I Quit: Sometimes You Don’t Have to “Do This All Day”

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Matthew
Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today myself and Paul Christopher Hoppe, aka Zen Madman, are going to be discussing quitting. What happens when someone decides they just don’t want to do something anymore? That happens in a job, wouldn’t you celebrate it? Like, go you. That happens in a relationship, well, yeah, as long as you’re not being a dick about it, cool, do your thing. You quit a bad habit, that’s great. Quitting a habit, sometimes that’s great.

Sometimes people look at you askance. A superhero decides they want to quit, they want to just go have a normal life. Well, great power comes with great responsibility, we all know that.

We’re talking about quitting and how it is perceived in media and in our heads, and how a lot of times quitting, whether it’s at the smallest, macro level, or a large, national level, or an individual, but fundamentally changing a part of your life level, can sometimes be the right thing to do. Looking at that in poker, looking at that in superhero media, looking at that in life. Paul, this was a topic you came up with. Talk to me about why this is important to you.

Paul
Yeah, so the first time I really gave a lot of thought to this, I mean, not about people quitting smoking and stuff like that, but in a broader sense, and actually this was a specific instance, there’s a poker mindset coach, I guess, slash writer, Tommy Angelo, who’s kind of the OG poker mindset coach. One of the things he talked about was quitting, effective quitting. The thing about poker, to use a specific example, is that knowing when to continue and when to fold a hand, essentially quitting that exact hand, is very important. But there’s also the fact that you decide to go play, or play at home, whatever it is, you start playing, and at some point you’re going to stop playing.

Right. For some people, that’s like, they play about an hour and then they quit. Sometimes we might have a sense of, well, this is how long I intend to play today. Maybe you go to the casino, you’re going with people, and then you’re just going to quit when other people want to go home.

Matthew
Well, wait a minute. If I just decide I’m done with something because I’ve made a plan for it, that’s not quitting, is it? Why are we calling that quitting?

Paul
Yeah, because it is, right? Sticking to your plan is a decision. It might be a decision you consider you’ve made before, but then you have to decide in that instance to actually do the thing.

The same way, whenever you’re not quitting, you’re always constantly deciding not to quit. You’re deciding to continue doing what you’re doing, even though I think that’s often regarded as, and in practice can function like, a non-decision.

It’s still a choice to keep doing whatever you’re doing. And in poker, what usually happens is it might take a little while to settle in and start playing your best, then you get warmed up and you feel like, okay, I’m good. Because poker specifically is a game where you’re making constant decisions under time pressure and with imperfect information, your ability to do that will, at some point, decay.

This is true for everything. If we want a non-poker example, it could be you’re driving across country, and you’re going to be driving 3,000 miles across some number of days. Each day you have to decide when it’s time to stop and get a hotel room, or park your camper, or whatever it is. And if you just decide, just a little longer, just a little longer, just a little longer, you might end up crashing, first metaphorically, in terms of your energy level, and then literally, in terms of not driving well anymore. In poker, people have a tendency to just play later and later and later. There are some things that can lead to really poor decisions in this regard, and there are ways of making better decisions. One of the premises of what Tommy Angelo was saying was, essentially, if you’re better at quitting than your opponents are, in other words, better at evaluating when it’s time to stop doing the thing you’re doing,

That’s an edge, right? And that’s going to help you. That’s a really important thing to have long term.

So I think this applies to all sorts of things. It can apply to working out, too. You’re going to do some amount of exercise, and at some point you’re going to be overtraining if you never stop. Something’s going to snap.

Matthew
I’ve been trying to exercise more, and one of the best ways I can exercise is going for the wheelchair equivalent of a run, which is going out and moving my wheelchair, not using my engine. I did that for the first time a couple days ago, and pushed myself probably harder than I should have, and I’ve had a sore neck and shoulder ever since. And guess what? It means I can’t do it anymore. Exactly. So this heals.

Paul
Exactly. There’s cold quitting, where you’re saying, okay, I’m quitting this activity, like smoking, and I’m never going to do it again, or not for a really long time. And there’s quitting for the day.

That’s kind of what I’d been thinking about talking about. But I think both are important. And the word quitting, “don’t be a quitter” or whatever, I think we both agree there are instances where quitting is a bad decision, not a great thing to do. But there are plenty of instances where it’s the best thing you can do right now, to stop doing what you’re doing. Even if it’s not an inherently harmful activity, it could be an activity you’re doing too long, and it’s just time to call it a day.

Matthew
Totally agree there. And I think we’re going to do a different episode specifically about the cultural perception of quitting that a lot of us, not Paul, hold. Paul is just exempt from all society and culture, just opts out.

Paul
And I think it is, and how I think honestly, superhero media is often a big part of that, with the “you gotta keep going” idea. Captain America never quits, he can do this all day. And, getting ready for this, I looked up the definition of quitting. In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, it gives a number of different things, especially how the word “quit” can be used in different grammatical terms, as a noun in “call it quits,” or as an adjective, verb, transitive or intransitive. But the three that are the biggest ones to me are: to give up employment specifically, I think that’s the most literal definition we often think of, “I quit my job,” to cease normal, expected, or necessary action, which is just, I’ve done a thing and I’m going to stop doing it. And I think Matthew’s making a really good point that often we think of that specifically in terms of “and never do it again,” but often it can be just, I’m quitting for today, I’m quitting for this month, I’m quitting for the rest of the year, whatever it is. And the third definition Merriam-Webster offers is to admit defeat.

You know? So, editorial, that’s like, and

Matthew
I think that’s the connotation though that often happens, is that because Cap can keep going, can keep doing this all day, how many times have you talked to someone about a bad situation they’re in, and the response is like, well, I’m not a quitter. I’ve heard that from people talking about bad relationships they’re in. I’ve probably said it about bad relationships I was in.

Paul has heard about many of those over the years. Any other kind of habit that’s becoming problematic for someone, or just isn’t doing helpful things, I’m speaking in generalities because there are so many specifics we can get into on both sides, and I’m not saying, as Paul said, that sometimes quitting is not the right thing to do, or sometimes we want to quit for reasons that maybe aren’t so great. It’s very individual, it depends on the circumstances, but the language in which we talk about quitting, I think, is so often so negative. And poker especially has really helped me see that’s a dumb way to think of things, because whether it’s the most literal example, a single poker hand, to the whole night, the casino trip, etc. We did an episode on sunk cost fallacy, that’s a lot of this, and this is kind of an outgrowth of that conversation. But I think it’s helpful to reframe the idea of quitting in terms of what else could you be doing. Is this bringing you joy? Is it bringing you money? Is it bringing you entertainment? Is it bringing you whatever the goal is of the thing? And if it’s not, and it doesn’t have a hope of doing so in the future, maybe it’s time to do something else, or at least do something else for the night.

Paul
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s important to remember that everything you spend your time on comes with an opportunity cost of all the other things you’re not spending your time on.

And say you’re a parent and you want to work hard so that you make money so your kids have things they need and things they want.

But all the time you spend working is, for the most part, time you’re not spending with your kids. And that’s a choice. And that doesn’t mean it’s a bad choice, it just means it’s a choice.

And when I think back, and I’m like, well, if I could have chosen whether my parents worked harder so I had more money growing up, or I could have spent more time with my parents, I’d take the time for sure. But that doesn’t mean that’s the right decision. The point is, it’s not, oh, you either do the thing or you don’t do the thing, it’s either you do the thing or you probably do something else.

And, to go to the poker example, say you go play at 8 p.m., and maybe your plan is to play until two in the morning, and at two in the morning you’re playing, I’ll give two examples of why you might want to keep playing.

One, the classic example, you’re stuck, which is you’re down money and you’re like, oh, if I just play another hour, I can win it back. Maybe you’re down $500 in a game where your hourly win rate is maybe $50.

Well, playing another hour, you could randomly happen to win a big pot and have a winning night, but you’re probably, on average, going to win about 50 bucks. So then you’re going to be stuck 450. Is that really worth pushing past your time, especially when maybe you’re not even feeling your best, in order to try not to have a loss? It’s not worth it. That’s a terrible, terrible way to think about it. And we talked about sunk cost fallacy recently, and how that’s really one of the reasons people don’t quit well, because of some cost value. It’s far from the only one.

Matthew
Well, and I just want to say one more thing about this, because this concept of being behind, I think, is very linked to sunk cost, but can also have other connotations, because that idea of, I allocated this amount of time and I was supposed to do something, I was supposed to have some result. I want to go back to your cross-country driving example.

I’ve done a lot of cross-country drives, particularly when I was going back and forth to school, or when my mother was in California and I was in the Midwest, or other things like that. And I’ll often have an idea of, okay, I want to drive till I get to about this point each day.

And the times when I feel like I should push myself beyond when I probably should, because I’m starting to get drowsy or sleepy or whatever, is often when it’s, well, I was stuck in traffic for two hours, or I stopped too long for lunch, and now I’m behind.

Paul
Yeah, you’re trying to make up for lost time, right?

Matthew
Exactly. And I hadn’t really made that connection until right now, but I think it’s the exact same mentality of being stuck at the table, because you’re putting yourself at more and more risk.

Paul
And obviously there’s a risk of crashing or something. That is a real risk to be very clear when we’re talking about driving.

You can die or kill people.

Matthew
But what actually happened a lot more frequently, and I think is also a cost you have to think about, is I’d say, okay, I’ll just go buy a five-hour energy. So I’d buy the five-hour energy in order to sleep for two, in order to drive for two more hours, and then guess what, I don’t sleep very well that night.

In fact, quite badly, and now the next day I’m terrible at driving. And we’re just stuck in a cycle. And I think that kind of thinking is because, again, you don’t want to quit, you don’t want to keep going, and so often you have to think about what’s the cost of continuing. It can be more losing, especially if the game isn’t good. It can be staying in a bad relationship, which is harming you in other ways. So much of the quitting conversation needs to be about what’s the actual harm, and if you stick around, how is that going to continue adding up, and is that going to actually make it harder to achieve what you want?

Paul
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a really nice parallel to the poker example. In the driving example, I’d say there are good reasons to actually go past how long you had intended.

One could be, you’re driving and you look at the weather and see that tomorrow there’s going to be really terrible weather in a particular spot, and you know you’ve got great conditions now and you feel good, and you say, okay, it makes sense to push myself more today so I get ahead of this storm, and then tomorrow I can take a shorter day. That’s a trade-off, but there’s a positive reason to do it. Or maybe it’s just, the conditions were great today, I’m feeling better than average, so I’m going to push a little extra.

Matthew
And if I get to a big city late at night, I’m often going to push through to avoid the traffic I’d hit the next morning.

Paul
Yeah, exactly. So that’s a reasonable choice. And the poker equivalent is you’re playing in a game, you get to a point when you had plans to quit, and just the biggest whale of a whopper comes in, and you know this person’s here and they have three thousand dollars in their pocket, and they’re going home without it. Someone’s going to get that money. So you can, in that spot, make a conscious decision, okay, maybe I’m going to have that five-hour energy, maybe I’m going to have a green tea matcha latte.

This might actually be a real example, and play up until seven in the morning, and just say, all right, tomorrow I’m just going to sleep, I’m going to rest, I’m going to recover, and I’m sacrificing tomorrow’s session because I know this is like a magical, once-a-couple-times-a-year type opportunity to have extra profit.

And I trust myself to be able to sit here and play well for this session, but I know it’s going to cost me tomorrow. But that’s worthwhile because the value today outweighs that. So that would be the positive reason to do it. And it still comes at a cost. But you’ve decided that cost is worth it, because you’re not there for some compulsion, or some feeling of, oh, I need to make sure I win it back. You’re there because this is a special opportunity, and it’s worth giving up tomorrow in exchange for converting this opportunity.

Matthew
And pulling it back to the superhero conversation, I think the thing with Cap is he’s all in on every hand. He can’t just say, you know what, Thanos, I have this reputation for being able to keep doing this all day, but I can’t.

Can we come back tomorrow? And that’s the thing I think that’s so important about the examples you’re talking about, is that when we frame the heroes we look up to in terms of the ones who never quit, it’s because if they quit, absolute disaster happens. But you can go back to the poker table tomorrow, you can get back on the road tomorrow. We’ve talked about quitting relationships, but I think one of the healthy things I’ve learned how to do, and it happened because people would do it to me and it would drive me crazy, so I’d realize it was so important, is to quit a conversation or quit an argument. Someone will say, look, I think we’re both heated right now, or even just, look, I’m heated right now, I need to stop this conversation and continue it tomorrow. And I’d be like, no, I’m so upset, we definitely have to keep talking.

Paul
So hard for me to do, but so healthy.

Matthew
When it’s time to do that, it’s really important. Or just sleep on it, or just, let’s both eat, or whatever, let’s take a break.

Paul
And I think that’s been a hard lesson, but it’s that same idea of quitting, it really just comes down to what are the consequences of quitting now and maybe stopping forever, versus quitting now and starting again. So thinking about that, can I come back to the table tomorrow? Can I have this discussion tomorrow? Can I get back on the road tomorrow? Sometimes you can’t.

Right, yeah.

Matthew
Sometimes you’re trying to get to a certain place to meet your plane, or your kid’s game, or whatever it is, you’ve got to keep going. Other times you can make the adjustment. I think that’s such an important part of the conversation.

Paul
Yeah, and even in those examples you gave, if the conditions are unsafe, you sometimes have to decide, okay, I am going to give up on this, because maybe I just missed the exit, and instead I shouldn’t get into an accident.

Matthew
Making a kid an orphan is not as important as arriving on time. Exactly.

Paul
And to touch back on that, in Endgame specifically, I think it’s interesting because it exemplifies the most ridiculous, absurdly outnumbered, no apparent chance at victory scenario, Steve Rogers just being like, we’re just going to keep going until it’s literally impossible. And then at the end of the movie, he’s like, all right, I did my thing.

I’m done. And I think some people were like, oh, how can you do that, whatever, but to me that seemed like a really healthy thing. I think it’s unreasonable to expect every person who could be a hero to do that for the entirety of their existence. It’s a valid choice to do it if they want, but it’s also a valid choice to stop at some point.

But when Thanos is trying to get the infinity gauntlet, there’s no tomorrow if you give up now. So I thought that was a nice example of both things.

Matthew
And it’s funny you said that, because I thought of something earlier. Cap quits before that. He quits the Avengers, and he quits SHIELD. He gets to a point where he realizes, because of the events happening, that his continued association with these organizations, because they’ve fundamentally changed in some way, or the conditions they’re putting on him are too high, means he will no longer be a part of them.

And I imagine a lot of people are like, what are you talking about, he hasn’t quit those things. That’s absolutely what he does. He stopped being a part of the thing he’d been doing. And in both cases it’s totally justified, but it is him making the decision that this is no longer where he wants to put his energy, he wants to do something else.

Paul
Yeah, exactly. And it doesn’t mean he’s going to stop doing hero-type stuff, he starts the Secret Avengers, I guess, when he leaves the Avengers. But when he leaves SHIELD, he’s like, no, we’re not going to do that.

Matthew
And at least we know he’s retired now, he’s done, so if another global threat like Dr. Doom showed up, we won’t see him. Oh, fuck.

Paul
See, that doesn’t even exist in my head canon. Of course they can’t not bring back everybody they could bring back and make money from bringing back, or whatever.

Matthew
And wait, Paul, aren’t you staying up to date with every bit of news about the MCU?

Paul
Totally. Every bit of news with everything, really.

Matthew
Well, I mean, I’m going somewhere with this. You used to. What happened?

Paul
Right, yes. Yeah, I quit. I just quit the MCU. It was kind of a soft quit and then a hard quit. I watched all of the movies, and then I watched all of the shows. Some of the shows I loved to an extent, maybe all of them I was somewhat mixed on, but there were parts I loved, parts I didn’t like. And then I think it was Secret Invasion.

I watched the first episode of Secret Invasion, and I was like, nope, we’re done here. I don’t know, I watched a little bit of Wolverine versus Deadpool, but it’s not a judgment of anybody else following all of it, it just lost its, I lost my joy for watching new Marvel material. And it felt like the same thing happened with Star Wars, where I really enjoyed the universe, I enjoyed a lot of the individual components, and I’m sure there will be things that come along that I could potentially enjoy and watch, but it just became too much at some point. And I’d like to thank Game of Thrones for being kind of the first show that I really deliberately quit, when I remember watching season one and thinking it was mostly pretty cool and enjoying a lot of it, getting to the end of season one and being like, hmm, I’m not sure I’m going to love this. And then I watched season two, and somewhere through there I was like, I don’t think I really like this show anymore. And I watched a couple episodes of season three, and I was like, yeah, I can just stop watching it.

And that’s fine. And I did, and I watched some of the end, but it’s kind of the show that taught me it’s fine to just deliberately quit something you get maybe some enjoyment out of, but also some pain and negative stuff you don’t want. And I think any of these franchises that go on super long, I remember when The Batman came out, I was like, oh, they’re making another Batman movie, why are they, and then I watched the first 15 minutes and I was like, I don’t know, and I was like, wait, I never, oh, no.

And we talked about it, and I was surprised by it. And I’m sure some of the MCU stuff and new Star Wars stuff I could watch and probably be like, oh, this is great. But right now, where I am in life, it’s just not how I want to spend my time. So I don’t spend my time that way. I quit doing that.

Matthew
Well, and I think the discussion of quitting media is a really important one, and obviously relevant on this podcast on two levels. First of all, there’s sunk cost fallacy all over the place. Because, and I think one of the biggest sources of sunk cost fallacy is the external shame, that’s something we can talk about, but also the internal shame, and the idea that if I watch five episodes of something but don’t finish it, I feel like I haven’t accomplished something, whereas if I finish it, then I feel like I’ve accomplished something.

And at least I can talk to people about it, I know the ending. And when I get four or five episodes into an eight-episode season and I’m like, I really don’t like this, it’s hard to make myself stop, because then did I just waste all that time on those episodes? I forget the term, and I’m kind of happy about it because I think it’s so awful, but I know among book-reading communities there’s a term for books you didn’t finish, and how you’re supposed to finish, and I think part of it is people are starting to reaffirm that it’s okay to not finish books, it’s okay to not finish short stories.

It’s okay to open something from AO3 and get partway into it and think, this isn’t my jam, this isn’t doing what I want. But it’s hard.

And I think the other part of it is FOMO, there’s a discipline to it. And I think the other part of it is, and here’s where the quitting that you’ve done has really inspired me, and that I’ve also done a lot of too, is that it’s not just that you’re quitting the media itself, it’s that you’re quitting the constant conversation about it.

I’m not turning away from it as often as you are, but I’m not seeking out, I’m not trying to read every article about every trailer and seeking it all out. And I enjoy the media that much more. But when I started doing that, even not watching things, the FOMO of people talking about, oh, what did you think of this thing we saw, and I’ve got to be careful on Twitter because I don’t want to get spoiled about something everyone’s talking about. And I don’t want to take this into a whole other tangent, but I don’t think it’s coincidental that the people who profit most from us watching all the things are often very connected to the social media and the algorithms that push the constant FOMO of, how have you not seen this, how are you not in the conversation, and by the way, we’re going to spoil you all the time so you should go watch it right now.

Paul
Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely a drive to create that “such and such is an event” feeling. I’ve always thought, personally, there are some things I want to see right when they come out because I’m just so excited to see them.

And sometimes I’m like, that was great, and I’m glad I saw it right away. And sometimes I’m like, why was I so, that was terrible, like the Saint, or something, the preview was really good but the movie was not so good.

But there are a lot of examples where it’s like, I need to see this soon, otherwise I need to cut myself off from all contact with anyone else except the people who know I’m waiting to see this thing and won’t say anything about it.

Matthew
I raised my hand for those not watching us on YouTube.

Paul
Matthew has done a marvelous job of not spoiling me on things where I’m like, well, I know that came out in 2003, but I might watch it someday, so if you could just not give any spoilers about it, like I don’t want Odyssey spoilers.

Matthew
It’s, you know, 3,000 years old.

Paul
But that’s right, but whatever, and maybe I read it, but whatever.

Matthew
And here’s one of the odd things, but I think it fits, I think the kind of media quitting you and I are talking about, and we can say more about baseball, but I want to get to the merits of quitting in a second. In my head, the way I’ve approached it with you and with others where this is a thing, I kind of think of it the way I think about people who have quit something that’s thought of as more traditionally an addiction, like alcohol. And I don’t want to sound like I’m critiquing you.

I think this is something you’ve self-identified with, but I know I have more of an ability to say, I’ve mostly quit the Mets, I’m going to read about what happened last night because I don’t think there’s a cool highlight. You’ve said that sometimes, if you do that, you get stuck in a rabbit hole of three hours of research you don’t want to do. To me, that’s a feeling of, if I introduce a little of this, you might do a lot more of it than you want to. I don’t think you’re addicted to news about the Mets, but I approach it the same way, like, hey, this is a thing you don’t want to get yourself too into, so I’m going to be very careful about it. In the same way that if I’m hanging out with friends who I know don’t drink, I’m going to be careful, like, hey, do you mind if I have a drink, and reassure them, like, I’m not, to be polite here, I’m about to tell a story about what I was drinking.

Is that okay, or do you not want me to do that? And in the same way, I’ve now gotten to like, hey, Paul, do you mind if I tell you this thing about baseball from last night or whatever?

Paul
Yeah, and I’m like, well, I might watch that at some point, so thanks for mentioning it, but I don’t want to talk about it yet. So I would say, it would be easy to say I have an addictive personality, and that might be accurate, but the way I think of it more is that I don’t tend to nurture casual interests, is pretty much how I’d put it, there aren’t a lot of things I really enjoy spending my time casually engaging with. So when I’m going to spend time on something and think about it, I usually want to dive deep on it. Because if it’s not something I want to dive deep on, well, why not just do something else I do want to dive deep on?

And there is, I have quit a lot of hobbies very deliberately, and I don’t want to say second-guessing, because I think it was the right thing at the time, but over the past week or two I’ve been noticing that when I basically eliminated almost everything except studying poker, teaching poker, playing poker, writing about poker, I want to have that, okay, it’s time to quit doing the thing and rest and recover, because I’ve pushed away so many hobby-type things, I actually don’t have a lot of relaxing activities to do.

Right, maybe I’ll watch Murder, She Wrote, but I think that can be not super healthy, to not have something. So I would enjoy having some more casual hobbies or casual interests, perhaps, but used in a very specific way, where I feel like this is my downtime. So, using baseball as an example,

because you brought it up, at the end of last season I was like, I’m never watching a baseball game again. That was what we call rage quitting.

Matthew
Which is an important thing.

Paul
Because it was just a disastrous end of the season for our beloved Mets, and I was just like, why would I ever want to go through this again? And then I just thought, then we were talking about it some, my mom and I were talking about it some. You’re the two people I really talk about baseball with.

Now that one of my neighbors has moved, who was a very nice, casual person to talk about it with, we talked about it a little bit, and I was like, okay, there’s this move they made, and offseason baseball is really interesting, there’s so much maneuvering and so many things you can do to rebuild a roster.

And the Mets did some really unusual stuff, basically, is what I would say, and the jury was very split. The results have not been so split.

The results have been very bad. Of course, as a poker player who thinks a lot about variance, it’s impossible for me to look at this without framing it within, well, here were the projections, here’s what I thought was going to happen. Some other people thought the actual outcome was much more likely than I thought it was. But the fact that it’s what happened doesn’t mean that’s the most likely outcome, it’s just what happened. Kind of like if somebody’s like, oh, if you go play poker, you’re probably going to lose, and then you go play poker and you lose, that doesn’t necessarily mean they were right.

Matthew
If I can put that in, I think we’re going to do a full episode on variance, especially if we get close to the election, because the way people misunderstand this, I think, is a cause of a lot of social problems, to be very clear. If I tell you I think this is a very good bet because I think it has an 80% chance of winning, and then it loses, a lot of people look at it and go, you were wrong to think it had an 80% chance of winning.

There is no data point that has entered the conversation that should in any way challenge the fact that I thought it was an 80%. Now, is it possible that the fact that it was in that 20% of possibilities is a good reason to take a look and say, well, let’s re-examine whether I was correct to think it was an 80% chance?

Sure. If it happens twice in a row, does that mean I was wrong about the 80%? No. But is it a good reason to maybe look harder? Yeah. If it doesn’t happen a hundred times in a row, then absolutely, I was probably wrong to think it was 80%.

Paul
Yeah, you’re probably not going to get a one-in-five, that would be five to the hundredth power, I believe.

Matthew
Yeah, exactly. And of course reality’s been somewhere in the middle, but I think that’s the whole point, because, and I’ll be honest, we’re not going to get into this debate, but just kind of framing the conversation on both sides, I definitely think the moves the Mets made had a much higher chance of failure than you did. But I think there’s a part of me that misses talking baseball with you for a lot of reasons, in part because I want to re-examine those conversations, but in part because of what I’ve learned about variance, in large part from you, but also through my own study, there’s no part of me that’s going to say, okay, the fact that this happened means it wasn’t within the range of possibility, even if everything the Mets’ leadership thought was right, it’s correct.

And I think we’re getting off the topic of quitting, so we’ll pull back to that, but I think that’s a very important thing, it’s like, do I think Tony Stark was right to try and create Ultron? No. Do I think Ultron becoming what it became is actually a much more complex example of that?

Paul
It wasn’t the right call to create Ultron.

Matthew
Well, because it’d also be like, the point is that taking a risk with some part of your stake is acceptable because you can afford to keep doing it again and again. If Ultron destroys the world, then congratulations, Tony Stark just went literally all in for everybody, and you probably shouldn’t do that if it’s not 100%, unless there are other bad possibilities.

Paul
Yeah, well, you’d have to estimate how likely it is that some sort of alien invasion was going to happen anyway, and then how likely your thing was to counteract that. It’s a very complicated topic.

Matthew
I mean, at the end of the day, part of the point of all these conversations is also that poker provides a very good model, but poker has some degree of perfect information in a way that most real-life decisions absolutely don’t.

Paul
Okay, wait, what do you mean?

Matthew
What I mean is that in poker, I can mathematically calculate the odds of me winning this pot, and the mathematical implications of this particular bet and this particular pot size, in a way that I can’t calculate, say, the likelihood of Tony Stark losing to an alien invasion, or a person’s odds with perfect information long term.

Paul
Yeah, because it’s very concretely a game of imperfect information. Let me try to say what I think you’re trying to say in a way I think I’ll agree with. Poker is a very concrete game, you know what cards are in the deck most of the time, unless something’s gone weird. You can calculate, given certain assumptions, what the range of possibilities are and what the average outcome, the expected value, of that is. In larger, non-poker life situations, many of those things are very difficult to quantify, or unquantifiable. Are you going to quantify the value of each life? Some people do.

I don’t accept those numbers. So I would say poker is a very contained game, and as a result, because there are rules within a very clear field of play, there are ways you can calculate things based on assumptions. Having said that, you have to be making assumptions in order to make those calculations.

And as a result, you’re operating under imperfect information about what cards are out against you, and the strategies people will employ. So I think I see what you mean overall.

Matthew
I’ll try to rephrase it. Poker is a good model for understanding how variance works. It also, though, is a model that can’t be applied one-to-one to real-life situations, because in poker there’s often a limited number of variables that are inherently limited. The cards in the deck, the amount of money in front of you, the amount of money in the pot, are not only limited, they’re specifically definable, in a way that they aren’t when you talk about the variance of whether a relationship or a job will get better, or whether traffic will be there.

Paul
Yeah, you don’t even know how many suits there are in the poker game of life, basically, you don’t know what the actual elements of the deck are all the time. There’s another level of uncertainty.

Matthew
Any kind of thing that tries to predict human activity, a lot of the variance conversation comes out of situations where models would predict one election result, and another election result would happen, and you’d get people saying, well, models say there’s an 85% chance this candidate will win, and then the other candidate wins, and some people want to say, well, the 85% was definitely garbage. That may be the case, but it’s not proven by that one data point.

No, but the point is we’re never actually going to be able to say this was the right percentage, in a way that I can say, oh, I have four spades, there’s one card to come, there are four suits in the deck, so I have a one-in-four chance the next card will be a spade.

Which is actually factually incorrect, because I know that certain spades are dead, since I have four of them in one place or another. And that’s all I mean, that level of factual analysis of poker odds is possible, same with blackjack, same with other things, in a way that it’s not for most of life.

Paul
Yeah, it’s a lot easier to say something’s definitely wrong in poker than in most of life, where you’re just like, well, was it a 15% chance one person won, or a 50% chance, or a hundred percent chance, or a one percent chance?

We don’t know. And there were models in, say, the 2016 election, where certain models were like 99 point something, 98.5. And most of the models were that, and then another model was like 60-something. And then the underdog won, and people were like, oh, the 60-something was too optimistic, but there were other ones that were 99.

What are we doing here? But there’s no way to really falsify it, not in the same way as being able to say, no, there were actually no spades left in the deck, so you couldn’t get there because you’re 27 cards stunned and all the spades are dead. I want to go back to the baseball thing just briefly, so, I decided to watch baseball this year, and I ended up watching most of the games early on. They didn’t go very well, maybe not most of the games, I didn’t watch a lot of the losses, and unfortunately those were most of the games. But it ended up, I would listen to podcasts, and when I pay attention to baseball, I look up stats, I look at projections and try to actually see how likely certain outcomes are.

And then you and I would talk about it a lot, my mom and I would talk about it a lot, and I enjoyed those conversations. But it got to a point where I was like, okay, I can’t listen to the podcast anymore because I think these people are out of their minds, some of them.

And then with you and my mom, it was more that there are things we disagree on, and we’ve discussed it to the point where we’ve all expressed our opinions and listened to the other and either agreed or not agreed. But there’s not really a volume of new information, it wasn’t moving the needle for me.

So it’s kind of like there’s not that much more to talk about for me, and so I don’t have anything new to express. And on top of that, I was like, watching the games doesn’t seem fun anymore, but more importantly, I was realizing this is taking a lot of time. And if I felt like I have a bunch of hours I need to fill and want to find something to fill those hours, that’s great, but there were very concrete things I was trying to do with my time, and I found I was failing to do that.

I was left with a choice between being able to have enjoyable conversations with people I want to talk to about this specific topic, and sinking a bunch of other time into the actual watching and data gathering, or putting that time into the work I know I need to be doing to get where I want to get in the next couple of years, and maybe just finding some other things to talk about. Because it would have been a harder choice if the only thing I connected with my mom on was baseball, or the only thing you and I could talk about was baseball, but that’s just not the case.

We have plenty of common interests. So it’s just finding a way to say, okay, I’m going to cut that out for now, indefinitely, and then say, okay, we’re going to have other things we can chat about and have meaningful conversations, and maybe I’ll come back and look at it again when I feel like, can I be a casual baseball observer? And I feel like now, because the trade deadline passed and a bunch of things happened, I can watch a happening here and there, that’s fine, and we can talk about it. And it’s been funny, because,

a little further on the Mets example, the team has gotten significantly better, or is playing significantly better, in a relatively short amount of time since the trade deadline. Variance is variance, there are a lot of reasons that can happen. It’s possible it’s not significant. It’s also possible that the trade deadline being such a clear sign that the Mets aren’t trying to win this year, they’re just trying to test out new players, there’s a lot less pressure on those players, and they’re having fun, and it makes it fun to watch again. And people are, in some sports conversations, saying, hey, isn’t it great watching them, there’s no pressure, we’re just seeing what they can do. And others are like, well, actually, if they continue at this pace, and these six other teams lose their race,

you might get back into the playoffs. And I’m kind of annoyed at that. I’m kind of like, look, if we backdoor our way into being in the playoff hunt somehow, I’ll pay attention to that, and I’m casually checking the wild card standings every couple of days, but I mostly don’t care, I’m just enjoying it for what it is.

And I think there’s a further part of this conversation, that when we quit something, I think there’s often a lot of feelings about how it affects other people around us. And you’re one of the people I think of as least affected by those kinds of social pressures, but you’re like, I like talking about baseball.

When you quit baseball, it sucks. That shouldn’t affect it, but I think it’s a thing. And it’s been a good lesson for me, of, okay, so I need to reframe that. I’ve been looking at other ways I can scratch my “want to talk about baseball” itch.

And in a weird way, fandom actually was a great example of that, because you and I have been talking about Star Wars. Star Wars, I think, was one of the first things you and I really bonded over, besides being the only two sober people in a room where everyone else was passed out or intoxicated, when we were both in high school.

Paul
Yeah, and playing guitar while everybody slept, passing out.

Matthew
Yeah, exactly. We’ve always loved Star Wars, and then we got to The Last Jedi and hit this impasse, because you and I saw it in such fundamentally different ways. And I’m sure both of us had some level of, how can the other person think of this? We had a couple of good conversations, I think, that were at first probably more, especially I think more from my side, trying to convince you that you were wrong, and to some degree the other way, probably more from my side. I had some degree of thinking, an awful lot of people are saying things that sound like what you’re saying for terrible reasons, I don’t think you’re saying it like that.

I just wanted to make sure you weren’t on that train, and you clearly weren’t. And I think then we got to a point of let’s cautiously try to understand each other, and there’s some value to that. I’ve basically had a better understanding of the movie because of understanding you, and I think you’ve had the same with me. And then we kind of just stopped talking about it. And we’re able to be like, look, there’s a lot of other cool Star Wars stuff to talk about, and that was a good way to move on.

I think that’s another part of the quitting thing, so often when we’re thinking about whether we quit this thing or not, it really is just that, do I do this or do I not do this? And it’s so important to think about, every moment you’re doing a thing, you’re not doing eight million other things.

And so that means there’s a cost of continuing to do it, and a cost of quitting, but it’s also so helpful, I have not picked up a guitar in a long time. I never made a conscious decision to quit playing guitar.

It happened gradually over time. But for all intents and purposes, I’ve quit playing guitar because I’ve been focusing my time on so many other things. I recently picked up a guitar again, and I felt a sense of loss because I wasn’t as good as I used to be.

And part of me was like, no, I’ve got to play guitar five hours a week again. Pro tip, don’t. No, I don’t have the time to do that.

Paul
No, that’s not even the reason, but yeah, I’ll get into this in a moment.

Matthew
Yeah, but I’ve kind of wandered into different parts of the topic, but I think when we think about how the people in our lives quitting things affects how we see them socially, if you’re spending most of your time at a bar and a friend of yours realizes they have a problem with drinking, often there’s a part of you that wants to be like, no, this is an extreme example, but I think most people probably won’t be at this level, but you wind up socially often not wanting someone to accept that they’re an alcoholic, or whatever, because you want to keep seeing them at the bar. And you don’t want to stop drinking, and this does not mean everyone who goes to a bar to socialize has a drinking problem, by any means, but it might be that you don’t want to question it. When someone else in your life quits something that you don’t feel you need to quit, it can raise really hard discussions. I’m not saying it means you have to quit, but I think it can mean you’re forced to question it in a way that you don’t want to.

Paul
Yeah, I think that’s a real thing for sure. There’s also, you alluded to it, somebody doesn’t want their drinking buddy to quit drinking because then they lose their drinking buddy.

They’re not going to be their drinking buddy anymore. And then some people quit drinking and they can still hang out around people drinking. Some people are recovering alcoholics who can occasionally have a drink, and a lot are not.

Some people can go from drinking too much to being a casual drinker. And some people are like, I need to not even talk about alcohol. And that’s fine. What’s important is that you figure out which one you are, out of all of them, which could also be the person who drinks moderately and is fine, I don’t know, but yeah, that kind of thing, and

Matthew
this actually ties back to something else I was going to bring up earlier. Part of the quitting conversation, especially when you’re talking to others about it, I think it’s very easy, if you think you don’t have to quit, to find it hard to accept that others have to quit. And this goes back to baseball.

I am able to watch a baseball game, be really upset about it, and then five minutes later I’m fine. And there are corollaries as well. There are things I’ve had to quit that you’ve never had a problem with. But I remember when you talked about how it just ruins your day when you watch a game and they lose, and you don’t want to do that to yourself, there’s a part of me that’s like, that’s dumb, just don’t feel that way.

Or just read a box score and don’t go into 20 minutes of analysis of things. But that’s not how you are. And it was really helpful for me to make that connection, in the same way that the things I get really obsessive over that people are like, why are you doing that, it’s just because that’s how my brain is wired. And so I need to not do point one, because I can’t stop myself from doing point six. If you’re able to, that’s great, but yeah.

Paul
Yeah, and it’s not always because I can’t stop myself, it can just be, well, and it’s not necessarily every loss, but it’s just, in general, looking at something and being like, is this a positive experience for me anymore? And if it’s not, why am I still doing it?

And sometimes it’s a mix of positive and negative, and you weigh them out. And now, I feel like I could look at a box score, I could watch a random game, an inning here and there over the week. If I was somewhere that had a TV, I’d turn it on, watch an inning, and then turn it off and go watch the rest of my evening.

And it wasn’t like, this was a nice way to spend five, ten minutes, and then I’ll go watch Jeopardy. But there is a truth that quitting something does affect others, the people you shared that thing with. Sometimes it affects others positively, sometimes negatively. In terms of quitting baseball, I did give actual consideration, I knew there was a negative effect that would have on you and my mom, in terms of being able to talk to someone you want to talk to about it. And then I was like, well, does that outweigh what I need to not do? No. And will you both be okay? Yes, you’ll both be fine. So that’s what I have to do.

Matthew
And quick tip, it’s because we care about you and we don’t want you to do things that are bad for us. If you have people in your life who are like, no, keep doing this bad thing because it benefits me, you might want to quit that person in your life.

Paul
Yeah, you might, but also sometimes, generally I agree with you, but there are times when somebody’s in a very vulnerable spot, and it’s just, okay, I will spend my time in ways that aren’t my favorite way of spending my time, because I feel like that’s what you need right now, not just something you want in a casual kind of way, but it’s just, okay, this is important, and then that becomes an important way to spend time, where the benefits aren’t just the thing itself, it’s the consequences of the thing.

Matthew
And a couple of nights ago, I had to get up in the morning with my baby, and I really didn’t want to be on the phone with a friend. My friend was in a really bad state, and so I didn’t quit.

I’m alive today because Paul took some time out of their life to deal with stuff when I was going through some real hard times. That can be true on a minor level and on a macro level. And honestly, having a baby has been such an interesting experience for me, reevaluating the quitting conversation, because it has literally changed the table stakes of every decision I make. You were talking before about, can I stay up all night at this poker game even if it’ll wreck my tomorrow, do I have a sick day at a job, can I call in sick?

That might have a deleterious effect on my job, but not disastrous. Can I tell my partner, I know you really wanted to go to that museum with me tomorrow, I’m not going to be able to, because I stayed up late at a poker game? That’s probably not going to lead to a comfortable conversation with your partner. It might lead to one of those, “we need to take a walk and talk about this more tomorrow.” Or it might be something your partner’s fine with either way. But I can’t have that conversation with my baby. Literally last night, Mary and I were playing a video game we were really enjoying, and we really wanted to keep playing. And I joked to her, I wish I could call a sick day on being a parent, because I really want to stay up late.

Paul
You just can’t.

Matthew
Yeah, you can’t. It’s a different kind of table stakes. And in a weird way, thinking about it in terms of that kind of quitting was a really helpful way to frame it for me.

Paul
Yeah, nice, nice, I like that. And I’m glad that you did ultimately quit, even though it wasn’t, could you pause? Is that possible, or is it like one of these,

Matthew
Yeah, no, I could pause, and it’s funny, I was going to mention this video game as another example of what you’re talking about. It’s called Fire Emblem: Three Houses. It’s a game on the Switch, a really fun game, and it’s a turn-by-turn strategy game, like an RPG, and it’s one of my favorites, because, I mean, you would absolutely hate it.

It’s a bunch of kids fighting at a high school where they’re being trained for war, so half your decisions are about what kind of fighting you learn and how you fight in the war, and half the conversations are about which character asks out which character to go to the dance.

Paul
Amazing, they just made this game for you.

Matthew
Yeah, it’s so much what I love. But the thing is, I’m playing this game right now, and I’m also playing an awful lot of poker online, which used to be a game for me, a form of entertainment. I’m now shifting into trying to make it a serious pursuit that will eventually be money-generating for me.

Right now it’s mostly money-neutral. That means I have to take it a lot more seriously, that means it’s not fun and entertaining in the same way. So I play Fire Emblem. The thing is, in Fire Emblem, there’s a lot of information you don’t have that, if you knew it, would make you do better at the game.

And so I googled, hey, which of these two characters is considered actually the strongest one to turn into an archer versus a barbarian? And then I read about that, and then I read more about it, and then I read more about it. And then it got to the point where I was tempted to pull up my computer and make an Excel chart or Google Sheets chart, which I have done before with this game, thinking, okay, I want this character to be good at archery, so let me make sure they get every chance they can to do archery. And I was like, you know what, this is not good, I am trying to min-max this activity in a way that many people do find fun.

Paul
I’m not saying it’s not fun sometimes.

Matthew
Yeah, and there was a time when I did find it fun. But at a time when I’m literally trying to min-max my poker, and this is supposed to be an escape from that, guess what, that won’t make it fun. And so I had to ask myself, will I still have fun playing this game if I’m not min-maxing? And if I wasn’t, I’d have to stop playing the game. Turns out I can, for now. But if it gets to a point where I can’t, then I’ll have to re-examine it.

Paul
Yeah, very good, very good. I wrote a chapter in Way of the Poker Warrior, my first book, called “The Cost of Making It Your Job,” which was about, first, taking taekwondo and making it my job. It was my very fun hobby, whatever, it was a pursuit of skill, something I’d spent tons of time doing, but I wasn’t getting paid, and on any given day I could be like, yeah, I’m just not going to go.

And that was fine. I did go almost every day, but I had that choice. And then when I made it my job, it was like, okay, this isn’t just for fun anymore. It’s still fun, but not always, and when it’s not fun, I can’t just say, eh, I’ll quit for the day, I’ve got to quit-quit if I want to tap out more than occasionally and get someone to run a session for me.

Matthew
And in a world right now where the internet is both allowing and encouraging, in good and bad ways, there are a lot of ways right now the internet lets you make your hobby profitable.

And that’s everything from sex work to Etsy design, to people who sew, and I know people from all those different worlds who have talked about, I used to love taking sexy pictures of myself and posting them to groups and getting that feedback. I used to love making jars of jam at home. I used to love making sweaters. And then I realized I could do that for money, and that’s good, but to some extent, I don’t love it anymore. And for some people, it’s like, yeah, but it’s still making me money, and I still can find ways to love it.

And if they can, that’s great. Others are like, I want to try weird kinds of jam, and that’s not going to sell as well as just making the same strawberry jam over and over again, but I need to do that to make money, so I should stop trying to make money this way because it’s no longer fun for me.

Paul
Yeah, and it’s definitely right, as you said, it’s not a necessary consequence of making it your job, especially if it’s a side hustle. You can really just say, I’m a writer, I’m going to put some books out there, you can just do that, and then they can make whatever money they make, or make nothing, and that’s fine if you’re not investing a bunch of money in it.

This is again, you can min-max it or not min-max it. But it’s very hard to maintain the same joy and the same kind of casualness when you see money coming in, and you’re like, well, do I really want to make less money, or do I want to make less fun? And then, obviously in poker, you know what the rest of the chapter was about.

Matthew
So we’re about an hour into this conversation and haven’t gotten to the main thing you wanted to talk about, which is the merits of quitting. Although we’ve talked a lot about it, just not in the framework you wanted to necessarily. Do we want to save that for another conversation, or would you say we’ve talked about most of the things you wanted to talk about, we just didn’t do it in an organized way?

Paul
Yeah, I feel like we did. The point, to kind of summarize, I would say quitting is just making a choice between two things, where maybe society would make you think one is a more significant choice than the other, and it’s true that quitting will upset the status quo of your life, whatever’s going on, it will cause change. In some cases it may prevent negative change, if you have an addiction that’s really hurting you. But it’s really, the way I frame it, is it’s simply consistently reassessing your choice to do something and evaluating, is this a good thing to keep doing? It doesn’t necessarily have to be a daily thing, but it should be periodic, like anything you’re doing. If you’re doing it without really thinking about it, then you’re making the unconscious choice to continue. And whenever you evaluate whether or not to quit, you can either make the conscious choice to quit, or the conscious choice to continue, which I think often leads to a lot more fulfillment than just unconsciously choosing to continue.

If that’s right, it’s affirming, it’s like, no, I’m choosing to spend my time on this. I’m choosing to keep doing this thing, even though there are some negative consequences and some positives, and I’m choosing that. And I think that can be empowering.

Matthew
Yeah, I think that’s really true. And part of that is the recognition that you can’t do everything. I am, so not to get into a very different conversation, but I’ll just drop this briefly, I’m a big adherent of what’s called process philosophy, and it leads to a theology called process theology. Alfred North Whitehead, I think it’s something like that,

Whitehead wrote a lot about this, a lot of others did. But it’s basically the idea that it’s kind of like quantum philosophy, this idea that every moment something is happening, everything else is not happening. Every time you’re saying yes to one thing, there’s an extent to which you’re saying no to every other thing. You can get very esoteric with that, but if you decide to become monogamous with someone, which is a perfectly reasonable decision, or just to have some level of commitment to someone, you are saying no to every other person.

Every time you choose to go to a movie, you are saying, I don’t want to go to every other movie. It sounds weird to say it, but I think it’s actually a really helpful way of conceiving it, because then it’s like, yeah, I did quit guitar because I wanted to do these other things. I did quit watching sports as much because I wanted to watch other things. And that, to me, is a really helpful framework for thinking about these things, that it’s okay to quit, because we’re actually quitting all the time. We just frame it in ways of when something is thought of as quitting and when something isn’t. And there are reasons for that, but I think re-examining it from that lens becomes really helpful, both in terms of analyzing yourself, but also analyzing all the stuff around you. I think, with our heroes, with our politicians, I can see lots of examples of people who aren’t willing to quit. Iron Man wasn’t willing to quit, and that became a real problem. There are wars we’ve gotten into that we’ve stayed in far longer than we should have, both right now and in the past, because people didn’t want to be seen as quitters, and that’s really dumb.

But also, every time a politician realizes they had a dumb idea and changes it, people call them out, like, why don’t you have the strength of your convictions? No, because they’ve learned new things.

Paul
You should be allowed to change your mind.

Matthew
Well, like George H. W. Bush, the senior Bush, a big reason Clinton won the election is because he promised he wouldn’t raise taxes, and then he did. The thing is, he made that promise under a set of economic conditions people were predicting wouldn’t change. That was a dumb prediction.

Paul
That was a dumb prediction.

Matthew
But the reason he raised taxes is because the economic situation fundamentally changed. He said, look, I have new knowledge, I probably shouldn’t have made that promise, but also,

Paul
No, what I’m saying is that’s not making a campaign promise you never intend to follow. That’s making a campaign promise and being like, oh, crap.

Like, no new wars, and then aliens invade, and you’re like, uh, except this one.

Exactly. And, to your point, the word decision comes from the same root as homicide, and suicide, and matricide, and fratricide, infanticide, I could go on.

Matthew
The idea that you’re killing the other option.

Paul
Yeah, you’re cutting off the other possibility. You’re essentially eliminating that other option by choosing the one option.

Matthew
I could just decide to keep this conversation going, but my blood sugar is plunging, and I’m going to have a very bad experience if we keep talking. So I’m going to cut off this conversation.

So, Paul, why don’t you quickly tell people where they can find more of your thoughts, including that essay you just mentioned. I will simply say that Superhero Ethics is awesome, so is Star Wars Generations, so is Marvel Movie Minute, you should check out all those things.

Paul
So, you can find my stuff at zenmadman.com. You can use the code SHE400 for links in the show notes to get any of the books I have there, which includes Way of the Poker Warrior, Zen Madman’s Friday Night Is My Monday Morning, Volume One, and some fiction I’ve written. The only other thing I’d like to add, on the guitar note, and I’ll keep it short, I wrote about this a little in my thing, I stopped playing guitar for a long time, I started again, and I decided to start by trying to learn an incredibly difficult solo, on 12-gauge strings, which are very heavy, and I did it so much that I now have trigger finger in my left hand, and that ring finger doesn’t bend properly anymore, or not comfortably. So I advise you, if and when you decide to pick up the guitar again, go slow.

Matthew
Good, good point. Or if you want to start exercising again because you feel bad, there’s an opportunity cost, start slow, because my shoulder hurts.

Um, speaking of which, there are a lot of great back episodes, listen to a couple, don’t listen to 24 at a time, because that’s 24 hours, you need sleep.

Paul
But you could just put it on and just have it play them all out, and you just hear it.

Matthew
I’m cutting the session off. This has been Superhero Ethics, made with philosophy for you.