William Poundstone

The stone breaks the scissors. How to outsmart anyone. Practical guide

© William Poundstone 2014

© Goldberg Yu., translation into Russian, 2014

© Design, edition in Russian.

LLC "Publishing Group "Azbuka-Atticus", 2015

ABC BUSINESS®

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What people don’t know how to do in everyday life is behave unpredictably.

J. J. Copling

...An objective perception of reality is often called cynicism by people who are not capable of it.

George Bernard Shaw

A good magician will never tell you what he does for a living.

Dan Guterman

Fortune telling machine

The prediction machine was the result of an unpleasant incident in the laboratory. In the 1950s A lanky guy from Ohio named Dave Hagelbarger, a graduate of the California Institute of Technology, worked at the Bell Labs research center in Murray Hill, Ohio. The laboratory had strict internal rules that required engineers to wear ties. Hagelbarger worked with drilling machines and therefore wore a bow tie to avoid accidents. He was trying to come up with a new type of computer memory.

According to the conditions of the experiment, it was necessary that the vacuum tube heat up to 400 degrees over the weekend. Returning to the laboratory on Monday, Hagelbarger discovered a shapeless slurry in place of the tube: a careless assistant had left vinyl gloves in the oven. Several months of work down the drain.

Frustrated, Hagelbarger took a few days off to read and think. He decided that he would now work on a mind-reading machine.

The idea came to him from the pages of the December 1950 science fiction magazine Astounding Science Fiction, with a mushroom cloud on the cover. The author of one of the articles, J. J. Copling, reasoned that a computer could be taught to compose music by analyzing the statistical patterns of already written works and composing similar compositions, only new ones.

Copling presented his own music, created using dice and a table of random numbers, a year before John Cage began similar experiments with the Chinese Book of Changes. Copling noticed that achieving randomness is not so easy. “Ask a person, for example, to create a random sequence of numbers,” he wrote. – Statistical studies of such sequences have shown that they are not at all random; a person is not able to create a random sequence of numbers that are in no way related to each other.”

Hagelbarger was interested in these ideas. However, unlike most science fiction fans, he decided to implement them and ended up building a machine to predict the choices a person would make. The machine was playing the coin matching game, which had long been used to amuse children in the schoolyard. Two players held coins in their fists, heads or tails up, and then simultaneously opened them. It was agreed in advance who wins if the position of the coins matches; if it doesn't match, the other one wins.

The fortune machine, as Hagelbarger called it, was a large rectangular box about three feet high. On the front panel there were two light bulbs and two buttons marked “+” and “–” - options corresponding to heads or tails. The machine acted as a sparring partner; the scheme was supposed to predict the opponent’s actions. The person chose “+” or “–” and announced it out loud. Then he pressed a button, and the machine made a prediction by lighting one of two lights.

Announcing the decision out loud was part of the performance. In the 1950s no machine could recognize the human voice. She made a choice before the player opened his mouth.

The optimal strategy is this: the choice should be random, with a 50% probability of heads or tails. Any child familiar with the game knows this. “The machine's strategy is based on two assumptions,” Hagelbarger explained. What is she like?

(a) A person’s choice is not accidental. The sequence of moves in the game is influenced by experience and emotions. For example, some people, having won twice in a row, are afraid of “scaring away their luck” and repeat the actions. Others, on the contrary, do not want to “tempt fate” and change their decision. But the car will catch them in both cases.

(b) To confuse the opponent, the machine will try to predict his actions only if he wins, and will make a random choice if he loses.

Part (a) describes the attack strategy. The machine gradually identifies unconscious patterns in the opponent's actions and uses them to make predictions. In point (b) there is a defense strategy. Faced with an opponent whose actions cannot be predicted, the machine begins to play randomly and wins 50 percent of the time.

For several weeks, Hagelbarger pestered his colleagues, offering to play with the car. He needed a lot of data to make sure it worked. Trying to make the car more attractive, he equipped it with two rows of 25 light bulbs located on the top. Every time a car won, a red light came on. If a person won, the green light turned on. The player's task was to light the entire row of his lights before the car.

One of the scientists spent all lunch time in front of the car. Another developed a game system by asking himself “random” questions that could be answered with a “yes” or “no,” such as, “Did I wear a red tie this morning?” The answer was converted into heads-or-tails, making the game random. After recording the results of 9,795 games, Hagelbarger found that his machine won 5,218 times—53.3 percent of the time. The machine's advantage turned out to be small, but the result was statistically significant.

Then one of Hagelbarger’s bosses wanted to play with the car. And he won without difficulty. As one of his colleagues noted: “Every scientist or engineer is familiar with the notorious boss syndrome when, in the presence of senior management, everything goes awry.”

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Here is a practical guide: how to benefit from the predictable behavior of other people and use this skill in everyday life. After reading this book, you will learn how to predict the actions of friends, bosses, teachers, competitors and just those around you. Most people are programmed to make certain choices and follow simple trends, and therefore their behavior is predictable even when they try to be original. William Poundstone has a gift for extracting practical advice from psychology and behavioral economics and proves that forecasting is easy, enjoyable, and sometimes profitable! ISBN:978-5-389-08659-3 Publisher: "Azbuka-Atticus" (2014) ISBN: 978-5-389-08659-3

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Author	Book	Description	Year	Price	Book type
Poundstone William	Stone breaks scissors	Here is a practical guide: how to benefit from the predictable behavior of other people and use this skill in everyday life. After reading this book, you will learn how to predict... - ABC-Atticus,		299	paper book
William Poundstone	The stone breaks the scissors. How to Outsmart Anyone: A Practical Guide	Here is a practical guide: how to benefit from the predictable behavior of other people and use this skill in everyday life. After reading this book, you will learn how to predict... - ABC-Atticus, e-book	2014	249	eBook

See also in other dictionaries:

Gestures used in the game (from left to right: rock, paper and scissors). Each sign defeats one of the other two. Rock, paper, scissors is a popular children's hand game known in many countries around the world. Sometimes I use... Wikipedia

William Poundstone

The stone breaks the scissors. How to Outsmart Anyone: A Practical Guide

Predicting fateful events seems easy. In fact, this is not the case, and one reason is that in matters of almost random sequences, intuition often deceives us. An incorrect prediction can lead to tragedy.

In recent decades, psychologists have studied a subject that at first glance seems abstract—the human perception of randomness. They studied how we make random, or arbitrary, choices, and how we predict events that cannot be predicted (such as the stock market, the outcome of a basketball game, and “the future”). It turned out that this subject is of great practical importance. One way or another, we are all making predictions. They can be as simple as a game of rock, paper, scissors where the loser pays the bar tab. The stone breaks the scissors. The best predictor wins. Anticipating other people's thoughts and actions is very important to winning an argument or a game, to getting a date or promotion, to getting rich. The success of your personal life or business often depends on whether you are more accurate than others in your predictions.

In this book you will learn how to use psychology to improve your predictions. In particular, it shows how to predict the behavior of people who are trying to be unpredictable. This will require a practical approach, specifically describing how a few simple principles can be applied to a wide range of everyday situations. You'll learn that outsmarting people is easy, fun, and often profitable. Here are some examples.

Tests with a choice from several possible answers. The test writers try to randomize the answers. In most cases this fails, which gives the opportunity to gain an advantage when guessing.

Tote. Your colleagues place bets on the outcome of football games, on the standings of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, on the Oscars. Their choice is more or less predictable. You can win bets by predicting what bets others will make and basing your strategy on that.

Games and strategy. Almost every game—from tennis to poker to rock, paper, scissors—has an element of guesswork. A player who anticipates the opponent's strategy can earn points and win.

Recognizing financial fraud. White-collar crime always involves fictitious figures: inflated entertainment expenses, false profit and loss statements, distorted tax returns. When people come up with numbers, those numbers follow a predictable pattern. Anyone who recognizes this pattern can quickly verify the authenticity of financial documents.

Investments. An investor or buyer of real estate who understands that market fluctuations over very long periods are quite predictable will be able to outperform the majority and beat the market average.

All of the practical applications in this book are based on one simple idea. When people make arbitrary, random, or strategic choices, they subconsciously adhere to certain patterns that can be predicted.

Part one

Experimental modeling of randomness

Zenith Radio Broadcasts

“Commander” Eugene Francis McDonald Jr. loved plaid suits and gin and pistachio ice cream cocktails. He lived on his 185-foot yacht, Mizpah, moored in Chicago's Lincoln Park yacht marina. As the executive director of Zenith Radio Company, he lived such an interesting life that any major businessman could only envy. His range of interests was unusually wide - from Arctic exploration to the search for pirate gold.

McDonald's main contribution to American business is a kind of advertising gimmick. In 1934, he sent a telegram to all tire manufacturers and oil companies: "PLEASE NOTE THE ABSENCE OF PEOPLE ON THE STREETS BETWEEN ELEVEN AND HALF Twelve DURING THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH." Indeed, during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's intimate conversation with radio listeners, the streets were empty. The telegram was followed by letters telling about the influence of radio. The B. F. Goodrich Company agreed to sell Zenith radios through its dealer network of 1,200 tire stores. After the stock market crash, many radio stores went out of business, making room for Zenith.

So McDonald invented hidden advertising. He supplied Zenith radios to Hollywood film studios. Following the advent of the television era in 1929, Zenith radios began appearing in television films, from Busby Berkeley musicals to Night of the Living Dead? (Night of the Living Dead). Could they be seen in war films, in “eccentric comedies”, in “black cinema” and in the television series “The Three Stooges”? (Three Stooges). In one episode of The Three Stooges, Curley is hit over the head with a Zenith radio, presumably to express the feelings of movie theater patrons.

In 1937, the radio network was at the height of its influence. A few words from NBC news anchor Herb Morrison were enough to destroy an entire industry. “It burst into flames,” breathed Morrison, who watched the Hindenburg airship crash. - Oh my God!" After that, no one wanted to fly airships. In 1937 Arturo Toscanini? led the NBC Radio Orchestra, and a young Orson Welles voiced the popular comic book and novel character named The Shadow. MacDonald's most successful publicity stunt harnessed the power of radio, but none of the radio broadcasts of 1937 could compare to the show created by "Commander" MacDonald.

Zenith dealers across the country began handing out decks of cards. During the Great Depression, it was hard to pass up a free deck, but these weren't intended for casual play. Their shirt shimmered with a bright pattern featuring the Zenith logo and the following words: DEVELOPED IN THE DUKE UNIVERSITY PARAPSYCHOLOGY LAB. MacDonald hoped to capitalize on the psychic craze, and the cards advertised a new Sunday evening radio series.

In the mid-1930s. Joseph Banks Rhine gained national attention for his psychological experiments at Duke University. He performed sessions of telepathy, clairvoyance and telekinesis. Piercing eyes and gray hair gave Rhine, a botanist by profession, special persuasiveness. Reviews in the press, from the New Yorker to Scientific American, were mostly favorable. As one journalist noted, "Ryne made ESP a craze in sororities across America."

...On a hot June evening, Ryan and his wife had dinner on board McDonald's yacht. The owner of Zenith wrote down his ideas for an extrasensory perception test he was going to conduct using a radio. Listeners had the opportunity to test the capabilities of their own psyche. This would be the largest experiment in history and the best possible proof of the existence of telepathy.

Rhine wasn't sure the new science was ready for prime time. Skeptics suspected that Rhine reported successes and hid failures (in other words, some of the “telepaths” were cheating).

But the skeptics didn't bother MacDonald. As one of his business partners put it, “Nothing can stop a street mob that likes to fight.” MacDonald played Mephistopheles, luring Ryan with the prospect of making money from telepathy. He said he has assigned one of his lawyers to handle the copyright and trademark registration of the cards that Rhine used to detect ESP. This is the so-called Zener deck, named after Rhine's colleague and consisting of cards with five repeating patterns (circle, cross, three wavy lines, square, five-pointed star). Rhine would receive a percentage of each deck sold, McDonald promised, and the cards (for five and ten cents) would be sold in small goods stores.

Ryan hesitated. He eventually allowed himself to be referred to as a “consultant,” understanding that other psychologists would be observing the experiments. MacDonald agreed.

A half-hour program entitled "The Zenith Foundation" aired on NBC's Blue Network on September 5, 1937 at 10:00 p.m. It was impossible to guess the content from the title of the show. The advertisement was enticing: “The program is so UNUSUAL - so AMAZING - so INTERESTING - that it will become familiar to the whole country.” The word "foundation" was associated with philanthropy, like the Rockefeller Foundation, but MacDonald saw no obstacle to the peaceful coexistence of public service and profit. An information letter sent to dealers stated: “The Zenith Foundation broadcasts are intended to increase sales of Zenith radios...You should make the most of the opportunity. Double your efforts."

MacDonald feared that the word "telepathy" would alienate more practical listeners, and therefore there was little mention of it in the early broadcasts. At first, the stories were devoted to outstanding thinkers, whose ideas were undeservedly ridiculed. Over the course of a few weeks, the program developed a pattern familiar in the modern world of cable television - a dramatic account of physical phenomena supposedly real, and commentary from a motley group of "experts."

A new element - MacDonald's telepathic experiment - was introduced in the fourth program. A group of ten "transmitters" from a locked studio in Chicago tried to send thoughts by radio to listeners in all corners of the country. Radio listeners were asked to record their feelings and send texts by mail.

In the first test, on September 26, the “transmitters” broadcast a random sequence of two colors, black and white. To avoid deception, the choice was made directly during the radio broadcast using a roulette wheel.

Host: It’s best to write down the sensations right away. Don't think or try to find logic. Write down your sensations sequentially - at the same speed as they arise. The machine is ready to select the first number.

ROTATING... STOP... SIGNAL... PAUSE... SIGNAL

Host: This was the first number. Now the machine will choose number two...

When letters from radio listeners began to arrive, it almost immediately became clear that something extraordinary was happening. It was necessary to guess a sequence of five elements; black and white colors alternated. Most radio listeners made only one mistake. Probably, the satisfied Rain was relieved - the result was in his favor.

After the first test, Woolworth's sold all of its stock of card decks and placed additional orders. The symbols depicted on the cards were used in several subsequent tests. They say that during the existence of the program, 150 thousand decks of cards were printed. You can still buy them on eBay today.

Next week we had to choose from five vegetables: carrots, beans, peas, corn and beets. This made the task more difficult because there were five options for each position in the sequence. Most listeners guessed correctly two out of five times—a satisfactory result, twice the chance of random selection.

During the next two broadcasts, two colors were again used, black and white. On October 10, the majority guessed four out of five options, and on October 17, five out of seven.

On October 24, radio listeners were offered a choice between a circle and a cross. The sequence transmitted was OXXOX, and most of the answers were absolutely correct.

This does not mean that every single radio listener guessed the sequence with such accuracy. But for some reason most of the answers turned out to be accurate - was it really mass telepathy? In many ways, the aggregate results were more impressive than the individual results. Given that the psychic game is statistically significant, Zenith's experiment can be compared to a powerful microscope or supercollider, capable of detecting subtle effects with great accuracy. During the 15-week broadcast period, the studio collected more than a million responses, making it the largest ESP test ever conducted. In many programs, the statistical significance of radio listeners' correct answers turned out to be incredibly high. The Zenith Foundation subsequently released a report stating that the odds of such a coincidence were 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 to one. But radio listeners didn't need that suspiciously round number to feel like they were part of something supernatural.

Zenith invited several renowned psychologists to design and conduct the experiment. A heated fight took place behind the scenes.

Rhine himself preferred to stay away from the radio show—not difficult, since he was in his laboratory in Durham, North Carolina—so the role of experts fell to two psychologists from Northwestern University, Harvey Gault and Louis D. Goodfellow. Galt, who was several years away from retirement, had long been interested in experiments with telepathy. Goodfellow was a young psychologist on Gault's faculty. He wore professorial glasses and combed his hair in the middle. Both shared MacDonald's belief that radio offered a unique opportunity to test the reality of telepathy.

Repeating Rhine's experiments was not difficult, since they required only a deck of cards and a senior student willing to sacrifice an hour of time. Psychologists were disappointed. In science, failure to confirm a discovery is fatal. In real life, things are not so simple. Rhine argued that telepathy is a very subtle thing. It is not 100 percent accurate and may not occur in any person at any time. Failure to replicate Rhine's results may simply mean that the subjects lack the gift.

Goodfellow and Ryne argued for a long time over details, some significant and some not so significant. Gault was irritated by both. After the first few passes, Goodfellow discovered a curious thing that infuriated Rine. He could predict the responses of radio listeners!

Very interesting, but that’s not what MacDonald and Ryan wanted to hear. Goodfellow's opinion threatened the increasingly profitable ESP industry (oh those people!). Goodfellow was declared an enemy of the paranormal and relieved of his position as an expert. Meanwhile, the program on extrasensory perception began to bore radio listeners, and its ratings declined. In early 1938, MacDonald closed the transmission.

Goodfellow independently published Zenith's findings in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. He offered a convincing explanation for the results that had nothing to do with extrasensory perception. Time magazine wrote that Goodfellow "pierced MacDonald's rainbow bubble of telepathy." In addition, Goodfellow dispelled some of the myths perpetuated in the program. It told how a psychic led police to the body of a murdered woman buried in a woodshed. Goodfellow found the court records and found out: the body was found at the tip of a boy peeking through a hole in the board.

After this, the civil strife between psychologists began to resemble a childhood quarrel. Goodfellow, whose character did not fully correspond to his surname?, launched an attack on Ryan, hiding behind a pseudonym. Chicago board game maker Cadaco-Ellis has unveiled a new game called Telepathy. It was invented by a certain “Dr. Ogden Reed,” and in the instructions for it, Rhine’s science was characterized as “replete with subterfuge.” Ryne, without any telepathy, guessed that "Dr. Ogden Reed" was in fact Dr. Louis Goodfellow. “Is it permissible,” wrote Ryan Goodfellow, “for a scientist to use fraudulent methods (in this case, a fictitious name) in order to avoid responsibility for his words?”

MacDonald was furious. He told Rhine that he should sue the game manufacturer and promised to pay the legal fees.

The cards that brought Rhine a percentage of his profits became a constant source of trouble for him. One of the complaints was that the paint used in the production of cards wrinkled the paper. In order to reduce costs, they were printed on paper so thin that newly minted psychics could see through it. Psychologist B.F. Skinner “guessed” 23 out of 25 cards - to the delight of the students. This made Rhine an object of ridicule, although he had nothing to do with cheap cards and used others in his laboratory.

“Ryne and Goodfellow sent me copies of their ‘love letters,’” Gault, the show’s chief psychologist, wrote to McDonald. – I’m not surprised that R. reached into the bottle. Strictly between us, I am indifferent to his attacks against G. The latter is an excellent specialist, and in this capacity he is very useful to me. But in some respects he is a complete fool."

Judging by these words, Goodfellow was not particularly well liked at Northwestern University. During the war, he left there and became director of the center for training technical personnel for aviation. Then he received a position in the psychology department at the University of Pennsylvania in his hometown of Altoona. The rest of his professional career passed in a quiet and calm backwater - he taught, published some good work, but did not achieve anything that would attract general attention. Today Goodfellow is remembered almost exclusively for the Zenith experiment. He is also popular with those who consider themselves scientific skeptics, on par with Harry Houdini or James Randi. By demonstrating that radio mind reading was a hoax, Goodfellow discovered real mind reading.

Goodfellow did not even try to do what radio listeners did - to catch the broadcast thoughts of the “transmitter”. They were determined by the position of the roulette wheel and were truly random, as Goodfellow was convinced of himself. Instead, he predicted the responses of radio listeners trying to guess a random sequence.

During the first broadcast, psychologists deceived radio listeners into believing that seven variants were being transmitted. In fact, there were only five of them. For the third and seventh “broadcasts,” group members were simply asked to count quickly to themselves and not think about the two “broadcast” options, black and white.

The stone breaks the scissors. How to Outsmart Anyone: A Practical Guide William Poundstone

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Title: The stone breaks the scissors. How to Outsmart Anyone: A Practical Guide
Author: William Poundstone
Year: 2014
Genre: Foreign business literature, Foreign psychology, Social psychology, Management, personnel selection

About the book “The Stone Breaks the Scissors. How to Outsmart Anyone: A Practical Guide by William Poundstone

Here is a practical guide: how to benefit from the predictable behavior of other people and use this skill in everyday life. After reading this book, you will learn how to predict the actions of friends, bosses, teachers, competitors and just those around you. Most people are programmed to make certain “choices” and follow simple trends, and therefore their behavior is predictable even when they try to be original.

William Poundstone has a gift for drawing practical advice from psychology and behavioral economics and proves that forecasting is easy, enjoyable, and sometimes profitable!

On our website about books you can download the site for free without registration or read online the book “The Stone Breaks the Scissors. How to Outsmart Anyone: A Practical Guide" by William Poundstone in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and real pleasure from reading. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For beginning writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you yourself can try your hand at literary crafts.

Quotes from the book “The Stone Breaks the Scissors. How to Outsmart Anyone: A Practical Guide by William Poundstone

He demonstrates that free will is the greatest of illusions.

In a consumer society, purchasing is the highest expression of free will.

Perhaps the most difficult of his charges was Claude Shannon. One of their dialogues became the talk of the town. “You have to do something about this,” Pierce told Shannon. "Must? - Shannon answered. “What do you mean ‘should’?”

A good magician will never tell you what he does for a living.
Dan Guterman

...An objective perception of reality is often called cynicism by people who are not capable of it.
George Bernard Shaw

Like many shy people, Shannon was prone to extravagant antics. He was known to ride around the halls of the Bell Labs research center on a unicycle, sometimes juggling while doing so. For a time, he used stilts as an alternative means of transportation from office to office. Looking from the outside, one might think that he was turning from a scientific genius into an illusionist clown. However, he explored - in his own way - deep problems. One of them was formulated this way: how complex does a machine have to be to outsmart a person? As his colleague David Slepian put it: "Intellectually, he was the world's best con man."

According to one study, about 65 percent of online shopping carts are abandoned. Some buyers are prevented from completing the purchase by the sudden arrival of the boss, others are shocked when they see the final price with delivery costs. A follow-up email gives the seller another chance to close the deal. Analysis shows that such letters are most often read, and these discounts really work. Some companies are willing to cut profits for the sake of a new customer, knowing that regular customers are not as price-conscious.
From a customer's perspective, cart abandonment is similar to leaving a salesperson at a car dealership. Perhaps this is what will allow you to get the best offer.