January 18, 2022 • 48 mins
Rock Paper Scissors is a child's game. But it's more than that if you can believe it, and it has a pretty cool history as well.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Jerome,
Roland st Jerome herself hanging out and this is Stuff
you should know. Just the three of us, we can
(00:23):
make it if we try. I think we should detail
what happened right before we rerecorded. It's very illustrative. Illustrative. Oh,
I like the way you say it, Frenchie, of this topic,
I think you should share for sure. Well, we were
debating on which episode to record first of our two. Uh,
this one is about rock paper scissors, And as a joke,
(00:46):
I said, why don't we use rock paper scissors to decide?
But we don't use videos, so we would just be
throwing rock paper scissors and going on each other's word.
And as soon as we did it, none of it
felt right to me. I shared what I what I shot,
and I was truthful, I know, and I stopped myself
because A I didn't throw anything, because I thought we
(01:06):
were kind of kidding, but it just and then you
said that you thought that people. Jerry said, are you
really doing this as an episode, and you said a
lot of people might think the same thing, but I
want to defend it out of the gate as part
of a two part series that I came up with
of seeming children's games where there's a lot more there
(01:30):
under the surface. Uh. And I'll go ahead and preview
and say the next one will be following. Uh followed
his Tug of War. Wait a minute, there's a third one,
isn't there? I thought you were requested yet another one.
I goofed up and when I sent Dave the idea,
I accidentally sent tic tac toe and he was like,
(01:51):
there's not much on this. After researching it for half
a day, I went, oh, dude, I mean to say
rock paper scissors. I'm so sorry. Okay, because you're is
a lot to rock paper scissors. I don't think there's
as much with tick tac toe. No, No, poor Dave. Okay, good,
got it? So okay, So Tug of War and rock
paper scissors. That's a winning combo if you ask me. Then.
(02:12):
Apologies to Dave Rouse uh for for the mid game shift. Yeah,
and many many thanks to Mighty Dave Rouse for helping
us out with these two mdr better than the rooster.
Remember how we were like, oh, yes, of course the rooster,
and we talked to him about He's like, yeah, that
(02:32):
they've been calling me that since like first grade, guys,
is not new. So we're moved on. Now, we're onto
mighty Dave. Ruse. That's like someone saying up Chuck and
then laughing as if it's original. To me, that is genius.
I've never called you that, of course not. Okay, So
today we're not talking about tug of war, Chuck. We're
talking about rock paper scissors, And I feel like we
(02:54):
should at least kind of explain because unless you've been
living under a rock or a sheet of paper or
a giant pair of scissors, everybody knows what rock paper
scissors is, right, Yeah? Should we do that and then
tell Dave's little story because I think it's pretty fun.
Uh well, it's a game, a children's game, namely, although
I would argue that if more adults decided some things
(03:18):
this way, it would be a better life for everyone, agreed,
because I think kids don't bring emotion into decision making
like adults do, or then they don't write fight like
adults do, so I think it can be a very
egalitarian way to settle and something fairly easy, totally and quickly,
(03:40):
very quickly. But yeah, it's a game where you, uh,
some people count one to three, some people say rock
paper scissors, and on that third beat, you each throw
out a hand indicating a fist for a rock, flath hand,
palm down for paper, or mimic com pair of scissors
with your index and Bernie finger what finger? Always call
(04:04):
it the Birnie finger. Oh yeah, that makes sense, the
Bernie finger. Oh, the Bernie Sanders finger. Because he's so
well known. Whenever he gets heckled on stage, he's just
throws a couple of birds high up in the air
and he says, read them and weep. That's pretty good, Bernie,
thank you. That was actually my Phil Hartman doing Sinatra.
(04:27):
I thought it was Larry David doing Bernie. No. No,
but it works. But that's the game, and you and
you generally do best of three, but that has to
be agreed upon beforehand. Okay, So that is and and
like this game is so basic and simple, but it's
also so widely played around the world that there's variations
to almost everything you just said. Like, I've seen plenty
(04:47):
of people who do it on the fourth count rock
paper scissor shoot. Um, They're like if you were playing
on a pro rock paper scissors m tournament, you would
not put your hand down palm on. You'd have it
palm out to the left or the right, depending on
what hand you're playing with. There's like all sorts of
little variations, but ultimately the point of it is is
(05:08):
that for each one of those possible choices, those three
choices you could possibly make, it has one it can
beat and one it can lose to, which makes it
incredibly thrilling. With just three little hand combinations, you can
either win lose and it happens in the blink of
a nine. It's a really great game. I'm with it totally.
It is, and it's um I think generally to just uh,
(05:32):
to settle a dispute. Not always, it doesn't. It never
struck me as a kind of game you would just
sit around and play, you know, Oh yeah, no, it's yeah,
I know, you're right, maybe if you're practicing, if you're
a weird kid practicing your rock paper scissors, But yeah no,
nobody's just sitting around playing that like they're playing cards
or something, right, And it's between two people, because if
(05:55):
you have more than two people, you'll probably go with
an any MENI money mo or an engine nine number nine.
I don't think I've ever seen three people playing rock
paper scissors before it once. I don't think you can.
That's the whole point. I don't know we should try it.
No wonder if the universe would crumble around us? Yeah,
but who would like? You have to be matched up
against a person otherwise? I mean, I guess if two
(06:19):
people did paper and one person did rock, you would
eliminate that person. I think, I don't know, Maybe you're
onto something I might be. I feel like I've just
kind of upped the evolution of the human species. I
think so too. So you mentioned a story Dave came
up with, and you're talking about settling disputes. You can
(06:40):
also use it to make decisions too, especially if your
name is Takashi hashi Yama, who was a Japanese electronic
firm uh C suite executive. I think maybe the CEO
of one of those companies and UM. He used to
like to use rock paper scissors to UM to basically
make important to say Asians when everything else was essentially equal,
(07:03):
and he ran into the same thing in two thousand five,
didn't he. Yeah, And I guess it worked out for
him if he was a C level executive, if that's
a measure of success to you. But he was an
art collector and he had a about a twenty million
dollar art collection of some very noteworthy artists and was
going to auction it off and said, should I choose
(07:25):
Christie's or Sotheby's. They're both great, and I don't know
what to do, So I'm going to make them play
each other in rock paper scissors for the account. Yeah,
because that's what Japanese electronics executives of twenty million dollar
art collections do. Yeah, they make other people play rock
paper scissors for their own amusement. So apparently Christie's recruited
(07:48):
a pair of eleven year old twins, Alice and Flora,
who were the twin daughters of the International Director of
Impressionist and Modern Art, for Christie's. And the reason that
they turned to these two eleven year old twins is
apparently they were rock paper scissors dynamos. They played all
the time, and they also like understood the psychology behind
(08:08):
it too, and it actually paid off in aces for
for Christie's turning to these two. Yeah, because Uh, in
the interview, I think the New York Times interviewed the
girls and Alice said, everyone knows you always start with
scissors because rock is way too obvious and scissors beats paper. Uh.
And I kind of laughed at that at first, like
(08:29):
that's such a thing a kid would say, But rock,
there may be something too. An adult being an aggressive
move with the rock, there may be something to that.
So that's actually what they did. They started with scissors.
On the day of the whole Um the whole Rock
Paper Scissors playoff to see who would host this auction
of this twenty million dollar art collection. UM, Christie's went
(08:53):
with scissors, and just like the twins predicted, UM, so
the Bees went with paper because apparently they thought rock
would be too obvious and they thought that rock that
Christie's would go with rock, so they went with paper.
But instead Christie's went with scissors. And that actually demonstrates
what you were saying earlier, that there's a lot more
to rock paper scissors than meets the eye, because like
(09:16):
it's these twins assertion that you would want to go
with scissors every time first, because the psychology of your
opponent can be kind of relied upon other people say
you would never want to go with scissors, and so
on and so forth. And there's actually like game theorists
that study this. Um, there's a whole lot to this
this topic. So I guess what I'm saying is is
a good idea of picking this one, because I don't
(09:37):
know if I ever would have. Well, what I did
think was interesting is in what it would have been
a funnier ending to this story is that he didn't
have them actually play the game with their hands. He
had them each right down the Japanese word for rock,
paper or scissors on a piece of paper, and I
thought it just would have been funny if they didn't
(09:57):
know that little hitch and like, you know, Christie's had
someone who spoke Japanese so that he's didn't so they
were like, you went by, Yeah, we forfeit, We don't know,
but yeah, it's um. I think there's something about the
simplicity of it that just in the future Tug of
War episode that just grabs me. Because when you start
(10:18):
talking game theory, and we'll get to that, it's uh,
I've wanted to do an episode on Game Theory Forever.
But it's just it breaks my brain a little bit
when you really get into it. I think it's made up.
So I think this might be a good way to
just satisfy that good, good, good thinking. These topics grab
you and say, let's play. Uh. As far as where
(10:41):
this came from, you know, of course, anything like this,
people are gonna say it came fro an ancient Egypt.
Because you can look at almost any mural or set
of hieroglyphics and say this is what I think they
were doing here. It's very vague. I think that one's
given me the bird, and I think that's kind of
what happened with the Benny Hassan on burial murals. Right.
(11:03):
I don't know. I think that the scholars typically agree
that they're they're doing something like what's called the finger
flashing game, that there's there's something like that. It's not
rock paper scissors, I don't. I don't believe scissors were
invented yet. Um, but that doesn't mean, as we'll see,
there's a lot of other games that aren't rock paper scissors.
They don't have to be rock paper or scissors. You
(11:24):
can kind of substitute just about anything for your hand gesture,
and it's possible they were playing that. I think what's
what keeps it from being definitive is that there's nothing
in like that that we've figured out from from transcribing
hieroglyphics using the resultist one that said, hey, you guys
of the future really missed out playing this finger flashing
game that we didn't bother to really uh put down.
(11:46):
But it's definitely the predecessor of of rock paper scissors.
There's nothing like that, so it's just kind of like
it's possible that goes back that far. Yeah, And I
couldn't you know. I looked like Dave did, to try
and find a picture of that specific and there were
a lot of pictures of this mural or set of murals,
but I saw a lot of wrestling, a lot of
(12:08):
wrestling going on, a lot of gaming gaming type stuff,
but I could not find this specific finger flashing game. Um.
There's also did you ever do the the even odd thing?
I never really understood that one. What is that one
when you throw you like go one to three and
you throw one, two or three fingers for what to
(12:28):
decide something? It's a finger flashing game. Okay, so it's
basically what we're talking. It's basically the Dollard's version of
Rock paper scissors. Well, I don't know. It may be
regional like they did it on Seinfeld. I remember, uh,
and it's like evens or odds. But I never, like
no one I knew ever did that. That's odd or
(12:49):
maybe old timing too, because I remember movies and the
like set in the fifties and sixties. I feel like
they did that song too. That's very weird because I mean,
by that time, from what I can tell, rock paper
Scissors had made its way to the United States from Asia.
It had been around for a while. So why would
you go from rock paper scissors just something as boring
(13:10):
as you know, one, two or three fingers? I don't know.
And I think the thing with that game is you
call even or odd beforehand, and then you put the
two hands together and whichever wins wins. That makes sense.
I'm probably explaining that poorly. I think that deserves its
own episode. Like you would say even, I would say odd,
we throw fingers. I throw two, you throw one, and
(13:34):
that's odd, so I win. Does that make sense? Oh?
If you add them together, it's odd. Yeah. Yeah, but
then if you added any odd to any even, wouldn't
it always be odd? Well? What if we both did ones,
that would be even? Oh yeah, but no, but if
I threw four and you through five, like that would
(13:55):
be odd. I think it's only three fingers. Huh, that's
really that's really interesting. You don't remember that from Seinfeld.
That's when they were trying to decide on like a
lane moving into one of their apartments or selling an
apartment or something. Genuinely don't like. I feel like it's
issue an alternate reality here. But back to ancient Egypt,
(14:19):
we agree that it they either may or may not have.
But if you go to China u during the Ming dynasty,
they definitely played some sort of iteration of rock paper scissors. Yeah,
it was called shushi ling, and um, they they appears
in print like it's it's like what I was saying
that Egyptians didn't do. The seventeenth century Chinese and the
(14:41):
Ming dynasty did that. They wrote history books and he said,
we've been playing this game called shushi ling, a finger
flashing game, um, for at least a thousand, fourteen hundred years,
maybe maybe even longer than that. Um, And so that
is definitively like the what we kind of understand is
rock papers sissors finds its root, if not in ancient Egypt,
(15:02):
at the very least in ancient China. Right. And then
of course that made its way to Japan. And they
had a sort of a collection of hand throwing games
called sen suku me ken, which means can as fists
sun or sand as a sand. Yeah. San is three
(15:22):
or three ways and suku me is deadlock. And they
found a pretty fun translation of uh san sukumi kin
that is three are afraid of one another, which I
think is kind of beautiful in its simplicity. I love
it too, so that we we have like a delineation
where these things started in ancient China made the way
(15:42):
to Japan. Japan said, I really like these. Let's make
a bunch of different games, um. And one of them
was called mushi ken, which is pretty awesome, um. And
it demonstrates how it doesn't have to be rock paper
scissors or just one, two or three fingers instead, um
and uh, mushy can your thumb as a frog or
you could throw a pinky finger, or you could throw
(16:05):
your index finger the pinkies is poisonous centipede in China.
Uh and um it's a snake as your index finger.
And by the time it made its way to Japan,
Um the centipede had been translated um apparently incorrectly into
slug because Chinese and Japanese share the same characters, but
often they have completely different meanings. So in Japan it
(16:27):
was a slug instead of a centipede. Right, And in
that game, frog beats snake, snake beats centipede or slug
and centipede beats frog or slug beats frog. Does make
as much sense snake would beat frog, I would think.
I think snake would beat all of them unless that
(16:48):
centipedes sneaks up behind the snake, you know. Yeah, But
that's the thing. I mean, it doesn't work unless you've
got to You've got one you can beat and one
you can lose to. You know, that's right. Uh. And
then there was another version in h called Kitsunnyken, and
this was a two handed game, and I guess it's
just a little more complex. You did a supernatural fox,
(17:09):
a village leader or a hunter. Fox beats village leader,
leader beats hunter, hunter beats fox. That's as the old
saying goes. That's right, But we know that it didn't.
It didn't start anywhere besides China and then move its
way to Japan and then eventually make its way to America.
We know that we got it here in America from Japan,
(17:31):
um or possibly Chinese immigrants. Um. Because as late as
the nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties, even I believe um, if
you read Western literature, western reporting that mentioned this stuff,
you'll find that the author feels compelled to explain what's
going on and what the rules are with one of
(17:51):
these sansukumiken games that they're describing, which clearly demonstrates that
a Western audience wouldn't wouldn't You couldn't just say the
kids are playing rock paper scissors and leave it at that.
You would have to explain what they were doing and
explain the rules because the Americans hadn't come across this yet, right. Uh.
And then the late eighteen hundreds, Japan was literally playing
(18:14):
a game that looked exactly like rock paper scissors called
john Kin Pon Yes, which they still play. I I
quizzed you me about this, and Um, I was like
did you ever play any san Sukumi ken games? And
she's like no. I was like, what about kitts Sunni
can no, It's like what about Jan Campon? She's like
Jack Campo of course, of course, and just started playing
(18:35):
with me. They definitely play it still, that's nice. Who won?
She won? So she she she did it, and I
thought this was interesting to remember how you were saying,
like you you when you throw, you throw on the
third one, And I said, well, some people throw on
the ship like they go rock paper says or shoot
When she does it, she said that as a kid,
(18:56):
she and her friends would say ja Jack Campo and
then would throw it on the po. But there was
still four hits to the fist. You were hitting your
the palm of your hand with your closes fist that
you were going to throw the sign on um still
hitting it four times, even though there's five syllables in there.
I thought it was interesting. I've seen four more universally
than i've seen three. Yeah, I think I think we
(19:21):
did it on the third and I definitely hit the
other hand when I did it. I wouldn't just throw
it out in the Yeah, almost like there's a platform
or stage or something for its land stage. Should we
take a break our first break in the will we
come back? We'll see okay, chuck so um, we're talking
(20:03):
about it finally ending up in UH in the United States,
and it seems like it probably came into the Pacific Northwest, UM,
possibly San Francisco, where there's long been a strong Chinese
and a strong Japanese immigrant community. And of course these
are two of the countries that have been playing these
(20:23):
finger flashing games for centuries um by the time they
started arriving in the United States. UM. And it also
ties in with a kind of a linguistic quizzical puzzle
about why some people call it rochambo. They think those
two things are tied today together the arrival of Rock
Paper Scissors and the beginning of when it was called rochambeau,
(20:45):
which is a kind of a regional word for that game. Yeah,
I had heard that word. I've never known anyone that
called it that. I thought, uh, And then until we
did this research and I saw that it was sort
of you know, San Francisco is one of the pockets.
Since I texted o our pal Jesse Thorn bulls Eye
with Jesse Thorne and Judge John Hodgman in the Maximum
(21:06):
Network because he's the only native San Francisco. And I know,
and I'll just read it to you. I said, we're
doing an episode on Rock, Paper Scissors. Did you do
you call it rochambo? Yes? Are you passing this along
to your children? He lives in Los Angeles now, so
I know this paints him, but his children are technically Angelino's.
Are you passing this on to your children? Can I
(21:27):
reference all of this in the episode? Yes? And yes?
And then he went row shambo with exclamation points, So
I think he they did it like UMI does it? Uh?
And he says none of this one to three shoot nonsense?
So um, I think they call it rochambo in South Park.
That's where I've heard it predominantly, too. How interesting. That's Colorado, right, Yeah,
(21:50):
which is technically west to western state. I think it's
still inclus to be really regionalized in northern California. Yeah,
but I've heard it outside of that. I haven't. I've
spent you know, a few nights in San Francisco, but
not enough to pick up that the kids call it
rochambo there. So I'm almost positive I've I've only heard
it from like South Park or whatever. Sound like you're
(22:10):
writing a song there for a minute. Been a few
nights in San Francisco. So yeah, have you ever heard
that John Denver song? A Saturday night in Toledo, Ohio? Geese?
I don't think so. Oh man, it's hilariously mean. He
said you can go to the park and watch the
grass die. Like he just talks about all the just
boring stupid stuff you can do Untilia in November. It's
(22:33):
a it's no, no, don't don't defend Toledo. It's thank
you for the gesture. But it's true in a lot
of ways. But it's a really cute, funny song that's
worth going and listening to his catchy too, all right,
don't check it out. But anyway, like linguists still today,
or like why you stupid kids have were you calling
it ro chambou? And why didn't you explain to anybody
why you were calling rochambo? Because it's a linguistic mystery
(22:55):
still to this day. Yeah, I mean some people say
it's from him, the real life person from history. How
do you pronounced that first name? Was it Compta? The
comp the count okay de Rochambeau, uh, the Frenchman who
who fought alongside the patriots in the Revolutionary War. And
interestingly that may hold a little bit of water because
(23:18):
there was a book, uh called the Handbook for Recreational Leaders,
where they literally spelled it as Roe Shambau and not
how he spells his name, and that book was published
in Oakland. Yeah. I don't know if what that means though,
just because it's published there didn't mean it was like
a regional book or maybe it was. Yeah, I mean
(23:41):
I could see the author living there. I'm not sure.
I'm not sure. I don't know, but but I think
it's a kind of kind of interesting that it is
that that recreational leaders book was published in Oakland at
about the right time. I think it was the book,
and it was about the time in the nine thirties
when they think that school kids started picking this up
in San Francisco. That makes sense. And you know what
(24:03):
now that I look at the title of the book,
Handbook of for Recreation Leaders, not recreational so it was
probably like a handbook for local wreck centers instead instead
of being like, are you a leader only recreationally? I
don't take it seriously weird, but they think it's it's
actually um, well, some people think it's from the original
(24:27):
Japanese name right, Yeah, either Jack Kip Poe, so you
apparently just barely pronounced the end in the on the
jan and the poem, so it's Jack and poe um.
And then in Chinese a jing jiang bo jing jun bo.
Either way, there's that that um hard bow or post
(24:47):
sound on the end of it. And they think maybe
American kids in San Francisco who were meeting these Chinese
and Japanese school kid immigrants were just kind of turned
it into something else that sounded vaguely familiar, which to me,
that's what my money's on. I think the Brits and
the Aussies call it paper scissors stone or paper scissors rock.
(25:11):
And then weirdly, if you live in Manchester, Uh, first
of all, you're a man Cunion, which is kind of weird. Secondly,
you don't clap except at the very end of the show. Yeah,
we performed live there. They were, uh, they enjoyed it,
but they were quiet about it. Uh. And then apparently
they called this either zip pop brick or ciss pop
(25:34):
rick just in Manchester. Yes, but they have all sorts
of cool made up words around that. Okay, so um,
the point is Rochambo, it's still. It's still and probably
will forever be a mystery exactly where it came from.
That's right. Should we talk about game theory? I don't
(25:54):
see how we can get around and Chuck, I really
tried to figure out a way, but I don't think
we can. Well, maybe you can embrace it is like,
this is the kind of game theory that like war
Games was about. Sure, yeah, yeah, you know what I
meant At its most basic level. Uh, we're talking in
this case about the Nash equilibrium or a Nash equilibrium,
(26:16):
and that's from John Nash of a Beautiful Mind fame
and sort of the simplest way to say it. They
found a pretty good definition, which is a set of strategies,
one for each player, such that no player has an
incentive to change their strategy given what the other players
are doing. In other words, it's a game where you
(26:37):
reach an equilibrium because there's no strategy essentially that will
get a better outcome. Right, Well, yeah, we'll put and like,
equilibrium is a really important term because it's a kind
of a even though you're in an adversarial situation where
you're competing against somebody, it also has a sort of
like UM cooperative ness that naturally trickles up from that gameplay.
(27:02):
And there's not a pure Nash equilibrium in Rock paper
scissors UM. In the Prisoner's dilemma, which is a famous
game theory UM kind of thought experiment, there's a pure
Nash equilibrium where it's like this is this one choice
is the thing to do. It's not quite the case
in Rock paper scissors. Instead, what happens is is that
(27:23):
if you eventually choose UM too, if your strategy is
to choose doing each Rock paper scissors one third of
the time, you can plan on over the course of
hundreds of games to finally shake out to winning thirty
three percent of the games. And that is the best
you can hope for so long as everybody else is
(27:45):
is cooperating or acting rationally throughout the whole thing. But
that's a mix. That's called a mixed Nash equilibrium, and
it doesn't really count UM. And there's a lot of
problems with applying or trying to apply in Nash equilibrium
to Rock papers scissors. Yeah, I mean humans play it
and when they play it, they do two out of
three usually or just one. So you're not doing it
(28:08):
hundreds of times to let this play out. And also,
humans are humans, so we have instincts, We have psychological
tendencies at play. We have biases, unconscious and conscious biases.
Even with a silly game like this, and that that
one thing like might be better even though one really isn't.
(28:30):
Like they all have an equal chance of equal uh
equally losing or winning. Right, So the Nash equilibrium, I mean,
it applies. It's not like it just you just can't
make sense of it. In the terms of rock paper scissors.
It's just as far as explaining a rock paper scissors
strategy goes, it's not your best strategy because the best
you could hope for is to win thirty three point
three three percent of the time as long as you
(28:52):
stuck to your guns and played that same that's one
to three every single time. Um. The there's another rategy
called a conditional response that they've studied. Um that's that
actually produces a winning um like an overall winning score,
ten more often than a Nash equilibrium. Well, yeah, so
(29:15):
this came from a study in China where they did
kind of the largest study on rock paper scissors ever done,
where they got three d and sixty students divided them up.
They each had to play I think three hundred rounds
apiece had he ended up operative a lot of rounds
(29:38):
of rock paper scissors in the pattern, they discovered the
conditional response was as humans, we instinctively, and it makes sense,
we instinctively stick to something that wins and we change
it when it loses. So if you lose on paper,
you're probably not going to go throw a paper right
again afterward. And if you win with rock, you're probably
(29:58):
or you're instinctively going to want to at least throw
rock as the next one. And this played out in
the experiment. Yeah, and so with that they found that
the conditional response you can actually if you if you
use that strategy where if you if you win with
one thing, throw it again the next time. If you
lose with one, uh, go switch to the next one.
And apparently also people follow the pattern depending on how
(30:22):
you say the name of the game, Like if you
call the game rock paper scissors, if you switch in
a conditional strategy, um, you will if you lose with scissors,
if you lose with rock, you'll go to scissors. If
you lose with scissors, you'll go to paper. Like you'll
follow the pattern of the name of the game too,
which is pretty interesting. But I'll like that. But yeah,
(30:42):
how rock paper scissors. So you lose with rock, go
to paper. Oh yeah, you're right, but I think everyone
gets Okay, So you don't want me to just start
over and completely explain again, I think we need to that.
So but all that combined kind of really points out
how humans aren't rational actors and we don't pick things
at random, and we do kind of fall into patterns, um,
(31:05):
and that that can be kind of used to your
advantage if you're like really paying attention to this kind
of thing. Depending on who you're playing with, well, yeah,
I mean, if you want to follow that model and
give and technically give yourself a statistical advantage, you would
know what they want are lost with obviously, and then
what their instinct to follow would be, and then you
(31:26):
would combat that then with the appropriate gesture. But here's
the thing. It's a fast game. And part of the
reason this game works is because you don't sit there
and go all right, let's think about what we're gonna
do here and let's throw on five. Like you just
go quickly, so you've got to be really really fast too.
I think remember what they did, or see what they did,
(31:48):
remember what's next, and then combat it. And that's then
that second right, like to consider your opponent psychology and
that fast of a time span. Gifted is the word
I think you're looking for. I think so, uh or
maybe professional And should we take a break? Sure, let's
take a break, all right, because people do this, maybe
not for a living, but there are tournaments and we'll
(32:09):
talk about that right after this. All right, So I
(32:30):
spilled the beans. There are not professional rock paper scissors players,
but in the two thousands, especially the mid two thousand's,
there were tournaments sponsored by sponsors that had prize money
at hand. Yeah, and actually, um, I think the prize
money got up to like fifty grand when you're at
the peak of two thousand six or two. Yeah, it's
(32:53):
not bad for playing rock paper scissors. And um. One
thing that we should kind of preface this with when
we're talking about the world of profession all um rock
paper scissors players, is that it is a really facetious
tongue in cheek self satirical world, and they make up
a lot of stuff that is just absolutely not true,
(33:13):
and it's really tough to figure out, like to to separate,
you know, truth from fiction when you're talking about it.
And in fact, um one of the sources Dave sent
was a blog post of a linguist who was posting
about the UM the origin of like the rock, paper
Scissors world society I think UM and how they actually
(33:33):
were founded in nineteenth century London and all of this
was totally made up and didn't realize it until some
of the commenters on her blog post was like, hey,
this is this this world is not real, Like, they
make up a lot of stuff, and she had to
go back and revise the post. So if we accidentally
say something that is not true and we say credul credulous,
lee than than apologies ahead of time. Yeah, I mean
(33:58):
it's kind of fun. They make up a or uh
supposedly the first one was in a bar in Toronto
and uh Toronto, excuse me, in two thousand two. But
whether or not, that's lore. Like once the media starts
covering something and bud Light starts sponsoring it, then it
it is a real thing and that's exactly what happened.
(34:20):
And you know they would make up fun names. Uh
Sean Wicked fingers Sears was one of the players. Unless
that's completely made up, but it was all very tongue
in cheek. Yeah. UM. Another good example of being tongue
in cheek is UM. There's this great article from Alex
Miyasi Prisonomics where they were talking about UM how very
(34:44):
frequently on like UM forums and and UM just basically
hangouts for rock paper scissors aficionados. They they'll mention UM
the book The Trio of Hands by Voyeck small soa
and that it basically like the Bible about rock paper scissors,
and you know, wisdom about rock paper scissors. And I've
(35:06):
seen that um small So is compared to loud Zoo
and UM that that he he was just this great
rock paper scissors UM kind of uh champion, I guess.
And this person is totally made up. The book is
made up, none of it exists, but yet you'll find
it everywhere. So it's almost like they wove this kind
(35:28):
of alternate universe, hilarious alternate universe UM to kind of
make rock paper scissors more important than it it possibly
could have ever been. Yeah, and see now I'm looking
at these uh pre planned throws and wondering if this
is all a joke too. I don't think so, because
(35:48):
they actually make sense. And I was watching one of
the tournaments and they were doing it like that. Okay, Well,
the idea is that you can't just stroll in there
as an eleven year old girl and say rock is obvious,
so you always start with scissors. Um, that's you know,
that's playground level stuff. So apparently the pros and the
(36:10):
tournament will sort of like an NFL team will prescript
their first drive a lot of times on offense and
just go with these plays. And then they start calling
the plays by gut or whatever. They have pre eight
pre set gambits that they are going to play, and
I guess they mix them up. I mean, obviously not
(36:30):
everyone's playing the same order. Oh I'm sorry, So I
think these are real, but I'm not sure they're real.
I thought you were talking about the actual way that
you're supposed to hold your hand. Oh no, no, no, no,
we'll talk about that. Cambits. I don't know that it
makes sense. It makes sense, it got great names. Yeah, sure,
should we tick through these. Yeah, there's the avalanche, which
(36:53):
is rock, rock and rock, right, of course, I love it.
What about the bureaucrat. The bureaucrat is paper paper, paper,
makes sense? Uh, we have scissor, scissor scissor, which is
the toolbox. Yeah, um, I'd like this one fist full
of dollars paper rock paper, So it's like you got
(37:13):
money sticking out of each side of your hand, your fist. Okay,
I like the scissor, sandwich, paper, scissors, paper. And the
point is is like if you are playing and you
you you kind of do your your three tries out
of this because you know you played best two out
of three and then in a tournament that best two
out of three. Um is, So it's game and then
(37:35):
match there's best two out of three games and then
best two out of three match. Um So, I guess
you could play a whole game with just one of
those gambits, depending on as long as there's no draws. Right.
But what you what you were talking about earlier with
the way they do it, it is different and you
mentioned it or at the beginning of the episode. When
you throw paper, you don't turn your wrist and go
(37:57):
palm down. You just go straight out like you would
rock or scissors with your hand, because if you were really,
really really fast and intuitive, you could technically probably see
someone moving their wrists in such a way to give
yourself a slight advantage on paper. Yeah, your biggest tell
is if you're throwing paper and you are you're throwing
(38:19):
your paper um horizontal, so palm down, you are you
watch you look at your elbow when you're doing that.
It's off to the side. Now throw your not throw
a paper with your palm to the side, right like vertically,
your elbow still at your side. So you would be
a chump to try to throw it um palm down
because your elbows going out and they'd be able to
(38:41):
see it every time. It's interesting. I can throw it
with my elbow at my side, really, I mean I can,
but it looks like I don't have use of my
shoulder any longer. I mean, I guess I could do
it like that, and if I were playing for fifty dollars,
I would do like that. But it's much easier to
just play to just throw the paper signed vertically. And
(39:01):
then the point of it all is all of it
comes from that one rock fist. So you've got the
rock and then you stick out all four fingers, you've
got the paper, you stick out just your index and
birdie finger. You've got the scissors. But it's all generally
the same thing, and the motion is just in your
fingers rather than your whole hand and maybe your elbow right. Uh.
(39:22):
And they programmed a robot to actually be so fast
that it could see these micro moves. And this robot
was perfect. There's no way to beat this thing. If
you watch a YouTube of just Google or put in
YouTube robot um almost at tick tack toe rochambo. Uh.
(39:44):
And this thing has a high speed camera and it
can see their little micro move and it can it
can change their things so quickly. It's kind of a
frustrating watch actually because they're doing it really fast, and
the froot but just wins every time, no matter what
the person does. Yeah, because it's cheating. It's watching that
that movement and then throwing a sign that's going to
beat it. So there's actually human players, like you were saying,
(40:06):
who who say? You know, people have tells you can
see what they're gonna do. And um again, that's that
all of it happens way too fast for my punity
brain to keep up with and and um and and
you know, may throw a sign that's gonna beat what
I think they're about to do. But there's been studies
that suggest that actually we do pick up on what
(40:28):
other people are going to throw, and that a lot
of times that probably explains draws, that we're actually mimicking them.
There's something called automatic imitation, and they think that it
has to do with the fact that we have a
complex of mirror neurons, which we've talked about years and
years and years ago. UM, that that where where we're
(40:48):
our motor cortex basically sees what somebody else is doing
and makes us do the same thing mirror neurons, and
that that accounts for draws. And some researchers in London
actually blindfolded some study participants. Hopefully it wasn't those same
poor kids who had to play three rounds in the
Chinese experiment and now they're just kind of like um
(41:11):
pigeonholed into into um rock paper scissors experiments, hopefully a
whole new batch of people. But they blindfolded some of them,
and the blindfolded ones if both participants were blindfolded, they drew.
They had to draw both through the same sign like
thirty three percent of the time, but if one of
the participants wasn't blindfolded, the draws went up to like
(41:33):
thirty six percent. Right, well, what do you do for
a living? I do rock paper scissor studies mainly, right,
I didn't want to kind of fell into it. Pay
is not great, but you know, it's cool. They mentioned
this on stuff you should know. Uh, yeah, they they
exactly what you would think happened. Happened the Nash equilibrium
(41:55):
sort of play out. When they were all blindfolded up
was thirty three point three percent, and then when it
wasn't that, how much did it kick up three point
three to a draw? Yeah, which just statistically significant. Say
that again, it is statistically significant. Oh goodness, it certainly is.
So I think we got to finish on the side
(42:17):
blotch lizards because this is just amazingly cool. Yeah. To me,
this was like what a way to end. It's kind
of the perfect thing because there is in nature sort
of an evolutionary game of rock paper scissors being played
out in front of our human eyeballs. Uh, and the
what is it? The side blotch lizard because the three uh,
(42:39):
there are three varieties with the color of their throat.
The males have either an orange, a yellow, or a
blue throat, and each of them have their own advantages
and disadvantages which we're gonna go over, but none of
them have won out over time as far as evolution
is concerned. So they switch like the dominan species switches out.
(43:01):
Is it yearly or just like every few years, It
seems like over very long spans of time, right, it
plays out because there's not one advantage over the other.
And I just think this is super awesome. Yeah, because
just like in rock paper scissors, one can defeat the
other but is defeated by the third one and vice versas.
So in this, in this kind of evolutionary game of
(43:24):
rock paper scissors, that these these lizards are locked into.
Orange throated ones are dominant over blue throated males, but
yellow throated males are dominant over orange throad of males,
and blue throated males are dominant over yellow So each
one has a foil and one that it can conquer,
which is not so amazing, but with orange males they're
(43:45):
super dominant. Um, they're super aggressive. They defend their territory
to the death, and so they command um large territories
with lots of females that the orange throated of males
um mate with like frequently all the time. You stopped,
but they they But so you would think, well, then
why wouldn't the orange throaded males have have taken over
(44:06):
and they're only be orange throated males. My friend Chuck
is going to explain that part. Are these the yellows? Yeah,
I think the yellows okay, uh yeah, you got your
yellow throated males. They are, well, I think it's interesting.
It's sort of like a picture of humans in a way.
Because the orange throatd I think we should mention the
blue throated They have smaller territories but only one female,
(44:28):
and they all work together to get things done and
to defend against attack. So these are two different, really
different societies. And then you've got your yellow throats. They
don't have any territory. They are mercenaries and rogues. They
don't have any females to call their own. But their
evolutionary trait was they evolved to be able to sneak
(44:48):
into enemy territory and secretly mate with the females, right,
So for the yellow ones, if the orange ones are dominant,
that's good for a yellow throated male because there's plenty
of territory and plenty of females to sneak in and
mate with. And so over time, the yellow throated males
start to outnumber the orange throated males because they've snuck
(45:09):
in and mate it with so many of the orange
throated males. Mates pretty awesome, right, So the orange numbers
shrink and the yellow numbers grow up, but the yellow
tend to be um shrunk. The numbers are shrunken by
the blue because the blues cooperate with one another to
defend other blue throated mails against yellows that sneak in,
and so blues do best when I think there's uh,
(45:33):
when there's a lot a lot of yellows. Yellows are
most successful when there's a lot of oranges because they
can sneak in. And then orange does best when there's
a lot of blues around because they're defending the oranges
territory inadvertently from those sneaky yellow guys. That's right, And
I think the perfect end of this is in you know,
a hundred thousand years, they'll go to study these and
(45:56):
they will just see a waste land of orange inch
blue and yellow throated males dead on the ground, with
all the female side blotch lizards standing there, having figured
out how to reproduce without sex from males. I think
that's a grime song. Might anything else? I got nothing else? Well, everybody,
(46:20):
that was Rock paper scissors? And again, good pick chuck,
thank you, thank you, Dave. If you want to know
about rock paper scissors, go play some rock paper scissors
or Jack Kemp, Jacques Campo or whatever you want to
call it. Um And in the meantime, I say it's
time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this uh funny misspronunciation.
(46:46):
So we gotta cover this because we got a lot
of emails about that. Oh yeah, cookie, most ever, Hello
from Smithers b C. I'm a big fan, guys, can't
get enough random knowledge squeeze into my brain. Even bought
myself Your Trivial Your Trivial Pursuit game for Christmas. Very nice,
which hopefully we'll be back on shelves soon. By the
way end of January, I think they're saying, okay, great,
(47:09):
I had a good laugh. The other day, listening to
the Cookies episode, I think it was Josh had the
most hilarious unique pronunciation of uh. Well, I think it's
the Nanaimo cookie is correct, right, Yeah? What did you
say Nanaimo? Okay, well, it's got a Japanese player to it.
That makes sense. It was. It was a very naive
(47:30):
way of putting uh. Side note, I don't think bars
are cookies there bars, especially if they have different layers.
I had to think for a second about what he
was trying to say. Even this bar is named after
the city on Vancouver Island, does pronounced Nanaimo Naimo City.
I guess you can put that in the list of
(47:51):
funny Canadian names only Canadians and how to say like Saskatchewan, uh,
mississaugua and took two yet took a yaktok. Very nice.
I'm sure you nailed all three of those. Sure that
is from Anna Ziegler. Thanks a lot, Anna. If one
of those two, um, if you have a nice, gentle
(48:12):
correction like Anna did. We love to hear those kind
of things. And you can send it to his via email,
wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send
it off. To stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(48:34):
favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Jerome,
Roland st Jerome herself hanging out and this is Stuff
you should know. Just the three of us, we can
(00:23):
make it if we try. I think we should detail
what happened right before we rerecorded. It's very illustrative. Illustrative. Oh,
I like the way you say it, Frenchie, of this topic,
I think you should share for sure. Well, we were
debating on which episode to record first of our two. Uh,
this one is about rock paper scissors, And as a joke,
(00:46):
I said, why don't we use rock paper scissors to decide?
But we don't use videos, so we would just be
throwing rock paper scissors and going on each other's word.
And as soon as we did it, none of it
felt right to me. I shared what I what I shot,
and I was truthful, I know, and I stopped myself
because A I didn't throw anything, because I thought we
(01:06):
were kind of kidding, but it just and then you
said that you thought that people. Jerry said, are you
really doing this as an episode, and you said a
lot of people might think the same thing, but I
want to defend it out of the gate as part
of a two part series that I came up with
of seeming children's games where there's a lot more there
(01:30):
under the surface. Uh. And I'll go ahead and preview
and say the next one will be following. Uh followed
his Tug of War. Wait a minute, there's a third one,
isn't there? I thought you were requested yet another one.
I goofed up and when I sent Dave the idea,
I accidentally sent tic tac toe and he was like,
(01:51):
there's not much on this. After researching it for half
a day, I went, oh, dude, I mean to say
rock paper scissors. I'm so sorry. Okay, because you're is
a lot to rock paper scissors. I don't think there's
as much with tick tac toe. No, No, poor Dave. Okay, good,
got it? So okay, So Tug of War and rock
paper scissors. That's a winning combo if you ask me. Then.
(02:12):
Apologies to Dave Rouse uh for for the mid game shift. Yeah,
and many many thanks to Mighty Dave Rouse for helping
us out with these two mdr better than the rooster.
Remember how we were like, oh, yes, of course the rooster,
and we talked to him about He's like, yeah, that
(02:32):
they've been calling me that since like first grade, guys,
is not new. So we're moved on. Now, we're onto
mighty Dave. Ruse. That's like someone saying up Chuck and
then laughing as if it's original. To me, that is genius.
I've never called you that, of course not. Okay, So
today we're not talking about tug of war, Chuck. We're
talking about rock paper scissors, And I feel like we
(02:54):
should at least kind of explain because unless you've been
living under a rock or a sheet of paper or
a giant pair of scissors, everybody knows what rock paper
scissors is, right, Yeah? Should we do that and then
tell Dave's little story because I think it's pretty fun.
Uh well, it's a game, a children's game, namely, although
I would argue that if more adults decided some things
(03:18):
this way, it would be a better life for everyone, agreed,
because I think kids don't bring emotion into decision making
like adults do, or then they don't write fight like
adults do, so I think it can be a very
egalitarian way to settle and something fairly easy, totally and quickly,
(03:40):
very quickly. But yeah, it's a game where you, uh,
some people count one to three, some people say rock
paper scissors, and on that third beat, you each throw
out a hand indicating a fist for a rock, flath hand,
palm down for paper, or mimic com pair of scissors
with your index and Bernie finger what finger? Always call
(04:04):
it the Birnie finger. Oh yeah, that makes sense, the
Bernie finger. Oh, the Bernie Sanders finger. Because he's so
well known. Whenever he gets heckled on stage, he's just
throws a couple of birds high up in the air
and he says, read them and weep. That's pretty good, Bernie,
thank you. That was actually my Phil Hartman doing Sinatra.
(04:27):
I thought it was Larry David doing Bernie. No. No,
but it works. But that's the game, and you and
you generally do best of three, but that has to
be agreed upon beforehand. Okay, So that is and and
like this game is so basic and simple, but it's
also so widely played around the world that there's variations
to almost everything you just said. Like, I've seen plenty
(04:47):
of people who do it on the fourth count rock
paper scissor shoot. Um, They're like if you were playing
on a pro rock paper scissors m tournament, you would
not put your hand down palm on. You'd have it
palm out to the left or the right, depending on
what hand you're playing with. There's like all sorts of
little variations, but ultimately the point of it is is
(05:08):
that for each one of those possible choices, those three
choices you could possibly make, it has one it can
beat and one it can lose to, which makes it
incredibly thrilling. With just three little hand combinations, you can
either win lose and it happens in the blink of
a nine. It's a really great game. I'm with it totally.
It is, and it's um I think generally to just uh,
(05:32):
to settle a dispute. Not always, it doesn't. It never
struck me as a kind of game you would just
sit around and play, you know, Oh yeah, no, it's yeah,
I know, you're right, maybe if you're practicing, if you're
a weird kid practicing your rock paper scissors, But yeah no,
nobody's just sitting around playing that like they're playing cards
or something, right, And it's between two people, because if
(05:55):
you have more than two people, you'll probably go with
an any MENI money mo or an engine nine number nine.
I don't think I've ever seen three people playing rock
paper scissors before it once. I don't think you can.
That's the whole point. I don't know we should try it.
No wonder if the universe would crumble around us? Yeah,
but who would like? You have to be matched up
against a person otherwise? I mean, I guess if two
(06:19):
people did paper and one person did rock, you would
eliminate that person. I think, I don't know, Maybe you're
onto something I might be. I feel like I've just
kind of upped the evolution of the human species. I
think so too. So you mentioned a story Dave came
up with, and you're talking about settling disputes. You can
(06:40):
also use it to make decisions too, especially if your
name is Takashi hashi Yama, who was a Japanese electronic
firm uh C suite executive. I think maybe the CEO
of one of those companies and UM. He used to
like to use rock paper scissors to UM to basically
make important to say Asians when everything else was essentially equal,
(07:03):
and he ran into the same thing in two thousand five,
didn't he. Yeah, And I guess it worked out for
him if he was a C level executive, if that's
a measure of success to you. But he was an
art collector and he had a about a twenty million
dollar art collection of some very noteworthy artists and was
going to auction it off and said, should I choose
(07:25):
Christie's or Sotheby's. They're both great, and I don't know
what to do, So I'm going to make them play
each other in rock paper scissors for the account. Yeah,
because that's what Japanese electronics executives of twenty million dollar
art collections do. Yeah, they make other people play rock
paper scissors for their own amusement. So apparently Christie's recruited
(07:48):
a pair of eleven year old twins, Alice and Flora,
who were the twin daughters of the International Director of
Impressionist and Modern Art, for Christie's. And the reason that
they turned to these two eleven year old twins is
apparently they were rock paper scissors dynamos. They played all
the time, and they also like understood the psychology behind
(08:08):
it too, and it actually paid off in aces for
for Christie's turning to these two. Yeah, because Uh, in
the interview, I think the New York Times interviewed the
girls and Alice said, everyone knows you always start with
scissors because rock is way too obvious and scissors beats paper. Uh.
And I kind of laughed at that at first, like
(08:29):
that's such a thing a kid would say, But rock,
there may be something too. An adult being an aggressive
move with the rock, there may be something to that.
So that's actually what they did. They started with scissors.
On the day of the whole Um the whole Rock
Paper Scissors playoff to see who would host this auction
of this twenty million dollar art collection. UM, Christie's went
(08:53):
with scissors, and just like the twins predicted, UM, so
the Bees went with paper because apparently they thought rock
would be too obvious and they thought that rock that
Christie's would go with rock, so they went with paper.
But instead Christie's went with scissors. And that actually demonstrates
what you were saying earlier, that there's a lot more
to rock paper scissors than meets the eye, because like
(09:16):
it's these twins assertion that you would want to go
with scissors every time first, because the psychology of your
opponent can be kind of relied upon other people say
you would never want to go with scissors, and so
on and so forth. And there's actually like game theorists
that study this. Um, there's a whole lot to this
this topic. So I guess what I'm saying is is
a good idea of picking this one, because I don't
(09:37):
know if I ever would have. Well, what I did
think was interesting is in what it would have been
a funnier ending to this story is that he didn't
have them actually play the game with their hands. He
had them each right down the Japanese word for rock,
paper or scissors on a piece of paper, and I
thought it just would have been funny if they didn't
(09:57):
know that little hitch and like, you know, Christie's had
someone who spoke Japanese so that he's didn't so they
were like, you went by, Yeah, we forfeit, We don't know,
but yeah, it's um. I think there's something about the
simplicity of it that just in the future Tug of
War episode that just grabs me. Because when you start
(10:18):
talking game theory, and we'll get to that, it's uh,
I've wanted to do an episode on Game Theory Forever.
But it's just it breaks my brain a little bit
when you really get into it. I think it's made up.
So I think this might be a good way to
just satisfy that good, good, good thinking. These topics grab
you and say, let's play. Uh. As far as where
(10:41):
this came from, you know, of course, anything like this,
people are gonna say it came fro an ancient Egypt.
Because you can look at almost any mural or set
of hieroglyphics and say this is what I think they
were doing here. It's very vague. I think that one's
given me the bird, and I think that's kind of
what happened with the Benny Hassan on burial murals. Right.
(11:03):
I don't know. I think that the scholars typically agree
that they're they're doing something like what's called the finger
flashing game, that there's there's something like that. It's not
rock paper scissors, I don't. I don't believe scissors were
invented yet. Um, but that doesn't mean, as we'll see,
there's a lot of other games that aren't rock paper scissors.
They don't have to be rock paper or scissors. You
(11:24):
can kind of substitute just about anything for your hand gesture,
and it's possible they were playing that. I think what's
what keeps it from being definitive is that there's nothing
in like that that we've figured out from from transcribing
hieroglyphics using the resultist one that said, hey, you guys
of the future really missed out playing this finger flashing
game that we didn't bother to really uh put down.
(11:46):
But it's definitely the predecessor of of rock paper scissors.
There's nothing like that, so it's just kind of like
it's possible that goes back that far. Yeah, And I
couldn't you know. I looked like Dave did, to try
and find a picture of that specific and there were
a lot of pictures of this mural or set of murals,
but I saw a lot of wrestling, a lot of
(12:08):
wrestling going on, a lot of gaming gaming type stuff,
but I could not find this specific finger flashing game. Um.
There's also did you ever do the the even odd thing?
I never really understood that one. What is that one
when you throw you like go one to three and
you throw one, two or three fingers for what to
(12:28):
decide something? It's a finger flashing game. Okay, so it's
basically what we're talking. It's basically the Dollard's version of
Rock paper scissors. Well, I don't know. It may be
regional like they did it on Seinfeld. I remember, uh,
and it's like evens or odds. But I never, like
no one I knew ever did that. That's odd or
(12:49):
maybe old timing too, because I remember movies and the
like set in the fifties and sixties. I feel like
they did that song too. That's very weird because I mean,
by that time, from what I can tell, rock paper
Scissors had made its way to the United States from Asia.
It had been around for a while. So why would
you go from rock paper scissors just something as boring
(13:10):
as you know, one, two or three fingers? I don't know.
And I think the thing with that game is you
call even or odd beforehand, and then you put the
two hands together and whichever wins wins. That makes sense.
I'm probably explaining that poorly. I think that deserves its
own episode. Like you would say even, I would say odd,
we throw fingers. I throw two, you throw one, and
(13:34):
that's odd, so I win. Does that make sense? Oh?
If you add them together, it's odd. Yeah. Yeah, but
then if you added any odd to any even, wouldn't
it always be odd? Well? What if we both did ones,
that would be even? Oh yeah, but no, but if
I threw four and you through five, like that would
(13:55):
be odd. I think it's only three fingers. Huh, that's
really that's really interesting. You don't remember that from Seinfeld.
That's when they were trying to decide on like a
lane moving into one of their apartments or selling an
apartment or something. Genuinely don't like. I feel like it's
issue an alternate reality here. But back to ancient Egypt,
(14:19):
we agree that it they either may or may not have.
But if you go to China u during the Ming dynasty,
they definitely played some sort of iteration of rock paper scissors. Yeah,
it was called shushi ling, and um, they they appears
in print like it's it's like what I was saying
that Egyptians didn't do. The seventeenth century Chinese and the
(14:41):
Ming dynasty did that. They wrote history books and he said,
we've been playing this game called shushi ling, a finger
flashing game, um, for at least a thousand, fourteen hundred years,
maybe maybe even longer than that. Um, And so that
is definitively like the what we kind of understand is
rock papers sissors finds its root, if not in ancient Egypt,
(15:02):
at the very least in ancient China. Right. And then
of course that made its way to Japan. And they
had a sort of a collection of hand throwing games
called sen suku me ken, which means can as fists
sun or sand as a sand. Yeah. San is three
(15:22):
or three ways and suku me is deadlock. And they
found a pretty fun translation of uh san sukumi kin
that is three are afraid of one another, which I
think is kind of beautiful in its simplicity. I love
it too, so that we we have like a delineation
where these things started in ancient China made the way
(15:42):
to Japan. Japan said, I really like these. Let's make
a bunch of different games, um. And one of them
was called mushi ken, which is pretty awesome, um. And
it demonstrates how it doesn't have to be rock paper
scissors or just one, two or three fingers instead, um
and uh, mushy can your thumb as a frog or
you could throw a pinky finger, or you could throw
(16:05):
your index finger the pinkies is poisonous centipede in China.
Uh and um it's a snake as your index finger.
And by the time it made its way to Japan,
Um the centipede had been translated um apparently incorrectly into
slug because Chinese and Japanese share the same characters, but
often they have completely different meanings. So in Japan it
(16:27):
was a slug instead of a centipede. Right, And in
that game, frog beats snake, snake beats centipede or slug
and centipede beats frog or slug beats frog. Does make
as much sense snake would beat frog, I would think.
I think snake would beat all of them unless that
(16:48):
centipedes sneaks up behind the snake, you know. Yeah, But
that's the thing. I mean, it doesn't work unless you've
got to You've got one you can beat and one
you can lose to. You know, that's right. Uh. And
then there was another version in h called Kitsunnyken, and
this was a two handed game, and I guess it's
just a little more complex. You did a supernatural fox,
(17:09):
a village leader or a hunter. Fox beats village leader,
leader beats hunter, hunter beats fox. That's as the old
saying goes. That's right, But we know that it didn't.
It didn't start anywhere besides China and then move its
way to Japan and then eventually make its way to America.
We know that we got it here in America from Japan,
(17:31):
um or possibly Chinese immigrants. Um. Because as late as
the nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties, even I believe um, if
you read Western literature, western reporting that mentioned this stuff,
you'll find that the author feels compelled to explain what's
going on and what the rules are with one of
(17:51):
these sansukumiken games that they're describing, which clearly demonstrates that
a Western audience wouldn't wouldn't You couldn't just say the
kids are playing rock paper scissors and leave it at that.
You would have to explain what they were doing and
explain the rules because the Americans hadn't come across this yet, right. Uh.
And then the late eighteen hundreds, Japan was literally playing
(18:14):
a game that looked exactly like rock paper scissors called
john Kin Pon Yes, which they still play. I I
quizzed you me about this, and Um, I was like
did you ever play any san Sukumi ken games? And
she's like no. I was like, what about kitts Sunni
can no, It's like what about Jan Campon? She's like
Jack Campo of course, of course, and just started playing
(18:35):
with me. They definitely play it still, that's nice. Who won?
She won? So she she she did it, and I
thought this was interesting to remember how you were saying,
like you you when you throw, you throw on the
third one, And I said, well, some people throw on
the ship like they go rock paper says or shoot
When she does it, she said that as a kid,
(18:56):
she and her friends would say ja Jack Campo and
then would throw it on the po. But there was
still four hits to the fist. You were hitting your
the palm of your hand with your closes fist that
you were going to throw the sign on um still
hitting it four times, even though there's five syllables in there.
I thought it was interesting. I've seen four more universally
than i've seen three. Yeah, I think I think we
(19:21):
did it on the third and I definitely hit the
other hand when I did it. I wouldn't just throw
it out in the Yeah, almost like there's a platform
or stage or something for its land stage. Should we
take a break our first break in the will we
come back? We'll see okay, chuck so um, we're talking
(20:03):
about it finally ending up in UH in the United States,
and it seems like it probably came into the Pacific Northwest, UM,
possibly San Francisco, where there's long been a strong Chinese
and a strong Japanese immigrant community. And of course these
are two of the countries that have been playing these
(20:23):
finger flashing games for centuries um by the time they
started arriving in the United States. UM. And it also
ties in with a kind of a linguistic quizzical puzzle
about why some people call it rochambo. They think those
two things are tied today together the arrival of Rock
Paper Scissors and the beginning of when it was called rochambeau,
(20:45):
which is a kind of a regional word for that game. Yeah,
I had heard that word. I've never known anyone that
called it that. I thought, uh, And then until we
did this research and I saw that it was sort
of you know, San Francisco is one of the pockets.
Since I texted o our pal Jesse Thorn bulls Eye
with Jesse Thorne and Judge John Hodgman in the Maximum
(21:06):
Network because he's the only native San Francisco. And I know,
and I'll just read it to you. I said, we're
doing an episode on Rock, Paper Scissors. Did you do
you call it rochambo? Yes? Are you passing this along
to your children? He lives in Los Angeles now, so
I know this paints him, but his children are technically Angelino's.
Are you passing this on to your children? Can I
(21:27):
reference all of this in the episode? Yes? And yes?
And then he went row shambo with exclamation points, So
I think he they did it like UMI does it? Uh?
And he says none of this one to three shoot nonsense?
So um, I think they call it rochambo in South Park.
That's where I've heard it predominantly, too. How interesting. That's Colorado, right, Yeah,
(21:50):
which is technically west to western state. I think it's
still inclus to be really regionalized in northern California. Yeah,
but I've heard it outside of that. I haven't. I've
spent you know, a few nights in San Francisco, but
not enough to pick up that the kids call it
rochambo there. So I'm almost positive I've I've only heard
it from like South Park or whatever. Sound like you're
(22:10):
writing a song there for a minute. Been a few
nights in San Francisco. So yeah, have you ever heard
that John Denver song? A Saturday night in Toledo, Ohio? Geese?
I don't think so. Oh man, it's hilariously mean. He
said you can go to the park and watch the
grass die. Like he just talks about all the just
boring stupid stuff you can do Untilia in November. It's
(22:33):
a it's no, no, don't don't defend Toledo. It's thank
you for the gesture. But it's true in a lot
of ways. But it's a really cute, funny song that's
worth going and listening to his catchy too, all right,
don't check it out. But anyway, like linguists still today,
or like why you stupid kids have were you calling
it ro chambou? And why didn't you explain to anybody
why you were calling rochambo? Because it's a linguistic mystery
(22:55):
still to this day. Yeah, I mean some people say
it's from him, the real life person from history. How
do you pronounced that first name? Was it Compta? The
comp the count okay de Rochambeau, uh, the Frenchman who
who fought alongside the patriots in the Revolutionary War. And
interestingly that may hold a little bit of water because
(23:18):
there was a book, uh called the Handbook for Recreational Leaders,
where they literally spelled it as Roe Shambau and not
how he spells his name, and that book was published
in Oakland. Yeah. I don't know if what that means though,
just because it's published there didn't mean it was like
a regional book or maybe it was. Yeah, I mean
(23:41):
I could see the author living there. I'm not sure.
I'm not sure. I don't know, but but I think
it's a kind of kind of interesting that it is
that that recreational leaders book was published in Oakland at
about the right time. I think it was the book,
and it was about the time in the nine thirties
when they think that school kids started picking this up
in San Francisco. That makes sense. And you know what
(24:03):
now that I look at the title of the book,
Handbook of for Recreation Leaders, not recreational so it was
probably like a handbook for local wreck centers instead instead
of being like, are you a leader only recreationally? I
don't take it seriously weird, but they think it's it's
actually um, well, some people think it's from the original
(24:27):
Japanese name right, Yeah, either Jack Kip Poe, so you
apparently just barely pronounced the end in the on the
jan and the poem, so it's Jack and poe um.
And then in Chinese a jing jiang bo jing jun bo.
Either way, there's that that um hard bow or post
(24:47):
sound on the end of it. And they think maybe
American kids in San Francisco who were meeting these Chinese
and Japanese school kid immigrants were just kind of turned
it into something else that sounded vaguely familiar, which to me,
that's what my money's on. I think the Brits and
the Aussies call it paper scissors stone or paper scissors rock.
(25:11):
And then weirdly, if you live in Manchester, Uh, first
of all, you're a man Cunion, which is kind of weird. Secondly,
you don't clap except at the very end of the show. Yeah,
we performed live there. They were, uh, they enjoyed it,
but they were quiet about it. Uh. And then apparently
they called this either zip pop brick or ciss pop
(25:34):
rick just in Manchester. Yes, but they have all sorts
of cool made up words around that. Okay, so um,
the point is Rochambo, it's still. It's still and probably
will forever be a mystery exactly where it came from.
That's right. Should we talk about game theory? I don't
(25:54):
see how we can get around and Chuck, I really
tried to figure out a way, but I don't think
we can. Well, maybe you can embrace it is like,
this is the kind of game theory that like war
Games was about. Sure, yeah, yeah, you know what I
meant At its most basic level. Uh, we're talking in
this case about the Nash equilibrium or a Nash equilibrium,
(26:16):
and that's from John Nash of a Beautiful Mind fame
and sort of the simplest way to say it. They
found a pretty good definition, which is a set of strategies,
one for each player, such that no player has an
incentive to change their strategy given what the other players
are doing. In other words, it's a game where you
(26:37):
reach an equilibrium because there's no strategy essentially that will
get a better outcome. Right, Well, yeah, we'll put and like,
equilibrium is a really important term because it's a kind
of a even though you're in an adversarial situation where
you're competing against somebody, it also has a sort of
like UM cooperative ness that naturally trickles up from that gameplay.
(27:02):
And there's not a pure Nash equilibrium in Rock paper
scissors UM. In the Prisoner's dilemma, which is a famous
game theory UM kind of thought experiment, there's a pure
Nash equilibrium where it's like this is this one choice
is the thing to do. It's not quite the case
in Rock paper scissors. Instead, what happens is is that
(27:23):
if you eventually choose UM too, if your strategy is
to choose doing each Rock paper scissors one third of
the time, you can plan on over the course of
hundreds of games to finally shake out to winning thirty
three percent of the games. And that is the best
you can hope for so long as everybody else is
(27:45):
is cooperating or acting rationally throughout the whole thing. But
that's a mix. That's called a mixed Nash equilibrium, and
it doesn't really count UM. And there's a lot of
problems with applying or trying to apply in Nash equilibrium
to Rock papers scissors. Yeah, I mean humans play it
and when they play it, they do two out of
three usually or just one. So you're not doing it
(28:08):
hundreds of times to let this play out. And also,
humans are humans, so we have instincts, We have psychological
tendencies at play. We have biases, unconscious and conscious biases.
Even with a silly game like this, and that that
one thing like might be better even though one really isn't.
(28:30):
Like they all have an equal chance of equal uh
equally losing or winning. Right, So the Nash equilibrium, I mean,
it applies. It's not like it just you just can't
make sense of it. In the terms of rock paper scissors.
It's just as far as explaining a rock paper scissors
strategy goes, it's not your best strategy because the best
you could hope for is to win thirty three point
three three percent of the time as long as you
(28:52):
stuck to your guns and played that same that's one
to three every single time. Um. The there's another rategy
called a conditional response that they've studied. Um that's that
actually produces a winning um like an overall winning score,
ten more often than a Nash equilibrium. Well, yeah, so
(29:15):
this came from a study in China where they did
kind of the largest study on rock paper scissors ever done,
where they got three d and sixty students divided them up.
They each had to play I think three hundred rounds
apiece had he ended up operative a lot of rounds
(29:38):
of rock paper scissors in the pattern, they discovered the
conditional response was as humans, we instinctively, and it makes sense,
we instinctively stick to something that wins and we change
it when it loses. So if you lose on paper,
you're probably not going to go throw a paper right
again afterward. And if you win with rock, you're probably
(29:58):
or you're instinctively going to want to at least throw
rock as the next one. And this played out in
the experiment. Yeah, and so with that they found that
the conditional response you can actually if you if you
use that strategy where if you if you win with
one thing, throw it again the next time. If you
lose with one, uh, go switch to the next one.
And apparently also people follow the pattern depending on how
(30:22):
you say the name of the game, Like if you
call the game rock paper scissors, if you switch in
a conditional strategy, um, you will if you lose with scissors,
if you lose with rock, you'll go to scissors. If
you lose with scissors, you'll go to paper. Like you'll
follow the pattern of the name of the game too,
which is pretty interesting. But I'll like that. But yeah,
(30:42):
how rock paper scissors. So you lose with rock, go
to paper. Oh yeah, you're right, but I think everyone
gets Okay, So you don't want me to just start
over and completely explain again, I think we need to that.
So but all that combined kind of really points out
how humans aren't rational actors and we don't pick things
at random, and we do kind of fall into patterns, um,
(31:05):
and that that can be kind of used to your
advantage if you're like really paying attention to this kind
of thing. Depending on who you're playing with, well, yeah,
I mean, if you want to follow that model and
give and technically give yourself a statistical advantage, you would
know what they want are lost with obviously, and then
what their instinct to follow would be, and then you
(31:26):
would combat that then with the appropriate gesture. But here's
the thing. It's a fast game. And part of the
reason this game works is because you don't sit there
and go all right, let's think about what we're gonna
do here and let's throw on five. Like you just
go quickly, so you've got to be really really fast too.
I think remember what they did, or see what they did,
(31:48):
remember what's next, and then combat it. And that's then
that second right, like to consider your opponent psychology and
that fast of a time span. Gifted is the word
I think you're looking for. I think so, uh or
maybe professional And should we take a break? Sure, let's
take a break, all right, because people do this, maybe
not for a living, but there are tournaments and we'll
(32:09):
talk about that right after this. All right, So I
(32:30):
spilled the beans. There are not professional rock paper scissors players,
but in the two thousands, especially the mid two thousand's,
there were tournaments sponsored by sponsors that had prize money
at hand. Yeah, and actually, um, I think the prize
money got up to like fifty grand when you're at
the peak of two thousand six or two. Yeah, it's
(32:53):
not bad for playing rock paper scissors. And um. One
thing that we should kind of preface this with when
we're talking about the world of profession all um rock
paper scissors players, is that it is a really facetious
tongue in cheek self satirical world, and they make up
a lot of stuff that is just absolutely not true,
(33:13):
and it's really tough to figure out, like to to separate,
you know, truth from fiction when you're talking about it.
And in fact, um one of the sources Dave sent
was a blog post of a linguist who was posting
about the UM the origin of like the rock, paper
Scissors world society I think UM and how they actually
(33:33):
were founded in nineteenth century London and all of this
was totally made up and didn't realize it until some
of the commenters on her blog post was like, hey,
this is this this world is not real, Like, they
make up a lot of stuff, and she had to
go back and revise the post. So if we accidentally
say something that is not true and we say credul credulous,
lee than than apologies ahead of time. Yeah, I mean
(33:58):
it's kind of fun. They make up a or uh
supposedly the first one was in a bar in Toronto
and uh Toronto, excuse me, in two thousand two. But
whether or not, that's lore. Like once the media starts
covering something and bud Light starts sponsoring it, then it
it is a real thing and that's exactly what happened.
(34:20):
And you know they would make up fun names. Uh
Sean Wicked fingers Sears was one of the players. Unless
that's completely made up, but it was all very tongue
in cheek. Yeah. UM. Another good example of being tongue
in cheek is UM. There's this great article from Alex
Miyasi Prisonomics where they were talking about UM how very
(34:44):
frequently on like UM forums and and UM just basically
hangouts for rock paper scissors aficionados. They they'll mention UM
the book The Trio of Hands by Voyeck small soa
and that it basically like the Bible about rock paper scissors,
and you know, wisdom about rock paper scissors. And I've
(35:06):
seen that um small So is compared to loud Zoo
and UM that that he he was just this great
rock paper scissors UM kind of uh champion, I guess.
And this person is totally made up. The book is
made up, none of it exists, but yet you'll find
it everywhere. So it's almost like they wove this kind
(35:28):
of alternate universe, hilarious alternate universe UM to kind of
make rock paper scissors more important than it it possibly
could have ever been. Yeah, and see now I'm looking
at these uh pre planned throws and wondering if this
is all a joke too. I don't think so, because
(35:48):
they actually make sense. And I was watching one of
the tournaments and they were doing it like that. Okay, Well,
the idea is that you can't just stroll in there
as an eleven year old girl and say rock is obvious,
so you always start with scissors. Um, that's you know,
that's playground level stuff. So apparently the pros and the
(36:10):
tournament will sort of like an NFL team will prescript
their first drive a lot of times on offense and
just go with these plays. And then they start calling
the plays by gut or whatever. They have pre eight
pre set gambits that they are going to play, and
I guess they mix them up. I mean, obviously not
(36:30):
everyone's playing the same order. Oh I'm sorry, So I
think these are real, but I'm not sure they're real.
I thought you were talking about the actual way that
you're supposed to hold your hand. Oh no, no, no, no,
we'll talk about that. Cambits. I don't know that it
makes sense. It makes sense, it got great names. Yeah, sure,
should we tick through these. Yeah, there's the avalanche, which
(36:53):
is rock, rock and rock, right, of course, I love it.
What about the bureaucrat. The bureaucrat is paper paper, paper,
makes sense? Uh, we have scissor, scissor scissor, which is
the toolbox. Yeah, um, I'd like this one fist full
of dollars paper rock paper, So it's like you got
(37:13):
money sticking out of each side of your hand, your fist. Okay,
I like the scissor, sandwich, paper, scissors, paper. And the
point is is like if you are playing and you
you you kind of do your your three tries out
of this because you know you played best two out
of three and then in a tournament that best two
out of three. Um is, So it's game and then
(37:35):
match there's best two out of three games and then
best two out of three match. Um So, I guess
you could play a whole game with just one of
those gambits, depending on as long as there's no draws. Right.
But what you what you were talking about earlier with
the way they do it, it is different and you
mentioned it or at the beginning of the episode. When
you throw paper, you don't turn your wrist and go
(37:57):
palm down. You just go straight out like you would
rock or scissors with your hand, because if you were really,
really really fast and intuitive, you could technically probably see
someone moving their wrists in such a way to give
yourself a slight advantage on paper. Yeah, your biggest tell
is if you're throwing paper and you are you're throwing
(38:19):
your paper um horizontal, so palm down, you are you
watch you look at your elbow when you're doing that.
It's off to the side. Now throw your not throw
a paper with your palm to the side, right like vertically,
your elbow still at your side. So you would be
a chump to try to throw it um palm down
because your elbows going out and they'd be able to
(38:41):
see it every time. It's interesting. I can throw it
with my elbow at my side, really, I mean I can,
but it looks like I don't have use of my
shoulder any longer. I mean, I guess I could do
it like that, and if I were playing for fifty dollars,
I would do like that. But it's much easier to
just play to just throw the paper signed vertically. And
(39:01):
then the point of it all is all of it
comes from that one rock fist. So you've got the
rock and then you stick out all four fingers, you've
got the paper, you stick out just your index and
birdie finger. You've got the scissors. But it's all generally
the same thing, and the motion is just in your
fingers rather than your whole hand and maybe your elbow right. Uh.
(39:22):
And they programmed a robot to actually be so fast
that it could see these micro moves. And this robot
was perfect. There's no way to beat this thing. If
you watch a YouTube of just Google or put in
YouTube robot um almost at tick tack toe rochambo. Uh.
(39:44):
And this thing has a high speed camera and it
can see their little micro move and it can it
can change their things so quickly. It's kind of a
frustrating watch actually because they're doing it really fast, and
the froot but just wins every time, no matter what
the person does. Yeah, because it's cheating. It's watching that
that movement and then throwing a sign that's going to
beat it. So there's actually human players, like you were saying,
(40:06):
who who say? You know, people have tells you can
see what they're gonna do. And um again, that's that
all of it happens way too fast for my punity
brain to keep up with and and um and and
you know, may throw a sign that's gonna beat what
I think they're about to do. But there's been studies
that suggest that actually we do pick up on what
(40:28):
other people are going to throw, and that a lot
of times that probably explains draws, that we're actually mimicking them.
There's something called automatic imitation, and they think that it
has to do with the fact that we have a
complex of mirror neurons, which we've talked about years and
years and years ago. UM, that that where where we're
(40:48):
our motor cortex basically sees what somebody else is doing
and makes us do the same thing mirror neurons, and
that that accounts for draws. And some researchers in London
actually blindfolded some study participants. Hopefully it wasn't those same
poor kids who had to play three rounds in the
Chinese experiment and now they're just kind of like um
(41:11):
pigeonholed into into um rock paper scissors experiments, hopefully a
whole new batch of people. But they blindfolded some of them,
and the blindfolded ones if both participants were blindfolded, they drew.
They had to draw both through the same sign like
thirty three percent of the time, but if one of
the participants wasn't blindfolded, the draws went up to like
(41:33):
thirty six percent. Right, well, what do you do for
a living? I do rock paper scissor studies mainly, right,
I didn't want to kind of fell into it. Pay
is not great, but you know, it's cool. They mentioned
this on stuff you should know. Uh, yeah, they they
exactly what you would think happened. Happened the Nash equilibrium
(41:55):
sort of play out. When they were all blindfolded up
was thirty three point three percent, and then when it
wasn't that, how much did it kick up three point
three to a draw? Yeah, which just statistically significant. Say
that again, it is statistically significant. Oh goodness, it certainly is.
So I think we got to finish on the side
(42:17):
blotch lizards because this is just amazingly cool. Yeah. To me,
this was like what a way to end. It's kind
of the perfect thing because there is in nature sort
of an evolutionary game of rock paper scissors being played
out in front of our human eyeballs. Uh, and the
what is it? The side blotch lizard because the three uh,
(42:39):
there are three varieties with the color of their throat.
The males have either an orange, a yellow, or a
blue throat, and each of them have their own advantages
and disadvantages which we're gonna go over, but none of
them have won out over time as far as evolution
is concerned. So they switch like the dominan species switches out.
(43:01):
Is it yearly or just like every few years, It
seems like over very long spans of time, right, it
plays out because there's not one advantage over the other.
And I just think this is super awesome. Yeah, because
just like in rock paper scissors, one can defeat the
other but is defeated by the third one and vice versas.
So in this, in this kind of evolutionary game of
(43:24):
rock paper scissors, that these these lizards are locked into.
Orange throated ones are dominant over blue throated males, but
yellow throated males are dominant over orange throad of males,
and blue throated males are dominant over yellow So each
one has a foil and one that it can conquer,
which is not so amazing, but with orange males they're
(43:45):
super dominant. Um, they're super aggressive. They defend their territory
to the death, and so they command um large territories
with lots of females that the orange throated of males
um mate with like frequently all the time. You stopped,
but they they But so you would think, well, then
why wouldn't the orange throaded males have have taken over
(44:06):
and they're only be orange throated males. My friend Chuck
is going to explain that part. Are these the yellows? Yeah,
I think the yellows okay, uh yeah, you got your
yellow throated males. They are, well, I think it's interesting.
It's sort of like a picture of humans in a way.
Because the orange throatd I think we should mention the
blue throated They have smaller territories but only one female,
(44:28):
and they all work together to get things done and
to defend against attack. So these are two different, really
different societies. And then you've got your yellow throats. They
don't have any territory. They are mercenaries and rogues. They
don't have any females to call their own. But their
evolutionary trait was they evolved to be able to sneak
(44:48):
into enemy territory and secretly mate with the females, right,
So for the yellow ones, if the orange ones are dominant,
that's good for a yellow throated male because there's plenty
of territory and plenty of females to sneak in and
mate with. And so over time, the yellow throated males
start to outnumber the orange throated males because they've snuck
(45:09):
in and mate it with so many of the orange
throated males. Mates pretty awesome, right, So the orange numbers
shrink and the yellow numbers grow up, but the yellow
tend to be um shrunk. The numbers are shrunken by
the blue because the blues cooperate with one another to
defend other blue throated mails against yellows that sneak in,
and so blues do best when I think there's uh,
(45:33):
when there's a lot a lot of yellows. Yellows are
most successful when there's a lot of oranges because they
can sneak in. And then orange does best when there's
a lot of blues around because they're defending the oranges
territory inadvertently from those sneaky yellow guys. That's right, And
I think the perfect end of this is in you know,
a hundred thousand years, they'll go to study these and
(45:56):
they will just see a waste land of orange inch
blue and yellow throated males dead on the ground, with
all the female side blotch lizards standing there, having figured
out how to reproduce without sex from males. I think
that's a grime song. Might anything else? I got nothing else? Well, everybody,
(46:20):
that was Rock paper scissors? And again, good pick chuck,
thank you, thank you, Dave. If you want to know
about rock paper scissors, go play some rock paper scissors
or Jack Kemp, Jacques Campo or whatever you want to
call it. Um And in the meantime, I say it's
time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this uh funny misspronunciation.
(46:46):
So we gotta cover this because we got a lot
of emails about that. Oh yeah, cookie, most ever, Hello
from Smithers b C. I'm a big fan, guys, can't
get enough random knowledge squeeze into my brain. Even bought
myself Your Trivial Your Trivial Pursuit game for Christmas. Very nice,
which hopefully we'll be back on shelves soon. By the
way end of January, I think they're saying, okay, great,
(47:09):
I had a good laugh. The other day, listening to
the Cookies episode, I think it was Josh had the
most hilarious unique pronunciation of uh. Well, I think it's
the Nanaimo cookie is correct, right, Yeah? What did you
say Nanaimo? Okay, well, it's got a Japanese player to it.
That makes sense. It was. It was a very naive
(47:30):
way of putting uh. Side note, I don't think bars
are cookies there bars, especially if they have different layers.
I had to think for a second about what he
was trying to say. Even this bar is named after
the city on Vancouver Island, does pronounced Nanaimo Naimo City.
I guess you can put that in the list of
(47:51):
funny Canadian names only Canadians and how to say like Saskatchewan, uh,
mississaugua and took two yet took a yaktok. Very nice.
I'm sure you nailed all three of those. Sure that
is from Anna Ziegler. Thanks a lot, Anna. If one
of those two, um, if you have a nice, gentle
(48:12):
correction like Anna did. We love to hear those kind
of things. And you can send it to his via email,
wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send
it off. To stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(48:34):
favorite shows.
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Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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