Does revenge work and how do you de-escalate?

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights, and this week we're discussing whether revenge works. Nick, does revenge work?

Speaker B: 00:00:26

Well, you probably noticed at the beginning of January that the US assassinated an Iranian general, General Soleimani, who was very popular, very senior and well known. And in revenge, the Iranians fired a bunch of ballistic missiles at US bases in Iraq. And because, well, it seems that because they were on high alert for American retaliation, shot down an airliner. Anyway, this kind of, you know, that looks very like what you often hear about, which is this sort of cycle of revenge. And revenge often does seem to make things worse. And we were always told that we shouldn't be vengeful and stuff. But I'm not sure because, I mean, people love revenge. Most films are about revenge. You get revenge. People love the idea of taking revenge on their enemies and fantasize about it. So I'm wondering, well, does it actually, is revenge sometimes a good thing? And if so, when?

Speaker A: 00:01:35

Okay. Wow. Okay. I feel my blood sort of rising already when I think of the wrongs that have been done to me in the past. Yes. Peter, anything you want to weigh in with at this point?

Speaker C: 00:01:47

Well, I think it's an interesting topic because on a sort of micro level, the way you conduct yourself in conversation with other people, but also the way that you conduct yourself with your own internal monologue when you're thinking about things and doing your analysis or even just day to day perceiving and understanding the world, I think they're heavily related. So this is an interesting topic in our sort of general theme about being a good analyst. So, okay. So this is

Speaker A: 00:02:17

one of those things. When we think about revenge, we tend to think, or I tend to think about it on a very personal level. There's quite a few things I've got on my list with you two guys, actually.

Speaker B: 00:02:26

But anyway, when we- Well, we're locked in a vendetta, of course.

Speaker A: 00:02:30

Yeah. Cycle of hate. That's it. So I tend to think of it on a very personal level. However, what we tend to talk about here is on an organisational level, on an institutional level. And indeed, the example that you gave there with what happened with the US and Iran is an institutional thing. So what's my question? How can we start thinking about this from an institutional point of view? Does it make sense to talk about revenge from an institutional point of view?

Speaker B: 00:02:58

Well, I think we'll probably get to the issue of institutions because in some way, you could see our entire legal institution system, at least in the West, is very much designed to take the place of revenge. And there's no doubt that people have a moral downer on revenge. I mean, if you look at all the great thinkers in history, such as Yoda, who said that fear is the path to the dark side, because it leads to anger and that leads to hate, which of course leads to suffering. But there's also various proverbs which have been attributed to people like Confucius and Gandhi, where if you want revenge, then dig two graves and an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. And of course, I don't know if you know much about theology, but there's a guy called Jesus. He famously said, if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also, rather than punching his lights out, which you or I might be tempted to do. So on one hand, everyone disapproves of revenge, but at the same time, we bloody love it. I mean, from a kind of fundamental level, animals take revenge. It's been observed in quite a lot of the... And I think by revenge here, what I'm thinking of particularly is a kind of, almost like a costly activity that you undertake to impose a bigger cost on someone else. There's no constructive element to revenge. You're not getting compensation from someone. You're not trying to get back from them something they've taken. You're trying to hurt them because they hurt you. So it's puzzling superficially because you'd think, well, why would we have evolved to undertake costly actions which don't actually benefit us? There's no benefit. So there must be... But the fact that animals do it shows that there is something quite fundamental going on. And of course, as I said, I think that people really like the idea of revenge and get very emotionally invested in it. I'm one of several thousand people who subscribe to a subreddit called ProRevenge, and they've got some fantastic... I mean, should I read you some of the... I'd definitely. Yeah. So these are some of the stories on ProRevenge. You stole my car. I will make you homeless. My hag of a stepmom gave away my PlayStation 4 while I was away in college, so I rented out her house while she was on her honeymoon with her newest husband. A woman let her dog shit on the airport floor, so I shit on her plans. Boyfriend of five years cheated on me, so I ruined his precious RuneScape account. Neighbours ran over fence. Dad installed concrete fence that wrecked eight of their cars. And my favourite is, I got back at childhood bullies by destroying an entire town. Anyway, it's always a good read. It's a very good subreddit. It's just the good stories are incredibly fun to read because you realise the person who's writing it is always the hero, and they've been horribly wronged by someone, by an evil person, and they always get their own back in a fantastically overblown way. And then, of course, you're full of... I mean, almost... I mean, so many films have that as an element as well. In order to set up the character arc, the character has to have some annoying challenge put there by the antagonist. The antagonist has to have hurt them in some way, and then winning in the end is satisfying because the antagonist gets their just desserts. So anyway, yeah, so there's a bit of a dichotomy. On one hand, we go round disapproving of revenge all the time. Nobody says, oh, revenge is brilliant,

Speaker A: 00:06:41

we should do it more. And yet, we all love it. So coming on to Peter, but just before we do, I was reading a book about storytelling recently, and one of the things it said is exactly as you've just said, any good story, you've got your hero, your hero has to have challenges, and every good story has to have a villain. And of course, what we like in a story is seeing that villain sort of getting his or her just desserts. And I don't know if this is what you're leading towards, Peter, but we can certainly see why the idea of revenge appeals. Unless it's being wrought on us, I suppose. But I guess, why not, Peter? Or maybe you want to go on a different angle, I don't know.

Speaker C: 00:07:25

Well, I was gonna be terribly reductionist and try to explain away our desire for revenge. It probably can be explained a lot by evolution, and particularly sort of social evolution. So our desire for revenge probably comes from us having evolved into social creatures, and as a such need to have mechanisms for enforcing certain social norms, which are good on aggregate for the entire social group. So the desire for revenge, the desire to punish somebody who's wronged you, the compulsion to seek revenge seems to be a good way of enforcing a social norm. So if you're wronged, you wrong somebody else in return, and as long as they understand that they're being wronged because they wronged somebody in the first place, then they're perhaps less likely to do that in the future. So it sort of, in aggregate, would kind of steer people towards a compliant way of behaving with each other that means that we can cooperate. Yes, kind of a community management, self policing systems. Exactly. Yeah. So but it's an emergent property, I think, of us being social creatures.

Speaker B: 00:08:37

Yeah, it's a kind of game theory solution to the problem of enforcing a good, the kind of good prisoner's dilemma outcome rather than the bad prisoner's dilemma outcome.

Speaker C: 00:08:47

I think we've cited this before, a number of times, probably on previous podcasts, there was a really interesting experiment by Robert Axelrod in early, early 80s, examining competing algorithms that were competing over a sort of limited resource and they could, it was a very pure game theory kind of experiment under a repeated prisoner's dilemma situation, where you had a big competition of lots of different algorithms that were competing one on one. And if they cooperated with each other, they would both get a reward. If one dissented, they would both get less of a reward, but one of them would get more. And if they both dissented, then they get nothing or very little reward. And the algorithm that was the most effective was the tit for tat algorithm, which was also one of the most simple, which would always cooperate until the competing algorithm dissented, in which case it would punish it once and then go back to cooperating with it.

Speaker B: 00:09:51

Oh, well, it would go back to cooperating if it then cooperated, basically copying what it did last time, but it would start by cooperating.

Speaker C: 00:09:57

Yeah, yeah. And that sort of, that is analogous with the desire for revenge. Revenge is often, you want it immediately, you're compelled to get it immediately. And it's often, once you're satisfied that you've got revenge, you're then willing to cooperate again.

Speaker B: 00:10:19

Yeah, no, I hadn't thought about revenge as almost the opposite of cooperation. I mean, Axelrod's book, The Evolution of Cooperation, is something that everyone should read. It's such a brilliant, very short, but really, it's one of those books where you think, oh, this is a concept I've needed my entire life.

Speaker C: 00:10:36

It's got a very high epiphany per page rate.

Speaker B: 00:10:38

Yeah, exactly. And you, but you, you know, so he talks about loads of examples, like, I mean, the evolution of truces in the trenches, for example, where, you know, they kind of got to the, provided it was the same units were facing each other on a repeated basis, they kind of evolved, letting each other get on with it and not taking pot shots when you could, because all that would happen was the enemy would take pot shots at you then, and nobody would be better off.

Speaker C: 00:11:05

Aiming to miss and then having, playing football matches.

Speaker B: 00:11:07

Yeah, exactly. So I think, I mean, I think, yeah, there's no doubt Peter's right in that the, it's a very fundamental thing. It's not something we work out, we don't acculturate into revenge, we don't have to learn to take revenge, it's something very fundamental. And actually, Peter mentioned something there, which is all to do with the person knowing why you're, why they're being punished. And actually, that, that turns out to be very important. People get a sense of relief when a wrongdoer is hurt, but only if the wrongdoer knows they're being hurt because they did wrong. Apparently, people get no psychological relief from seeing a wrongdoer hurt if they're not able, if they're not kind of told, this is why this is happening to you. But I think that the question is, like, how have we managed to get away from that? How have we managed to supplant revenge with kind of legalised retribution? So just to think about the difference, I found a list of sort of Robert Nozick's list of what the difference is, which is revenge is for an injury, whereas retribution is for a wrong. Retribution has some kind of limit to the amount of punishment according, which is, which is graded against the level of seriousness of the offence, whereas revenge doesn't necessarily have that. And I think that's one of the reasons you get these kind of vendettas, you get these cycles of revenge, because if the wrong you visit on the person who's wronged you is the same or greater, then the total amount of wrong is going to increase. There's a personal element to revenge, whereas an agent of retribution doesn't have to have a personal side. So we get the state, we get to do the retribution for us, but we don't do it ourselves. There's also an emotionality to revenge, which there isn't in retribution. And revenge also doesn't have a generality. So in other words, revenge, it does not provide a rule, like, whereas what you want really is a set of rules that we can all agree on. Whereas revenge is very much about an act, one act and another act and another act rather than what is the general rule that we're following here. So I think, yeah, the point is that we have managed to get ourselves into a, yeah, almost certainly a better equilibrium where we sort of keep a lid on revenge, maybe just let it out through computer games and Hollywood films. Because actually it is better. And if you look at, you know, the kind of indicators of the kinds of where you have still have honor cultures, which is a very big thing, and it's contrasted usually with sort of cultures of law where you have honor cultures, actually, you know, things seem worse, you know, there's more violence. And so it's probably the case that letting revenge take over, letting revenge be the predominant way that you do justice probably is worse in that sense.

Speaker A: 00:14:18

And this is, I guess, what happened in what sparks this conversation, which is the example of, you know, the US and Iran falling out and Iran wreaking vengeance or seeking to wreak revenge for that assassination. And I guess that's where the norms and the rules and the international set of rules broke down. And that's where we came into this almost like a personal vengeance thing.

Speaker B: 00:14:50

Well, although could you say the problem is that they don't really exist? I mean, I think there's a lot of people who think that honor cultures are not a driver necessarily, but a cause, but an effect of a certain set of sort of resources and constraints. So if you do not have, you know, readily available sort of collective force, so, you know, if you live a long way from the nearest law enforcement, for example, if there are relatively scarce resources so that, you know, someone taking your stuff is particularly bad, then you will tend to get an honor culture emerging. And it's interesting if you look at the kinds of places where you have strong honor cultures. And so, for example, the US, the south, southern US states versus the northern ones, you know, which are sort of predominantly rural and quite sparsely populated compared to the heavily urbanized north. And that distinction is there. You know, then what did you say? Because I was getting on. I was talking about whether in terms of international rule. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Then you might think, well, actually, the international system is still in the honor culture phase, because we don't have, there's no one we can call on. There's no unified central system. Yeah, there's no credible international enforcement mechanism.

Speaker C: 00:16:16

I'm not convinced that the analogy translates directly to state level. I think when it comes to states, it's less about a sense of honor and being wronged. I think it's more a sense of not wanting to appear weak. So if you allow your top generals to be killed and you do nothing about it, you look a bit weedy and people will treat you thus and try to take advantage of you more. I think it's more that. But you just described an honor culture. That is essentially the gist of it.

Speaker A: 00:16:47

Yeah, but also there's a domestic element to international politics as well, where you've got your domestic audience who you need to satisfy as well.

Speaker C: 00:16:52

Yeah, it's not a sense of honor in the sort of sense that, you know, an eye for an eye, you know, it's more calculated. It's slightly more intelligent in that it's a calculated decision about how you're perceived by others.

Speaker B: 00:17:07

But I mean, I think the characteristics of honor culture are very much about reputation. In fact, I've seen a distinction drawn that says that, you know, honor cultures are about reputation, whereas legal cultures are about dignity. So in other words, about the individual and how we treat individuals, rather than about your reputation per se. Like, it's what do you deserve as a person, not what do you deserve because you're a person of high standing and you look strong in front of the community. So I don't know, I think we agree.

Speaker C: 00:17:39

Yeah, I think what I'm saying is that the mechanism is slightly different, but maybe the outcome is the same, but maybe the kind of process in that sport is slightly different, but actually it boils down to more or less the same thing at a sort of aggregate level. But yeah, so what I'd quite like to just briefly dip into is the modern punitive systems are much less about kind of retaliation. They're more about, well, they try to be more about rehabilitation. So although you might be satisfied that somebody's tried and found guilty of a crime and then has a period in prison, the state tries to make that stay in prison more about rehabilitating that person, preventing them from re-offending, rather than just as pure punishment. They're not just locked up and just left sort of put in solitary and left to it. They try to sort of give them skills and prepare them to be a functioning member of society on their release. So if you took that to the extreme and actually, well, there is no prison anymore and you are just rehabilitated in open society, but it may perhaps sort of under, you're monitored in some way. I think that would perhaps be less satisfying to the victim of the crime.

Speaker B: 00:19:08

Sure. I was thinking about this in the context of a cake based experiment, which is, let's say that someone, a cake thief comes and steals one of your cakes. You had two cakes and you worked the sweat of your brow to get these cakes. And a cake thief comes and gets one of your cakes and takes it away. And then the cake fairy comes up and says, oh, well, don't worry. I'll magic up an extra cake. A fairy cake. A fairy cake. Why not? Here's your extra cake. So you're no worse off now. Are we all back to normal? Are we back to square one now? Definitely not. Definitely not. That cake thief needs to be punished. He needs to have his cake taken away. It's not his cake. And I think, yeah, it's interesting what Peter's talking about, because I think there is a big clash between, and it certainly happens on a kind of, you know, the more you learn about why the law is the way it is, the more you're kind of content with it. But an intuitive appreciation of the law would see it as very favourable to wrongdoers because we want, you know, things like the presumption of innocence, where you think, well, this guy's a, you know, some scumbag. It's his 25th offence. And, you know, but we still have to, and we know he did it, but we've got to treat him like he's got this, the same shield of innocence as some completely pure white, you know, wrongfully accused guy. And we're not allowed to mention his previous offences in court again. And you think, well, why? Because, I mean, this guy's asking for it. You know, he's been breaking into cars all, you know, all his life. And there's quite a few aspects of the legal system which, you know, are really counterintuitive, but which are good. They're still good.

Speaker C: 00:20:50

In your thought experiment there, I think I would probably work with the cake thief to try and capture the cake fairy, given that cakes can be magically stuffed and seem to be an inexhaustible supply. And you just put the cake fairy into a tiny little cage and force her to create cakes.

Speaker B: 00:21:06

Yeah, put it in a jar and get it just making cakes all the time. Then we can cook a cog whoop of cakes. Until the hellfire fairy pops up and starts punishing you.

Speaker A: 00:21:18

Before we finish off, I mean, there's something I want to move on to, but before we finish off, is there anything you, any sort of final points you want to make?

Speaker C: 00:21:25

Yeah, just very briefly, I mentioned at the start, I think it's an interesting thing to study in terms of being a good analyst and having productive discussions. I'm reading a book at the moment, so I can't, I've not finished it, so I don't know how it ends, but it's the, it's called Why Are We Yelling? The Art of Productive Disagreement by Buster Benson. It's a good read. It's very short. It's a sort of, it's in the style of a sort of light self-help kind of book, but he talks about how arguments work and how they can be made more productive by just being more aware of how you're conducting yourself. And he does say, he does say through nice analogies about, with talking about the modes of thinking that you're going through when you're, when you're selecting what you're saying and things. Worth reading, but a lot of it strikes me as being kind of like revenge based, because when you get in a, in a heated argument, a non-productive argument, it often devolves down another, a nice little model by Graham, Paul Graham, which he calls the disagreement hierarchy. So productive arguments really center on refuting facts, like talking about the world and how, you know, what is true. And then at the very bottom of the hierarchy, where sadly most kind of arguments happen, it resorts to sort of out homonym attacks and name calling and things where you're actually not just talking about the thing you're talking about anymore. You're now talking about each other.

Speaker B: 00:22:57

So really it should be like, well, I've, I've looked very hard at the data and it turns out that you're an arse. That would be a productive argument.

Speaker A: 00:23:06

I need to read that book actually. Because I think one of the problems I have in life is that, as you know, that I am a lover of truth. I'm a lover of rationale. And, and actually one, and one of the things actually I like about when, when we all chat is we can have all sorts of disagreements and shouting gets quite heated, but actually it's just talking through ideas. And it's, it's, it's, I think there's nothing sort of personal in it. Okay. But I have lots of sort of disagreements with people at work and it very quickly gets, gets very personal.

Speaker C: 00:23:36

I would say that they need to read the book. Not you. Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:23:39

Yeah. But I think I, I think this is, we've, we've opened a box to a new pod, to another podcast. Because I think this, this issue of argument culture is really interesting. And it does, as you suggest, vary very widely between families. You know that, I mean, I come from a very hugely argumentative family. But my, my partner's family never argued. And they, and they, and they see what I would consider to be a little bit of a kind of, let's toss this idea about and have a, and have a chat about it as, as being, you know, a kind of awkward argument type situation. So, so yeah, I think, but I think this is, yeah, I think it's worth putting, noting this down. Yeah. Anyway, you're completely wrong, but I know you don't mind me saying that.

Speaker A: 00:24:19

Look, just before we finish off, we can't sort of finish off without talking about, do you have any favourite personal revenge stories that have involved yourself, either as being the wreaker of said vengeance? Well, I guess we don't want any revenge stories where people are getting their own back on us.

Speaker B: 00:24:37

No, I, and no doubt. I mean, we must have gone through life, slighting people. And I think actually the most angry I've been at people are just things that people do in public, on the tube, you know, when they kind of don't get out of your way, when you say, excuse me, or they, or they blame you for doing something which you didn't do.

Speaker C: 00:24:53

Yeah, and they tut at you when you want to get off the tube and that sort of thing.

Speaker B: 00:24:56

of London school in the early: 1990

Speaker C: 00:26:14

So when I was when I was young, I was quite aware of a sort of tit for tat relationship I had with my younger sister. And I think siblings often have this as of there's a competition amongst siblings. But something that my sister developed a brilliant tactic that I've not been able. I was never able to counter that she would spawn to gain attention. She would spontaneously start crying and blame me for doing something that I just hadn't done and sometimes wasn't even in the room. And then I'd get chewed out for hitting her or doing something. But I thought that was a really, really clever tactic. I'm surprised that you didn't have a Petery type solution. The sort of six year old Petery type solution was just preemptive and just hit her anyway. I can see what I think this is the cycle of violence. Yeah. So just preempt this kind of like.

Speaker B: 00:27:10

Well, but maybe she thought she was preempting you hitting her by starting crying.

Speaker A: 00:27:13

Well, maybe I wasn't thinking that deeply at the time. You know, my one is I was once on the motorway and I got cut up, cut up by this van. So I took down the number plate and I just and I just waited a couple of months. And also, I knew sort of the firm who it was. And so two or three months later, I rang up the firm and I and I told them that exactly what happened that it nearly caused an accident. Yeah. Because of that, he got fired.

Speaker B: 00:27:41

That's a pro-revenge, a Reddit pro-revenge type story. Cut me up on the motorway. I'll ruin your life.

Speaker A: 00:27:47

Deliciously chilled. Exactly. And I must confess, it's not true. I stole that from Gone Girl. Oh, that's sad. Yeah. Right. We'll wrap up there. So thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights. Until next time. Goodbye.