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Rock Paper Scissors: Decider of Things · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Jerome,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Roland st Jerome herself hanging out and this is Stuff
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: you should know. Just the three of us, we can
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: make it if we try. I think we should detail
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: what happened right before we rerecorded. It's very illustrative. Illustrative. Oh,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I like the way you say it, Frenchie, of this topic,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: I think you should share for sure. Well, we were
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: debating on which episode to record first of our two. Uh,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: this one is about rock paper scissors, And as a joke,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I said, why don't we use rock paper scissors to decide?
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: But we don't use videos, so we would just be
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: throwing rock paper scissors and going on each other's word.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: And as soon as we did it, none of it
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: felt right to me. I shared what I what I shot,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: and I was truthful, I know, and I stopped myself
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: because A I didn't throw anything, because I thought we
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: were kind of kidding, but it just and then you
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: said that you thought that people. Jerry said, are you
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: really doing this as an episode, and you said a
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: lot of people might think the same thing, but I
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: want to defend it out of the gate as part
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: of a two part series that I came up with
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: of seeming children's games where there's a lot more there
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: under the surface. Uh. And I'll go ahead and preview
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: and say the next one will be following. Uh followed
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: his Tug of War. Wait a minute, there's a third one,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: isn't there? I thought you were requested yet another one.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: I goofed up and when I sent Dave the idea,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I accidentally sent tic tac toe and he was like,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: there's not much on this. After researching it for half
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: a day, I went, oh, dude, I mean to say
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: rock paper scissors. I'm so sorry. Okay, because you're is
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: a lot to rock paper scissors. I don't think there's
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: as much with tick tac toe. No, No, poor Dave. Okay, good,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: got it? So okay, So Tug of War and rock
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: paper scissors. That's a winning combo if you ask me. Then.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Apologies to Dave Rouse uh for for the mid game shift. Yeah,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: and many many thanks to Mighty Dave Rouse for helping
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: us out with these two mdr better than the rooster.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Remember how we were like, oh, yes, of course the rooster,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: and we talked to him about He's like, yeah, that
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: they've been calling me that since like first grade, guys,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: is not new. So we're moved on. Now, we're onto
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: mighty Dave. Ruse. That's like someone saying up Chuck and
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: then laughing as if it's original. To me, that is genius.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: I've never called you that, of course not. Okay, So
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: today we're not talking about tug of war, Chuck. We're
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: talking about rock paper scissors, And I feel like we
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: should at least kind of explain because unless you've been
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: living under a rock or a sheet of paper or
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: a giant pair of scissors, everybody knows what rock paper
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: scissors is, right, Yeah? Should we do that and then
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: tell Dave's little story because I think it's pretty fun.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Uh well, it's a game, a children's game, namely, although
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: I would argue that if more adults decided some things
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: this way, it would be a better life for everyone, agreed,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: because I think kids don't bring emotion into decision making
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: like adults do, or then they don't write fight like
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: adults do, so I think it can be a very
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: egalitarian way to settle and something fairly easy, totally and quickly,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: very quickly. But yeah, it's a game where you, uh,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: some people count one to three, some people say rock
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: paper scissors, and on that third beat, you each throw
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: out a hand indicating a fist for a rock, flath hand,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: palm down for paper, or mimic com pair of scissors
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: with your index and Bernie finger what finger? Always call
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: it the Birnie finger. Oh yeah, that makes sense, the
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Bernie finger. Oh, the Bernie Sanders finger. Because he's so
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: well known. Whenever he gets heckled on stage, he's just
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: throws a couple of birds high up in the air
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: and he says, read them and weep. That's pretty good, Bernie,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: thank you. That was actually my Phil Hartman doing Sinatra.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: I thought it was Larry David doing Bernie. No. No,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: but it works. But that's the game, and you and
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: you generally do best of three, but that has to
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: be agreed upon beforehand. Okay, So that is and and
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: like this game is so basic and simple, but it's
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: also so widely played around the world that there's variations
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: to almost everything you just said. Like, I've seen plenty
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: of people who do it on the fourth count rock
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: paper scissor shoot. Um, They're like if you were playing
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: on a pro rock paper scissors m tournament, you would
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: not put your hand down palm on. You'd have it
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: palm out to the left or the right, depending on
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: what hand you're playing with. There's like all sorts of
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: little variations, but ultimately the point of it is is
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: that for each one of those possible choices, those three
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: choices you could possibly make, it has one it can
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: beat and one it can lose to, which makes it
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: incredibly thrilling. With just three little hand combinations, you can
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: either win lose and it happens in the blink of
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: a nine. It's a really great game. I'm with it totally.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: It is, and it's um I think generally to just uh,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: to settle a dispute. Not always, it doesn't. It never
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: struck me as a kind of game you would just
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: sit around and play, you know, Oh yeah, no, it's yeah,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: I know, you're right, maybe if you're practicing, if you're
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: a weird kid practicing your rock paper scissors, But yeah no,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: nobody's just sitting around playing that like they're playing cards
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: or something, right, And it's between two people, because if
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: you have more than two people, you'll probably go with
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: an any MENI money mo or an engine nine number nine.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen three people playing rock
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: paper scissors before it once. I don't think you can.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: That's the whole point. I don't know we should try it.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: No wonder if the universe would crumble around us? Yeah,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: but who would like? You have to be matched up
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: against a person otherwise? I mean, I guess if two
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: people did paper and one person did rock, you would
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: eliminate that person. I think, I don't know, Maybe you're
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: onto something I might be. I feel like I've just
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: kind of upped the evolution of the human species. I
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: think so too. So you mentioned a story Dave came
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: up with, and you're talking about settling disputes. You can
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: also use it to make decisions too, especially if your
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: name is Takashi hashi Yama, who was a Japanese electronic
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: firm uh C suite executive. I think maybe the CEO
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: of one of those companies and UM. He used to
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: like to use rock paper scissors to UM to basically
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: make important to say Asians when everything else was essentially equal,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: and he ran into the same thing in two thousand five,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: didn't he. Yeah, And I guess it worked out for
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: him if he was a C level executive, if that's
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: a measure of success to you. But he was an
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: art collector and he had a about a twenty million
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: dollar art collection of some very noteworthy artists and was
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: going to auction it off and said, should I choose
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Christie's or Sotheby's. They're both great, and I don't know
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: what to do, So I'm going to make them play
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: each other in rock paper scissors for the account. Yeah,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: because that's what Japanese electronics executives of twenty million dollar
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: art collections do. Yeah, they make other people play rock
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: paper scissors for their own amusement. So apparently Christie's recruited
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: a pair of eleven year old twins, Alice and Flora,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: who were the twin daughters of the International Director of
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Impressionist and Modern Art, for Christie's. And the reason that
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: they turned to these two eleven year old twins is
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: apparently they were rock paper scissors dynamos. They played all
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: the time, and they also like understood the psychology behind
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: it too, and it actually paid off in aces for
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: for Christie's turning to these two. Yeah, because Uh, in
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: the interview, I think the New York Times interviewed the
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: girls and Alice said, everyone knows you always start with
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: scissors because rock is way too obvious and scissors beats paper. Uh.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: And I kind of laughed at that at first, like
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: that's such a thing a kid would say, But rock,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: there may be something too. An adult being an aggressive
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: move with the rock, there may be something to that.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: So that's actually what they did. They started with scissors.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: On the day of the whole Um the whole Rock
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Paper Scissors playoff to see who would host this auction
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: of this twenty million dollar art collection. UM, Christie's went
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: with scissors, and just like the twins predicted, UM, so
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the Bees went with paper because apparently they thought rock
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: would be too obvious and they thought that rock that
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Christie's would go with rock, so they went with paper.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: But instead Christie's went with scissors. And that actually demonstrates
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: what you were saying earlier, that there's a lot more
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: to rock paper scissors than meets the eye, because like
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: it's these twins assertion that you would want to go
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: with scissors every time first, because the psychology of your
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: opponent can be kind of relied upon other people say
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: you would never want to go with scissors, and so
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: on and so forth. And there's actually like game theorists
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: that study this. Um, there's a whole lot to this
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: this topic. So I guess what I'm saying is is
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: a good idea of picking this one, because I don't
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: know if I ever would have. Well, what I did
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: think was interesting is in what it would have been
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: a funnier ending to this story is that he didn't
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: have them actually play the game with their hands. He
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: had them each right down the Japanese word for rock,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: paper or scissors on a piece of paper, and I
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: thought it just would have been funny if they didn't
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: know that little hitch and like, you know, Christie's had
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: someone who spoke Japanese so that he's didn't so they
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: were like, you went by, Yeah, we forfeit, We don't know,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: but yeah, it's um. I think there's something about the
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: simplicity of it that just in the future Tug of
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: War episode that just grabs me. Because when you start
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: talking game theory, and we'll get to that, it's uh,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: I've wanted to do an episode on Game Theory Forever.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: But it's just it breaks my brain a little bit
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: when you really get into it. I think it's made up.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: So I think this might be a good way to
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: just satisfy that good, good, good thinking. These topics grab
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: you and say, let's play. Uh. As far as where
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: this came from, you know, of course, anything like this,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: people are gonna say it came fro an ancient Egypt.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Because you can look at almost any mural or set
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: of hieroglyphics and say this is what I think they
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: were doing here. It's very vague. I think that one's
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: given me the bird, and I think that's kind of
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: what happened with the Benny Hassan on burial murals. Right.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I think that the scholars typically agree
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: that they're they're doing something like what's called the finger
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: flashing game, that there's there's something like that. It's not
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: rock paper scissors, I don't. I don't believe scissors were
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: invented yet. Um, but that doesn't mean, as we'll see,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of other games that aren't rock paper scissors.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: They don't have to be rock paper or scissors. You
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: can kind of substitute just about anything for your hand gesture,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: and it's possible they were playing that. I think what's
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: what keeps it from being definitive is that there's nothing
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: in like that that we've figured out from from transcribing
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: hieroglyphics using the resultist one that said, hey, you guys
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: of the future really missed out playing this finger flashing
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: game that we didn't bother to really uh put down.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: But it's definitely the predecessor of of rock paper scissors.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: There's nothing like that, so it's just kind of like
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: it's possible that goes back that far. Yeah, And I
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: couldn't you know. I looked like Dave did, to try
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: and find a picture of that specific and there were
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: a lot of pictures of this mural or set of murals,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: but I saw a lot of wrestling, a lot of
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: wrestling going on, a lot of gaming gaming type stuff,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: but I could not find this specific finger flashing game. Um.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: There's also did you ever do the the even odd thing?
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: I never really understood that one. What is that one
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: when you throw you like go one to three and
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: you throw one, two or three fingers for what to
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: decide something? It's a finger flashing game. Okay, so it's
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: basically what we're talking. It's basically the Dollard's version of
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Rock paper scissors. Well, I don't know. It may be
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: regional like they did it on Seinfeld. I remember, uh,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: and it's like evens or odds. But I never, like
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: no one I knew ever did that. That's odd or
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: maybe old timing too, because I remember movies and the
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: like set in the fifties and sixties. I feel like
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: they did that song too. That's very weird because I mean,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: by that time, from what I can tell, rock paper
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Scissors had made its way to the United States from Asia.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: It had been around for a while. So why would
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: you go from rock paper scissors just something as boring
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: as you know, one, two or three fingers? I don't know.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: And I think the thing with that game is you
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: call even or odd beforehand, and then you put the
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: two hands together and whichever wins wins. That makes sense.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: I'm probably explaining that poorly. I think that deserves its
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: own episode. Like you would say even, I would say odd,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: we throw fingers. I throw two, you throw one, and
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: that's odd, so I win. Does that make sense? Oh?
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: If you add them together, it's odd. Yeah. Yeah, but
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: then if you added any odd to any even, wouldn't
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: it always be odd? Well? What if we both did ones,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: that would be even? Oh yeah, but no, but if
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: I threw four and you through five, like that would
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: be odd. I think it's only three fingers. Huh, that's
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: really that's really interesting. You don't remember that from Seinfeld.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: That's when they were trying to decide on like a
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: lane moving into one of their apartments or selling an
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: apartment or something. Genuinely don't like. I feel like it's
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: issue an alternate reality here. But back to ancient Egypt,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: we agree that it they either may or may not have.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: But if you go to China u during the Ming dynasty,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: they definitely played some sort of iteration of rock paper scissors. Yeah,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: it was called shushi ling, and um, they they appears
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: in print like it's it's like what I was saying
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: that Egyptians didn't do. The seventeenth century Chinese and the
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Ming dynasty did that. They wrote history books and he said,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: we've been playing this game called shushi ling, a finger
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: flashing game, um, for at least a thousand, fourteen hundred years,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe even longer than that. Um, And so that
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: is definitively like the what we kind of understand is
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: rock papers sissors finds its root, if not in ancient Egypt,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: at the very least in ancient China. Right. And then
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: of course that made its way to Japan. And they
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: had a sort of a collection of hand throwing games
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: called sen suku me ken, which means can as fists
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: sun or sand as a sand. Yeah. San is three
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: or three ways and suku me is deadlock. And they
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: found a pretty fun translation of uh san sukumi kin
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: that is three are afraid of one another, which I
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: think is kind of beautiful in its simplicity. I love
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: it too, so that we we have like a delineation
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: where these things started in ancient China made the way
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: to Japan. Japan said, I really like these. Let's make
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: a bunch of different games, um. And one of them
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: was called mushi ken, which is pretty awesome, um. And
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: it demonstrates how it doesn't have to be rock paper
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: scissors or just one, two or three fingers instead, um
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: and uh, mushy can your thumb as a frog or
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: you could throw a pinky finger, or you could throw
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: your index finger the pinkies is poisonous centipede in China.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Uh and um it's a snake as your index finger.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: And by the time it made its way to Japan,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Um the centipede had been translated um apparently incorrectly into
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: slug because Chinese and Japanese share the same characters, but
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: often they have completely different meanings. So in Japan it
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: was a slug instead of a centipede. Right, And in
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: that game, frog beats snake, snake beats centipede or slug
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: and centipede beats frog or slug beats frog. Does make
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: as much sense snake would beat frog, I would think.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: I think snake would beat all of them unless that
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: centipedes sneaks up behind the snake, you know. Yeah, But
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: that's the thing. I mean, it doesn't work unless you've
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: got to You've got one you can beat and one
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: you can lose to. You know, that's right. Uh. And
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: then there was another version in h called Kitsunnyken, and
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: this was a two handed game, and I guess it's
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: just a little more complex. You did a supernatural fox,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: a village leader or a hunter. Fox beats village leader,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: leader beats hunter, hunter beats fox. That's as the old
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: saying goes. That's right, But we know that it didn't.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: It didn't start anywhere besides China and then move its
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: way to Japan and then eventually make its way to America.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: We know that we got it here in America from Japan,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: um or possibly Chinese immigrants. Um. Because as late as
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties, even I believe um, if
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: you read Western literature, western reporting that mentioned this stuff,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: you'll find that the author feels compelled to explain what's
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: going on and what the rules are with one of
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: these sansukumiken games that they're describing, which clearly demonstrates that
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: a Western audience wouldn't wouldn't You couldn't just say the
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: kids are playing rock paper scissors and leave it at that.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: You would have to explain what they were doing and
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: explain the rules because the Americans hadn't come across this yet, right. Uh.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: And then the late eighteen hundreds, Japan was literally playing
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: a game that looked exactly like rock paper scissors called
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: john Kin Pon Yes, which they still play. I I
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: quizzed you me about this, and Um, I was like
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: did you ever play any san Sukumi ken games? And
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: she's like no. I was like, what about kitts Sunni
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: can no, It's like what about Jan Campon? She's like
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Jack Campo of course, of course, and just started playing
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: with me. They definitely play it still, that's nice. Who won?
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: She won? So she she she did it, and I
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: thought this was interesting to remember how you were saying,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: like you you when you throw, you throw on the
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: third one, And I said, well, some people throw on
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: the ship like they go rock paper says or shoot
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: When she does it, she said that as a kid,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: she and her friends would say ja Jack Campo and
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: then would throw it on the po. But there was
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: still four hits to the fist. You were hitting your
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: the palm of your hand with your closes fist that
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: you were going to throw the sign on um still
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: hitting it four times, even though there's five syllables in there.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting. I've seen four more universally
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: than i've seen three. Yeah, I think I think we
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: did it on the third and I definitely hit the
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: other hand when I did it. I wouldn't just throw
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: it out in the Yeah, almost like there's a platform
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: or stage or something for its land stage. Should we
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: take a break our first break in the will we
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: come back? We'll see okay, chuck so um, we're talking
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: about it finally ending up in UH in the United States,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: and it seems like it probably came into the Pacific Northwest, UM,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: possibly San Francisco, where there's long been a strong Chinese
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: and a strong Japanese immigrant community. And of course these
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: are two of the countries that have been playing these
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: finger flashing games for centuries um by the time they
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: started arriving in the United States. UM. And it also
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: ties in with a kind of a linguistic quizzical puzzle
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: about why some people call it rochambo. They think those
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: two things are tied today together the arrival of Rock
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Paper Scissors and the beginning of when it was called rochambeau,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: which is a kind of a regional word for that game. Yeah,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: I had heard that word. I've never known anyone that
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: called it that. I thought, uh, And then until we
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: did this research and I saw that it was sort
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: of you know, San Francisco is one of the pockets.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: Since I texted o our pal Jesse Thorn bulls Eye
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: with Jesse Thorne and Judge John Hodgman in the Maximum
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Network because he's the only native San Francisco. And I know,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: and I'll just read it to you. I said, we're
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: doing an episode on Rock, Paper Scissors. Did you do
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: you call it rochambo? Yes? Are you passing this along
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: to your children? He lives in Los Angeles now, so
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: I know this paints him, but his children are technically Angelino's.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Are you passing this on to your children? Can I
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: reference all of this in the episode? Yes? And yes?
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: And then he went row shambo with exclamation points, So
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: I think he they did it like UMI does it? Uh?
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: And he says none of this one to three shoot nonsense?
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: So um, I think they call it rochambo in South Park.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: That's where I've heard it predominantly, too. How interesting. That's Colorado, right, Yeah,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: which is technically west to western state. I think it's
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: still inclus to be really regionalized in northern California. Yeah,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: but I've heard it outside of that. I haven't. I've
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: spent you know, a few nights in San Francisco, but
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: not enough to pick up that the kids call it
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: rochambo there. So I'm almost positive I've I've only heard
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: it from like South Park or whatever. Sound like you're
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: writing a song there for a minute. Been a few
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: nights in San Francisco. So yeah, have you ever heard
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: that John Denver song? A Saturday night in Toledo, Ohio? Geese?
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. Oh man, it's hilariously mean. He
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: said you can go to the park and watch the
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: grass die. Like he just talks about all the just
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: boring stupid stuff you can do Untilia in November. It's
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: a it's no, no, don't don't defend Toledo. It's thank
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: you for the gesture. But it's true in a lot
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: of ways. But it's a really cute, funny song that's
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: worth going and listening to his catchy too, all right,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: don't check it out. But anyway, like linguists still today,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: or like why you stupid kids have were you calling
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: it ro chambou? And why didn't you explain to anybody
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: why you were calling rochambo? Because it's a linguistic mystery
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: still to this day. Yeah, I mean some people say
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: it's from him, the real life person from history. How
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: do you pronounced that first name? Was it Compta? The
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: comp the count okay de Rochambeau, uh, the Frenchman who
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: who fought alongside the patriots in the Revolutionary War. And
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: interestingly that may hold a little bit of water because
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: there was a book, uh called the Handbook for Recreational Leaders,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: where they literally spelled it as Roe Shambau and not
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: how he spells his name, and that book was published
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: in Oakland. Yeah. I don't know if what that means though,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: just because it's published there didn't mean it was like
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: a regional book or maybe it was. Yeah, I mean
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: I could see the author living there. I'm not sure.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I don't know, but but I think
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: it's a kind of kind of interesting that it is
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: that that recreational leaders book was published in Oakland at
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: about the right time. I think it was the book,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: and it was about the time in the nine thirties
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: when they think that school kids started picking this up
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: in San Francisco. That makes sense. And you know what
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: now that I look at the title of the book,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Handbook of for Recreation Leaders, not recreational so it was
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: probably like a handbook for local wreck centers instead instead
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: of being like, are you a leader only recreationally? I
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: don't take it seriously weird, but they think it's it's
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: actually um, well, some people think it's from the original
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Japanese name right, Yeah, either Jack Kip Poe, so you
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: apparently just barely pronounced the end in the on the
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: jan and the poem, so it's Jack and poe um.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: And then in Chinese a jing jiang bo jing jun bo.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Either way, there's that that um hard bow or post
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: sound on the end of it. And they think maybe
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: American kids in San Francisco who were meeting these Chinese
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: and Japanese school kid immigrants were just kind of turned
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: it into something else that sounded vaguely familiar, which to me,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: that's what my money's on. I think the Brits and
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: the Aussies call it paper scissors stone or paper scissors rock.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: And then weirdly, if you live in Manchester, Uh, first
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: of all, you're a man Cunion, which is kind of weird. Secondly,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: you don't clap except at the very end of the show. Yeah,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: we performed live there. They were, uh, they enjoyed it,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: but they were quiet about it. Uh. And then apparently
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: they called this either zip pop brick or ciss pop
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: rick just in Manchester. Yes, but they have all sorts
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: of cool made up words around that. Okay, so um,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: the point is Rochambo, it's still. It's still and probably
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: will forever be a mystery exactly where it came from.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: That's right. Should we talk about game theory? I don't
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: see how we can get around and Chuck, I really
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: tried to figure out a way, but I don't think
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: we can. Well, maybe you can embrace it is like,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: this is the kind of game theory that like war
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Games was about. Sure, yeah, yeah, you know what I
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: meant At its most basic level. Uh, we're talking in
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: this case about the Nash equilibrium or a Nash equilibrium,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: and that's from John Nash of a Beautiful Mind fame
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: and sort of the simplest way to say it. They
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: found a pretty good definition, which is a set of strategies,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: one for each player, such that no player has an
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: incentive to change their strategy given what the other players
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: are doing. In other words, it's a game where you
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: reach an equilibrium because there's no strategy essentially that will
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: get a better outcome. Right, Well, yeah, we'll put and like,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: equilibrium is a really important term because it's a kind
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: of a even though you're in an adversarial situation where
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: you're competing against somebody, it also has a sort of
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: like UM cooperative ness that naturally trickles up from that gameplay.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: And there's not a pure Nash equilibrium in Rock paper
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: scissors UM. In the Prisoner's dilemma, which is a famous
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: game theory UM kind of thought experiment, there's a pure
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Nash equilibrium where it's like this is this one choice
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: is the thing to do. It's not quite the case
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: in Rock paper scissors. Instead, what happens is is that
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: if you eventually choose UM too, if your strategy is
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: to choose doing each Rock paper scissors one third of
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: the time, you can plan on over the course of
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: hundreds of games to finally shake out to winning thirty
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: three percent of the games. And that is the best
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: you can hope for so long as everybody else is
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: is cooperating or acting rationally throughout the whole thing. But
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: that's a mix. That's called a mixed Nash equilibrium, and
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: it doesn't really count UM. And there's a lot of
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: problems with applying or trying to apply in Nash equilibrium
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: to Rock papers scissors. Yeah, I mean humans play it
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: and when they play it, they do two out of
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: three usually or just one. So you're not doing it
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: hundreds of times to let this play out. And also,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: humans are humans, so we have instincts, We have psychological
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: tendencies at play. We have biases, unconscious and conscious biases.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Even with a silly game like this, and that that
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: one thing like might be better even though one really isn't.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Like they all have an equal chance of equal uh
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: equally losing or winning. Right, So the Nash equilibrium, I mean,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: it applies. It's not like it just you just can't
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: make sense of it. In the terms of rock paper scissors.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: It's just as far as explaining a rock paper scissors
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: strategy goes, it's not your best strategy because the best
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: you could hope for is to win thirty three point
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: three three percent of the time as long as you
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: stuck to your guns and played that same that's one
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: to three every single time. Um. The there's another rategy
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: called a conditional response that they've studied. Um that's that
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: actually produces a winning um like an overall winning score,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: ten more often than a Nash equilibrium. Well, yeah, so
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: this came from a study in China where they did
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: kind of the largest study on rock paper scissors ever done,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: where they got three d and sixty students divided them up.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: They each had to play I think three hundred rounds
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: apiece had he ended up operative a lot of rounds
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: of rock paper scissors in the pattern, they discovered the
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: conditional response was as humans, we instinctively, and it makes sense,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: we instinctively stick to something that wins and we change
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: it when it loses. So if you lose on paper,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: you're probably not going to go throw a paper right
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: again afterward. And if you win with rock, you're probably
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: or you're instinctively going to want to at least throw
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: rock as the next one. And this played out in
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: the experiment. Yeah, and so with that they found that
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: the conditional response you can actually if you if you
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: use that strategy where if you if you win with
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: one thing, throw it again the next time. If you
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: lose with one, uh, go switch to the next one.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: And apparently also people follow the pattern depending on how
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: you say the name of the game, Like if you
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: call the game rock paper scissors, if you switch in
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: a conditional strategy, um, you will if you lose with scissors,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: if you lose with rock, you'll go to scissors. If
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: you lose with scissors, you'll go to paper. Like you'll
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: follow the pattern of the name of the game too,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: which is pretty interesting. But I'll like that. But yeah,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: how rock paper scissors. So you lose with rock, go
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: to paper. Oh yeah, you're right, but I think everyone
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: gets Okay, So you don't want me to just start
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: over and completely explain again, I think we need to that.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: So but all that combined kind of really points out
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: how humans aren't rational actors and we don't pick things
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: at random, and we do kind of fall into patterns, um,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: and that that can be kind of used to your
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: advantage if you're like really paying attention to this kind
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: of thing. Depending on who you're playing with, well, yeah,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you want to follow that model and
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: give and technically give yourself a statistical advantage, you would
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: know what they want are lost with obviously, and then
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: what their instinct to follow would be, and then you
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: would combat that then with the appropriate gesture. But here's
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: the thing. It's a fast game. And part of the
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: reason this game works is because you don't sit there
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: and go all right, let's think about what we're gonna
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: do here and let's throw on five. Like you just
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: go quickly, so you've got to be really really fast too.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: I think remember what they did, or see what they did,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: remember what's next, and then combat it. And that's then
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: that second right, like to consider your opponent psychology and
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: that fast of a time span. Gifted is the word
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: I think you're looking for. I think so, uh or
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: maybe professional And should we take a break? Sure, let's
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: take a break, all right, because people do this, maybe
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: not for a living, but there are tournaments and we'll
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: talk about that right after this. All right, So I
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: spilled the beans. There are not professional rock paper scissors players,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: but in the two thousands, especially the mid two thousand's,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: there were tournaments sponsored by sponsors that had prize money
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: at hand. Yeah, and actually, um, I think the prize
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: money got up to like fifty grand when you're at
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: the peak of two thousand six or two. Yeah, it's
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: not bad for playing rock paper scissors. And um. One
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: thing that we should kind of preface this with when
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: we're talking about the world of profession all um rock
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: paper scissors players, is that it is a really facetious
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: tongue in cheek self satirical world, and they make up
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that is just absolutely not true,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: and it's really tough to figure out, like to to separate,
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: you know, truth from fiction when you're talking about it.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: And in fact, um one of the sources Dave sent
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: was a blog post of a linguist who was posting
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: about the UM the origin of like the rock, paper
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Scissors world society I think UM and how they actually
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: were founded in nineteenth century London and all of this
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: was totally made up and didn't realize it until some
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: of the commenters on her blog post was like, hey,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: this is this this world is not real, Like, they
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: make up a lot of stuff, and she had to
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: go back and revise the post. So if we accidentally
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: say something that is not true and we say credul credulous,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: lee than than apologies ahead of time. Yeah, I mean
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: it's kind of fun. They make up a or uh
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: supposedly the first one was in a bar in Toronto
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: and uh Toronto, excuse me, in two thousand two. But
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: whether or not, that's lore. Like once the media starts
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: covering something and bud Light starts sponsoring it, then it
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: it is a real thing and that's exactly what happened.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: And you know they would make up fun names. Uh
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Sean Wicked fingers Sears was one of the players. Unless
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: that's completely made up, but it was all very tongue
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: in cheek. Yeah. UM. Another good example of being tongue
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: in cheek is UM. There's this great article from Alex
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: Miyasi Prisonomics where they were talking about UM how very
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: frequently on like UM forums and and UM just basically
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: hangouts for rock paper scissors aficionados. They they'll mention UM
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: the book The Trio of Hands by Voyeck small soa
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: and that it basically like the Bible about rock paper scissors,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: and you know, wisdom about rock paper scissors. And I've
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: seen that um small So is compared to loud Zoo
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: and UM that that he he was just this great
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: rock paper scissors UM kind of uh champion, I guess.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: And this person is totally made up. The book is
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: made up, none of it exists, but yet you'll find
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: it everywhere. So it's almost like they wove this kind
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: of alternate universe, hilarious alternate universe UM to kind of
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: make rock paper scissors more important than it it possibly
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: could have ever been. Yeah, and see now I'm looking
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: at these uh pre planned throws and wondering if this
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: is all a joke too. I don't think so, because
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: they actually make sense. And I was watching one of
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: the tournaments and they were doing it like that. Okay, Well,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: the idea is that you can't just stroll in there
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: as an eleven year old girl and say rock is obvious,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: so you always start with scissors. Um, that's you know,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: that's playground level stuff. So apparently the pros and the
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: tournament will sort of like an NFL team will prescript
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: their first drive a lot of times on offense and
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: just go with these plays. And then they start calling
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: the plays by gut or whatever. They have pre eight
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: pre set gambits that they are going to play, and
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I guess they mix them up. I mean, obviously not
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: everyone's playing the same order. Oh I'm sorry, So I
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: think these are real, but I'm not sure they're real.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: I thought you were talking about the actual way that
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: you're supposed to hold your hand. Oh no, no, no, no,
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: we'll talk about that. Cambits. I don't know that it
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: makes sense. It makes sense, it got great names. Yeah, sure,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: should we tick through these. Yeah, there's the avalanche, which
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: is rock, rock and rock, right, of course, I love it.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: What about the bureaucrat. The bureaucrat is paper paper, paper,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: makes sense? Uh, we have scissor, scissor scissor, which is
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: the toolbox. Yeah, um, I'd like this one fist full
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: of dollars paper rock paper, So it's like you got
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: money sticking out of each side of your hand, your fist. Okay,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: I like the scissor, sandwich, paper, scissors, paper. And the
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: point is is like if you are playing and you
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: you you kind of do your your three tries out
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: of this because you know you played best two out
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: of three and then in a tournament that best two
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: out of three. Um is, So it's game and then
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: match there's best two out of three games and then
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: best two out of three match. Um So, I guess
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: you could play a whole game with just one of
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: those gambits, depending on as long as there's no draws. Right.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: But what you what you were talking about earlier with
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: the way they do it, it is different and you
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: mentioned it or at the beginning of the episode. When
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: you throw paper, you don't turn your wrist and go
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: palm down. You just go straight out like you would
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: rock or scissors with your hand, because if you were really,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: really really fast and intuitive, you could technically probably see
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: someone moving their wrists in such a way to give
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: yourself a slight advantage on paper. Yeah, your biggest tell
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: is if you're throwing paper and you are you're throwing
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: your paper um horizontal, so palm down, you are you
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: watch you look at your elbow when you're doing that.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: It's off to the side. Now throw your not throw
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: a paper with your palm to the side, right like vertically,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: your elbow still at your side. So you would be
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: a chump to try to throw it um palm down
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: because your elbows going out and they'd be able to
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: see it every time. It's interesting. I can throw it
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: with my elbow at my side, really, I mean I can,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: but it looks like I don't have use of my
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: shoulder any longer. I mean, I guess I could do
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: it like that, and if I were playing for fifty dollars,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: I would do like that. But it's much easier to
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: just play to just throw the paper signed vertically. And
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: then the point of it all is all of it
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: comes from that one rock fist. So you've got the
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: rock and then you stick out all four fingers, you've
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: got the paper, you stick out just your index and
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: birdie finger. You've got the scissors. But it's all generally
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: the same thing, and the motion is just in your
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: fingers rather than your whole hand and maybe your elbow right. Uh.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: And they programmed a robot to actually be so fast
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: that it could see these micro moves. And this robot
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: was perfect. There's no way to beat this thing. If
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: you watch a YouTube of just Google or put in
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: YouTube robot um almost at tick tack toe rochambo. Uh.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: And this thing has a high speed camera and it
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: can see their little micro move and it can it
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: can change their things so quickly. It's kind of a
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: frustrating watch actually because they're doing it really fast, and
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: the froot but just wins every time, no matter what
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: the person does. Yeah, because it's cheating. It's watching that
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: that movement and then throwing a sign that's going to
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: beat it. So there's actually human players, like you were saying,
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: who who say? You know, people have tells you can
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: see what they're gonna do. And um again, that's that
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: all of it happens way too fast for my punity
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: brain to keep up with and and um and and
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: you know, may throw a sign that's gonna beat what
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: I think they're about to do. But there's been studies
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: that suggest that actually we do pick up on what
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: other people are going to throw, and that a lot
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: of times that probably explains draws, that we're actually mimicking them.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: There's something called automatic imitation, and they think that it
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: has to do with the fact that we have a
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: complex of mirror neurons, which we've talked about years and
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: years and years ago. UM, that that where where we're
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: our motor cortex basically sees what somebody else is doing
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: and makes us do the same thing mirror neurons, and
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: that that accounts for draws. And some researchers in London
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: actually blindfolded some study participants. Hopefully it wasn't those same
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: poor kids who had to play three rounds in the
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Chinese experiment and now they're just kind of like um
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: pigeonholed into into um rock paper scissors experiments, hopefully a
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: whole new batch of people. But they blindfolded some of them,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: and the blindfolded ones if both participants were blindfolded, they drew.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: They had to draw both through the same sign like
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: thirty three percent of the time, but if one of
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: the participants wasn't blindfolded, the draws went up to like
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: thirty six percent. Right, well, what do you do for
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: a living? I do rock paper scissor studies mainly, right,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to kind of fell into it. Pay
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: is not great, but you know, it's cool. They mentioned
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: this on stuff you should know. Uh, yeah, they they
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: exactly what you would think happened. Happened the Nash equilibrium
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: sort of play out. When they were all blindfolded up
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: was thirty three point three percent, and then when it
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: wasn't that, how much did it kick up three point
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: three to a draw? Yeah, which just statistically significant. Say
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: that again, it is statistically significant. Oh goodness, it certainly is.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: So I think we got to finish on the side
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: blotch lizards because this is just amazingly cool. Yeah. To me,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: this was like what a way to end. It's kind
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: of the perfect thing because there is in nature sort
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: of an evolutionary game of rock paper scissors being played
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: out in front of our human eyeballs. Uh, and the
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: what is it? The side blotch lizard because the three uh,
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: there are three varieties with the color of their throat.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: The males have either an orange, a yellow, or a
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: blue throat, and each of them have their own advantages
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: and disadvantages which we're gonna go over, but none of
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: them have won out over time as far as evolution
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: is concerned. So they switch like the dominan species switches out.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: Is it yearly or just like every few years, It
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: seems like over very long spans of time, right, it
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: plays out because there's not one advantage over the other.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: And I just think this is super awesome. Yeah, because
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: just like in rock paper scissors, one can defeat the
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: other but is defeated by the third one and vice versas.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: So in this, in this kind of evolutionary game of
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: rock paper scissors, that these these lizards are locked into.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: Orange throated ones are dominant over blue throated males, but
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: yellow throated males are dominant over orange throad of males,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: and blue throated males are dominant over yellow So each
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: one has a foil and one that it can conquer,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: which is not so amazing, but with orange males they're
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: super dominant. Um, they're super aggressive. They defend their territory
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: to the death, and so they command um large territories
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: with lots of females that the orange throated of males
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: um mate with like frequently all the time. You stopped,
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: but they they But so you would think, well, then
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: why wouldn't the orange throaded males have have taken over
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: and they're only be orange throated males. My friend Chuck
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: is going to explain that part. Are these the yellows? Yeah,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: I think the yellows okay, uh yeah, you got your
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: yellow throated males. They are, well, I think it's interesting.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: It's sort of like a picture of humans in a way.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: Because the orange throatd I think we should mention the
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: blue throated They have smaller territories but only one female,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: and they all work together to get things done and
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: to defend against attack. So these are two different, really
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: different societies. And then you've got your yellow throats. They
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: don't have any territory. They are mercenaries and rogues. They
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: don't have any females to call their own. But their
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: evolutionary trait was they evolved to be able to sneak
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: into enemy territory and secretly mate with the females, right,
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: So for the yellow ones, if the orange ones are dominant,
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: that's good for a yellow throated male because there's plenty
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: of territory and plenty of females to sneak in and
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: mate with. And so over time, the yellow throated males
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: start to outnumber the orange throated males because they've snuck
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: in and mate it with so many of the orange
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: throated males. Mates pretty awesome, right, So the orange numbers
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: shrink and the yellow numbers grow up, but the yellow
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: tend to be um shrunk. The numbers are shrunken by
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: the blue because the blues cooperate with one another to
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: defend other blue throated mails against yellows that sneak in,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: and so blues do best when I think there's uh,
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: when there's a lot a lot of yellows. Yellows are
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: most successful when there's a lot of oranges because they
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: can sneak in. And then orange does best when there's
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: a lot of blues around because they're defending the oranges
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: territory inadvertently from those sneaky yellow guys. That's right, And
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: I think the perfect end of this is in you know,
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: a hundred thousand years, they'll go to study these and
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: they will just see a waste land of orange inch
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: blue and yellow throated males dead on the ground, with
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: all the female side blotch lizards standing there, having figured
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: out how to reproduce without sex from males. I think
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: that's a grime song. Might anything else? I got nothing else? Well, everybody,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: that was Rock paper scissors? And again, good pick chuck,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, Dave. If you want to know
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: about rock paper scissors, go play some rock paper scissors
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: or Jack Kemp, Jacques Campo or whatever you want to
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: call it. Um And in the meantime, I say it's
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this uh funny misspronunciation.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: So we gotta cover this because we got a lot
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: of emails about that. Oh yeah, cookie, most ever, Hello
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: from Smithers b C. I'm a big fan, guys, can't
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: get enough random knowledge squeeze into my brain. Even bought
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: myself Your Trivial Your Trivial Pursuit game for Christmas. Very nice,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: which hopefully we'll be back on shelves soon. By the
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: way end of January, I think they're saying, okay, great,
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: I had a good laugh. The other day, listening to
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: the Cookies episode, I think it was Josh had the
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: most hilarious unique pronunciation of uh. Well, I think it's
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: the Nanaimo cookie is correct, right, Yeah? What did you
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: say Nanaimo? Okay, well, it's got a Japanese player to it.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: That makes sense. It was. It was a very naive
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: way of putting uh. Side note, I don't think bars
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: are cookies there bars, especially if they have different layers.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: I had to think for a second about what he
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: was trying to say. Even this bar is named after
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: the city on Vancouver Island, does pronounced Nanaimo Naimo City.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: I guess you can put that in the list of
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: funny Canadian names only Canadians and how to say like Saskatchewan, uh,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: mississaugua and took two yet took a yaktok. Very nice.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you nailed all three of those. Sure that
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: is from Anna Ziegler. Thanks a lot, Anna. If one
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: of those two, um, if you have a nice, gentle
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: correction like Anna did. We love to hear those kind
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: of things. And you can send it to his via email,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: it off. To stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
• 48:29
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• 48:31
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• 48:34
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