I’m back up about a pound. It’s not as bad as I expected given the massive cheat day in the mountains. And I’m still 1.2 pounds below the last peak high and trending overall in the right direction – down. Today’s blog is going to take a bit of a departure from sobriety, binge drinking, alcoholism, weed, impermanence, or the other topics we usually cover here. Today and tomorrow we’re going to talk about Candyland!
Zero+; Single ; M: 111 ; C: 74 ; P/U: 50 ; W : 3.5 mi
Health R.O.S.
- Weight: 211.3
- BMI: 28.6
- Fat %: 21.9
Candyland, Deja Vu, & Fate
On my morning hike I contemplated fate. This was partially influenced by a documentary I watched last night about a group of CIA agents who made $120,000 in the stock market back in the 1980s. They made this money after they claimed they could see how the stock market would perform in the future using certain third eye meditation techniques.
What interests me about this concept is not whether it actually happened, but rather the idea that we live in a universe of fixed and predetermined outcomes, that free will is an illusion.
This led me to a consideration of card games as a proxy for predetermination. If we consider that the act of shuffling the cards randomizes their order and therefore determines how those cards are dealt and/or later drawn, there is little doubt that shuffling ultimately influences the outcome of the game.
There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.
– John Lennon
Three Card Games
For this thought experiment, let’s look at three card games: Poker, 21, & Candyland. Yes, Candyland is a card game that makes use of gameboard and tokens.
In all three cases, the dealer shuffles the cards. With poker and 21 (BlackJack) the cards are dealt to the players. In Candyland, players draw cards beginning with the youngest player.
So, here’s the big question: Is life more like poker, 21, or Candyland?
In poker, there’s the shuffle, the deal, the odds, order of play, and intangibles like bluffing (essentially pretending you have a better hand than you actually do).
With 21, there’s the shuffle, the deal, the odds, and whether players understand and play the odds or not.
But with Candyland, there is only the shuffle. The cards are in whatever final order they are in. After the shuffle, the only determining factor is who draws the first card. Once the first card is drawn, the outcome is predetermined. Unlike poker or 21, there is no influencing the outcome by bluffing or strictly playing the odds. There are no odds. The winner is determined (though not yet revealed) by whoever draws the first card.
Influencing the Game Of Life
In 21, more commonly called blackjack, whether or not you take a card when the dealer is showing a 2 (assuming 12) is your choice. It very much depends on what’s in your hand, and whether you understand the odds in the first place. But if you do understand the odds and play strictly by them (and maybe count cards if it’s a one deck game), you’re going to guess right more often than you guess wrong. This means, strictly speaking, you’ll win more than you’ll lose.
With poker, if you know the odds, bets, when to call, and add in the complexity of psychological components like bluffing, the game gets very complex and unpredictable. Yet, there are those who master this game and all its complexity. ESPN hosts tournaments with such poker masters. In this way, poker most mimics life.
How? It seems to me that most people are dealt a hand and then spend most of their time placing their bets and bluffing their way through life while calling everyone else out. But instead of cards they use jobs, diplomas, cars, houses, vacations, curated social media, and the like. Some even appear to make their way to the top through their mastery of betting, bluffing, and playing the odds. Yet, is this just an illusion? Was their outcome predetermined?
Neither poker nor 21 address the issue of predetermination very well since either can be greatly influenced by the players. In this regard, only Candyland is different.
And that, my friends, is a blog for another day.
The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
– Ambrose Bierce
