So I'm a professional poker player, and today, I want to talk about three things that the game has taught me around decision-making that I find apply to everyday life.
Sem profesionalna igralka pokra in danes bom govorila o treh spoznanjih, o odločanju, ki me jih je naučil poker in za katere menim, da jih lahko uporabimo v vsakdanjem življenju.
Now the first of these things is about luck. Now, like poker, life is also a game of skill and luck, and when it comes to the biggest things we care about -- health, wealth and relationships -- these outcomes don't only depend on the quality of our decision-making, but also the roll of life's dice. For example, we can be perfectly health-conscious and still get unlucky with something like cancer. Or we can smoke 20 a day and live to a ripe old age, and this kind of ambiguity can make it hard for us to know how good our strategies are, sometimes, especially when we're experiencing a lot of success.
Prvo spoznananje je o sreči. Kot poker, je tudi življenje igra spretnosti in sreče. Številne stvari, ki so za nas najbolj pomembne, zdravje, premoženje in odnosi, niso odvisne le od kvalitetnega odločanja, pač pa tudi od sreče. Lahko zavedno skrbimo za svoje zdravje, a nas kljub temu doleti nesreča, na primer rak. Ali pa pokadimo 20 cigaret na dan in vseeno doživimo visoko starost. Zaradi te dvoumnosti lahko včasih težko ocenimo kako dobre so naše strategije, še zlasti ko doživljamo velike uspehe.
For example, back in 2010, I won a really big poker tournament known as the European Poker Tour. And because I'd only been playing full-time for about a year, when I won, I assumed I must be rather brilliant. In fact, I thought I was so brilliant that I not only got rather lazy with studying the game, but I also got more risky, started playing in the biggest tournaments I could against the very best in the world. And then my profit graph went from a thing of beauty to something kind of sad, with this worrying downhill trend for a long time, until I finally realized that I was overestimating my skill level, and got my act together.
Leta 2010 sem na primer zmagala na zelo pomembnem turnirju, Evropski poker turneji. Ker sem takrat poker profesionalno igrala šele eno leto, sem sklepala, da sem verjetno genialna. Bila sem tako sigurna v svojo genialnost, da sem ne le nehala marljivo preučevati igro, pač pa sem začela več tvegati in igrati na največjih turnirjih, proti najbolšim igralcem na svetu. In tako se je graf mojega zaslužka spremenil iz nečesa čudovitega, v nekaj precej žalostnega, in ta zaskrbljujoč trend upadanja se je nadaljeval dokler nisem ugotovila, da precenjujem svoje sposobnosti in se vzela v roke.
And this kind of reminds me of what we've been seeing in the cryptocurrency space, at least in 2017, where the only thing that's been going up faster than the markets themselves is the number of "senior investment specialists" who have been appearing out of nowhere. Now I'm not saying it's not possible to have a strategic edge, but at the same time, it's very easy to feel like a genius when you're in a market that's going up so fast that even the worst strategies are making a profit. So when we're experiencing success, it's important to take a moment to really ask ourselves how much of it is truly down to us, because our egos love to downplay the luck factor when we're winning.
To me spominja na dogajanje v svetu kriptovalut, no, vsaj v letu 2017, ko je bilo edino, kar je rastlo hitreje kot sam trg, število "višjih investicijskih specialistov," ki so se pojavili od nikoder. Ne trdim, da je nemogoče imeti strateško prednost, vendar pa se zlahka počutimo kot genialci na trgu, ki raste tako hitro, da so celo najslabše strategije profitabilne. Ko doživimo uspeh, je zato pomembno, da se vprašamo kolikšna zasluga je dejansko naša. Kajti naš ego zelo rad podceni vlogo sreče pri zmagi.
Now, a second thing poker taught me is the importance of quantifying my thinking. When you're playing, you can't just get away with going, "Eh, they're probably bluffing." That's just going to lose you a bunch of money, because poker is a game of probabilities and precision, and so you have to train yourself to think in numbers. So now, whenever I catch myself thinking vaguely about something really important, like, "It's unlikely I'll forget what I want to say in my TED Talk," I now try to estimate it numerically.
Druga stvar, ki sem se jo naučila pri pokru, je pomembnost kvantificiranja svojega razmišljanja. Med igro ni dovolj, da razmišljamo: "Eh, verjetno blefirajo." Na ta način bomo le izgubili veliko denarja, kajti poker je igra verjetnosti in natančnosti. Moramo se izuriti, da razmišljamo v številkah. Zato sedaj, ko se ujamem, da le nejasno razmišljam o čem pomembnem, kot denimo: "Malo verjetno je, da bi pozabila kaj hočem povedati v svojem TED govoru," poskušam to oceniti številčno.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
Trust me, it helps a lot with the planning process. And the thing is, almost anything that could possibly happen here today, or at any point in the future, can also be expressed as a probability, too.
Verjemite mi, to zelo pomaga pri načrtovanju. Stvar je v tem, da skoraj vse, kar bi se lahko tu zgodilo danes, ali kadarkoli v prihodnosti, lahko izrazimo tudi kot verjetnost.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
So now I also try to speak in numbers as well. So if someone asks me, "Hey, Liv, do you think you're going to come along to that thing tonight?" instead of just saying to them, "Yeah, probably," I actually give them my best estimate -- say, 60 percent. Because -- I know that sounds a little odd -- but the thing is, I ran a poll on Twitter of what people understand the word "probably" to mean, and this was the spread of answers. Enormous! So apparently, it's absolutely useless at actually conveying any real information.
Zato sedaj poskušam tudi med pogovorom uporabljati številke. Torej če me nekdo vpraša: "Hej Liv, prideš na tisto prireditev danes zvečer?" jim bom namesto: "Ja, verjetno," podala svojo najboljšo oceno- recimo 60%. Vem, da to zveni malo čudno. A naredila sem anketo na Twitter-ju o tem, kaj ljudje razumejo kot "verjetno" in tole je razpon rezultatov. Ogromen je! Očitno je ta beseda čisto neuporabna za posredovanje kakršnih koli konkretnih informacij.
So if you guys catch yourselves using these vague words, like "probably" or "sometimes," try, instead, using numbers, because when we speak in numbers, we know what lands in the other person's brain.
Če se ujamete, da uporabljate te nejasne besede, kot so "verjetno" ali "včasih," poskusite raje uporabiti številke. Kajti ko govorimo v številkah, vemo, kako bo to druga oseba razumela.
Now, the third thing I want to touch on today is intuition. How often have you seen these kinds of inspirational memes in your Facebook feed?
Treta stvar, ki bi se je rada dotaknila danes, je intuicija. Kako pogosto vidite takšne inspirativne citate na svoji Facebookovi časovnici?
[Always trust your gut feeling and never second-guess.]
[Vedno verjemi svojemu nagonu in nikoli ne dvomi.]
They're nice, right? It's lovely. Yes. "Trust your soul." Well, they're terrible advice. These are some of the best poker players in the world right now. Do they look like people who live purely off feelings and intuitions?
So prijetni, ne? Ja, čudoviti so. "Zaupaj svoji duši." No, grozni nasveti so! Tole so nekateri izmed najboljših igralcev pokra na svetu, trenutno. Ali izgledajo kot ljudje, ki se zanašajo samo na občutke in intuicijo?
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
Look at them! Obviously, these guys are about slow, careful analysis, and that's because the game has outgrown the days where pure street smarts and people-reading can get you to the top. And that's because our intuitions aren't nearly as perfect as we'd like to believe. I mean, it'd be great, whenever we're in a tough spot, to just have an answer appear to us from some magical source of inspiration. But in reality, our gut is extremely vulnerable to all kinds of wishful thinking and biases.
Samo poglejte jih! Očitno je, da imajo ti fantje raje počasno, previdno analizo, to pa zato, ker je igra prerasla dni, ko si lahko z ulično pretkanostjo in branjem ljudi, prišel do vrha. Naša intuicija namreč ni niti približno tako nezmotljiva, kot bi si želeli. Bilo bi super, če bi se nam, ko bi se znašli v zagati, rešitev kar čudežno utrnila iz nekega magičnega vira navdiha. Ampak naši nagoni so močno podvrženi našim željam in predsodkom.
So then, what is our gut good for? Well, all the studies I've read conclude that it's best-suited for everyday things that we have lots and lots of experience in, like how we just know that our friend is mad at us before we've even said anything to them, or whether we can fit our car into a tight parking spot. But when it comes to the really big stuff, like what's our career path going to be or who should we marry, why should we assume that our intuitions are better calibrated for these than slow, proper analysis? I mean, they don't have any data to be based off.
Zakaj torej so naši instinkti dobri? No, vse študije, ki sem jih prebrala kažejo, da jih je najbolje uporabljati za vsakdanje reči, s katerimi imamo veliko izkušenj. Recimo, ko začutimo, da je naš prijatelj jezen na nas, preden z njim spregovorimo eno samo besedo. Ali pa ko ocenjujemo, če bomo avto spravili v mali parkirni prostor. Ampak zakaj bi pri pomembnih rečeh, recimo odločitvah o karieri ali izbiri zakonca, predpostavili, da je naša intuicija boljša od počasne, resne analize? Naše iskušnje v tem primeru ne slonijo na podatkih.
So my third lesson is, while we shouldn't ignore our intuitions, we shouldn't overprivilege them either. And I'd like to summarize these three lessons today with my own set of memes, with more of a poker-player twist.
Moje tretje sporočilo je torej, da ne smemo ignorirati naše intuicije, a vanje ne smemo niti polagati preveč zaupanja. Svoje tri današnj nauke, bi rada povzela s svojim lastnim setom citatov s pokerskim pridihom.
"Success is sweetest when you achieve it across a large sample size."
"Uspeh je najslajši, ko ga dosegaš pri velikem vzorcu."
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
"Your gut is your friend and so is a cost-benefit analysis.
"Tvoj nagon je tvoj prijatelj in analiza stroškov in koristi prav tako."
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
"The future is unknown, but you can damn well try and estimate it."
"Prihodnost je neznana, vendar pa jo lahko poskušiš predvideti."
Thank you.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Aplavz)