PZ104: Michael Lukich Reboots

Dean and I return with data scientist, writer, solver explicator and now author Michael Lukich. It’s his second time on the pod, and this time he kicks off a new round of Poker Zoo interviews.

The day-old news is that Solver School is dead, but Solver School lives on, in this case, in the data heaven (or hell) that is YouTube. Yes, you can find Michael’s excellent work here at no charge.

Thank him by checking out his new publishing spot and book, The Stoic Systems Thinker. I think the idea here is to explore and recommend the connection between Stoical thought and modern process-oriented thinking. As someone who writes quite a bit about “variance,” I think you’ll find his work interesting. I liked his recent post, “We Live in a Sample Size of One,” in which he emphasizes the need for a systemic attitude in a universe where luck has an outside influence on all our activities.

We talk about many related things in this return podcast. “It feels like everything is gambling now,” says Michael at one point and this is, of course, because everything is gambling. Always was. The problem is that society must cordon certain activities so that people have clear, acceptable choices which make the moral majority feel good. (They are always looking after us, we just don’t appreciate it that much.) We in the gambling space can’t really inhabit acceptable areas of society, no matter what we do or what silly phrases we engage to describe what we do. Poker, in other words, must always be at the margins of culture by definition. Say “mindsport” one more time, motherfucker.

Stoicism and philosophy in general have always had much to offer the suffering mind, no matter what the field. I used to tell players to read Shakespeare to help their game, but they never believed me. The point was perspective and human behavior; they’ll come around. Speaking of, poker pro, sports bettor and Zoo member Greg Porter has published a piece connecting Lasch’s extraordinary Culture of Narcissism to finding a better way forward in the game, right on this site. Consider:

I began meditating, assessed my strengths and weaknesses, adopted a philosophy of life, and slowly sussed out what I wanted to accomplish. Lo and behold, I started having impulses that I didn’t indulge, learned my limits, and began to become a better person for the people around me. (The aim is self-knowledge and personal responsibility, not the cult of self-improvement.)

These are the kinds of people we want in charge, not whoever it is out there doing whatever the hell they are doing these days. While I can’t seem to persuade Michael or any of my guests or students to get into politics, I do recommend it. It’s not about seeking to give poker a status it does not merit, but about our community using a honed intelligence to benefit all. As for concerns over poker itself, giving it and other activities outside the mushy center a little room to breathe is all it ever needed.

I hope you check out Michael’s website and see an example of what sharp things us poker players are often up to. The reality of our community is not so much the degens and failsons that gambling attracts and therefore has the illusion of harming, but the winners that challenge themselves through poker’s infinite complexity and come out stronger. Or at least make a cool website.

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