In her book, “Thinking in Bets,” author Annie Duke remarks in the introduction, “Thinking in bets starts with recognizing that there are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out: the quality of our decisions and luck.” She continues in the chapter LIFE IS POKER, NOT CHESS: “[…] our tendency to equate the quality of a decision with the quality of its outcome.” This tendency is known as resulting.
I like Duke’s book. However, to understand decisions involving escalation, we have to expand a bit. First, we may not know the endgame we are involved in regarding escalations. As Duke points out, we are dealing with incomplete information for decisions in poker. But, with escalations, we may have incomplete information about what endgame we are playing because we have incomplete information about our “opponent.” This would be equivalent to making a decision to play but not knowing what game you are playing. Varg Freeborn comments:
This recalls a hierarchy of escalation, for which I credit to Marc MacYoung: “Nice people fall to the manipulator. The manipulator crumbles under the assertive. The assertive shrinks before the aggressive. The aggressive have no plan for the assaultive. The assaultive are unprepared for the homicidal.”
Freeborn, Varg. Violence of Mind: Training and Preparation for Extreme Violence. One Life Defense LLC, Varg Freeborn. Kindle Edition.
This situation is familiar to a law enforcement officer (LEO). An LEO can pull over an ordinary civilian running late for work or an armed violent criminal on parole who is determined never to go back to prison. To stay alive, an LEO has to prepare as if the person they pull over is an armed violent criminal because sometimes they might be.
For ordinary civilians and escalations, we don’t often realize that an escalation can get deadly fast. Let’s hear some wisdom from Varg Freeborn:
Once you open that door to violence, anything from aggressive to homicidal can come out; you don’t get to choose which one and there’s no putting it back in once it comes out. Now, I understand how some of you feel. Why should we have to “cower” to bullies and arrogant, rude people? […] Walking away from a childish argument and going on with your life is not cowering. There is no real lasting effect on you, other than your hurt feelings and pride. Think about that deeply.
Freeborn, Varg. Violence of Mind: Training and Preparation for Extreme Violence. One Life Defense LLC, Varg Freeborn. Kindle Edition.
Manipulators, assertive people, aggressive, and homicidal people will dominate nice people on their first meeting as nice people want to cooperate. Or, in the language of game theory, they are hawks (manipulators through the homicidal) infiltrating a dove (nice) population.
What is a dove, such as myself, to do? Recognize that cooperating requires some level of trust. Building quality relationships with other people has tremendous benefits; one of those is that the fruits of cooperation can be realized. Almost everyone other than family starts out as strangers, so interactions with strangers are a part of life. When a stranger doesn’t respond to cooperation, recognize you can be easily on the hawk escalation path (manipulator all the way to homicidal) and get out of the situation if at all possible. Remember that a highly cooperating dove population knows what to expect from one another and has the principles of justice for conflict resolution. This type of dove population is highly resistant to hawk infiltration.
This is why I usually frequent only a few places when I leave the house. I don’t easily get to know people. By attending only a few places, I can get to know people much better and build friendships (or, if I don’t like the people, decide to go somewhere else). Good friendship leads to good cooperation. For a dove like myself, friendship and cooperation are very helpful in derailing a potential escalation outside of the home.
Annie Duke learned from many great poker players, but her greatest asset in becoming a great poker player was learning what she needed to learn about. She learned that to succeed at poker required making quality decisions with incomplete information and separating out luck, good or bad, from that decision (note that this is easier said than done). Once she had learned what she needed to learn, she could focus on learning how to make quality decisions with incomplete information. Furthermore, if she suffered a bad beat, she could put it out of her mind and not let it influence the fact that she made a good decision even though the outcome was poor. More importantly, if she wins but, in the process, realizes that she did not make a quality decision, she will take what information she can and incorporate it into her future decision process. Winning while making bad decisions isn’t sustainable – you’ll go broke.
Sadly, in the world of self-defense, we are still trying to learn what we need to learn about.
Almost everyone in the self-defense industry assumes the question ordinary civilians want answered is, “How do I survive a violent encounter with an armed violent criminal?” This question is the wrong one; we must learn to ask the right one. For ordinary civilians, the proper question is similar to their mission. I credit Varg Freeborn for the mission concept. So, let’s replace “How do I survive a violent encounter with an armed violent criminal?” with “How do I protect my loved ones while being an important and vital part of their life as I do my best to help them be all they can be?” The latter question is far better than the former question. It is the question best suited to most ordinary civilians.
Once we have two questions to compare, we can see the underlying assumptions more clearly. For example, military training for wartime, if used by an LEO or civilian in a violent encounter, can dramatically improve your chances of surviving a violent encounter. However, it can also land the LEO or civilian in prison. Importantly, the prospect of going to prison isn’t even a concern if you only think about the first question. Considering the second question, it is obvious that prison is a horrible outcome.
Another example is that law enforcement training, while useful for civilians, has an underlying assumption: it is given to LEOs. Law enforcement has a duty to protect the public, while civilians do not. If mistakes occur, this discrepancy can cause legal problems for civilians but not for an LEO. For example, suppose an innocent civilian is accidentally shot during a shootout between an armed robber and an LEO. In that case, the injured civilian probably has no legal recourses, criminal or civil, against the LEO. However, if the shootout were between an armed robber and an armed civilian, the hurt civilian would likely have legal options to pursue. The armed civilian has to answer why they chose to shoot it out when their life was not on the line. Even if you don’t see prison, having your life savings cleaned out hurts your ability to help your loved ones.
The armed robbery situation brings to light another consideration: what violence do you want to involve yourself in? Let’s get really specific: If the mother of your children was alone in a convenience store and an armed criminal decided to rob it, would you want her to shoot it out with the criminal or just let him rob the store? When we ask the right question, we can see that we don’t want our wife to be shooting it out with anyone unless she or the kids are in mortal danger. Having your kids lose their mother to save $90 in the cash drawer isn’t a good trade-off.
Lastly, the experience of violence itself can have horrible emotional and psychological impacts on your life. Remember that some of the toughest men in the world suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These psychological problems will impact your loved ones, and your ability to protect them will also suffer. We only want to choose violence when no other recourse is available.