Monthly Archives: March 2013

LTC v. Bergen (Real World, Part 2)

Posted on by
Reply

A horrible slam. Continue reading →

The opponents were vulnerable when my partner dealt me this unimpressive collection on one of the last rounds of an equally unimpressive session at the Hartford Bridge Club:

♠A 9 7 4 2   ♥10 6   ♦Q 10 8 6 3   ♣7
My partner opened 1♥, and I quickly responded 1♠. After his jump to 4♠ I paused to assess the situation. His rebid generally showed a hand with twenty or so points and five losers. My hand had only six HCP, but there were only seven losers. Losing Trick Count (LTC) analysis said that we could make six. I was most worried about diamonds, so I lied and bid 5♣. My plan was to try 6♠ if he bid 5♦ and to stop at five if he did anything else. Sure enough; he bid his diamond control, and I went straight to 6♠.

LHO made the very passive lead of a diamond. This is what my partner set down on the table:

♠K J 8 5 2   ♥K 8 7 4   ♦A K   ♣K Q 6
 Could I complain? Well, yes, his opening bid was a bit strange, but he does have nineteen points and five losers. Nevertheless, against best defense this slam was down one off the top, and it would require a bit of luck not to be down two or even more. However, I realized that with a diamond lead it was still theoretically possible to make the contract if both spades and diamonds split, and the A♥ was on side. The fact that LHO did not lead the A♥ even gave me a little encouragement. However, RHO pitched a diamond on the second round of trump. I ended up down two, but it could actually have been worse. Every card was wrong. The opponents could have taken two hearts and a club off the top. If they did, and I made the percentage play of the drop in spades (as I did), I would have only managed nine tricks.

So, what went wrong with LTC? Well, the basic problem was clubs. Partner’s King and Queen were so worthless to me that I ended up pitching them on the diamonds. Add a little bad luck to that, and you end up with an LTC calculation that is off by three tricks!

I later (the game ended shortly before 11 p.m.) remembered that Bergen’s method was better on contracts above the four level. My research had revealed that Bergen’s superiority was usually derived from the fact that LTC’s assessment was too conservative. I decided to reassess my hand using Bergen count. For the starting count Bergen would have added to my six HCP one point for my fifth spade, and one for my fifth diamond to a total of eight starting points. Once partner supported my spades I could claim two for my singleton, one for my doubleton, and one for my long second suit. To him my hand would therefore be worth twelve points if I was declaring spades. Even if partner had had his twenty, we would still have been a little short of the thirty-three that he recommends for a slam bid. I deduced that Bergen would say to pass. At least his method says to pass; my understanding is that Marty himself held the green card in great disdain.

But wait. Partner actually could claim twenty-two dummy points! He has two quality suits and a doubleton in diamonds. In fact, if the suit that my partner actually opened, hearts, had been one of the quality suits, and if the suit without quality had been the one suit that he never mentioned, clubs, I would have had a pretty good play at making the hand. Maybe my bid was not as stupid as I thought when I saw the dummy.

It may be worth noting that we do better if my partner declares the hand. It would have been theoretically possible for him to garner eleven tricks.

Reflections on the Conclave

Posted on by
Reply

Assessment, predictions, etc. Continue reading →

Now that the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI has come to an end, it is time to reflect on its achievements and shortcomings. Actually, it is difficult to think of much to put in either category. Benedict continued virtually all of the policies of his predecessor. He had none of Pope John Paul II’s flair, however, and nothing that he did comes close to matching the latter’s accomplishment of serving as the wedge that toppled the Iron Curtain in Europe. I would say that no pope since the end of the Papal States in 1870, with the exception of the short-lived John Paul I, has been less influential. If Benedict XVI is remembered for anything, it will be for his attention to his appearance. He hired a new tailor, wore fabulously jeweled crosses, and, of course, he often appeared in his red Prada loafers. He was almost certainly the most style-conscious pontiff since Paul II, the flamboyant Venetian of the cinquecento. Benedict even made a splashy exit by taking a helicopter to Castel Gandolfo, which can be reached by car in an hour or so.

The conclave was much shorter than I expected, but the outcome was exactly as I predicted. The electors chose a male Catholic. According to the reports of the most reliable vaticanisti, no woman received more than 20 percent of the vote on any scrutiny (the official term for a round of voting in a conclave), and no Jews or Muslims were seriously considered.

The new pope selected the name Francis. He has not personally disclosed the thought process behind this choice, but a Vatican spokesman has announced that “Cardinal Bergoglio had a special place in his heart and his ministry for the poor, for the disenfranchised, for those living on the fringes and facing injustice.” So, it appears that, until the pontiff expresses himself, we must conclude that he was dedicating his pontificate to the memory of St. Francis of Assisi, the thirteenth century ascetic who founded the order now known as the Franciscans.

So, what can we expect from a new pope named Francis? Based upon my years of research of papal history and fully cognizant that my heretofore perfect record of pontifical predictions is on the line, I confidently make the following two predictions:

  1. There will be no change in the official Church policies on ordination of women or abortion.
  2. We have seen the last of the red Prada shoes and the bejeweled accoutrements for a while.

That a Jesuit such as Cardinal Bergoglio would take the name of the founder of another order is certainly peculiar. There have been a couple of Franciscan popes before. By some strange twist of fate, in fact, the pope who suppressed the Jesuit order, Clement XIV, was a Franciscan.

Evidently Pope Francis wants Catholics to focus their attention on the spiritual matters that were important to St. Francis in the thirteenth century rather than the material concerns that he had completely forsaken. As a matter of fact this same dichotomy was the focus of a rather famous controversy that came to a head ninety-eight years after the saint’s death in 1226.

A lot had transpired in the interim. The order established by St. Francis had grown dramatically. The popes for the last seventeen years had not been living in Rome; instead they had usurped the bishop’s residence in Avignon in the Provence and had transformed it into a colossal palace/fortress for their own use. The resident at the time was an irascible and miserly figure named John XXII. His was the sort of pontificate that Scrooge McDuck might have been aspired to if he had been a Roman Catholic cleric.

The Fransiscan order at the time was split into two sects, the “Conventuals” and the “Spirituals.” The latter argued that St. Francis and Jesus before him had ordered their followers to reject all of their worldly possessions in pursuit of spiritual salvation. The Conventuals opted for a more lenient and less literal interpretation. A previous pope and council had ruled in favor of the Spirituals, but Pope John issued a bull that endorsed the position of the Conventuals.

At this point the story gets interesting. The Spirituals argued that the matter had already been settled by the pope and council. The fact that John XXII was contradicting established doctrine was irrefutable evidence that he was not in fact a legitimate pope! John XXII responded with another blustery bull, Quia Quorundam, in which he declared their positions as outright heresy.

Pope John meant business. Sixty-four of the Spirituals were summoned to Avignon. Some were remanded to the Inquisition, and four of them were burned at the stake in Marseilles.

Incidentally, when Pope John XXII died in 1334 he was so rich that some people thought that he had found the Philosopher’s Stone and that it gave him the power to transmute base metals into gold.

A Jesuit Pope

Posted on by
Reply

A short history of the Society of Jesus. Continue reading →

The new pope is a member of the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuit order. He is the first pope to be chosen from the ranks of the Jesuits. The Jesuits, apart from the pontiff himself and the four Jesuit cardinals, are known for their simple black robes, Most of them are teachers and missionaries. Many of the most well-known Catholic universities in the United States — Georgetown, Boston College, Marquette, St. Louis University, and all of the Loyolas to mention a few — are run by the Jesuits.

I know a little about them; I went to a Jesuit high school for four years. I can still remember my very first religion class there. Fr. Bauman began the first class by challenging us freshmen to answer the following question, “The Bible: book or books?” I was very impressed that he actually wanted us to think about it. Prior to that day religion classes for me consisted of memorizing the catechism and speculating about whether one could use water from a car’s radiator for an emergency baptism if it contained antifreeze.

The primary reason that no Jesuit had previously been elected pope is that all Jesuits swear an oath that they will not accept any such election. That Pope Francis felt compelled to break this vow might be the most underreported story of the entire event. The other reason is that Jesuits have been so historically controversial that they were actually disbanded for decades by one of the popes whom they swore to serve. This is a story worth telling.

The Jesuits were founded in the sixteenth century by a Basque mystic known as Ignatius Loyola. The group devoted itself to the pope for two purposes: to counter the intellectual arguments of the Protestants and to spread the faith outside of Europe. They were more successful at the second objective than the first, largely owing to the fact that they were perfectly willing to adapt to the customs and cultures of those whom they aimed to convert. In China they worked so closely with the emperor that one of them helped him manufacture cannons. The Jesuits there learned Chinese language and customs and even adopted Chinese modes of dress. A few Confucian notions were even integrated into the celebration of the mass. The results were overwhelmingly positive.

In Latin America the Jesuits likewise converted huge numbers of natives to Christianity and fought hard against their enslavement by the Portuguese. This struggle was dramatically portrayed in the 1986 movie, The Mission.

For two centuries the Jesuits amassed tremendous power in the Church. The process of their ascendancy, however, ruffled a few feathers. The Dominicans objected to their unconventional tactics in the Far East, and eventually they were recalled from their missions in China and India by Pope Benedict XIV. The Bourbons and other European powers complained about their activities in the New World, which occasionally ventured into entrepreneurial realms that competed with the activities of the kings and their relatives. Matters came to a head in 1767 when all Jesuits were rounded up and banished from Spain. In 1774 Pope Clement XIV issued a bull that officially disbanded the order. Within a month he died a horrendous death, and many blamed the Jesuits for poisoning him.

The Jesuits were officially suppressed, but they did not disappear. Jesuit priests were still priests, but their order had no official standing. In a few countries they continued to operate openly, but in most places they were forced to keep a very low profile. In 1814 Pope Pius VII reinstated the order after four decades of suppression, and the Jesuits almost immediately resumed their positions of influence, which they have maintained until yesterday, when one of their number assumed the Throne of Peter to lead the entire Church.

Incidentally, the correct answer to Fr. Bauman’s question is “Books.”

Twenty-first Century Liars

Posted on by
Reply

Can you trust your parents? Continue reading →

I recently watched an episode on the PBS show Nature about crows. Evidently researchers now think that these birds are so intelligent that they can recognize human faces and can even use their system of calls to pass on information about specific people to other crows. One of the points that the show emphasized was that mental activities that were long considered unique to homo sapiens have now been verified in diverse areas of the animal kingdom.

What I took away from the show was somewhat different. I could not help wondering whether any of the crows were liars. I have long suspected that at least a few of the first dozen statements uttered by men were probably deliberate lies. Until prevarication by crows can be demonstrated by science, I will continue to believe in the superiority of our species. Even if such proof is forthcoming, I doubt that crows or any other animal have raised lying to the level of an art form the way that we humans have.

What ranks the biggest lie of the twenty-first century? Many people would probably nominate the Bush administration’s strident claim that there was “no doubt” that Iraq in 2003 possessed weapons of mass destruction. I strongly disagree. In fact, I am not sure that it was a lie at all. While the talking points that mentioned “smoking guns” and “mushroom clouds” were pure horse hockey, many knowledgeable people probably were pretty certain that Saddam Hussein still had a number of chemical weapons, which are relatively cheap, hanging around. After all, he had already deployed them once, and even the radical cult Aum Shinrikyo had managed to obtain enough sarin gas to attack the Japanese subway system in 1995. If you considered this type of chemical as a WMD, then it was reasonable to suppose that Iraq had some.

Far more outrageous was the linking of Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden and his followers. From Osama’s perspective Saddam was perhaps the worst Muslim ruler in the world. He ran a secular state that tolerated a thriving Christian community; he even wrote trashy novels! ObL was a fanatical fundamentalist who had no use for an infidel like Saddam. The two had no relationship whatever. In fact, they almost certainly hated each other. The evidence that Iraq had anything to do with Al Qaeda consisted of one imaginary meeting in Prague between Muhammed Atta, the Egyptian student who organized the 9/11 attacks, and an Iraqi agent. This meeting never happened, and everyone knew it. However, that was not the big lie.

I came to recognize the actual big lie when I was sitting in the Burger King at the Kansas City airport a year or two after the initiation of the fiasco in Iraq. At a nearby table were a young couple, their two children, and an older couple who evidently were the grandparents. The striking thing to me was that the young adults were both dressed in camos and combat boots. They were evidently both in the military, and they were about to be deployed. What of the kids? I could only surmise that they would be staying with the grandparents. At least, I hoped so.

I was in the army during the tail end of our nation’s last major fiasco — Vietnam. I had been drafted, and the non-lifers that I knew had either been drafted or had volunteered to avoid the draft. A few of them were married, but of the hundreds of guys whom I encountered, I can only remember one person — an extremely poor fellow from Mississippi who joined up because it was the best job that he could find — who had any children. In those days having a wife and kids exempted a young man from the draft. Needless to say, the wife was already exempt because she was female, and women in those days were too weak or too hysterical or something to be trusted with fighting our wars. I had never even heard a rumor of a family that included children in which both parents were in the service and were shipped off to ‘Nam. Such a thing would have been just short of inconceivable.

So, the scene at the Burger King had a dramatic effect on me. How, I wondered, would the family explain to the children why both mommy and daddy had to leave them behind for several months. The answer was, of course, quite simple. They would almost certainly be told that mommy and daddy needed to go to Iraq to defend America. That was the big lie. The deception was originally started by Bush, Cheney, Rice and the rest of them, but it then became interwoven into the fabric of families all across America. No one would tell the children that their parents were leaving them behind because they were being well paid by the administration to implement the incredibly costly invasion of a country the ruler of which had never had the slightest intention of attacking America. He had just made the mistake of getting on the wrong side of a few people in Washington who took advantage of a two-bit terrorist attack to implement a grudge that they had been nursing for decades.

What happens when the children learn about the big lie? I suppose that a few will be disgusted with their parents’ choices, but most of them will probably still think of them as heroic figures who made a big sacrifice that saved the rest of us from the bad guys.

Epiphanies

Posted on by
Reply

Changing one’s mind. Continue reading →

In his famous book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman posits that the mind uses basically two systems of decision-making. The first is employed nearly all of the time in the thousands of quotidian decisions that confront people. The judgments are generated so fast and require so little effort that we often do not even think of them as thinking. The second system is more analytical and deliberate. When we say that we are paying attention, we mean that System 2 is in charge. The funny thing about this arrangement is that humans all identify with the second system even though the first one is clearly the mental workhorse. The commonly heard sentence “I don’t know why I did that” really means “System 2 does not know why System 1 did that.”

This made me think about epiphanies, which I would define as occasions in which someone’s System 2 decided that because of some new information it must override an area that had previously been assigned to System 1. I suppose that it could work the other way, too, when someone decides that he/she is just not going to worry about something any more. Going native, becoming an artist, or joining a monastery might qualify.

I experienced a very striking epiphany in 1973. I read a book with a theme that was somewhat similar to Kahneman’s entitled I’m OK,You’re OK. I learned soon enough that the divisions that the author, Thomas A. Harris, described among Parent, Adult, and Child aspects of one’s thinking were not perfectly accurate. In fact, however, I found the medical research by Michael Gazzaniga that served as the basis for the Transactional Analysis described in the book even more compelling. The idea that the same human body possessed more than one thought process and, moreover, that the separate processes actually competed for control of the body’s functions affected me (and by me I mean my System 2) greatly. More than anything else, I found it very liberating. There was no reason for me (System 2) to feel guilty about something that he (System 1) had done. Of course, I could work hard to prevent him from doing it again, but if I had no idea of what was coming, no jury, not even a jury of a dozen nuns, could convict me.

A few years later I had an epiphany of a different sort. Once again a book, James Randi’s The Magic of Uri Geller, was the instigator. In those days I was quite interested in slight-of-hand tricks. I had watched an astounded Charlton Heston on television — at the Amazing Kreskin’s direction — name the color of every card in a deck simply by holding the corner of each card between his fingers for a second. Even after I discovered how Kreskin did this incredibly simple trick, and I learned that Kreskin’s “mental powers” consisted of nothing more than memory and counting, I still thought that there must be some people who had paranormal abilities. This was not a thoroughly researched heartfelt conclusion. It just seemed reasonable that some of the thousands of people who claimed psychic abilities probably had powers that science could not yet understand. I mean, bats and dolphins have mental abilities that are beyond ordinary humans. System 1 often bases its conclusion on those types of impressions.

Randi’s book thoroughly exposed Geller, who was formerly a stage magician, and his assistant, formerly a stage magician’s assistant (!), as frauds. It also made it quite clear that the academics who had tested him and other such claimants did not understand how easy it was for one human being to fool another’s senses. They wrongly thought that they were smart enough to recognize tricks, and they may have wanted him to succeed.

The exposé induced me to pay more attention to the subject of credence. Reading Randi’s book turned me into a skeptic about everything. Shortly thereafter my belief in just about everything invisible — psychic powers, ghosts, souls, guardian angels, etc. — fell aside.

Recently I have been thinking about how one might induce an epiphany in someone else. Religious cults have developed a very effective technique. The first step is to smother someone with love and affection. The idea, in Kahneman’s terms, is to convince them to set aside System 2 processing for everything that has to do with the cult. System 1 quickly associates the cult with stimulation of the brain’s pleasure centers and thus forms a strongly favorable impression. Many become True Believers.

How can one reverse the process? How can one persuade another person to use System 2 in dealing with something (not necessarily a cult) that the target person had previously relegated to System 1? This is a thorny question. System 2 is inherently lazy, and employing it requires real effort that is difficult to sustain. I hope that Kahneman addresses this at some point in his book.

The dissertation that I abandoned long ago was going to focus on a very small aspect of this subject. A long string of well-known studies of some very specific questions involving judgments in situations in which the probabilities of outcomes had been specified showed that people consistently changed their minds about the advisability of certain options after a discussion with others. The direction of the shift is predictable. On some questions it shifts in the direction of taking risks. On others it shifts in a more conservative direction. The effect is not perfect, but it is strong.

I speculated that some of the people who changed their minds probably did not understand the concept of probability well enough to calculate the best course. The discussion might have provided enough context so that System 2 decided that it had enough information to take over and make a different decision.

I wonder if I was right. I probably will never know.