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Some 'game theory', by way of metaphor... I spent a lot of time playing Scrabble where winning would not strictly be the aim, goal and objective. Being 'in the
by Theodores 13y ago
Some 'game theory', by way of metaphor...
I spent a lot of time playing Scrabble where winning would not strictly be the aim, goal and objective. Being 'in the zone' and able to repeatedly put down all seven letters and hit the triple word scores would be where I wanted to be.
Sometimes I played against those that might rummage in the letters bag, perhaps to take an extra tile out and have to 'correct' their mistake by returning a less than desirable letter back into the bag. Obviously on detecting such cheating one could call them out and storm off from the table. However this I did not do because I did actually want to win :-) I realised that the time they spent doing things they should not be doing in order to get 'ideal' letters meant that they were not able to focus in the way I could.
Guess who won?
Scrabble was not the only game played. Bridge was another game played quite extensively where there was room for cheating. Again, honesty won out. However, with other card games - played for money - cheating was a viable strategy, no amount of focus on an honest game could help you to win against the guy that had all the aces under the table.
And my point is...
There are some areas of endeavour where telling the truth and being honest will pay dividends. However there are plenty of other areas where those that are less than honest will win.
- Fuxy 13y agoThat's the first thought that came to me when reading the article. Honesty is the best policy small lies are always counter productive and increase expectations to an unreasonable level sometimes making you putting a lot of effort into meeting it. There's very few situations where lying is a good idea however 100% complete honesty is probably not a good idea either there's some things in business you just can't reveal however outright refusing to answer the question is probably a good solution.