Evan Coopersmith

I was in high school. As a precocious kid with a high school math teacher for a father1, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem">Monty Hall problem</a> found its way into some dinner conversation during my post-adolescent years. I’m not <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_vos_Savant">Marilyn Vos Savant</a>, nor any other kind of savant. But the solution seemed logical enough, and apparently, among adults circa 2000, this clarity on the famed puzzle was hardly a guarantee.2

He did not teach at the high school I attended. Not a relevant detail.

For those who remain uninitiated, the scenario is simple. A game show contestant is asked to choose one of three doors, behind one of which is a new car (or other valuable prize), and behind the other two are goats (or something else far less valuable). The host, who is aware of which door contains the car, opens a different door to reveal a goat. The contestant is then offered to either open the door he or she chose initially or switch his decision to the remaining door (the one he did not choose, which the host has not yet opened). The correct answer is to switch doors, which yields a probability of ⅔ of winning the car, as opposed to a ⅓ chance of winning the car by standing pat. The intuition is best revealed by imagining not three doors, but 1,000. Imagine picking a door, then watching the host open 998 other doors to reveal goats behind them all. Either you were remarkably lucky and picked the single correct door from the 1,000 initially or the prize is behind the only remaining door. Clearly, you should switch.&nbsp;

Somewhere along the line, (and how I wish I could remember the context in which this interaction began!) I found myself on the other end of a landline phone, speaking to some contact of my father’s, attempting to explain the intuition behind the correct answer to a man who would hear none of it. And even if he were inclined to hear the flaw in his reasoning, I am exceedingly confident that the voice of some borderline-pretentious teenager was not the source of wisdom he would have found convincing.&nbsp;

As the level of frustration and acrimony began to rise and burble, in my exasperation, I offered to play the game with the man in question repeatedly, using playing cards in lieu of doors obscuring prizes and a neutral third party, wagering $100 to win $90 that I would find the prize after switching my initial guess. If the odds were truly 50/50 as he so vociferously asserted, he would be offering me a sucker’s bet. If the odds were as I believed, I would slowly erode his wealth.&nbsp;

And with that, my interest in convincing him of anything whatsoever vanished. He was unwilling to put capital behind his convictions. He was willing to raise his voice on the phone to a minor he’d never met, but not to take a bet that he’d been insisting would be lucrative for far too long.

No one liked the hall monitors. You know the ones, the goody-two-shoes currying favor with the adults by enforcing their draconian rules.&nbsp;

Well, the landscape of adult life is littered with those types of folks. However, in lieu of becoming administration-endorsed tattle-tales, they are the risk-averse naysayers willing to cast doubt on an idea that runs afoul of existing orthodoxy, but not to put their own skin in the game to demonstrate that they believe their own rhetoric.

What does this look like in the world of work, life, and family?

Years ago, I ran advanced analytics for a professional services firm. While quarantining and carrying in unhealthy quantities of St. Louis BBQ3, I was also tasked with evaluating the strategic initiatives under consideration for the subsequent fiscal year.

I spent 2020 in St. Louis. If you’re going to be stuck in a rented house, one with access to large slabs of ribs isn’t the worst outcome.

Some of these plans were excellent fodder for the type of powerpoint presentations beloved by senior management, but doomed to failure given some fairly elementary scrutiny of past data. We’re talking reasoning at the following level of complexity:

You did this X times a few years ago, and made $Y. The next year, you did this thing 2X times, and made ~$Y. Then, the following year, you did the thing 4X times, and made ~$Y. Your current strategy is to hire more people to do the thing 8X times. Why exactly do you suspect the outcome will be markedly different?

Now of course, there are plenty of arguments why such doomed-to-failure efforts occur, from a lack of originality to the short-term incentives of private equity firms, to the delusional optimism that permeates a company losing market share.4&nbsp; &nbsp;

Because delusional optimism is more fun than fatalism.

But the point is that I was certain I was correct, and would happily have placed a wager against my zoom-boardroom antagonists. None would have been inclined to fade me. Ah, but in the real world the only mechanism of expressing such a position (unless you work a hedge fund and can manage a portfolio reflecting your sentiments) is either to vote with your feet or opine in copacetic corporate-speak then await the inevitable.&nbsp;

We’ve all been required to, as Jeff Bezos would say, “disagree and commit” at one point or another. Acquiescence, followed by good faith efforts in furtherance of a strategy with which we disagree is part of “learning to play well with others.”5 If putting one’s skin in the game in opposition would incentivize sabotage and lethargic disengagement, then perhaps we ought not create moral hazards.

Admittedly, I’m an only child, and do continue to struggle along this axis.&nbsp;

Nonetheless, at a minimum, the proponent of any idea ought to express their opinion with personal capital, with very few exceptions.

I am continually amazed at how easily I can avoid feeling the internal anguish when presented with someone else’s irrationality6 if I can simultaneously recognize that they would be unwilling to put their money where their mouth is.

Moreover, if I am unwilling to put my money where my mouth is in such a disagreement, then perhaps I too am either irrational or apathetic (and my blood pressure falls in response)!

Most discussions do not yield the rancor and fervor of Monty Hall. And many more already have the necessary stakes built-in. For instance, we might dispute the proper religion, but as an atheist, if I’m wrong and my theologically-inclined friends are correct, I’ll already be suffering for eternity. Our respective skin (and souls!) are already in the game. With respect to politics and other sources of Thanksgiving-table-fury, I suggest we all note when our skin is already in the game, when our skin is not but could be if we truly had the courage of our convictions, and when we might not truly believe our own rhetoric as much as our bluster might imply.

I love a good argument. But only when both sides are willing to bleed.&nbsp;

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