The Poker Game

Imagine waking up to find yourself sitting you down at a poker table. You've never played before and you have only the vaguest idea of the rules. The room is dark and as far as you know sealed all around. In front of you is a stack of plastic chips of various different colours. The other players at the table are ghostly cloaked figures - all you can see is the cloudy light of their eyes shining out from under dark hoods. You get the distinct impression they won't react if you try and talk to them. You have a larger pile of chips than they do but you suspect that they are nonetheless hardened veterans of the game. A sadistic voice starts speaking to you from behind. You turn to look but can't see anyone in the darkness. The voice sends chills down your spine as it speaks. You're told the game starts in one hour and that once it begins it will run for a minimum of four days straight. There's a gun to your head. You're told if you try to leave or even sit out one hand it'll be the last thing you ever do. Finally, you are told with a sly laugh that the only way you will ever be able to leave the game is if, at some point after the four day mark, you manage to accumulate more chips than when you started. If at any point you lose all your the chips, that's game over.

Just as you start to panic, a strange man appears alongside you. He has a scraggy beard and a faraway look in his hollowed-out eyes. He says nothing, only reaches into one of the pockets of his enormous overcoat and pulls out two books. Holding one in each palm, the strange man gestures both books towards you, his eyes still staring off into the distant dark. You have a look at the books. The first is called 'The Definitive Modern Encyclopedia of the History and Rules of Texas Hold'em Poker: Complete and Unabridged'. It's absolutely pristine - still in it's original wrapping. The font is smart and there is a helpful looking picture on the front cover. A caption on the bottom tells you it was compiled by leading experts in the rules of poker, one of whom had even earned a Nobel Prize for their work in the field. You breath a sigh of relief. "Phew", you think "I can learn everything I need to know in the hour before the game begins, I'm going to be fine". As relief washes over you, you wonder why even bother with the other book. As you turn your attention to it you see that the other book is a mess. There is no title and half the coffee-(and you suspect worse)-stained pages are on the verge of falling out. The black outer-binding is badly ripped. So much so that you can just about make out some of the writing on the first page. Barely legible, written in the blotched ink of an ancient pen, you discern the words: 'Write here, ye winners, thy call to beginners'. Below that you see the tail end of a sentence in completely different handwriting (indeed you can't be sure it's even written in English). As you reach out to take a closer look, the strange man steps back, his gaze unmoved. The deathly voice speaks again: 'pick one'.

'A bad plan is better than no plan'

Look at your body. Think about the aspects of it you have in common with a significant number of other human beings. Every one of these aspects, every cell, every organ , every limb, every system, every brain function has contributed to one or more of your ancestors' survival and reproductive chances [1]. Anything even remotely harmful is washed away by random deviations and the unrelenting passage of time [2].

The same concept can be applied to whole societies. Any beliefs, ideals, practices, rituals, structures or sets of ideas which are harmful to the survival of that society will be surely weeded out over the ages. Societies with harmful ideas will simply die off and be replaced. Conversely, anything which has evolved and survived independently in many different societies is practically certain to have positively aided the survival of those societies and the individuals in them [3].

Let's apply this evolution view to religions and religious belief.

Why do we tell each other stories? (and what does that have to do with religion?)

Some people seem to think that stories are pure entertainment, a form of escapism from the mundanity of every day life. But this cannot possibly be the complete picture - there are many ways of killing time, but stories are a universal. Every successful tribe of humans has evolved to be good at telling and remembering stories. Our ancestors who did not have the ability to listen to, be interested in, learn from and pass on stories died out. Why? A story contains a lot of information. They distil hundreds of observations about the world into compacted, memorable and entertaining strings. Everyone knows what you mean when you say 'the moral of the story'. Stories help us learn how the world works and how we should act within it to improve our chances of doing well.

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Jordan Peterson on stories with inspirational music to boot

Now what is the 'story' of religion? It goes like this: "The world is created and governed one or more superhuman, supernatural, all powerful 'god' figures. Here is what they are like and here is how you should act accordingly (in order to please them)." Over the ages many many different versions of this story have come and gone, but they always shared the same overarching structure. They provided answers to the questions: How did we get here? How does the world work? What should we aspire towards - i.e. what the hell should we do (especially now we are aware of our own mortality)?

Consider which question is most important from an evolutionary perspective - it's the third one, what the hell should we do. Evolution doesn't care how ludicrous your creation myth, how barmy your explanation for the daily passage of the sun or how twisted your logic used to arrive at your traditions or moral imperatives: it cares only about the actions you take and whether those actions aid survival. It is the grand bookkeeper of the universe, nature's P&L. It cannot be bullshitted. It is an therefore undeniable fact that religious practices common across many societies, such engaging in prayer, regular visits to a particular religious venue or abiding by a certain set of 'commandments from god', have been beneficial to the survival and reproduction of the members of those societies. Those who had religion are in the evolutionary green - they are winners. [4]

Enter science. Science comes along and disproves and surpasses all previous answers to questions 1 and 2 that religions around the world had come up with to date. Dawkins and other know-it-all atheists [5] pipe up, as Peterson says "with the intelligence of an above average 14 year old" [6], and proudly tell us that we can now safely cast aside religions (and perhaps the outdated concept of having 5 fingers..) entirely as historical niceties of illiterate savages. They feel a sense of warmth inside as they bask in their own intellectual superiority. They sell some books (though, strangely, not as many copies as the bible in the same period, or even the works of nutjob L Ron Hubbard). Science is hailed as the future and we all sit patiently waiting for the day science fills in the last couple of blanks when we can rest easy, knowing we have all the answers, the keys to universe.

So what's the problem?

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

As with the problem of choosing the first book in the poker game, this rationalistic view of the world fails to account for the difficulty of deriving strategy from simply knowing the rules. Even in man-made games like poker, chess or alpha go where we have known the entire rule set for hundreds of years, only now, with the aid of powerful supercomputers, are we honing in on theoretically perfect strategy. Before that the best you could do was ask your local card shark for advice or watch the old men down on the streets of Chinatown. Remember these are very simple games with simple rules and involving a very limited number of players. even if we did come up with a grand unifying theory of physics and a precise understanding of the human brain down the very last neurone, the complexity of any attempted calculation of significance would blow up before you had even scratched the surface.

The conclusion?

We should choose the second book. No matter how tattered. If we want to survive the scenario the best and only thing we can do is learn from ancient wisdom that has stood the test of time. A working knowledge rules can easily be deduced as you go, solid strategy cannot (at least for those of us not equipped with an intimate knowledge of game theory and an onboard cranial supercomputer). What does this mean for the 'game' of real life? It means that, if you want to survive, a historically-proven set of principles guiding how you act in the world is more important than all the modern science or technology there is. As Taleb says - 'survival comes first... science later'. Note this is in no way anti-science, nor implies that science and religion are mutually exclusive. It only demonstrates which is more important. So, next Carbonara-day, buckle up and follow your favourite Pastafarian down to his spaghetti-related place of worship [7]. When Dawkins comes knocking tell him this:

Mine not to reason why
Mine but to do, or die

Notes

[1] There are some traits not helpful to personal survival e.g. homosexuality. In these cases there must be some factor to do with increased survival rate for close genetic relatives (e.g. gay uncle hypothesis). The argument still holds if you take the family gene set rather than the individual gene set.
[2] Taleb on absorbing barriers:

[3] This is why anthropologists are so interested in remote tribes
[4] Note this means asking 'has religion done more harm than good' is logically equivalent to asking 'has having 5 fingers done more harm than good'.
[5] I was one of these not so long ago
[6] r/atheism explained
[7] other religions are available

*I'm not saying that you shouldn't be . I'm saying you don't need to feel bad for doing things you don't necessarily understand as long as they work