When I was a teenager, I had a neighbor who used to sometimes “find” things. By find things, I mean he used to steal them. He got in trouble numerous times with his school, with his family, and he even spent some time in jail. Still, his luck at “finding” things never ceased. One day, I overheard him bragging that he’d stolen something from where he worked. Though it’s a question that has never ceased getting me in trouble, I couldn’t help but to ask, “Why?” Specifically, “Why would you do such a thing?”
I have never forgotten his answer: “Hey, they OWED me! I should’ve gotten a raise by now!”
Despite my parenthetical mention of it in the title, this is not an article about cheating. Not really. It’s just that I have wanted to talk about cognitive dissonance for a long time, and it’s kind of hard to do that without relating it to cheating at some point. Lying, cheating, and stealing are all defended with excuses, which are basically just more lies, and those lies are all the more heinous when we tell them to ourselves. But cognitive dissonance doesn’t stop at immoral behavior; it pervades all areas of life, whenever we make an excuse for anything we don’t wish to accept as it is.
Sometimes we just call that The Uncomfortable Truth.
Cognitive dissonance happens when a person holds ideas or beliefs that are contradictory. This can create confusion and discomfort, which causes them to reduce this “dissonance” between their “cognitions” by changing their ideas or adding new ones. In my example above, my neighbor knows that stealing is wrong and he has stolen. In order to avoid the inescapable conclusion that he is in the wrong, he has added a new idea: it was really he who was treated unjustly. His employer is the bad guy; therefore they deserve to pay.
I should remind you all that Robin Hood did not steal from the rich to give to himself. This sort of thinking leads to some pretty unfortunate ideologies. It doesn’t help us win more at Magic either.
Imagine a player who thinks that he should’ve qualified for the Pro Tour by now. He’s played in a ton of PTQs, made a bunch of Top 8s, but he keeps falling short. The obvious conclusion is that he is just not good enough. If you’re talking about a small sample size, maybe he’s just been unlucky, but if he’s made a really solid and sustained attempt and still can’t do it, then it’s possible, even probable, that he just needs work. Yet, it is pretty rare in the Magic community to hear someone admit this.
In my article, “Seeking Advice,” which can be found here, I mentioned how one has to remain humble and remember that we don’t know everything in order to stay open to new experiences and lessons. This habit of constantly looking at myself in the mirror and seeking the core truth is the foundation of what has made me a good player. I, too, occasionally fall victim to blaming mana screw or a bad matchup, but it has never helped me to get better by focusing on the things I can’t change.
Imagine living your whole life like that. Indeed, I’ve known many people who do. At one point, I was probably one of them.
Recently, I was sharing some stories about my life and reflecting back on them with a friend. We both had a good laugh about a few things, especially when it hit me that this incredibly awesome life that I have is actually full of sinkholes of misfortune, looking to suck me into their negative clutches.
If you think about that, it might seem kind of strange because usually we want to go the other direction: to imagine that our lives are better than they appear. I have to admit it was a kind of unusual realization that, while I had come to the conclusion that my life is awesome, someone else in my shoes could’ve easily reached a completely opposite conclusion.
You have to trust me when I say that years ago, I really was a negative person (I still have my moments; one is never totally “cured!”), but when it is shocking that someone could think something negative about your positive experience, that is when you know you’ve made it.
As an example, I suspect that I might get ridiculed for sharing thoughts like that. I can already read the forum posts in my mind: “What does this have to do with Magic?”, “I already know this stuff,” “Where are the decklists?”, but that will only serve to illustrate my point. There will always be people who focus on the negative. But I’m trying really hard to share something profound here. I am putting it out there because I believe in it as a useful truth that will help you get better at Magic.
I believe it is the key to my success, not just at cards, but at everything I’ve done and will ever do. Having that knowledge is valuable; no price can be put on it. Please don’t be so quick to dismiss it.
The thing that cognitive dissonance teaches us is that we sometimes deceive ourselves so that we feel better. That is quite a thing to know if you think about it, and if you do know that, you can train yourself to catch when you do it. Now the advantages of that are endless, not the least of which is beginning to understand what is REALLY going on, not just in Magic, but in your own lives.
Strip away the mana screws, and a lot of what you might have are hands you should’ve mulliganed.
A friend of mine once said, “I can’t get a job because I don’t have a car, and I can’t get a car because I don’t have a job!”
Think about that. It’s a metaphor.
It sort of sounds halfway rational, but, at its core, it is just absurd. As human beings, we are never that helpless.
It’s also almost always wrong to think we have the number of courses of action we have. Whether we think there is only one thing we can do or a hundred, I can guarantee you, in most cases, we can do even more.
Patrick Chapin once linked this video, and I’m going to share it again here because I thought it was something really interesting and thought-provoking, especially the part about divergent thinking.
Let’s go back to my example of the guy who stole from his work. Imagine that we put his thinking into some kind of formal logic.
Premise: Stealing is wrong.
Premise: My employer is not paying me enough.
This in itself can’t lead logically to stealing from his employer, since stealing would still be wrong. Maybe there are other ideas at play—
Premise: Money that’s owed to me is my money.
Premise: You can’t steal something that is already yours.
Inference: Since my employer is not paying me enough, he owes it to me.
Inference: Since it’s owed to me, it is my money.
Inference: And since you can’t steal something that’s already yours…
Conclusion: Therefore, it’s not really stealing to take money (or equivalent goods, I guess…) from my employer.
Now, I just know there is going to be someone reading this who majors in this stuff and is going to nitpick this, but it’s really just a rough draft to illustrate a point. There is a logic at play (even if we have to struggle to understand it…).
What’s important is that we see how and why the argument breaks down.
First of all, the most blatant observation to make is that his employer didn’t owe him anything; after all, he’s stealing! He shouldn’t even have a job! No, he can’t argue that “they started it.” There is nothing about his character or performance that would suggest that he was EVER deserving of a raise.
Secondly, and why I posted the link to the video about “Changing Education Paradigms” and divergent thinking, is that the whole argument supposes that the employer was in the wrong and that stealing was the only relief from it. In reality, he could’ve done what most people would do if they felt their employer wasn’t paying him enough; he should’ve quit. It is a free country, and it is his right. There is nobody making him work there, and certainly nobody is making him steal.
This is one of the problems we get into with our “either-or” thinking. And it will cost us games. It will also let people manipulate us (but that’s a whole other story…). It’s a logical fallacy called a false dichotomy. If I told you that someone was either lying or telling the truth, that would be a false dichotomy. It’s also possible that someone is telling the truth (as they see it) and is just genuinely mistaken.
I remember the PTQ Top 8 game where I was at one life, had a Bitterblossom out, and had an Ajani Goldmane. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but it continues to provide the same excellent reminder of some of the lessons I’m trying to teach. Here the lesson is that I had more options than—
- Not gain life. Lose.
- Gain life. Probably still lose.
I literally could’ve made the choice to win, then and there from this “hopeless” scenario if I had not gotten “locked in” with my way of thinking. Option a) is really not even an option at all. Why would you NOT use a planeswalker’s ability every turn if you have one in play? So naturally I b) Probably still lose.
Just some of the other lessons that this ONE game taught me are:
- Don’t get too comfortable.
- Have less narrow sideboard cards.
- Practice more.
- Keep my eyes on the prize.
- And even good players make mistakes.
The last one is particularly difficult. It is really hard to not beat yourself up after you make a bad misplay, especially that costs you a game, especially with lots of people watching. None of that matters. Nobody is infallible. Don’t hold yourself to a standard that is unachievable. Perfection can be attained… maybe. For a match, for a game, just for a single turn. But over the course of turns, and games, and matches, and tournaments, and years and years of playing, you are going to screw up, many, many times.
So, conversely, don’t expect a pro to be some kind of superhuman either.
Most importantly, don’t tell yourself lies so that you can feel better. Without seeing the world as it is, we can’t adapt to face the challenges of the world as it is.
Which brings me back to my original topic of cognitive dissonance (we’ve never really left, I’m tricky like that…).
I’m not going to tell you that there aren’t games where there was nothing you could do. Magic is a game of luck as well as skill so we have to know that sometimes the worse player is going to win. On the other hand, those games are MUCH rarer than you think. You probably wouldn’t play ten in the same day, let alone ten in a row, so if you keep losing, something is going on beyond that.
Not only are helpless games statistically rare, we don’t gain anything from writing them off that way. Also, if someone makes a mistake, be it you or someone else, it doesn’t mean they suck. I was such an arrogant, impertinent child that I walked out of my first grade classroom when my teacher misspelled something! I felt she wasn’t fit to teach me!
Everyone is fallible; nobody is perfect, but that doesn’t mean they can’t teach you something anyway.
Don’t let a truth, that Magic is a game, lead you to the slight variant of that, that Magic is JUST a game, because that is the lie, the cognitive dissonance. It’s a highly suspect phrase that reeks of the discomfort created by the two ideas: I want to win at Magic, and I do not win very often at Magic. It is not unlike the fox in Aesop’s fables who wants the grapes but decides they aren’t worth the effort just because he can find no way to reach them.
One big difference in Magic is that the grapes are not what we desire; we want the ability to reach the grapes. That is where the thinking of a cheater breaks down and separates them from the rest of us. The prize is just a thing. Most of us want to be the best (even if for a single day, for a single tournament), and the prize tells everyone, and, more importantly, it tells ourselves that we succeeded.
I suppose the great thing about cognitive dissonance is that it allows the liars, the thieves, and the cheaters of this world to sleep with themselves. Maybe cheaters suppose they’re the possessors of a special skill set? Kind of playing a different game, I guess. Not like playing chess when their opponent is playing checkers but more like playing tackle football when their opponent is playing chess…
Look at it this way; someone might take someone’s money by force, and, if they do, they have that person’s money, but it’s absurd to think that they are going to brag about “winning it.” And if this was their idea of “success,” they’re going to keep doing it, and eventually they’re going to get caught. Very –EV in the long run when you consider the far-reaching ramifications, not the least of which is that they won’t ever be able to “play” again.
When it comes to things having to do with morality, I like a concept taught by the ancient druids called “Right Action,” which is doing what one knows is right and not merely what one wishes to be right.
At her first Grand Prix, I watched Jamie play a card as an instant that was really a sorcery. If she had played it as a sorcery, she would’ve been in pretty good shape, but, for some reason, she had thought it was an instant. Her opponent didn’t even notice and let her make the play. He was a really well-known player by the way, proving not only that everyone is fallible but that everyone can still make basic mistakes.
Since I was a spectator and I had witnessed something amiss, I had an obligation to act. But what should I do? I had only a second to decide, and it may not seem like a tough call to some of you, but I admit that, for just an instant, I fervently wished I hadn’t seen anything at all, and I wanted to just pretend that I hadn’t. I’m proud to say that I did stop the match, and Jamie lost because of it.
I wasn’t sure how she would react in that situation. Would she be really mad? Would she not want me to ever watch her games again? I was being dumb and really didn’t give her enough credit. Sure, IF she had played the card correctly, she probably would’ve won, BUT she didn’t, and she didn’t deserve to. Being the good and gracious person she is, she never thought or argued otherwise. She marked her loss on the match slip and shook her opponent’s hand.
Score 1 us. Cognitive dissonance 0!
The right thing is not always easy, whether we’re talking about morality or a play. Just be honest with yourself and don’t get caught up in believing you only have X options. It is rare that we are caught up helplessly in an inescapable vortex. That’s why so many self-help books and groups quote the Serenity Prayer:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
Or, in the words of the druids:
“Three things avoided by the wise: desiring the unattainable, grieving over the irretrievable, and fearing the inevitable.”
Don’t fret over the things you can’t change, but don’t succumb to cognitive dissonance and lie to yourself.
Some things you can’t change. Most things, you can.