair is another matter. Mark might just want to compromise and stop any escalation of disagreeableness—i.e., escalation of betting—and/or avoid a fight.) Once Mark agrees to Tim’s last offer, the zucchini bread is apportioned as agreed, and the pot of reputation is apportioned according to whose belief is closer to the agreed-upon compromise. (That is, the closer the compromise is to my belief, the greater the percentage of the reputation from the pot I get. If the compromise is at my belief, I would get all the reputation in the pot.)
A Call
• In typical poker, a (final) call ends the rounds of betting, the cards are flipped over, the truth uncovered, and the ante and the entire pot goes to the player with the better hand.
• In the Poker Game of Life, a call is just the decision to abandon negotiation and fight about it instead, which uncovers the truth. The zucchini bread is apportioned as determined via the fight judgment, and the pot of reputation gets apportioned according to whose most recent offer is closer to the truth. (That is, the closer the truth is to my most recent offer, the greater the percentage of the reputation in the pot I get. If the truth is at my most recent offer, I would get all the reputation in the pot.)
Starting
• In typical poker, there’s no real issue about how to begin.
• In the Poker Game of Life, however, there’s a bit more to it. Recall from chapter four that each party’s response is always a correction, or difference, from what the other party just signaled. That simple point, however, raises a difficulty we didn’t inform you about at the time: What happens for the first person who signals in a negotiation? It can’t be a correction to anything, because his opponent hasn’t even signaled anything yet. Before either party begins signaling in the discussion, there needs to be an implicit starting pair of certainties that neither party actually signaled. Otherwise, how does the whole discussion get going? Recall that any pair of confidences—my force curve and yours—determines a crossover point in the two-dimensional space. The x-axis position is the suggested compromise, and the y-axis is the tension or social price. The implicit starting compromise value could just begin, say, in the middle, but sometimes one party has a better historical reputation for being correct and has accordingly accumulated a greater amount of social capital. In such cases, the implicit starting compromise value ought to be weighed against the party with less social capital. The burden is thus always more on the shoulders of the lower reputation party, in this case Mark, who gets caught bluffing all the time. That tells us where the implicit starting horizontal, compromise position should be, but where should it be vertically? At what tension does the discussion implicitly begin? Now that we realize that the vertical axis also is the social price, there’s a natural suggestion. We all know the approximate price in dollars (or pounds, or euros, etc.) of thousands of items in our lives today. For social animals, long before there were pounds and dollars and yen to spend to buy things, there was the currency of reputation, and some things tended to be more costly in reputation than others. Zucchini bread has a high social price, at least when Tim and Mark are at opposite ends of the loaf, whereas a Christmas fruitcake has a low social price (and a long shelf life!). Social animals tend to know the prices of portions of the sorts of stuff they need to compromise about. They’re not only tracking how disagreeable folks have been, and who backed down or lost in a fight, but also tracking what the price ended up being when there was an agreement. That informs them later about how much social capital they should be willing to expend in order to potentially get their way. The history of the social price for portions of zucchini bread can then be used to help determine the initial vertical setting, before either party has begun negotiating. (Of course, two other parties could quickly lower the tension. “I don’t even much care for zucchini bread,” with the other replying, “Me either. Yuck.”)
Acknowledgment
• In typical poker, although not a formal part of the rules, a player always has the ability to see how much the other player just bet. If the amount of new chips the other player bet is unclear (perhaps getting mixed in with earlier bets), I might have to say, for clarity, “You just bet ten dollars. Well, I’ll match your ten dollars and . . .”
• In the Poker Game of Life, signals can be fleeting, ambiguous, and noisy, and I might need to confirm that I got the correct signal. If Mark emotionally expresses that he’s very confident, and Tim not much, Tim may say, “You’re saying I’m not very confident, and that you’re very confident. Well, actually . . .”