Re-release: Rivalry

Speaker A: 00:00:03

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 Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights, and this week we're discussing rivals. And due to the new lockdown, unusually, we're recording this remotely. Nick, I can't imagine you have too many rivals. Not me, no.

Speaker B: 00:00:36

Not me, but people in the United States of America. No, I don't know. I'm not sure. I'll get on to me later on. We're doing a project at the moment looking at the Middle East, and as part of this, we're sort of trying to get a sense from various countries of who they get on with and whether or not relations change and how you might measure that. And I was looking at the favorability that Americans have to other countries, and they, you know, the Gallup do a survey every year, and there are, you know, there's this, luckily, we've got a bunch of our, you know, best, their best buds include us. We're like number two in terms of the countries they like. Yeah, Canadians are top, actually. So, yeah. Everyone likes Canadians. Yeah, exactly. Except me. God, they're boring, aren't they? Anyway, but it occurred to me, looking at the countries nearer the bottom, you know, who obviously at the moment include, you know, the likes of Afghanistan and Iran and various other people they've got a bit of history with, whether it does, and it's odd because the Americans, often we share a lot of things, but I think, you know, thinking about Iran, the US has got a particular, like, recent history with them. And they just seem very antipathetic to the Iranians in a way that I think British people, we don't really have, you know, we didn't have the hostage crisis and that kind of thing. And it just occurred to me that I wonder if there's, I wonder if it, if it in some way does the Americans and the Iranians good to have each other as a kind of, you know, baddie. And, you know, you think back to the Cold War, and perhaps, you know, you might think of some of the technological advances that were made to try and keep ahead of each other. And obviously, Second World War, you know, the extraordinary amount of, you know, of technological development we went through. And yeah, you know, kind of, is it good? Is it somehow good? You know, or is it the case, you know, is it the case that without enemies, society is going to decline is, is the problem recently that the, you know, the US hasn't had anyone to be any enemies with? And so it's had to become an enemy with itself? Who knows? Anyway, there's a few speculative thoughts.

Speaker A: 00:03:07

Yeah. Okay. I mean, what's interesting, I thought we might be talking about this on a personal level, which we might indeed do, because that's immediately what I think of. But so far, all the examples you've given have been on a national level, or on a sort of a societal sort of level. So let's, let's see where we go. Chris, what are your thoughts?

Speaker C: 00:03:25

ending, spending more. And by: 1964

Speaker B: 00:06:47

taken us, you know, 10 years to get a new PlayStation out. And, and that's the same amount of time they went from basically nothing to walking on the moon. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's

Speaker A: 00:06:57

incredible. Well, sorry to interrupt. But it sounds to me like what we're talking about here is this is just a natural extension of competition. It's just part of that. That's what happens, which arguably, you know, is human nature, let's say. And also, it can have benefits. And so, you know, progress, essentially, what we're talking about here. Is that it? End of podcast? I mean, and I'm sorry. And also, we need them for identity as part of it as well, whether it's be personal or

Speaker B: 00:07:22

national, Nick. Yeah, the, I think the issue is that, you know, okay, so just thinking about the difference between enemies and rivals, it feels and I think the space race is a great analogy. Because with enemies, it feels like there's a zero sum element, you know, you are actively trying to the other person, you're incurring a cost to harm them. With rivals, you're both investing in the same thing. But you're not, you know, you're, you're attempting to outdo them at something. I think very generally, and it's quite an abstract definition. But I think that's the it's, it's, it's almost like, you know, enemies are like a tug of war, whereas whereas rivals are more like a race, you know, you're pointing in the same direction and just trying to do better than the other guy. Well, I think from an economic point of view, the idea that rivalry is good for you is really odd. It's really weird. Because if it were true that, you know, there was a situation where you do better if you had a rival, why wouldn't you just behave as though you actually did have a rival? I mean, the the, you know, economic approach would probably be to say, well, the problem is that deep down that rivalry is costly, and it's inefficient. And, you know, all of the alleged benefits of the space race would have, you know, if they were actually beneficial in net terms, then, then we should have been spending that money on the space race anyway. But if in fact, it would have been better to, you know, give it to back to Americans in the form of lower taxes or to spend that money on something else, some other big project, the Americans should have done that. So I think that's the that's the weird thing that I think very often, we're inclined to think that rivalry is good for us. It's good to be kept on your toes. Like, you know, imagine if you're competing with someone else for, you know, a the someone, you know, for a particular potential girlfriend or something, and so you both end up going to the gym, that kind of feels like, well, you're both getting something out of that as well, you know, and, and, and rivalry is what makes sports people work hard, you know, and, and, and it feels like they gain from that process. But so, so, you know, that's the that's the that's the puzzle, I think, is why, why we need a rival to do something that is good for us anyway.

Speaker A: 00:09:41

But sorry, isn't it that this stuff is almost impossible to fake, right? Because, for example, something you sometimes I've worked with large organizations, and they talk about certain positions about having an entrepreneurial approach, right? Or a startup mentality. But it's bullshit, because you can't fake that stuff. The fact is, a big organization is a big organization, no matter how much it talks about those values, it's impossible to live them, because a lot of those values, for example, are about not having a safety net. And, you know, and if it the stakes are too high, when you're when you really are a startup, so you just can't

Speaker C: 00:10:18

t at the summer exhibition in: 1832

Speaker B: 00:12:44

transformed- A boy in the sense of the naval- Yes, not a child. That would have been more dramatic.

Speaker C: 00:12:52

But, you know, it transformed the picture, you know, drew the eye to the centre of the picture and so on and so forth. And it's, it's the only, only, it's like you at the point you were making, Fraser, only at that point of concrete comparison, where you see yourself against your rival at that moment. That's, that's the bit where you go, oh, I've got to do, I've got to do a bit more now. Got to step up. Yeah. Got to step up and do something. And it creates those, those additional things. Now, the question is, are those things the right things to do? So in case of the Space Race, Nick, you were saying, you know, if those things had been sensible things to do, they would have rationally done them anyway, regardless of the presence of a rival. And the question is, was the Space Race a decent thing? Was spending all that money on it worthwhile?

Speaker B: 00:13:42

Well, I've got a kind of, I think there are some economic principles we can point to, to help us think about that. Because I think it does depend on the, on the thing you're fighting over, and the way that you're fighting it. But I mean, just before we, before we do that, just a few studies into, you know, with a, with a rivalry works. Yeah, I mean, obviously, arms races, you know, and the Space Race, they're really good examples. But it also, you know, it does, it does improve, allegedly improves athletic performance. And, you know, I think there's obvious examples, like, you look at the, the difference between competitive markets versus monopolies, and monopolies will often be, you know, in really not have any innovation at all. And, you know, because because companies are more keen on preserving their monopoly status, and they invest in that, rather than investing in better products. Whereas if you have a competitive market, you know, people have much more incentive to try and go out and work for the for their, you know, for their money. Yeah. On the other hand, you have bad rivalry. And I, there's, you know, for example, one study into countries where there's more political rivalry, where there's more of a kind of, you know, dog eat dog political culture, have those countries that have, well, there's an inverse relationship between the rivalrousness of politics, and, you know, kind of indicators of development in those countries. And similarly, with, you know, with with things like arms races, I mean, I mean, strictly just forget about the technological developments that might go with them. But, you know, spending money on arms is money that could be spent on something else. And it is obviously net terms is inefficient. And there is this sense that, you know, the rivalry might, even if it's good for the rivals, there might, there are some instances where it's bad for other people for that rivalry to be to be taking place. Now, so I think so I've been trying to sort of take all these things and come up with some general principles. And I think there's two things going on that might that might sort of help us think about good and bad rivalry. And, and sort of whether it makes with whether it's good for the rivals, if it's bad for the rivals. So the first thing is the, the type, the thing you're competing over and the costs of investing in that thing. And, and, you know, so at the extreme, you have these sort of, you know, you've got a one big prize, which only one person can get. So not not like a market, but more like a kind of gold medal or something, you know, where where you really is winner takes all and, and and then, you know, how much it costs to it costs you personally to enter. So now, you know, let's say a gold medal is worth is worth, you know, one point, you can imagine a situation where people in a kind of tragedy of the commons, all spend, you know, 0.9 points, hundreds of people spend 0.9 points worth of effort trying to get that that gold. And you've got, you know, you've got this one gold medal, which someone's someone's acquired, but so many people have wasted effort trying to achieve it. And a lot of things are like that, you know, when we're competing over status, there's only one person, only one person can have that. It's essentially the zero sum nature of the prize, you know, does does the prize create that do many people aiming for the same prize? You know, is there some sense that that creates value? So there's just the arms race was good for the

Speaker C: 00:17:12

Soviet for the Americans, but bad for the Soviets also. Yeah, well, it was good for the American

Speaker B: 00:17:18

arms industry. Yeah, but the but I think I think the argument would be it's it's negative for the Americans, because that that you can't arms only exist to try and win that race. It's it's it's money that you've literally chucked down the drain, you know, you're not going to do anything with them. The other thing, but I think the other key thing is with a there is there are externalities in the struggle. And I think this is where a lot of the positives come out from from rivalries. And, and, and that includes so where where people are not just investing in winning, right, but whether the the struggle itself create that investment is in something else, which is good. And so quite apart from whether it's good for the rivals, it creates good things that other people can enjoy. And Chris's example of Turner and Constable is a perfect one, where, you know, the fact that they were both competing with each other, they didn't care about creating. But I mean, let's pretend that they didn't even care about making good paintings. But that was their way of beating each other. All they cared about was getting the top spot of the Royal Academy, you know, competition or something, they would nevertheless have squirted out these great artworks as a means to doing that. So I think and I think a lot of the you know, certain that certainly applies to the technological spinoffs from from these kinds of things, you know, which which which produce great, you know, which can produce enormous amounts of side effect value that might, you know, when you quit, even when you move away from thinking about the the rivalry and the amount of resources people are investing in it, are nevertheless producing spinoffs. And you could say things like, you know, people enjoying watching sporting events, for example, people just like watching them. And you know, things like the X Factor, you might say it's probably not worth people entering the X Factor, but people nevertheless enjoy watching it. Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:19:11

Okay, there's a question that I want to ask. But before I do, and that question is to round things off. But before I do, is there anything either of you wants to add to finish this off?

Speaker C: 00:19:20

Yeah, I was just I was just gonna sort of pick up on Nick's point about sport and you know, the fact that it lends to the to the spectacle. And, you know, what we find most compelling in sport is those individual or long standing team relationships. And this is one of the things that has been observed about rivalry is that it is inherently rational, because it's affected by previous competitive interactions, and builds up over time. And that is a rational thing to do to base your response to somebody else based on, you know, their previous action. And it's played out in lots of, you know, examples within, within game theory that, you know, previous performance in Prisoner's Dilemma affects, you know, the playing of the game in the future and, and so on. So yeah, and you know, sport is littered with, you know, McEnroe, Borg, Hunt, Lauda, you know,

Speaker B: 00:20:20

Real Madrid, Barcelona, that there are the two steeps of, of 80s athletics. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker C: 00:20:30

Yeah, that's what you want, what you want from a rivalry, I think is to make it a compelling rivalry is you've got to have equity, you know, they've got they've got to be reasonably or kind of very similar in standard. But, but as well, you know, as well as being locked in a high stakes competition, and being uncertainty about the outcome, you also want that contrast in styles or philosophy, you know, you want, you want the sort of the artist, the LAN, you know, the kind of natural, gifted person versus the, you know, highly prepared, sort of planned, who puts lots of effort into that. That's what makes it, it's like two extremes. And really, the best solution is probably in the middle. But you want to see those two extremes sort of slug it out.

Speaker B: 00:21:29

st sporting event of all time: 1985

Speaker A: 00:23:02

Yeah, I like that. I like that. And that leads us nicely on to the question I want to ask, which is, I want to talk about your, I don't know if you're able to answer this, but if you can think of any personal favourite rivalries or enemies that you've had over the years, Chris, are we talking about an enemy or a rival or tell us, talk to us.

Speaker C: 00:23:23

Yeah, so I think the best example I can think of in my life is a sporting one. And it relates to a team we used to play regularly, who, I forget their actual name, but we just knew them as the Romanians. And they were all sort of Romanian emigres. Right. Just in sort of in London. And what was the sport? Football. And we'd rugby football or association. Yes. Yeah. So we kind of basically been the best team in our league for a period of time. And this team was a new team. And the first season they turned up, they beat us 4-1 sort of comfortably. And they were playing like a totally different type of football to we had been used to. And so from then on, and they were very, they were very sort of physical team, but highly skilled, much more highly skilled than we were, hence the fact they beat us. But from then on, for about three years in a row before their team sort of disbanded, we would turn up and we essentially worked out how to beat them over a series of... Even a fine out and a training montage. Yeah, exactly. And basically what we did, they had one, I mean, they were all very good technical players. But the guy in the sort of the centre midfield, to use a technical term, was their player who made everything sort of work for them. And it was my job to effectively go and stand next to him for the whole game. And every time he got it, either kick the ball or him. And he would just get more and more cross throughout the game. And it was really sort of satisfying knowing that he was actually better than me, but I was able to sort of cancel him out, sabotage him exactly. And that he would lose his temper every time as a result. So yeah, that's my tale of sporting rivalry.

Speaker A: 00:25:35

Yeah, no, I like that. A good tale of rivalry there. Nick?

Speaker B: 00:25:40

Well, I'm not very good at this because I don't... One of the reasons I really don't like sort of playing competitive sports, or indeed any sports, is this whole idea that you have to sort of artificially generate this big desire to win. And that was always my problem at school. It was okay, well now we've randomly sorted you into two teams. And now like the Zimbardo prison experiment, you know, you now have to kind of try and beat each other. And I was like, why? I mean, I've got no interest. I gain nothing from putting effort in to try and win this match. And I've always seen it as a bit beneath my dignity, really, to engage in rivalry. Well, I think if you treat someone as your rival, you are sort of saying that you're equal. And I feel like that's a bit undignified, you know, in many ways. So I don't really... I really struggle to come up with...

Speaker C: 00:26:36

Nick has no peers, therefore he can't have a rival.

Speaker B: 00:26:39

Exactly. And I know when I was at school, we had these legacy houses, right, which were, you know, the kind of, I guess, a leftover from a time. They were essentially just the classes, but they meant nothing. You were just told, you know, you're in Asquith House this year, and hey, presto, woo, go Asquith House, woo, we love them. But also this rivalry between schools, I also never really, you know, the school wanted to foster this for all of the reasons we've been talking about. And I remember once I used to do rowing, and the one time we entered a rowing competition, it was a massive race on the Thames with hundreds. I mean, I think there were about 300 or 400 schools took part, each of which had one boat, and they kind of took off in sequence up the Thames. And, you know, we were kind of aiming to get the best time. And we were just, we were like the Keystone Cops on the water. It was just, you know, we were not a kind of highly motivated, well-trained team. It was basically, you know, our weekly rowing sessions were sort of, you know, sploshing about a bit in the Thames. And eventually we came fourth from last. And that is still, you know, higher up than I've ever come in any other rowing competition. So, but no, I'm terrible at rivalry. I just, it's draining, and I can't be doing with

Speaker A: 00:27:57

it. Nick, I'm the total opposite of you. And I don't know if this is a surprise or not, but I am actually an incredibly competitive person. And especially, you know, when it comes to sports, and at school, less so these days, I was quite a sporty person. But yeah, even, and again, this will surprise you, board games, I'm incredibly competitive. Well, I mean, competitive in the game, but that's it, right? Because you're supposed to try and win. Sure. So anyway, as a result of being quite a competitive person, I've generated all sorts of enemies throughout my life, I think, and all sorts of rivals. Or it could just be that I think they're my enemies and they're my rivals, and they just don't even notice me. Particularly annoying. And yeah, just annoying. Just a git. Yeah. But I remember, especially my big sport at school was swimming. And I did indeed have a rival from another school. And also that school was our rival school as well. And his name was followed all this corporate nonsense about having to be right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:28:56

Was he a chisel jawed six foot kind of? He was a bit podgy, actually. He was a bit podgy.

Speaker A: 00:29:02

But very sporty at the same time. His name was Tim Bradbury, I believe. And he was the best swimmer in my year at the other school. And I was the best swimmer in my year at my school. And so, yeah, we were sort of knocking to each other every now and again at galas and things like that. And we were always very close in terms of positions. But again, a bit like Chris's story is that, you know, there was some back and forth, but by the end of it, I was just beating him every single time. And so it was a rivalry that I quite enjoyed. Yeah, that's my rivalry story. You distracted him with your speedos, didn't you? I did indeed. And actually, even now, I think I stalk him every now and again. And I look him up on LinkedIn and he's-

Speaker B: 00:29:47

Check out the size of his bulge, see if it's got any smaller.

Speaker A: 00:29:51

Yeah. But what I'm really pleased about is that he's now lost all his hair, whereas I've got all mine still. So, you know, I feel really good about that.

Speaker C: 00:29:59

He's not podgy and you aren't either.

Speaker A: 00:30:05

Okay, right. Let's finish there. I enjoyed that. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. I've been here with Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights. Until next time, goodbye.