It is surprising to discover how thoroughly our basic functions sometimes control our conscious minds. Scientific studies have shown that mice and pigeons, and recently other animals such as cuttlefish, can be taught to react to a specific arbitrary sign with a specific set of behaviors: animals learn to expect food at a sight or sound, and learn to receive food by manipulating a lever, ringing a bell, or pecking a certain spot. Through habituation, they are conditioned to consistently believe that specific phenomena or actions regularly lead to the same specific results.
Moreover, additional experiments show that once an individual is thus conditioned, it will not learn what to a more developed mind, such as ours, may seem a variant of the same. That is, once a cuttlefish learns that a pink circle means food is coming and a blue spot means no food, it will take any additional color to mean no food. It has no capacity to interconnect new phenomena and allow hitherto inexperienced possibilities.
Having learnt one condition, the mouse mind is blocked to any other possibility, even if subsequent stimuli are as strong or even stronger. Obviously? Before you condescendingly dismiss inferior mice, rooks, and cuttlefish (all significantly more intelligent then Man previously supposed), ask yourselves if have never been jolted into a sudden realization of a simple possibility that had never hitherto occurred to you: like that the bunch of guys at the top running the country might be as ignorant or even more ignorant than you?
Sometimes a bunch of good players will discuss at lunch the hands they had just been playing and somebody might say how surprised they are the guy in seat 4 hasn't yet folded, he had been playing so terribly. Upon which another player might add smugly that, yes, and he has a huge tell on him, only to discover that besides one more player at the lunch table nobody else seems to be in on it. Swearing each other to secrecy, these two share their discoveries in somber undertones and immediately discover that each had in mind a completely different thing: the first one noticed that every time 4 has a good hand, he makes his bet and closes his hands in fists on the table and never does it otherwise than with a good hand; the other player noticed that when 4 has weak cards, he fidgets with his chips after placing a bet, never touching the chips otherwise.
So that the terrible player in seat 4 has at least two tells to betray him, but each pro has only discovered one. But where is written that there is never more than one tell to discover? Both of the better players had discovered sure tells and that surety blocked their superior minds from registering any additional clues.
This is not a trivial realization. In fact, what often distinguishes the best players is their flexibility to learn and keep actively in mind throughout the game a number of each opponent's tells, classifying each according to importance and plausibility, increasing the possibilities of winning.
Moreover, additional experiments show that once an individual is thus conditioned, it will not learn what to a more developed mind, such as ours, may seem a variant of the same. That is, once a cuttlefish learns that a pink circle means food is coming and a blue spot means no food, it will take any additional color to mean no food. It has no capacity to interconnect new phenomena and allow hitherto inexperienced possibilities.
Having learnt one condition, the mouse mind is blocked to any other possibility, even if subsequent stimuli are as strong or even stronger. Obviously? Before you condescendingly dismiss inferior mice, rooks, and cuttlefish (all significantly more intelligent then Man previously supposed), ask yourselves if have never been jolted into a sudden realization of a simple possibility that had never hitherto occurred to you: like that the bunch of guys at the top running the country might be as ignorant or even more ignorant than you?
Sometimes a bunch of good players will discuss at lunch the hands they had just been playing and somebody might say how surprised they are the guy in seat 4 hasn't yet folded, he had been playing so terribly. Upon which another player might add smugly that, yes, and he has a huge tell on him, only to discover that besides one more player at the lunch table nobody else seems to be in on it. Swearing each other to secrecy, these two share their discoveries in somber undertones and immediately discover that each had in mind a completely different thing: the first one noticed that every time 4 has a good hand, he makes his bet and closes his hands in fists on the table and never does it otherwise than with a good hand; the other player noticed that when 4 has weak cards, he fidgets with his chips after placing a bet, never touching the chips otherwise.
So that the terrible player in seat 4 has at least two tells to betray him, but each pro has only discovered one. But where is written that there is never more than one tell to discover? Both of the better players had discovered sure tells and that surety blocked their superior minds from registering any additional clues.
This is not a trivial realization. In fact, what often distinguishes the best players is their flexibility to learn and keep actively in mind throughout the game a number of each opponent's tells, classifying each according to importance and plausibility, increasing the possibilities of winning.
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