Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
Speaker 1: better decisions. I'm Maria Kannakova and.
Speaker 2: I'm Nate Silver. So today in typical high low fashion
Speaker 2: Risky Business, We're going to start out with one of
Speaker 2: the most serious topics in the world right now, Iran.
Speaker 2: We're going to navigate carefully around this, in fact, talking
Speaker 2: about how is an American citizen? Let alone podcast co
Speaker 2: host We're trying to navigate things where we don't know
Speaker 2: a lot of the parameters and think about a little
Speaker 2: bit about the domestic conflicts, but also the the strategy
Speaker 2: that Trump faces and the potential for good and bad
Speaker 2: decision making.
Speaker 1: And after that we're gonna do a one eighty and
Speaker 1: talk about poker and what's been going on at the
Speaker 1: World Series, how Nate and I have been doing, and
Speaker 1: some angle shooting and other controversies that have arisen in
Speaker 1: the past week. Because what would a World Series be
Speaker 1: without a controversy a week.
Speaker 2: Let's get into it, Nate.
Speaker 1: We tape this show on Tuesdays. It's Tuesday, June twenty fourth.
Speaker 1: You won't hear this until Thursday, and we always have
Speaker 1: this caveat. But with the situation in Iran right now,
Speaker 1: I think that caveat is extra important because just's changing
Speaker 1: every second. Right So this happens all the time in
Speaker 1: military conflicts, in wars, but in this particular situation, when
Speaker 1: there's so much unknown, so much uncertainty, so much ambiguity,
Speaker 1: where it's so difficult to make judgments, the fact that
Speaker 1: we just don't know what's going on, and that the
Speaker 1: situation keeps changing hour by hour really makes it difficult.
Speaker 1: But as of now, we have Trump having announced on
Speaker 1: truth social that there's a East fire, having successfully bullied
Speaker 1: both sides, just saying okay, okay, we'll have a ceasefire
Speaker 1: at least as of now Tuesday morning. We'll see how
Speaker 1: how this ages on Thursday, but that's where we currently are.
Speaker 1: So just a little bit of a recap in case
Speaker 1: you haven't been following the news at all. The US
Speaker 1: bombed three strategic nuclear sites in Iran. It was a
Speaker 1: successful mission, but maybe not as successful as Trump initially
Speaker 1: made it out to be. Iran retaliated by hitting a
Speaker 1: base the largest US military base the Middle East, in Qatar,
Speaker 1: gave the US ample warning, and Israel and Aron have
Speaker 1: been exchanging strikes up until Tuesday. Morning, where Trump is like,
Speaker 1: Israel stop and Iran stop, there's a ceasefire, and you're
Speaker 1: going to agree to it. So that's where we are
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, for better or worse. Markets are upfices
Speaker 2: again Tuesday morning, Vegas time, Tuesday afternoon East Coast time.
Speaker 2: When we're taping this market sere up. They seem to
Speaker 2: put some credence in the news. Oil prices are back
Speaker 2: down again. I believe it is a little funny because
Speaker 2: like the heuristic had been taco Trump always chickens out,
Speaker 2: which I think was kind of poorly formed. Right, I
Speaker 2: think Trump is Okay, We're already getting into controversial territory.
Speaker 2: I think Trump is more quote unquote rational. We can
Speaker 2: debate what rational means about some of this stuff than
Speaker 2: he's sometimes given credit for. Right, he backs off when
Speaker 2: he has a losing hand. Here, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: there was apparently we're going to talk about like the
Speaker 2: way Americans feel about this and the splits in the
Speaker 2: Republican Party, right, you know, here there was apparently some
Speaker 2: dissent in the cabinet. Tulsa Gabbard was afraid of doing
Speaker 2: anything mean to Iran. Apparently this is not something that
Speaker 2: Putin likes either.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You know, the Republican Party also has a very complicated
Speaker 2: relationship with the State of Israel, as does America in general,
Speaker 2: and liberals and Democrats as well in their own way.
Speaker 2: But this does appear to have been a Trump decision.
Speaker 2: This is not a case like our previous president, President Biden,
Speaker 2: who was maybe outsourcing a lot of high level decision
Speaker 2: making to members of his cabinet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so on risky business, you know, we're all about
Speaker 1: good decision analysis, Right, How do you analyze the risk?
Speaker 1: How do you kind of weigh all the factors to
Speaker 1: decide correctly? And in situations like this, like the simple
Speaker 1: truth is that we don't have the information, right, no
Speaker 1: one has the information when you're reading analyzes, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's in the New York Times or a Foreign
Speaker 1: Policy BBC wherever it is, nobody has the facts and
Speaker 1: we won't have them until much later on. Right, These
Speaker 1: are the sorts of decisions that are analyzed well in
Speaker 1: retrospect by historians when you know, there are things that
Speaker 1: have become declassified, when we know more about what happens
Speaker 1: when the people who were in the room actually start
Speaker 1: talking and right, now we simply don't know. So all
Speaker 1: of these analyzes we've talked before on the show about biases,
Speaker 1: about motivated reasoning, about you know, availability, heuristics, and all
Speaker 1: of these things, and that's I really don't want to
Speaker 1: add to that because I think that people right now
Speaker 1: are being biased by their political leanings, their presuppositions when
Speaker 1: it comes to Iran, the United States should we get involved,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And that is obviously I think tinting their
Speaker 1: analysis in one direction or in another and showing how
Speaker 1: they selectively process information. And so I think that on
Speaker 1: this show, we don't want to do that, right, We're
Speaker 1: not in the business of speculating on people in that
Speaker 1: sort of sense. That's bad decision analysis. And so for now,
Speaker 1: I think what we can focus on is on the
Speaker 1: things that we do now, and as you know, as
Speaker 1: responsible citizens. I think this is what Nate was alluding
Speaker 1: to earlier. You often are in situations, right, this is
Speaker 1: like the extreme of the unknowns because it's a foreign
Speaker 1: policy decision. It was a military strike. Right, everything is classified,
Speaker 1: like we really have no idea what the hell's going on.
Speaker 1: We don't know what the intelligence is, we don't know
Speaker 1: anything but we have to make decisions all the time.
Speaker 1: We're in a democracy, so we vote, So we need
Speaker 1: to kind of try to figure out what do we
Speaker 1: do as citizens in situations of uncertainty? How do we
Speaker 1: try to parse this sort of information? Right, Nate, that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of what you were getting at, Right, How
Speaker 1: do how do we respond? How do we try to
Speaker 1: get through the fog of all of these different opinions
Speaker 1: that may or may not agree with each other, and
Speaker 1: how do we do that in a way that's actually
Speaker 1: as unbiased as possible because it's so easy for me
Speaker 1: to say, like in advance, oh, I agree that we
Speaker 1: should have bombed around or I don't agree that we
Speaker 1: should have bombed Iran, And so I'm going to look
Speaker 1: at those analyzes only and I'll make up my mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, let's let's enumerate for a minute here, Like
Speaker 2: some of the things that we don't know and in
Speaker 2: fact are deliberately likely to be concealed yep, right or ambiguous? Right?
Speaker 2: You know. Number one thing we don't know is in
Speaker 2: what state was Iran's nuclear program? How close they were
Speaker 2: they developing actual weapons?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Number Two we don't know is how much to set
Speaker 2: them back. I mean, you can look at satellite photos.
Speaker 2: There's a big hole in the ground. Right, did that
Speaker 2: hole was supposed to be dug very and deep in
Speaker 2: the ground get penetrated to the point where they've been
Speaker 2: set back by years? Right? Other other facilities that we
Speaker 2: don't know about. That's number two. Right? Number three is
Speaker 2: to what extent so Israel lacked? I believe they're called
Speaker 2: bunker busting bombs to penetrate far enough if they could
Speaker 2: do some things, they could take out you know, Iranian
Speaker 2: nuclear scientists and things like that.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You know, as a citizen, I'm I'm somewhat curious about
Speaker 2: how much Trump felt like his hand was forced by that.
Speaker 2: Yahoo That creates a complicated equilibrium, right. You know, Look,
Speaker 2: I will say, I'm not a big BB guy. I
Speaker 2: won't go further than that, Right, but you know, where
Speaker 2: we force into a situation that like it may have
Speaker 2: been the most rational action given that choice. We don't
Speaker 2: know that either, And obviously we don't know like any
Speaker 2: of the long term consequences of this. So far, it
Speaker 2: seems like Iran is maybe more concerned about preserving domestic politics.
Speaker 2: But to what extent does this like provoke for their
Speaker 2: hatred of the United States and Israel. Does it provoke
Speaker 2: future terrorist attacks? Does it make countries more determined to
Speaker 2: develop nuclear programs or you know, biological weapons and things
Speaker 2: like that. How does the rest of the Middle East
Speaker 2: and the Arab world feel about this? I mean, one
Speaker 2: of the good things. I think there were a few
Speaker 2: good things in Trump's first term, right, one of which
Speaker 2: is you kind of had And you can debate the
Speaker 2: reasons for this, but we did see improving relations with
Speaker 2: parts of the Arab world during Trump's first term. Are
Speaker 2: they happy about this or not?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: We don't know any of that, right, And we also
Speaker 2: don't know to what extent Iran would have used nuclear
Speaker 2: weapons if they had them. I mean, I think they're
Speaker 2: pretty widely regarded as a bad actor. But like also
Speaker 2: that's a question of like stylized facts that we know.
Speaker 2: It's not a case like what's the case, It's like
Speaker 2: much more trivial. Right. It's like congestion pricing in New York. Right,
Speaker 2: if you don't like research the empirical data on that
Speaker 2: and don't look at the mechanism for how it works, right,
Speaker 2: That's something where if you took a day and really
Speaker 2: study it, you might have a valid opinion here, there
Speaker 2: are just things that are unknowable beyond a certain level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean even even to the point where as
Speaker 1: you said, we have no idea how much the nuclear
Speaker 1: program was damaged. You know, there's speculation that a lot
Speaker 1: of nuclear material was actually moved before the strikes, right,
Speaker 1: And we don't know what the counterfacture would have been,
Speaker 1: right Like, would diplomacy have been successful. We have you know,
Speaker 1: historic data that it hasn't been in the past, but
Speaker 1: who knows, right Like, there are so many things that
Speaker 1: we just have no way of telling, and we don't
Speaker 1: know how Iran is going to react right now kind
Speaker 1: of over the long term. Right now, it seems like
Speaker 1: the ceasefire is going to hold because it is a
Speaker 1: great you know, rationally like it seems to me it's
Speaker 1: a great space saving thing, right Like, if you know
Speaker 1: that you don't really want the US to keep attacking you,
Speaker 1: you can say, look, hey, we launched a at the
Speaker 1: biggest US base in the region. But obviously they warned
Speaker 1: the US ahead of time that this was going to happen,
Speaker 1: so there were no casualties. But you can say, here
Speaker 1: there's a win for all of us. We retaliated. Now
Speaker 1: we're all going to step back. But what's the as
Speaker 1: innate as you kind of alluded to, what's the long
Speaker 1: term plan here? If we kind of saved all our
Speaker 1: nuclear materials, do we just lie low for a few years, right,
Speaker 1: and pretend that everything's fine? But really, like this really
Speaker 1: pissed us off. What's going to happen? And the truth
Speaker 1: is we can speculate, but speculation isn't going to be
Speaker 1: particularly helpful in the absence of this sort of information.
Speaker 1: And this is one of those times when I would
Speaker 1: really really caution everyone to really try to understand what
Speaker 1: your biases are, because those are really going to affect
Speaker 1: how you're interpreting information, what information you're seeing as legitimate
Speaker 1: or not legitimate. And that's true by the way of
Speaker 1: policymakers as well. Right, this is one of those situations
Speaker 1: where like, because of all of the uncertainty, actually are
Speaker 1: reaching for heuristics and our brains kind of reliance on
Speaker 1: biases becomes greater. So it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: like there's an inverse relationship where well, actually no, it's
Speaker 1: a direct relationship.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The greater the uncertainty the greater our use of heuristics
Speaker 1: and biases, because we don't actually have a lot of
Speaker 1: information to go on, and so we go on what
Speaker 1: we want to be true and gut feeling, and it's
Speaker 1: much easier than to support that point of view. That's
Speaker 1: a relationship that's very, very tricky and something that we
Speaker 1: really need to avoid, including you and me, Nate right like,
Speaker 1: we do it too, We're human. It's really difficult to
Speaker 1: think clearly when you have all of this uncertainty. I
Speaker 1: do want to go back to a point you made,
Speaker 1: because I do think it's really interesting. And I was like,
Speaker 1: what the hell, especially initially, like when you see that
Speaker 1: the stock market, you know, and crypto and all these
Speaker 1: things were not like they weren't really reacting right. Even
Speaker 1: before the ceasefire when there was news of the bombing,
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, this is probably not going to
Speaker 1: be that bad, right. We saw a much bigger fall
Speaker 1: in both the last time that there was potential for
Speaker 1: uncertainty and Iran a little over a year ago, and
Speaker 1: this time everything was very muted, and I wonder if
Speaker 1: that's just over correction saying, oh, well, last time nothing
Speaker 1: bad happened, so we're just going to assume that it's
Speaker 1: going to be just like last time, or if it's
Speaker 1: wishful thinking, you know, oh well, we don't want anything
Speaker 1: bad to happen, so we're just going to kind of
Speaker 1: pretend nothing bad's going to happen.
Speaker 2: What is it, Well, yeah, this famous thing where like
Speaker 2: the stock market doesn't really discount for the price of
Speaker 2: nuclear war because if we're all dead, then nobody cares
Speaker 2: what you're for. One k is worth. I do think
Speaker 2: it's worth saying that. Like, Iran's a big country in
Speaker 2: various senses of that term, right, it has ninety million people.
Speaker 2: I think Ted Cruz got that wrong in some interview.
Speaker 2: It's ninety million people. It's a lot of people. It's
Speaker 2: GDP per capita it is not very high as four
Speaker 2: ero point five thousand per head. That's down. I don't
Speaker 2: know what, except it's oil price fluctuations versus regime change
Speaker 2: versus everything else. As of twenty as we say, as
Speaker 2: twenty twelve, it had a higher per capita GDP than China,
Speaker 2: so the world changes a lot. It occupies a very
Speaker 2: important strategic location in terms of the way that oil
Speaker 2: is moving and other goods are moving around. The Middle
Speaker 2: East and around the world. So this is a high
Speaker 2: leverage decision point. And by the way, it's like not
Speaker 2: really invadable. Even foolish Americans I think would not be
Speaker 2: inclined to invade. This country's much more populous and much
Speaker 2: more mountainous than say Iraq. Right, maybe in some ways
Speaker 2: it's better. I don't think there's any risk of like
Speaker 2: turning this into a ground world, Like I do want
Speaker 2: to say a couple of things here, right, you know,
Speaker 2: One is that more countries having nuclear weapons is probably
Speaker 2: probably bad. Right, you know, I think people on balance
Speaker 2: understate the risk of a nuclear conflict. It hasn't been
Speaker 2: that long, just a couple of generations since the world
Speaker 2: has had weapons these powerful, right, So you know, other
Speaker 2: things be equal, and things are not equal international law
Speaker 2: and precedents and norms and things like that. And you know,
Speaker 2: why does Israel get to have Unofficially it's a strategic
Speaker 2: mbig explicient. Everyone believes that Israel has nuclear weapons, right,
Speaker 2: you know who deserves them and who doesn't. I don't
Speaker 2: know about that paternalism or whatever else, right, but some
Speaker 2: people think we want regime change in a random like
Speaker 2: the one thing I'll say about Trump because obviously we've
Speaker 2: talked about Okay, you don't know all the facts, really
Speaker 2: don't know any of the important facts, right, so you
Speaker 2: default to priors, and what's a prior versus a bias?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: You know, I would feel better if Trump had people
Speaker 2: obsessions of power that he had in his first term. Right,
Speaker 2: if Pete Hegseth or Chelsea Gabberd don't like this, I
Speaker 2: actually feel better about it, right, I believe it or not,
Speaker 2: Trump trust Trump's judgment more than them frankly. But that's
Speaker 2: the why we've come to it. That's the point we've
Speaker 2: come to. But he has not been particularly hawkish, right.
Speaker 2: He's been trying, I think not terribly effectively to be
Speaker 2: negotiating a ceasefire with in Ukraine. Right, He's been all
Speaker 2: over the place on China. Right, but you know, we
Speaker 2: didn't have any new wars in Trump's first term. And
Speaker 2: so so okay, you can clip this and criticize me.
Speaker 2: You know the fact that like he's not doesn't have
Speaker 2: this bushy and default toward intervention, I think is a
Speaker 2: meaningful affects the priors a little bit.
Speaker 1: It actually does, it makes you and like I said,
Speaker 1: we want to try to avoid speculation, but you know,
Speaker 1: with these priors, it does seem like a potential thing
Speaker 1: that he was thinking was not like I want the
Speaker 1: US to be involved in Iran, but rather, oh, like
Speaker 1: I think that I can just bomb them and they'll
Speaker 1: do what I say, and we'll be one and done,
Speaker 1: and then I'll be this beautiful peace broker, right, because
Speaker 1: that's kind of what he like. That's always that's what
Speaker 1: he wanted to do in Ukraine, not bombing Ukraine, but
Speaker 1: he wants like, he wants to be seen as the peacemaker, right,
Speaker 1: and he wants it to be done quickly. When he
Speaker 1: took office, this we know, so this isn't speculation. You know,
Speaker 1: he said, oh, I'll end the war in Ukraine in
Speaker 1: twenty four hours. Obviously that didn't happen, but in his head,
Speaker 1: you know, he can end everything in twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: just you know, Trump shows up and he makes peace,
Speaker 1: and so I think that this might have been a
Speaker 1: bid too. Okay, well we'll just bomb them and then
Speaker 1: everything will be fine and I can make peace and
Speaker 1: we'll end this situation in twenty four hours or forty
Speaker 1: eight hours or whatever it is. And that might seem
Speaker 1: like insane thinking from the outside, but it is the
Speaker 1: type of thinking that he's engaged in over and over
Speaker 1: and over, so that seems like that might have been
Speaker 1: what was going on in his head. Rather than oh,
Speaker 1: we want another protected conflict, it was more of a
Speaker 1: one and done. Right. If I do this, then I
Speaker 1: can be Trump the Great. I can get a Nobel
Speaker 1: piece price for a broker in piece between Iran and Israel.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, Trump won the Republican nomination in twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: in part because he explicitly campaigned against Bushism in various forms, right,
Speaker 2: and against foreign entanglements, especially in the Middle East. I mean,
Speaker 2: in terms of the domestic politics, this policy or this
Speaker 2: decision to bomb Iran depends on how the question is phrased. Right,
Speaker 2: appears to be actually slightly unpopular on Trump's net approo
Speaker 2: writting in the silver boltipulling average is a negative six
Speaker 2: point eight. It's been fluctuating. It's actually fallen over the
Speaker 2: past couple of days, whether it's an Iran effect or
Speaker 2: just sistical noise. I think we'll need more data to show.
Speaker 2: Maybe by Thursday you're looking at that, you'll have more.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Maerica books, very skeptical of foreign intervention in
Speaker 2: general in the Middle East in particular, has grown more
Speaker 2: skeptical of Israel to the extent that we are are.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't think it's a helpful factor necessarily. So,
Speaker 2: you know, Trump, it's not a it's not a move.
Speaker 2: It may be a cynical move to you know, Pollymark
Speaker 2: has a ten percent chance that he wins a Nobel
Speaker 2: Peace Prize or something. Right, But it's like, I don't
Speaker 2: think it's a cynical Bush era move of Oh my
Speaker 2: proval writing is falling, let's bomb somewhere, right. I don't
Speaker 2: think that quote unquote trick works very well anymore. People
Speaker 2: are very wary before and wars. Often what happens historically
Speaker 2: is that you get an approval rating bump and then
Speaker 2: things turn into a quagmire and then the president becomes
Speaker 2: deeply unpopular. Here Trump, I don't way, whether it's a
Speaker 2: decline or it's steady, does not appear to be a
Speaker 2: bump coming at least from this right, So that historical
Speaker 2: reward not being there I think might affect your your
Speaker 2: priors too. That I don't know. I mean, there are
Speaker 2: lots of cynical reasons to do this, I guess. But like,
Speaker 2: but having lived through Iraq in Afghanistan, you know, and Trump,
Speaker 2: I think again has good instincts for why the previous
Speaker 2: Republicans became unpopular. I don't think he's doing this as
Speaker 2: a way to like boose his popularity. And he's enough
Speaker 2: other ways to have little cheap tricks to like to
Speaker 2: do that. And like, you know, I'm not sure particularly
Speaker 2: cares about foreign policy. Right he said recently, oh, there
Speaker 2: are no permanent enemies. Was in the context of China
Speaker 2: or Russia or whatever else, Right, But like he's transactional,
Speaker 2: he's a deal maker, and maybe in some ways I
Speaker 2: prefer that to the grandiosity of Bush era foreign policy.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a it's a tough one. I don't think
Speaker 1: I can go as far as to say I prefer
Speaker 1: those because.
Speaker 2: We just have you know, it's not I mean, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: Not a particular high bar. But it's just in the
Speaker 1: sense that I think that there's a kind of Trump's
Speaker 1: vision and then there's kind of the reality. Right. He
Speaker 1: sees himself as, oh, I can be this peacemaker, but
Speaker 1: the reality of it is that he might do things
Speaker 1: that have unforeseen or they could have been foreseen by
Speaker 1: good advisors, but unforeseen by him, long term consequences that
Speaker 1: really fuck the world over. So it's kind of it's
Speaker 1: kind of one of these one of these situations where, yes,
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to entangle us. However, and I will
Speaker 1: also say, in terms of his approval ratings, we've just
Speaker 1: seen historically over and over and over that the Trump coalition,
Speaker 1: kind of the MAGA coalition, is able to stomach complete
Speaker 1: changes of policy when they come from Trump right, Like
Speaker 1: he's just so good at persuading his base that what
Speaker 1: he's doing is the right thing. So I would not
Speaker 1: be at all surprised that if we do end up
Speaker 1: kind of becoming more entangled in the Middle East, that
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the same people who were saying
Speaker 1: no foreign entanglements will be like, yeah, America first, like
Speaker 1: we're we're gonna show them what's happening. And we were
Speaker 1: for this all along. So I can definitely I don't
Speaker 1: see that this is going to actually do lasting damage
Speaker 1: to him, because he has shown himself to be just
Speaker 1: phenomenally good at being able to turn any sentiment in
Speaker 1: his favor that's his superpower, right, Like, he is so
Speaker 1: good at convincing his base that whatever he decided to
Speaker 1: do was the right thing, even if it was the
Speaker 1: total opposite of what he had campaigned on.
Speaker 2: And we'll be right back after this break. Trump's other advantage,
Speaker 2: I think your relative to Biden is that, like, he
Speaker 2: is seen, I think as being a little bit unpredictable,
Speaker 2: and that probably helps. I don't know if we want
Speaker 2: to go too far in the game theory, but like,
Speaker 2: but like, no, we've talked about that before.
Speaker 1: I mean the kind of the irrational rationality, right, the
Speaker 1: irrational actor, the kind of the Thomas Shelling model of
Speaker 1: you know your famous chicken problem where you have two
Speaker 1: cars going towards each other right head on collision course
Speaker 1: and one of the drivers pulls out the steering wheel
Speaker 1: and throws it out the window, signaling I can't swerve right,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to win this, And that's kind of
Speaker 1: the rational irrationality. Of course, the problem comes in what
Speaker 1: happens if both of them pull out their steering wheel
Speaker 1: at the same time. Then you're kind of screwed. What
Speaker 1: happens if one person doesn't actually see you throwing the
Speaker 1: steering wheel out the window, which is possible even though
Speaker 1: you try to be blatant about it. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: they were looking away at that moment. Maybe they were
Speaker 1: so focused on your car that they didn't see that.
Speaker 1: So there are issues with that scenario. But yes, there
Speaker 1: is kind of the madman theory that if I'm unpredictable,
Speaker 1: if I'm the one who is capable of ripping out
Speaker 1: my steering wheel, and people know that, then they're going
Speaker 1: to tread much more carefully around me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or at least one would, or at least one
Speaker 2: would hope.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: Right to the point earlier about like, Iran's a populist
Speaker 2: country at times, it has flirted with becoming a developing,
Speaker 2: wealthier country before the revolution in I guess seventy nine
Speaker 2: and then and then more recently it's GDP had been increasing, right,
Speaker 2: So it's it's not a I don't think it'd classified
Speaker 2: as like a failed state that kind of has nothing
Speaker 2: to lose, right, And it's always hard to gauge public
Speaker 2: sentiment in authoritarian countries. I don't know, you know, I
Speaker 2: think the conventional wisdom is that, like, the regime is
Speaker 2: not especially popular in Iran. It's a sophisticated country with
Speaker 2: a lot of history, and people may have ambiguous feelings
Speaker 2: about about its current status, right, a lot of different
Speaker 2: ethnic groups also within Iran, again a big, complex country, right,
Speaker 2: and so like, look, all of this seems better to
Speaker 2: me than like trying and failiate regime change in Iraq. Right,
Speaker 2: But it's also higher stakes in some ways, involving you know,
Speaker 2: one unofficial nuclear power will two the United States and Israel, right,
Speaker 2: one perhaps aspiring nuclear power right, a state that where
Speaker 2: a lot of oil and commerce turns on and so yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry to use a cliched metaphor, it is risky business, right.
Speaker 2: You know. One of the things you learn in poker
Speaker 2: is that, like, the biggest confrontations often arise from cases
Speaker 2: where it becomes one decision escalates after another, and in
Speaker 2: any isolated circumstance, it may be correct to take the
Speaker 2: escalatory move. However, the a cumult of effective that can
Speaker 2: be quite profoundly high stakes and profoundly negative in some cases.
Speaker 1: Yeah, effects are not just what you see in the moment, right,
Speaker 1: they can be exponential, And so you have kind of
Speaker 1: the immediate stakes and it doesn't seem p regularly like oh,
Speaker 1: you know, this is just a tiny, tiny blip, but
Speaker 1: then it can really spiral out of control. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know people it's to stay in the poker realm
Speaker 1: who end up going bust in level one. I know
Speaker 1: multiple people on level one of the main event of
Speaker 1: the World Series, which Nate and I will both be
Speaker 1: playing in just over a week. But in level one
Speaker 1: of the main event, you have two hour long levels
Speaker 1: and I don't remember how many big lines you start with,
Speaker 1: but an insane amount, right, just totally crazy. And then
Speaker 1: people just lose their minds and they end up in
Speaker 1: these situations where they really do not need to bust,
Speaker 1: but they do anyway, and they're like, oh, I couldn't
Speaker 1: avoid it, And I was like, no, you could have
Speaker 1: avoided it, right, Like, let's look at all of the mistakes,
Speaker 1: all of the decision errors that led you to this
Speaker 1: point where you felt like you couldn't avoid it, right,
Speaker 1: there are so many mistakes that keep compounding and compounding,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you're out of this tournament
Speaker 1: where like you didn't need to be in that situation
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes there can kind of be so what happens
Speaker 2: a lot in these big world series events where there
Speaker 2: are a lot of amateur recreational players, right, is like,
Speaker 2: sometimes you'll have implicit agreement between the better players at
Speaker 2: the table that we don't want to go to war
Speaker 2: with one another. We both have an incentive to as
Speaker 2: the superpowers. It's table to like preserve our chip stacks
Speaker 2: and make easy profit from the fish as they're called. However,
Speaker 2: when there's a lack of trust and there's no intrinsic
Speaker 2: reason to trust opponents in poker, that regime can break
Speaker 2: down right where you feel like I'm being taking advantage
Speaker 2: of now, right, But the point is that, like you know,
Speaker 2: when you have better global norms, there is more potential
Speaker 2: for de escalation. And if you kind of look at
Speaker 2: it as like an exponential right, So if you look
Speaker 2: at like, how does nuclear war start when there's not
Speaker 2: at the moment where you can argue there's a NATO
Speaker 2: versus Russia proxy conflict obviously in Ukraine. Right at the moment,
Speaker 2: there's not a hot war between nuclear superpowers, right, So
Speaker 2: you know, has nuclear war starting, it happens through a
Speaker 2: series of accidents probably, right, you know, we do, I
Speaker 2: think have enough precedent in the eighty whatever one years
Speaker 2: since Hiroshima Nagasaki to say that, like, probably you don't
Speaker 2: have nuclear wars start easily or nuclear accidents start easily,
Speaker 2: but in the fog of war, in these escalatory scenarios, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, it is a little frightening in the sense of, like, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: we actually have to take this rather dramatic action that
Speaker 2: has some particular consequence because it's so bad preemptively if Iran,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, what if our man already has
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons, right, and or you know, or some failed
Speaker 2: dirty bombers. You know, there's a lot we don't know
Speaker 2: and like and like, when you have less cooperation around
Speaker 2: the world, then every step is more likely to escalate. Right, Like,
Speaker 2: let's say you need you know, three things that have
Speaker 2: a ten percent probability of happening to happen in sequence
Speaker 2: to have a nuclear detonation somewhere. Right, that's a one
Speaker 2: in one thousand chants. What if the chances go up
Speaker 2: just because there's less cooperation in the world to fifteen
Speaker 2: percent times three, Right, that's actually six times higher if
Speaker 2: you do the math, or four times higher if you
Speaker 2: do the math. I'm I'm trying to get my spreadsheet
Speaker 2: out right, because the exponential increase of all these steps
Speaker 2: you have to pass when things are a little bit
Speaker 2: less cooperative, is more is quite a bit more dangerous
Speaker 2: when they combine together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a really really important point that
Speaker 1: we are actually in a global moment where I do
Speaker 1: think that kind of global norms have been eroding for
Speaker 1: a while and kind of we are in a less
Speaker 1: cooperative moment than we were in even during the Cold War,
Speaker 1: right like that That seems crazy to say, but I
Speaker 1: think that norms have shifted in the last decade, in
Speaker 1: the last two decades, to a point where these sorts
Speaker 1: of percentage just probably have gone up, and you know,
Speaker 1: and shit happens. Like we've I think we've talked on
Speaker 1: the show before, Nate, correct me if we haven't about
Speaker 1: Stanislav Petrov, who was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet
Speaker 1: Air Force and he basically prevented World War three back
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty three unilaterally, back when there was a
Speaker 1: false alarm basically right, the Soviet nuclear system malfunctioned and
Speaker 1: it looked like the United States had launched a nuclear missile,
Speaker 1: and he just made he made the decision that this
Speaker 1: was a false alarm and that they were not going
Speaker 1: to counterstrike, and that decision was absolutely pivotal. Now, imagine
Speaker 1: if it wasn't him. Imagine if we've outsourced to AI, right,
Speaker 1: Imagine so many different things that could have happened, where
Speaker 1: instead of this being something that we only that we
Speaker 1: now know happened back then, no one knew right that
Speaker 1: we almost had a nuclear confrontation. Like imagine if those
Speaker 1: percentages shift a little bit of you know, different person
Speaker 1: like those types of situations, if the risk of them
Speaker 1: goes up even a tiny tiny bit, then it's a
Speaker 1: really scary proposition. Even back in nineteen eighty three, it
Speaker 1: was terrifying, And I don't even want to know what
Speaker 1: would have happened had someone else had have been at
Speaker 1: the helm and decided not decided that this was the
Speaker 1: right thing to do. So that's why these these decisions
Speaker 1: are good to analyze in retrospect, because then we know
Speaker 1: the kinds of things that could have that were avoided
Speaker 1: that were unknown at the time. But yeah, it's someone
Speaker 1: disobeyed orders, right, Somebody went against the military protocol and
Speaker 1: decided not to launch a counterattack, and that prevented the
Speaker 1: Soviets from actually launching a nuclear missile when the US
Speaker 1: did not. So these sorts of things are really important,
Speaker 1: and we've talked you know, you've you've mentioned it, I've
Speaker 1: mentioned it. Exponential effects are really important, and human brains
Speaker 1: don't usually think about kind of exponential growth. That's very
Speaker 1: difficult to think about. But you know, tiny shifts can
Speaker 1: actually have outsized effects because exponential growth is a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's both exponential and existential potentially, right, you
Speaker 2: can to meet this and antics ever where their climate
Speaker 2: change is quote an existential threat, right, it's a bit
Speaker 2: more linear generally speaking, where it's like not like well,
Speaker 2: I mean there are like feedback loops and this gets
Speaker 2: a little bit, but like it's not like, you know,
Speaker 2: there is some chance that next week a situation grows
Speaker 2: out of control and there's a massive nuclear attack somewhere. Right,
Speaker 2: There's no chance that, like we all burn despite the
Speaker 2: heat wave on the East Coast. There's no chance that
Speaker 2: like the world ends because of climate change tomorrow. It's
Speaker 2: longer term and nuclear war is not is not like that, right, Look,
Speaker 2: a lot of Americans lived in fear for many years
Speaker 2: of nuclear war, right, I can remember just faintly from
Speaker 2: growing up in forty seven, like the presence of like
Speaker 2: fallout shelters by the time I was in school, they're
Speaker 2: no longer like fallout drills, but you know, some number
Speaker 2: of years earlier there might have been. Right. Trump is
Speaker 2: obviously old enough to remember the Cold War, you know,
Speaker 2: sooner or later we're gonna have a younger generation of
Speaker 2: leaders that are not and that didn't live with nuclear
Speaker 2: risk as this like persistent existential threat and the way
Speaker 2: that people feel about climate change or increasingly even like
Speaker 2: AI today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that that's another very important point.
Speaker 1: So we have the compounding effects of changing social norms,
Speaker 1: changing international norms, less cooperation, and the loss of historical memory,
Speaker 1: right of people who actually have that visceral knowledge of
Speaker 1: what these things felt like, which we talk about a
Speaker 1: lot on the show. This is like direct risky business. Right.
Speaker 1: The way that we understand risk the best is by
Speaker 1: actually experiencing, and that's why people understand risks so poorly.
Speaker 1: But the kind of the historical memory, the people who
Speaker 1: lived through this, who understand just how important this is,
Speaker 1: just how scary it is, that's going away, and the
Speaker 1: people who've lived through the world war is like, that's
Speaker 1: going away. All sorts of these major moments in memory
Speaker 1: are going away, and that has scary implications for the
Speaker 1: next generation for us as well. I'm just saying for
Speaker 1: the next generation of leaders. That has scary implications for
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 2: So so, yeah, we're out here playing poker. Well, I
Speaker 2: don't think the world's on the verge of a World
Speaker 2: War three. That's kind of like an internet meme, but
Speaker 2: clearly this is, you know, one of the most conspecial
Speaker 2: things happening in the world right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Nate, I think I think that's a good way
Speaker 1: of putting it. So with that, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break and let's lighten it up a little bit and
Speaker 1: talk a little poker. Last week on the show, we
Speaker 1: promised you that if we were not going to give
Speaker 1: you a poker update, that meant that things were not
Speaker 1: going well. So no news, bad news, and for me,
Speaker 1: for me, that's actually mostly the case. I had one
Speaker 1: or two cashes in online bracelet events. I don't remember
Speaker 1: it was one or two because I don't quite remember
Speaker 1: the timing, But my live events have not gone well, Nate.
Speaker 1: For you, they've gone slightly better.
Speaker 2: A little better I'm going to have four cashes and
Speaker 2: online events, which was at the win not the World Series.
Speaker 2: One online cash I succumbed and played one online. I
Speaker 2: don't really love the online stuff as much. But like
Speaker 2: I was talked about last week, the way to actually
Speaker 2: end the trip with more than you lose is making
Speaker 2: a very deep run top two percent, or to cash
Speaker 2: in your higher buying events. And I've done neither. Plenty
Speaker 2: of cashes in these smaller events that are medium deep,
Speaker 2: but not deep enough to to really make good money,
Speaker 2: and so we're still searching for that. You know, that
Speaker 2: big win. I think it feels better to know it's
Speaker 2: better or worse. I've played a lot of poker, right,
Speaker 2: I've been making it to the end of nights and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. I don't know if it's better or
Speaker 2: worse then to maybe you have one big cash and
Speaker 2: then a bunch of bus early. Then you have more
Speaker 2: dinners with friends and things like that. But it's been
Speaker 2: a grindy kind of World series. We've played a lot.
Speaker 2: Get our name on the topeboard sometimes but but nothing
Speaker 2: no lasting memories yet, and then about halfway through. That's
Speaker 2: how it goes often.
Speaker 1: Though, but it is how it goes often, and Nate,
Speaker 1: you know, we still have a number of weeks left,
Speaker 1: so we're just saving up our run good for the
Speaker 1: main event and other events. And Nate, you and I
Speaker 1: are going to tag team together, so there's there's a
Speaker 1: there's a fun event called the tag Team where you
Speaker 1: get to play with a partner and you tag in
Speaker 1: and out, and so it would be really fun. You know,
Speaker 1: we are taping this again on Tuesday, which is when
Speaker 1: Tag Team starts, So by Thursday you'll know if we're
Speaker 1: still in or not. We don't know right now, but
Speaker 1: let's let's be optimistic, Nate and say that we're still
Speaker 1: on Thursday, which means we made the final table. That
Speaker 1: would be pretty.
Speaker 2: Cool'd be amazing, That would be great for the fucking show.
Speaker 1: So so there are some fun things there been, you know,
Speaker 1: every World Series, and we've talked about some of the
Speaker 1: controversies so far. There have been more controversies. Not going
Speaker 1: to talk through all of them, but there have been
Speaker 1: more accusations of both angle shooting, which, as we've talked about,
Speaker 1: is when you basically bend the rules but don't break
Speaker 1: them right where you go to the limit of what's
Speaker 1: technically allowed, but don't cross the line. And so there
Speaker 1: have been accusations against multiple players of angle shooting. And
Speaker 1: there was accusations of collusion at the final table of
Speaker 1: the fifty KPLO, which is a which is a huge event,
Speaker 1: some chip dumping might have happened, And Nate, you know,
Speaker 1: this is something that I actually was thinking about as
Speaker 1: you were talking about, you know, soft collusion with other
Speaker 1: players at the table, where you think, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: we're the better players, we're gonna we're going to stay
Speaker 1: out of each other's way. But there's also kind of
Speaker 1: there's also this phenomenon which is not angle shooting. It
Speaker 1: actually is illegal, but it's incredibly difficult to police. Where
Speaker 1: say you you and I and ate, Like, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying we would ever do this, but like, let's imagine
Speaker 1: that we're in an event together at the same table.
Speaker 1: I have lots of chips, you don't have very many chips,
Speaker 1: and we both decided that we really need you to cash,
Speaker 1: and so I raise you go all in and doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what hand I have, you know, I just fold
Speaker 1: right so that you can take my chips. That's chip dumping.
Speaker 1: That's incredibly bad. Don't ever do something like that. There's
Speaker 1: a reason that there's a rule in poker where if
Speaker 1: everyone is all in, you have to share your hand.
Speaker 1: It's to prevent collusion. It's to prevent stuff like this.
Speaker 1: But in situations like the one that happened at the
Speaker 1: final table of the of the fifty KPLO, it was
Speaker 1: impossible to tell what happened because the first person who
Speaker 1: raised didn't scan their cards, and it was not an
Speaker 1: all in situation where there was a call, there was
Speaker 1: a raise, there was an all in, and there was
Speaker 1: a fold, and so it's incredibly difficult to understand what
Speaker 1: happened in situations like this. I don't know in that
Speaker 1: particular situation. Other players have been accused of angle shooting
Speaker 1: by we've talked about this before, by saying the wrong
Speaker 1: raise size right with really strong hands, where they say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't mean to raise, or I didn't
Speaker 1: mean to I meant to raise, not to call, and
Speaker 1: they just pretend that they're confused, and maybe they really
Speaker 1: are confused, maybe they aren't, And it's very difficult to
Speaker 1: know what happened in situations like that. That's happened a
Speaker 1: few times already at the World series, And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm of mixed, so you know, I'm working on a
Speaker 1: book about shooting. You know, I really care about angle shooting.
Speaker 1: You know, I really care about keeping the game. You know,
Speaker 1: at a high level, I do think that we need
Speaker 1: to be careful of just starting to call everything angle shooting. Right.
Speaker 1: People have become a little trigger happy. I think this
Speaker 1: World series with their accusations just whenever anyone does something
Speaker 1: that they don't like and takes their chips or like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're angle shooting. Like, no, it's not always angle shooting, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you need to be very very careful and reserve. That's
Speaker 1: that terminology for moments that really are suspect, and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of the moments people have called out
Speaker 1: are not. They're just people really do get confused.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of people. One of the things that
Speaker 2: comes with like having more experience than poker is you
Speaker 2: see more situations like this number one, and you're able
Speaker 2: to play poker without all of your bandwidth being devoted
Speaker 2: to what's the right play in this hand? Right, You're
Speaker 2: able to take be more aware of the setting and
Speaker 2: the situation and so and look for potential angle shoots
Speaker 2: are weird shit, right. You know, sometimes if someone makes
Speaker 2: a weird bet size, right, and I'll ask them for
Speaker 2: clarification on that right to get information from my own self.
Speaker 2: Or sometimes it's kind of like not an angle but
Speaker 2: like speech play right where I'm trying to like confuse
Speaker 2: or intimidate somebody, but like being having more awareness in
Speaker 2: a poker game like the World Series where you have
Speaker 2: a very wide range of players from the best in
Speaker 2: the world to the worst players in the world kind
Speaker 2: of almost literally, right, and you have a lot of
Speaker 2: dealers who are making let's be honest, you are making mistakes, right, then,
Speaker 2: like just being aware of a situation over the course,
Speaker 2: if you play seven weeks of the World Series, it's
Speaker 2: going to probably save you big mistakes two or three
Speaker 2: times in seven weeks. That could be for a lot
Speaker 2: of chips, right, Like that's a lot, right, So don't
Speaker 2: be on your headphones, don't be on your phone in
Speaker 2: higher stakes moments, or you're gonna risk things like like
Speaker 2: stupid decisions, tilting yourself or also just being a good
Speaker 2: poker citizen and like when other players are fucking up,
Speaker 2: protecting his other players too, that you have, I think
Speaker 2: is an obligation to do as a good poker citizen.
Speaker 2: I think that's a.
Speaker 1: Really good note to end on. Just really really pay attention.
Speaker 1: There was a situation that happened this past week where
Speaker 1: with one of you know, Poker's characters that people really like,
Speaker 1: I think he's great, Texas Mike, and he talked about
Speaker 1: a situation where a player had raised, he went all
Speaker 1: in and the dealer pushed the blinds and antis to him.
Speaker 1: Texas Mic was also playing on the phone at the
Speaker 1: same time and mucked his cards like assuming that it
Speaker 1: was the whole pot. The other player had never folded
Speaker 1: and still had his cards, and the dealer fucked up,
Speaker 1: and Texas Mike ended up losing the pot. He had
Speaker 1: to put in the amount of the rays and it
Speaker 1: was just it was just a nightmare. He had had
Speaker 1: pocket Queen's But yeah, it was a really bad situation
Speaker 1: just because the dealer messed up and he was on
Speaker 1: his phone. This was not even an angle shoot. So
Speaker 1: bottom line, pay attention. There's nothing that's more important to
Speaker 1: your bottom line, to your end results of anything in life,
Speaker 1: but especially you know at poker in the World series,
Speaker 1: just pay attention.
Speaker 2: And if you believe you won the pot. Where there's
Speaker 2: anything ambiguous, you might be misreading the boord. That can
Speaker 2: happen in Omaha games and you might have won the pot.
Speaker 2: Do not fold, Do not muck your hand.
Speaker 1: Never muck your hand.
Speaker 2: Until the chips are pushed your way.
Speaker 1: Or even when they are being pushed your way. Because
Speaker 1: the dealer was pushing the chips towards Mike, right, she
Speaker 1: just didn't understand that there was someone else in the
Speaker 1: in the handstill, so just be hyper hyper aware. Always
Speaker 1: on that note, Nate, good luck today in the five
Speaker 1: K six Max and to both of us in the
Speaker 1: tag team. I hope that by the time our listeners
Speaker 1: hear this, we will be at the final table. Let
Speaker 1: us know what you think of the show. Reach out
Speaker 1: to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot fm. And
Speaker 1: by the way, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber, we
Speaker 1: have some bonus content for you that's coming up right
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Speaker 1: Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanikova.
Speaker 2: And by me Nate Silver. The show is a co
Speaker 2: production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. So this episode was
Speaker 2: used by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer is Sonia Gerwit.
Speaker 2: Sally Helm is our editor, and our executive producer is
Speaker 2: Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruguer.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for tuning in.