The Secret Knowledge

poverty.

How fashionable to wear clothes which are distressed. The young on the Westside of Los Angeles dress themselves in jeans worn, sanded, and razored to resemble something a six-month castaway might crawl ashore in. Why? They are trying to purchase a charade of victimization, as the ethos of the Liberal West holds that these victims are the only ones of worth. But how to go about it? For the jeans can cost over one thousand dollars (one might buy them at Goodwill for two bucks, but, I am informed, they would be “seen through” and, though a closer approximation to true poverty, they are ineffective as a concomitant display of wealth).

It beats me all hollow.

Look at those Old Rich Guys in their Porsche, the young might say; but the Porsche is perhaps not an attempt to display wealth, neither to recapture youth, but to enjoy that which some years of labor have permitted as an indulgence.

I think quite a bit about higher education, which, to me, partakes of the ethos both of bottled water and of an “evening of poverty”: bottled water because, at least in the Liberal Arts, it is useless; and Ticket Number Three, as the rather universal absence of rigor in courses devoted to “Identity” abandons the children to fantasies of their own omnipotence and oppression (a bad mix). This allows, indeed, encourages them to criticize and dismantle a culture they, in their adolescence, are equipped neither to understand nor to participate in—any more than the young chap receiving Ticket Number Three would have, thus, become an expert on Global Inequality.

I believe the incredible wealth of this country will allow it to survive quite a while on its hundreds of years of production and upon its natural resources and historic culture of productivity. But the Change which Obama’s rhetoric referred to preceded and will follow him, accelerated by him and his policies, accepted by a drugged populace and a supine press. It is the unfortunate descent of a productive nation into socialism, which, as I understand it, is robbing Peter to pay Paul. I don’t think it’s any more complex than that.

12

THE MONTY HALL PROBLEM AND THE CONTRACTOR

There was, and still may be, a television game show called Let’s Make a Deal. Its MC, Monty Hall, brought the contestants down to guess behind which of three closed doors the Grand Prize lurked.

The contestant made his guess (e.g., Door One). Now Monty opened one of the two remaining doors (e.g. Door Two) to show that it did not conceal the prize, and asked the contestant if he wished to stay with his original guess, One, or choose the third door, Three—which had neither been originally guessed, nor subsequently revealed.

The audience would then scream out its intuition: “Change! Don’t change! Don’t change! Change!”

This seemed a logical choice—between option One and option Two—the odds being ostensibly 50 percent of picking a winner; a decision to change or stand pat, resting, then, but upon sentiment. But the odds were not now 50 percent, but two to one, actually, in favor of change.

A mathematician acquaintance of mine explained this to me some years ago, and though convinced, I, when the conversation was over, reverted immediately to my previous, logical perception: There was a choice between two doors. Door Two had been revealed a blank—the prize must therefore be behind Door One or Three. The odds had to be 50 percent.

Over the years, I would see the mathematician at parties, and ask him to convince me again, and I would again be convinced during the time of our chat.

The problem, called the Monty Hall Problem, I learned, was quite famous in mathematic circles, and had formed the basis for much new and interesting investigation and speculation regarding probability and perception. For it pertained not only to mathematics, but to cognition. It could be proved mathematically, and demonstrated empirically, that the odds were two to one in favor of change, and yet, the lay mind (mine) remained unconvinced. There were two choices; I had picked Door One, Monty revealed Door Two was a blank, and I was offered the choice between my Door One, and Door Three.

But no, I was told, I was offered a choice between Door One, and all the other doors.

But “All the other doors,” I said, “were only one door, Door Three.”

One day, I figured it out for myself. For I thought about it not as a mathematical proposition, but as a confidence trick: Having picked my door, Monty was going to reveal that one of the two remaining was blank. But of course one of the two remaining was blank. One of the two remaining had to be blank, as there was only one prize.

Thus, Monty’s supposedly generous offer was not generosity at all. As far as any benefit to myself, he could just as easily have made his generous offer before revealing the nullity of Door Two. He could have said, “You’ve chosen Door One, you can stand pat, or trade it for Doors Two AND Three. Which, as the penny dropped, I realized, was exactly what he was doing. I had defeated myself by accepting the shiny but destructive misinformation that he, in revealing Door Two, had offered me a gift.

My greed convinced me that I possessed something which I did not in fact possess (more information), and so I seduced myself into a false (and destructive) understanding of the problem. “Oh,” I realized, “I am an illogical being.” This is sobering but helpful information.

I now compare my escape from Monty’s fiendish cunning with my experience with an architect.

My wife and I were renovating a house, and the architect said that there were two ways to figure his payment. We could pay him on a cost-plus basis; or we could pay him on an hourly basis.

This seemed to me very sporting, and I was surprised when, near the end of the job, and facing the outrageously mounting costs associated with any building process, I was wrathful and sullen. But no, I reasoned, correct yourself—the fellow gave you a choice, the choice was yours (I’ve forgotten which scheme I chose), and now it is your part to live with it.

Which I did. Until some years later it occurred to me that I had (as with the Monty Hall Problem), misconstrued the nature of the choice offered me.

For why, I reasoned, would the architect offer a client a choice which was a fifty-fifty proposition to lose him money? The architect knew or would figure how to best reward himself in whichever scheme I picked. I do not suggest duplicity, but merely human nature—if paid on a cost plus basis, he (or you, or I) would indulge a natural passion for the most expensive materials—why not? The house would have his name on it, and expensive materials could only redound to his credit. If paid on an hourly basis, he would express this same passion for perfection by working himself and his staff more hours. It was impossible that it should be otherwise. Neither you nor I would do otherwise.