Assumptions Can Get You Killed: The Ludic Fallacy by Mark Hatmaker

Today’s combat voyage will take us into the mind of a legendary Civil War guerrilla fighter and what he learned from 17^th-century French drama. We’ll discuss two logical/cognitive fallacies and how they can drive even quite effective martial arts into useless margins, and, if we’ve been paying attention we’ll wind up back with our guerilla fighter and how to “play the game well by not playing the game at all.”


We’ll start with our French drama and not the Guerrilla warrior, you’ll see why we start here before we’re through.


The following passage is from Moliere’s 1670 play The Bourgeois Gentleman, the premise of which is that a shopkeeper newly come into money decides that to be one of the upper-crust he needs to take great pains to “become cultured.” He engages numerous “culture instructors” who gladly take his money and leave him none the wiser or better cultured.


One of these “culture instructors” is a fencing master who teaches him a few basics in the form of a call-and-response pattern (sounding familiar?) Later, within the play, our cultured dupe decides to display what he knows about fencing with an un-cultured person who knows nothing about fencing.


Mr. Jour: Goodness me! The fencing master seems to set your teeth on edge. Come here, and I will show you at once your senseless impertinence. (He asks for two foils, and gives one to Nicole.) Here, reason demonstrative the line of the body. When you thrust in quart, you have only to do so; and when you thrust in tierce, only to do so! That is the way never to be killed; and is it not a fine thing to be quite safe when one fights against anybody? There, thrust at me a little to try.


Nicole: Well, what? (Nicole gives him several thrusts)


Mr. Jour: Gently! Hold! Oh! Softly. Deuce take the wench!


Nicole: You tell me to thrust at you.


Mr. Jour: Yes; but you thrust in tierce before thrusting at me in quart, and you haven’t the patience to wait till I parry.


Familiar scenario, huh?


Our uncultured, unschooled “rabble” performs outside the confines of the drill, beyond the borders of the game and renders that “schooled” mind in the play ridiculous, were it the street our gentleman would be rendered dead.


We turn now to our guerrilla fighter. John Singleton Mosby, “The Gray Ghost.”

Mosby and his crew became known as Mosby’s Rangers or Mosby’s Raiders, they were noted for their unconventional but very effective tactics. They executed quick raids, often the opposite of textbook tactics and then, akin to American Indian warfare strategy, they just as quickly disappeared.


Mosby did not fall into unconventional tactics out of ignorance. He was an educated man, as his literary references show and he simply chose to exploit the “education” of others by knowing what said “education” would predict and then playing outside the boundaries of the usual. 


Mosby’s tactics played hell with the Union and, truth be known, more than irritated the Confederacy as he would not follow tactical protocol.


Let’s allow Mosby to educate us.


“Although a revolutionary government, none was ever so much under the domination of red tape as the one at Richmond. The martinets who controlled it were a good deal like the hero of Moliere’s comedy, who complained that his antagonist had wounded him by thrusting in [sic] cartre, when according to the rule, it should have been in tierce. I cared nothing for the form of a thrust if it brought blood. I did not play with foils.”-Colonel John Mosby, Mosby’s War Reminiscences, 1887.


On to our two cognitive errors.


Error One—Domain Specificity 


There is often a tendency to assume that the attributes of one field of expertise transfers expertise across disciplines.


For example, many assume that one who has “mastered” the game of chess and its welter of complexities move to move shows signs of a superior intellect and a mind with Sherlock Holmes-like observational prowess and a keen grasp of the complexities of situations in matters outside chess.


And yet…study after study shows that chess masters, while having tremendous grasp of the game of chess, demonstrate little to zero above mean ability in intellectual endeavors outside the game itself.


This is not picking on chess. This domain specificity rule holds in most all endeavors. Tremendous school grades demonstrate the ability to play the classroom game well, but follow-up studies show little to no transfer outside the classroom setting [keep our French Gentleman in mind through all.]


Elite basketball players are not equally elite volleyball players.


Et ctera, et cetra.


The human animal is remarkably domain specific. We respond well to training but that training effect is for the specific endeavor. We are in essence task-saturated animals with a bit of tunnel vision.


Error Two-The Ludic Fallacy


Ludic, from the Latin “ludus” referring to games or entertainment. 


Humans love games. Humans adore sports. We love measured quantifiable activities that allow us to know how well we are doing or how we measure up against an opponent.


And games, sports, puzzle et cetera are all terrific good fun as long as we regard them as games.


The ludic fallacy is made when we attempt to “gamify” or apply rule-bounded strictures or predictions to endeavors outside the game itself.


Even when the game appears to be a truthful simulacrum of real life.


Back to Moliere’s gentleman. Swordplay can render a mortal dead.


Fencing rules and fencing drills allow the participant to “play” at the sword [hence “swordplay”] without being rendered dead. 


The rules and strictures of fencing, boxing, MMA, the pre-determined call and response dills of combatives, the “rules of use” at the firing range et cetera are all ways to bound and gamify deadly endeavors.


Rules are likely wise for safe play.


There is much to be learned inside a ruleset.


But…we are also wise to keep Mosby’s advice in mind and look to Moliere’s gentleman and ensure that we are not “playing” to our detriment.


A bit of programmed chaos is sage. A bit of messiness is realistically clarifying. A wily mind is ever thinking outside of the strictures of the game so that if/when it is required you can “play the game well by not playing the game at all.”


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