Having already read and thoroughly enjoyed Maria Konnikova’s two previous books,[1] I pre-ordered her newest book as soon as I learned about it. The Biggest Bluff did not disappoint. I believe it’s her best book yet, and I thoroughly recommend it.
First, let me summarize what it’s about. Konnikova is a psychology PhD who studies human cognition and decision making. In 2016, for various professional and personal reasons, she set herself the challenge of learning how to play poker from scratch, with the hugely ambitious goal of finishing in the money at a World Series of Poker event—within one year.
What strengths did she bring to the table? A strong academic grasp of the science of decision-making; an deep capacity to learn; and, most importantly, a humble recognition of her own ignorance. Not least, she chose her teacher wisely: Erik Seidel, a legendary poker champion who also has an incredible gift for teaching.
Reading The Biggest Bluff is like peeling an onion, because there are at least four layers to this deep book.
On the surface, The Biggest Bluff is about poker. I don’t play poker, so I can’t comment on how well it does its job. I did have trouble following some of the descriptions of certain hands she played, but those few instances do not detract from following the often suspenseful action and grasping the meaning of what’s going on.
Second, it’s a book about psychology, and the primary reason I bought the book. It’s one thing to study decision-making using other subjects in a laboratory setting; it’s another challenge entirely to study it under unrelenting time pressure, intimidation, using yourself as the test subject, with real money at stake. Konnikova learns and teaches useful insights about attention, emotional control, working with your own cognitive biases, reading people, and acquiring expertise. If the book had stopped here, I would have still considered it well worth reading. The next two layers are an unexpected bonus.
Third, The Biggest Bluff is a memoir that reads like a novel, a hero’s journey of self-discovery and personal transformation. As a neophyte, she had to adapt and learn quickly in order to survive her quest. As a woman in the heavily male-dominated world of poker, she had to learn to endure appalling insults and attempts at intimidation; Although it took longer than her initial one-year target, she ultimately fulfills her quest, but gains far more than she intended when she began. And something tells me that Konnikova’s journey is not over yet.
The fourth layer, and the one that resonated most strongly with me personally, is as a philosophy book, particularly Stoic philosophy. I’m not sure if she meant it that way. She only mentions the stoics once, near the end of the book, but their philosophy weaves throughout the book. Three key themes of stoicism are also key themes in this book: knowing what you can and can’t control; managing your perception and interpretation of reality; and staying calm and rational whether you’re winning or losing, especially the latter.
I strongly recommend you read this book if you’re interested in any one of the layers. You may even find other layers I’ve missed.
[1] Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes and The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It…Every Time,
When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. It’s one of the oldest clichés in the book. The problem with clichés is that we hear them so often that we tune them out, which is sometimes a pity because there’s usually a reason they became clichés in the first place. They contain a deep and clear truth—if we just take the time to dip below the surface.
2020 has produced a bumper crop of lemons for most of us, so what better time than now to dive into the philosophy of that old adage?
But it helps when you have an experienced guide to show you the way. Tom Morris has a singular ability to start with a simple truth, examine it carefully for 275 pages, and produce something that’s wise, highly readable, and especially useful at this time.
The point in Plato’s Lemonade Stand is to show you explicitly how to deal with change. How do you explain the recipe without resorting to yet more shallow clichés and easy advice? You start a conversation with the great minds in history. Plato doesn’t actually appear too much in the book, but his name is a proxy for a long litany of thinkers throughout history whose wisdom Morris taps for this book including Plato’s teacher Socrates and student Aristotle, continuing with the New Testament, and ending up with Harry Potter. As change books go, Plato’s Lemonade Stand is orders of magnitude more fulfilling than, say, Who Moved My Cheese?
Life is full of change, and it’s not always positive. We want strawberries or peaches, but we get lemons instead. Grit and resilience will help us deal with the sour taste, but we can also add sweetener in the form of perspective, self-control and positive action. These are covered extensively in the first two-thirds of the book. If the book ended here, it would be well worth the price for the help it can give anyone struggling to deal with the current crisis, or any other adverse circumstances they face.
But there’s more to the story than that. There are two forms of change: that which happens to us, and that which happens because of us. The second section of the book is about the latter.
It’s one thing to change when you don’t have much choice in the matter; you have to play defense. But sometimes it may be harder to play offense—to initiate change when things are going well. In one of the more compelling metaphors in the book, Morris teaches that when you finally reach a peak that you’ve aspired to climb for a long time, you will inevitably spot a higher peak in the distance. But here’s the rub: you can’t start climbing the second peak without first going downhill from the first. It definitely won’t be easy, and it can be tempting to just decide that the hill you’re on is good enough.
But if you decide to embark on the effort, you need to accept being a beginner, struggling with the unfamiliar, being scared and tested all over again, which is why G.K. Chesterton said, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”
If I have a quibble with the book, it’s that I would have liked to see more about self-initiated change. To be fair, Morris covers a lot of that ground well in some of his previous books, especially True Success. And maybe he’s saving for a sequel. He hints at that on the next to last page, with one last surprising truth—which I won’t spoil in this review.
If you’ve read anything by Tom Morris before, you will encounter some familiar ideas, particularly his 7 Cs of Success. But that’s not a bug, it’s a feature, because anything worth knowing is worth repeating and refreshing from time to time. If you haven’t read anything by Tom Morris before, do yourself a big favor, starting with Plato’s Lemonade Stand.
I’ve always thought of books as tools. Every book serves some sort of function. In the big picture, the book may entertain, or inspire, or instruct. The books I list below have done all three functions for me in the past, and each has also benefited me in a specific way.
I’ve selected them because they may be especially useful during this time. I’ve listed them by function—eight ways to cope and even thrive during your enforced isolation:
Improve your habits
Whether you intend to or not, you will acquire new habits now that you’re stuck at home. You might as well have a say in what those habits are. Atomic Habits, by James Clear, will show you how to break bad habits and instill good ones. I previously reviewed it here.
Focus on what’s essential
While it may seem like you have more time on your hands, it’s so easy to fritter it away with trivialities. Essentialism, by Greg McKeown, will help you figure out what’s important and then cut out everything that does not directly contribute to that. I previously reviewed it here.
Work deeper
Chances are, you have much better control of your own schedule, without random people popping their heads into your cubicle or office. Now is a perfect time to improve your own productivity and creativity by immersing yourself deeply into your work, and Cal Newport shows you how in Deep Work.
Deal with stress
Stress is another constant that you can’t avoid, but did you know that stress can be good for you? The Upside of Stress, by Kelly McGonigal will show you why and how. I previously reviewed it here.
Put things in perspective
There is no better time than now to become acquainted with stoic philosophy. You should eventually learn about it from Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, but The Obstacle is the Way, by Ryan Holiday, is a very accessible starting point.
Give back
When everybody is hurting, some give and some take. Giving is better, not only morally, but also personally, but in Give and Take, Adam Grant gives solid advice on how to get more by giving more through networking, collaborating, developing talent, and communicating. I previously reviewed it here.
Filter out fact from fiction
We’re being flooded with a torrent of misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies, and unfortunately our minds register the bad news stronger than the good. Factfulness, by the late Hans Rosling, will give you a mental toolkit to think more clearly—and realistically. I previously reviewed it here.
Get better
If you plan on taking time to learn a new skill or perfect an existing one, Practice Perfect can show you 42 best practices to improve you practice. I previously reviewed it here.
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On a scale of 1-10, how good are you at spotting when others are trying to scam you?
If you rated yourself higher than a five, you’d better stay with me for this entire post. It’s a story of some very smart people—people who should have known better—who were fooled for a very long time and lost millions of dollars in the process.
I’m switching sides for at least one episode because I’ve recently become fascinated by how con artists work. I first became interested when I was preparing for my podcast on instant trust, and I read a book called The Confidence Game, by Maria Konnikova, At about the same time, my son recommended that I read Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, by John Carreyrou. Both books are stark reminders that persuasive communication can be used for evil as well as for good, and it’s helpful to know how people pull off cons that seem unbelievable in retrospect.
Let’s start with Bad Blood. In a nutshell, the story is this: a company named Theranos started by an attractive and charismatic 19-year-old Stanford dropout sets out in 2003 to make a huge dent in the universe of healthcare by developing a revolutionary technology that makes it possible to perform hundreds of blood tests using a single drop of blood. It’s a powerful promise, and it attracts investors from professors, seasoned tech entrepreneurs, and the likes of former Secretary of State George Shultz, retired General James Mattis, Henry Kissinger, Rupert Murdoch, and also signs contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars with Walgreens and Safeway. The company raked in over $700 million in capital and was valued at one time at $9 billion, making its founder Elizabeth Holmes the youngest self-made billionaire in history.
Holmes may have initially had sincere aspirations to deliver on her dream, but somewhere along the way it turned into a big, bad, elaborate deception. It finally got exposed and began crashing down in 2015, when Carreyrou wrote about it in the Wall Street Journal.
How did a company fool so many sophisticated people for so long? If people with such smarts and experience can be so easily fooled for so long, what hope is there for us ordinary mortals? Actually, as I will talk about, being smart is not necessarily a defense. In fact, being of above average intelligence may actually be a liability.
I believe any elaborate deception requires active participation by both sides in the transaction. This is no way implies that there is anywhere near moral equivalence between someone who deliberately sets out to deceive and their victims, but the thoughts and behaviors of the victims are certainly contributing factors. Let’s look at both sides and see how Elizabeth Holmes was able to pull it off for so long:
- She was extremely charismatic. very intense way of looking at someone; spoke with great sincerity and conviction
- She looked the part. She fit the story she was telling, and people had heard the story before: the gifted passionate dropout who transformed an entire industry, a la Bill Gates and especially Steve Jobs. In fact, she encouraged the similarity by dressing only in black turtlenecks.
- She was totally ruthless with the truth. Could easily look someone in the eyes and tell the most outlandish lies.
- She showed no empathy or conscience. She was willing to do anything to protect her version of the story, from hiring lawyers to intimidate and harass those who expressed doubts to even putting patients at risk.
Even smart people fall into common mental traps
Even the most analytical and careful thinkers take shortcuts or bend to certain biases, and here are just a few of the factors that Holmes exploited.
Social proof. Even smart people don’t have time to research the biochemistry of blood analysis, so they take a shortcut by relying on the words and actins of people they trust.
Halo effect. When someone exhibits positive outward qualities, such as looking and sounding professional and competent, it’s much easier to think they’re good at other things as well, such as being a good manager or scientist.
Confirmation bias. Once you build an attractive story in your mind, it’s almost guaranteed that you will ignore evidence that does not fit that narrative, or you will find convenient explanations.
Fear of Missing Out. If you’re Walgreen’s and you don’t take the plunge, what happens if CVS does and makes millions?
Highly intelligent people may be more vulnerable
Anyone can fall into the mental traps listed above, but highly intelligent people also have two additional handicaps, which may make them even more vulnerable.
Ricky Jay, a professional magician, says, “For me, the ideal audience would be Novel Prize winners…their egos tell them they can’t be fooled.”
But one Nobel prize winner, Richard Feynman, said, “The first principle is not to fool yourself. And you’re the easiest person to fool.” And keep in mind that he was speaking to the 1974 graduating class of CalTech when he said that.
What makes smart people so easy to fool? First, it goes to what Ricky Jay said. They know they’re smart, so they think they can’t be fooled. They don’t actually imagine that the person sitting across from them is smarter than they are (at least in this particular situation). That means that they won’t even listen when someone tells them they’re wrong. George Shultz’s own grandson was one of the first to blow the whistle on what they were doing, and Shultz sided with Holmes. He actually told his own grandson, “I don’t think you’re dumb, but I do think you’re wrong.”
Second, smart people are very clever at coming up with rational explanations for things that don’t look right. No peer reviewed journals? That’s because it prevents others stealing their advanced ideas. Negative press? That’s caused by competitors trying to stop them. Missed deliveries? That’s because of the earthquake in Japan. Those types of explanations are easier to think of than the simple fact that they may just be wrong.
So, what can you do about it?
- Konnikova says the key to resisting persuasion is to have “a strong, unshakeable, even, sense of self. Know who you are no matter what, and hold on to that no matter what.”
- Be objective. There’s a simple hack to help you distance yourself emotionally from the decision. Pretend that someone you know came up to you and asked your advice on whether to invest or not.
- Have an exit script. If you start losing money it can be tempting to throw more in to salvage it. Know what your limits are before you enter into the transaction and stick to it.
- Be very suspicious of secrecy and time pressure.
- Search for disconfirming information; actively search for evidence that you may be wrong.
OK, now that I’ve armed you with the tools, go ahead and listen to the rest of the podcast and see if you pass the test at the end!
