I was somewhat disappointed to find a lack of Magic: the Gathering players on LessWrong when I asked about it in the off-topic thread. You see, competitive Magic is one of the best, most demanding rationality battlefields that I know about. Furthermore, Magic is discussed extensively on the Internet, and many articles in which people try to explain how to become a better Magic player are, essentially, describing how to become more rational: how to better learn from experience, make judgments from noisy data, and (yes) overcome biases that interfere with one's ability to make better decisions.
Because people here don't play Magic, I can't simply link to those articles and say, "Here. Go read." I have to put everything into context, because Magic jargon has become its own language, distinct from English. Think I'm kidding? I was able to follow match coverage written in French using nothing but my knowledge of Magic-ese and what I remembered from my high school Spanish classes. Instead of simply linking, in order to give you the full effect, I'd have to undertake a project equivalent to translating a work in a foreign language.
So it is with great trepidation that I give you, untranslated, one of the "classics" of Magic literature.
Stuck In The Middle With Bruce by John F. Rizzo.
Now, John "Friggin'" Rizzo isn't one of the great Magic players. Far from it. He is, however, one of the great Magic writers, to the extent that the adjective "great" can be applied to someone who writes about Magic. His bizarre stream-of-consciousness writing style, personal stories, and strongly held opinions have made him a legend in the Magic community. "Stuck in the Middle with Bruce" is his most famous work, as incomprehensible as it may be to those who don't speak our language (and even to those that do).
So, why am I choosing to direct you to this particular piece of writing? Well, although Rizzo doesn't know much about winning, he knows an awful lot about what causes people to lose, and that's the topic of this particular piece - people's need to lose.
Does Bruce whisper into your ear, too?
I remember liking the Bruce article when I first saw it linked here. I wish I remember why.
That's the author's thesis. Your persistent problems, he says, are due to a facet of your mind that wants to lose and suffer persistently; not to suffer for exhilaration, like a man who enjoys the occasional nipple clamp, but to suffer as penance to the cosmos for being a wretched, worthless person, a person who wouldn't ever win in a just world, and so shouldn't win in this one. You shouldn't be allowed to succeed, he says, and somehow we learn that from people telling us "no".
There are a few types of "no"s that we hear throughout our lives. There are proscriptive rules for your health, like "Don't drink from the sump pump hose" or "Don't play on the roof". There are proscriptive rules with a more social theme like "Don't take your pants off in the mall" or "Don't ask that woman about her nose ring". Finally, there is occasional advice of infeasibility like, "Don't invest all your saving in an Indonesian record company" or "You're probably not smart enough to make it as an actuary."
The last type plausibly limits people from taking the rare weird but weirdly effective life decisions. Maybe.
Anyway, there are lots of reasons why people have problems. You're poor, you're dumb, you're sick, you're ugly, you were raised in a culture without a strong work ethic, you were born in the wrong month and got grouped into a class with more developed peers, and so on. You can get around a lot of that with enough effort, but such circumstances are still not trivial. Putting at the top of your list "my strategic behavior opposed to having a nice life" is a bold choice, not least because it calls a human strategic.
I've had low self esteem. That's not the unusual part. I've also wanted to make up for my mistakes. I even kind of understand the appeal behind self critical thoughts or the denial of impulses. But the combination of those three, of wanting to make up for existing as a inferior person by losing on purpose, is so foreign to me, and so sad. Even when I've had thoughts of suicide, it was always because life was unpleasant, not because my existence was a moral affront to the rest of reality. That depth of shame is just startling.
So startling I'm just going to say no. People don't have Bruces in their heads. Humans have lots of external causes of problems and our brains don't always work right to solve them as much as we might. Some people might even act in a Brucey way if they've been convinced they're infected with Bruce Syndrome, like a counter placebo. But until I see some much stronger evidence that people have semi-conscious, self-defeating agency by default and that it's a persistent cause of their life problems, I'm just dismissing it. Bye, Bruce.