The Absurdity of Games Part III

Part 1: Theabsurdity of Games

Part 2: Potluck with the boys

Part 3: The girls turn—Ad Victorem ire spolia

There are several ways to exact penalties on individuals for non-compliant behavior. I know that phrase sounds weirdly apocalyptic, one-world-government-ish, and Orwellian, but stick with it. One way this often plays out is that, financially, you can place a penalty on people for illegal behavior. Speeding tickets, improper building permits, testing U.S. Military prototypes in public waters without proper consultation of the Coast Guard, blowing up a port-a-potty, treating patients in a hospital without being a licensed "doctor", and making fun of the defendant while seated in the jury pool are all things I may or may not have been threatened with a fine for doing.

Financially, stiff penalties are a way to get people to comply with the rules and not speed through a construction zone, to wear a life jacket, to dot your i's and cross your t's on all your paperwork, or to not tell the defendant during jury selection he deserves to go to jail for being too stupid enough to delete incriminating text messages on his phone.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch orphanage, after playing our imaginary potluck game with the boys, it was time to play the game again, but this time with the girls. When I played with the boys, they went and told the girls the strategy to win, and I was quietly pleased that both genders had inferred that the object of the game was to finish with the most money—that if "To the victor go the spoils" holds true, then conversely the one with the most spoils must be The Victor. This is just another absurd premise I was in the process of breaking down during that day.

The second time through the game started much like the first. I was playing along as well. Having figured out how the game was played, the first round (week one of the potluck) each of the girls secretly wrote down her contribution and turned it over to me to tally. Much to nobody's surprise, not a single person gave any amount towards our "public good". The only person to give was me. That is to say, everybody showed up to the potluck with empty hands as we divided up my chili con carne, giving each one an equal, tiny portion.

However—here is the big shocking twist that absolutely nobody saw coming—after collecting everybody's (non-existent) contributions, I announced that anybody not giving the minimum amount would be fined $20 (an amount that would not count towards the group fund). That is to say, in our church potluck example, we you charged people who brought nothing with a price well exceeding the cost of furnishing your own meal, and then the money went to the missionary relief fund to support the starving kids in Africa rather than buying more food for the potluck.

So, fancy math aside, the girls were all fined and my $10 was meted out to all the players, each of whom received a lonely dollar in return. After the first round I stood with more money in my pocket than all the other girls. Silent, stunned faces surrounded me. It literally took about four minutes for this all to sink in. "So I didn't give anything. And now you're fining me? And now I have less than when I started? And you still have more? The first game you didn't give anything. Why didn't you get fined then? What do you mean the first game was different? Can we start this game over now that we all know? Let's just do that, all start fresh brand new. Can we do that? Why are you laughing? Laughing is not an answer."

Was it unfair to not announce that there would be penalties levied on those who didn't give? Maybe. Was I skewing the game to my advantage? Maybe. Was I doing it to teach a point? Yes.

After everybody calmed down a little bit, the second round of our game found everybody writing down their contributions. To absolutely nobodies surprise, everybody gave exactly the minimum amount of $10 and therefore received an equal portion of $10 in return. Everybody, when doing this finishes right where they started and neither gain nor lose money. Because of the first round and not being penalized I had more money and was therefore deemed to still be in the lead.

At this point there was a little consternation from the players. After much head scratching, we continued with the third round of the game. All of the girls, and myself, gave their minimum contribution of $10. The money was divided and returned and everyone else found themselves exactly where they started, with less money than me. This would be like if the third week of the church potluck the theme was italian and everybody brought the identical spaghetti and meatballs and the people who didn't bring money that first week are shocked and upset to discover that all the money they coughed up the first week wouldn't be returned to them now that they were contributing.

At this point, three or so of the girls became visibly upset. They asked to stop the game and asked me point blank if there was any way for them to get more money than me. There wasn't. They began to cry foul and say I twisted the game to my advantage (not true, but not...untrue). They threw their hands up and left the game declaring if they couldn't beat me there weren't going to play.

With that, the game ended as the other players simply asked if, knowing what everyone was going to contribute the next time if they even needed to bother playing because it wouldn't change the amount each person was left with. After most of the girls left the game, several that stayed asked how they could have won.

We played a new game from scratch between the three of us just to see. As we played it and everyone gave the same, minimum amount all the players finished with the same balance and nobody had any more or any less money than anybody else. This led the girls (and several of the boys still watching) to say that there was no way to win because everyone has the same amount.

Rather than challenging them on what the objective of the game was in order for someone to have won, I asked a far more fundamental question: in order for someone to win, does another have to lose?

The Absurdity of Games Part II

Part I: Theabsurdity of Games

Part II: Potluck with the boys

I like playing games with kids that emphasize two main points. The first point is that if you do good, you will reap what you sow. Do what Jesus said: love your neighbor as yourself, know good and do it, serve others, etc. The second point I like to teach the kids is much more controversial. If the first point is that good behavior has good rewards, the second is that bad behavior has greater rewards.

Imagine your church has a potluck. Somebody brings brings homemade lasagna and another a cobb salad and anther a chocolate cake. You bring a dozen, prime, top choice steaks! I bring nothing. You spend a hundred of dollars on steaks and another hour preparing and grilling them. As you enter the line I am coming back to the front to grab another paper plate because mine is folding under the weight of you steak and the lasagna.

By the time you get through the line you get a plateful of tuna casserole, brownie crumbles, and a pat on the back from Reverend Lovejoy because you have learned that "Truly, better ye that giveth than receiveth."

Let's say now that our imaginary church potluck, and your steaks, were such a success that the Reverend decided to do the same thing the whole rest of the month. This time one person brings cocktail weenies, another brings fruit salad, and you bring mini-hamburgers. Two other people, seeing that I got through the line last time having not brought any food myself, decide to join me and become the freeloaders and bring absolutely nothing.

We fleece your fruit, burgle your ham, and polish off the polishes. You go through the line last and wind up with a scoop of smashed bananas and half of an Oscar Meyer. You sit down looking at your half-empty plate Reverend Lovejoy pulls up a chair next to you, pats you on the back and says, "Blessed be ye that hunger and thirstest for righteousness."

Imagine that by the third week of the potluckathon the other families have caught on to my secret and decide to bring nothing and only eat others' food. This time the only person that brings anything is you and your deviled eggs. Being a little wiser, you made extras and stashed them at home in the fridge so you wouldn't be completely without. Reverend Lovejoy, instead of patting you on the back, quietly nudges you and whispers, "Deviled eggs isn't exactly subtle, is it?"

For the last week of the church potluck, you are fed up with your freeloading brothers and sisters in Christ and decided to not bring anything. To no one's surprise, no food was brought at all and everybody goes home hungry. Reverend Lovejoy is booed out of the pulpit after reminding the congregation that man doesn't live on bread alone.

This imaginary potluck disaster is a parallel to a game I played with the kids called the Public Goods game. The game revolves much in the same way, except in our game everyone started with an imaginary amount of money to contribute to the common good. Much like people deciding what to bring to a potluck, each player is player is left with a decision to make on how much to contribute to the our money pool. The monies in the pool were then distributed equally among all the players.

Each player started with "100" dollars. They were told that we were playing five rounds and each kid was told to secretly write down his contribution on a scrap of paper and pass it to me. Most kids donated around 15-20 (that would be those that brought tuna casserole and lasagna), one donated half his money (you and your steaks), and I donated zero, just like in the potluck. The money was returned equally to all the players, and about half found they were left with less money than when they started. Those who gave abundantly to the pool fund (potluck) were left with little in return comparatively. Those who gave nothing (me) after the money was given back had the highest total of everybody.

The second round of the game, about half of the people, seeing that I had attained the most money by nature of not giving any away, decided to join me in being Scrooges. The rest of the people that gave contributed significantly less to the potluck, noting that most had less money to draw from after the first round. After monies were pooled and divided out amongst everybody, by this point everybody noticed that I still had the most money and—equally important for our observations—those who gave the most were left with the least in their proverbial pocket.

The third round of the game, only one person contributed to the potluck. Nobody gave anything. In his defense, the one player that gave, out of the ten boys I played with, was by far the youngest and a little slow to pick up the object. At this point, they noticed that by only one person donating to the communal fund, there was little left when divided among all the players. At the next round, number four, the game essentially ended as all the players refused to contribute.

The Public Goods game is very limited in its scope. It is meant to simulate a real world example of people contributing towards a public good (a community park, taxes to fund a municipal bus system, a public school levy, war bonds, etc). The contributions by everyone differ, but everyone receives the same compensation as the money is divided equally amongst all players. The game is extremely capitalist and anti-socialist in nature—this is true of most Western economic games because these games reduce complex economies down to singular principles, often with of absurd results.

As the game ended everyone looked at their balance sheet. Having started all with the same $100, some were now at 60, most were around 90 or 100, some a little higher, and I had the most by far having not contributed ever and only receiving the same equal portion. The ten boys I was playing with all cried foul and started saying how wrong it was that I should win with the most money when I never contributed a cent the whole game. I rigged the game and it wasn't fair.

What I found odd was that I never told them the object of the game was to have the most money...

The absurdity of Games: Part I

Part 1: The absurdity of Games

I like to play games with the kids. I also play games on the kids, but those are mostly harmless and aimed at getting Jose and Jordao to remember to water the salt and chicken bones they planted in the garden. The games I play with the kids are not just soccer and cards and board games and house (yes, I play house). I like using games that are designed to reinforce certain behaviors and/or to illustrate and elucidate others. For example, if you remember playing heads-up-seven-up in grade school, it wasn't so much as a way to spend recess when it was raining. It was a way for your teacher to figure out who the cheaters were. Bet you didn't know that, did you?

Most of the games I play with the kids are derived from economics. Economics might be the dismal science, but economic games are great at illustrating principles like altruism and trust. Altruism isn't a naïve, touchy-feely, hippy term. I've touched on this before, and it's more akin to selfishness. I like defining it better by Galatians 6:10, "So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone." That's kind of a scary thought if you think about it. How many of you would have your lives turned upside-down if you followed that verse? But enough preaching...

Economic games are not like Monopoly or Shop Till You Drop, or where you have to name the right price for detergent on The Price Is Right. Most economic games are even simpler than that.

One game I played was rock paper scissors. Rock paper scissors is not an economics game, it is a children's game. That is why we played it with a twist. Everybody played against me twenty times and I only threw rock. With everyone watching, and seeing plainly that I only threw rock, the game is aimed at gauging if a person will jump in and trust that I will always throw rock, or if they will doubt me that I will play something else.

Almost half of the kids will, the first time, throw something other than paper (because paper beats my rock). Almost ALL of the kids except for three threw something other then paper within the first five turns, fearing all the while in the back of their minds that I would change my pick of rock and cut their paper with my scissors.

This game is simple and not to be taken as gospel. I'm sure if I played the game with a group of nuns there would be those that would mistrust and throw in a scissors every now and then. The fun part of the game becomes when I can single out the kid that lost to me—yes, in a game of rock-paper-scissors where I openly said I would only throw rock there was a kid that decided to throw scissors enough times to actually lose the majority of 20 matches—and ask him why he was doubting. The game becomes a microcosm for teaching other things.

The reason I like these games is that they reduce a principle I am trying to teach the kids down to an absurd level. Not absurd in the vulgar sense, like somebody eating a peanut butter and sardine sandwich, but absurd in the classical sense. If you have one beer and feel good, then two beers and feel better so you then absurdly reason that if one beer is good and two is better, then fifteen must be great. Pretty soon your liver is screaming in agony and you realize that while your logic was sound, your premise (beer=feeling good) was, at it's core, absurd.

This is how kids reason. Jose and Jordao see people put seeds in the garden and then bigger versions of those seeds sprout. This leads Jose and his brother to put chicken bones in the ground hoping that, like Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones, his chicken thigh would grown tendons and muscles and skin and feathers and grow into a chicken. His logic was sound—water it and it will grow. What was flawed was his premise—anything I put in the ground will grow.

And I'm all about breaking down the kids' absurd premises.

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille

The rain here is pretty straightforward. It either rains or it doesn't. Sometimes there will be a very light mist in the mornings, but those are pretty much the only three options. There isn't much variety.

In Seattle, there is rain, drizzle, sprinkles, mist, showers, scattered showers, scattered thunderstorms, thunderstorms. The Eskimos have nine words for snow. Seattle has forty-six for rain. Sometimes they will forecast morning showers, turning into sprinkles later on, and scattered thunderstorms in evening with rain for everybody else. (And then you wake up the next day and it is completely sunny the whole time.)

Here, most of the time here the rain will come in the afternoon and usually there is about an hour or so of warning before it happens. The hour is about the time it takes for the clouds to appear on the horizon till they get to wherever you are. Often, because of the heat and humidity you just kind of know when it is going to rain.

Sometimes it takes you a little off guard though. If the rain comes after dark there isn't that sudden temperature drop and chill in the air that accompanies these tropical rains.

When the rain starts, it isn't always few drops here or there that progresses into a larger rainstorm. Often the very minute the rain starts it hits full power and is enough to drench you to the bone in a matter of seconds. Often because of the speed with which the rains move it comes in full force the moment it starts falling. Still, because of the daytime sky turning to night and the temperature dropping by up to ten degrees (or 6 centigrade) in a matter of minutes there is ample warning.

The other warning sign that the rain is coming is the roar that the falling rain makes at it is approaching.

The only time in my life I've felt like I was in a scene was when I was with my brothers and I was driving across North Dakota doing 110mph on the interstate in our grandma's Ford Taurus blasting heavy metal through the speakers. It felt if the Dukes of Hazard met a direct-to-DVD sequel of The Fast and The Furious.

That all changed this week, when I felt like I was in a movie for the second time in my life. You know that stereotypical scene where the character(s) stand around and all of a sudden through the silence they see or hear the impending danger. Realizing this danger results in the character(s) running for dear life. Some examples can be found in:

• The Lord of the Rings (with John Rhys-Davies) when they are in the Mines of Moria and realize the balrog (that big fiery creature) is down there with them and they have to run from it.
• Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (with John Rhys-Davies and directed by Steven Spielberg) when in the very beginning Indie hears the rumble of the giant stone rolling to crush him, turns around wide-eyed, and then sprints for his life.
• Saving Private Ryan (directed by Steven Spielberg starring Tom Hanks) when they stop to help a villager in the rain and then hear the rat-a-tat of machine gun fire, panic, and scramble to take cover.
• Apollo 13 (starring Tom Hanks and BOOM KEVIN BACON!!!) when the astronauts here the warning alarms before hurrying like there's no tomorrow to put out a fire that is consuming all their oxygen.

My own movie moment was more like Honey I Shrunk the Kids when the aforementioned kids get caught in a hail of death-sized water drops when the sprinkler turns on.

It was one evening when I was sitting around with a bunch of kids discussing who-knows-what (plasma physics, probably) when we heard a rumble in the distance. This was not the kind of rumble that comes from thunder, this was more of a sustained din. After looking at one another, there was a dramatic pause (isn't there always) and somebody screamed "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAIN!!!".

At that point, the rain started pounding on the roof of the cafeteria and everybody bolted as fast as they could to run for shelter. For the boys, they had about 10 yards to sprint till they were in their dorm. The girls, maybe about fifty yards to the front of their house. Me? A full 100 yards to make it to my house. I grabbed my courage, put my head down, and sprinted as if my life depended on it. Did it? Not in the slightest. Was my adrenalin pumping all the same? A week has gone by and I'm still amped up!

I made it to my house dry, slammed the door behind me (for dramatic effect) and collapsed out of breath onto my couch (they should have just given me an Oscar right there) as my ever stoic roommate Daniel glanced up from his book and asked, "Rain, huh?"

The Sniffles

Call me crazy, but it just takes a long time to heal in Mozambique. I got the sniffles a week ago. I still have the sniffles. I also had a fever and headaches sore throat and everything else in between, but it's been over a week.

This is all purely anecdotal but everybody I've talked to seems to confirm it. I've have scabs and scars on my hand from two months ago, the equivalent of road rash. It was two months ago. I still have them. They just won't go away. Everybody I know that gets a cut or a scrape, even a simple one, will have it for at least a month. They are the type of cuts that after a week in the US you wouldn't even know I had it.

Even simple little things that you would never notice are different. I would have never thought of it had someone else not mentioned it, but when I'm in the U.S., even for my brief visit last year, if I go two days or so without shaving people start giving me glances telling me to clean up. Here I could go for about a week without even looking like I've stopped caring. It just doesn't grow the same. The same go for healing from sickness or wounds.

It seems every time I get sick it just never goes away. There is a difference between a scratchy throat that hangs on for a week and spending three days with a splitting headache and a fever. The latter is what I did. Luckily for me, I maintain my unquenchable foolishness optimism in the face of adversity. A group of kids came to visit me one day when I was pretty much out of it. I don't remember them coming to see me. When asked how my fever was I apparently replied, "It's not so bad. In fact, I'm thinking of asking it out on a second date."

I shut myself in for three days just trying to avoid moving any part of my body, bright sunlight (is there any other kind) and getting anybody else sick along with me. So how did I pass my time? The same way I always pass my time when I'm sick: Watching Star Wars. All of them. In french. That last part is kind of new thing because the copy of Star Wars I got my hands on is only in French. "Louis, je suis ton père," needs no translation.

Now I'm pretty much left with a dripping nose and a sore throat. The only advantage is that I'm able to sing along with all my Johnny Cash records now. Even the bottom register of "I Walk The Line".