“If we say a thing is great or small by its own standard of great or small, then there is nothing in all creation that is not great, nothing that is not small.”
Zhuangzi
There’s an urban myth that runs roughly along these lines: If you put a frog in a pan of hot water, it will leap out. If you put a frog in a pan of cold water, then steadily bring it to the boil, the frog, too dumb to notice the subtle change, will sit still until it dies. Fortunately, it seems frogs are a little more sophisticated than that — they’re not so stupid as to allow themselves to die at the ready hands of pan-wielding stove-utilizing frog serial-murderers, and will get themselves out of the water as best they can as soon as they start to get uncomfortable — and generally, their tolerance is at the same temperature, regardless of whether they’re introduced to the water cold turkey, or if the water is heated up.
I put forward the reason that the urban myth is so enduring, however, is because people can imagine doing that. It’s easy to bring to mind the times you’ve gone in the shower and steadily turned down the cold water until you’re standing under almost-boiling water — so it’s even easier to think of an animal, who is, of course, stupider than you, doing worse. What’s added to this is that humanity, for all that it has created a number of empirical rules, is really awful at recognizing them.
You know anyone who can honestly track what time it is without device? I think you’ll find that if you do, they leap to your mind, because they are so rare. You don’t have to winnow out all the people you know who can track time perfectly because it is an exceptional thing. How about temperature? My father was a professional cook — he can tell you when an oven’s hot enough for what he wants, but the margin of error is huge.
Distance, though — people can manage distance, right? People who drive are told to start braking a hundred meters from the lights. Surely that means people can measure distance reasonably well, right? Well, yes and no. See, people tend to start out by using roadside telegraph poles (a standard distance apart) as a yardstick for that. They measure the distance they want against the distance they know.
Today, we’re going to talk about mistakes. We’re going to talk about why you make them, what they say about you, what you can do to stop them. And to get through that, we’re going to have to talk about why your brain stops working.
Step One: How Your Meatloaf Works
The human brain, as has been found in studies, isn’t actually very good at reasoning things through in a fashion that could best be called “logical.” It’s really a large, complicated change detector. For all that we think we do things rationally and empirically, we really don’t. The best example of this — at the most basic level — is how the brain processes information from the eye.
Now, the human eye, from our position behind it, seems steady and sure. I don’t see the world around me in a constant blur, so, I assume, my eye is still. This isn’t true, however; the eye is actually constantly moving — it’s jiggling in its socket. The reason for this is that the retina isn’t capable of recognizing an image that remains still on the retina.
Studies have demonstrated that when you take a short contact lens and use it to project a static image onto the retina (since the eye itself is moving, that’s the only “stable place” on which to stand), the subject can see the image for a few seconds and then, it fades out. The brain needs change to interpret the images it’s receiving.
You don’t notice how you smell. No, really, people do not notice this. They notice changes in smell. That’s why you can plug your way through a tournament as rancid as can be, and it’s not until you actually stick your nose in your armpit you notice — because the smell you give off and the smell directly under your armpit are different in their intensity. But subtle changes — step-by-step changes — will often be ignored because the brain detects change, but only a bit of change.
Your radiator and refrigerator both hum. The animals around your house make noise. Your house creaks in the cold. Your computer fan makes noise almost constantly — indeed, in the fan’s case, you recognize it best when it stops. You don’t notice these things though, certainly not most of the time. This is because, as I said, don’t register things empirically — indeed, it’s remarkably hard to do so, because there aren’t many empirical measures that are easily remembered.
Looking To The Horizon
“Mao Qiang and Li Ji [two beautiful courtesans] are what people consider beautiful, but if fish see them they will swim into the depths; if birds see them, they will fly away into the air; if deer see them, they will gallop away. Among these four, who knows what is rightly beautiful in the world?”
Zhuangzi
A little thought experiment, if you’d humor me. Think of the crappiest card of each rarity, in Ravnica block. Then think of the crappiest card in each rarity in Coldsnap. Then write them down and post them on the forums.
I’ll lay odds we don’t find a consensus. Maybe a majority — maybe half the people who have this opinion (and I don’t think many people will do this, so don’t worry about it) will find the same card in one or two rarities to be The Crappiest Card. Heck, I can’t think of what I’d choose. Because my memory isn’t that great — I can only bring to mind cards that I find disappointing, like Vindictive Mob.
The way your memory works is based on distinctive features. People don’t remember things perfectly. They remember specific, pertinent details and then dredge the rest back from your memory from there. Vindictive Mob leaps to my mind because it’s so odd. It has a casting cost of six and a drawback, and all for a body most would consider insufficient, and an ability that appears random. But still, it’s there, and supposedly, not that awful a card in some formats. Weird? I thought so.
That’s why it leaps easily to my mind. People aren’t comparing the crappy cards in Ravnica to the crappy cards in Kamigawa — they’re comparing the crappy cards in Kamigawa to the good cards in Ravnica! Of course that’s going to have cards fall short of the mark — you know which ones are better and that’s why you’re offering the comparison!
Now, with Planar Chaos here, we’re sitting around and quietly muttering to ourselves. We’re comparing the cards from Planar Chaos with the cards we like and finding them wanting, in their flavor or in their execution. I remember when Thoughtcast was first spoilered, I heard one pundit voice, “It’s no Gush.”
It never pretended to be Gush, damnit.
Remember Giant Solifuge? We compared the Solifuge we got with the Solifuge we wanted — a card that never existed! — and found the Solifuge wanting. For a long time it was selling low as people complained about how badly it sucked! Planar Chaos is full of New Stuff — and I mean really new stuff, not just the old stuff that’s been repainted. That’s kind of the point.
Planar Chaos brings with it a number of cards we’ve seen before (some as recently as Time Spiral, in a move I can’t help but feel is… well, a bit lazy), and a lot of — casual, I will note – writers are being dismissive of them, because they feel they “know these cards already.” The best example of this attitude is in Mana Tithe.
Force Spike was only, as far as I know, the “only” counterspell in Ankh-Tide style Pirates decks, designed to capitalize on the fact that, if you countered the first-turn play, your opponent would have basically no chance to get into the game while you bounced and taxed everything into oblivion. The rest of the time, Force Spike saw more play as part of another suite of countermagic, protecting early turns and being an economical way to punish tap-out turns, or win a countermagic war.
White doesn’t have either the mana denial (though pirates should probably be White), nor the suite of countermagic to make Mana Tithe “just Force Spike.” When Mana Tithe sees play, it’s going to be on the basis of its own merits as a lone card. This is very distinct. It’s not Just Force Spike, and it never can be. By shifting a card into a different color, Wizards have made an effectively different card altogether.
I mean.
Funny how that works.
On Chris Romeo
Chris Romeo is really, really unhappy with Planar Chaos. And hey, good for him — he’s got an opinion, and, prior to actually seeing the set as a whole, it seems to be more or less the same as mine. Apparently, Red messing up combat for R is a bit much for him to handle, and that’s entirely okay. But in his set review, he numbered multiple cards that were either “good” (and he then removed all qualifiers for the cards to be good), or “bad” (and then skirted around actually saying it). This is the worst kind of set review. It was a nonsensical exercise in avoiding saying anything that would look foolish in the future, and in the process, it did nothing but look foolish.
Set reviews are basically speculation. I think almost anyone can write speculatively, but for the better part, very few people are good at it. Indeed, go back over any writer on this site that’s done a set review, or made a bold prediction about a card (between myself, Rivien Swanson, and Evan Erwin, you’ve got an esteemed list of What-Were-We-Thinkings), and see how many of us were right. I don’t mean “bold prediction” like “Glare of Subdual may be a flagship card, but the flagship might be leaky,” but I mean “Seriously, this card will define Standard.”
Most every writer I know claims they saw Affinity coming. Most of them claim they knew Necro was broken the second they saw it. Most of them claim they predicted the banning of Tinker. Every time I hear this kind of thing, I quietly wonder, exactly, if I’m dealing with the Hindsight Bias.
It’s funny, but just because your brain is designed to detect change, it actually tends to dislike change. The Hindsight Bias is the best example of this — because it is a bias that says your opinion now is how your opinion always has been. You remember events to make yourself sound better, to make your dialogue crisper, or to make the Other Guy’s behavior less justifiable. As a writer, putting my thoughts out there, I really have no means to do that. I also think stating, post-fact, an opinion I had beforehand that I never told anyone is really quite pointless.
You need to embrace change in this game. You need to understand that the ideas you start with and the ideas you end up with are not necessarily going to be the same, and be honest with yourself along the way. Initial thoughts are great and all, but the idea that the set has to live up to some impressive standard before you’ve ever sleeved up a card is silly. Further, once you’ve tested and found yourself unhappy with a card, wait and see, because other people are doing the same thing.
You cannot have all the good ideas. I don’t care who you think you are, or how good you fancy yourself as being. Learning from others is vital to improving at this game.
Finally, Why You’re Not Really An Idiot
I’ve done a classic educational trick in the opening of this article. I’ve stated about 75% of a premise as a fact and now that we’re further into the subject, and you accept it as true, I’m going to adjust what I said to cover the point more precisely.
The human brain handles static information just fine. It just prioritizes for you. This is because the human brain was not designed to create cars, build bridges, or fly to the moon. It was certainly not designed to play this game of magical cards. You’re a hunter-gatherer in a suit, my friend, and your brain is doing its best to help you cope.
It’s doing a marvelous job, really.
Who here hasn’t seen a game of Magic where a win has been on the table and one player kept playing despite its presence, completely ignoring the fact they had a powerful option available to them? Is it because that person is stupid? No, it’s because of how we process information.
Information that was already available, static information gets filed in the back. Dynamic information, stuff that’s changing, new, or not yet comfortable enough to be static, that gets put right in front and center. So you don’t notice the Vulshok Sorcerer who’s been there for ten turns. He’s been there for ten turns, after all. New stimuli — like your opponent playing around the creature in question — can actually prompt the brain into reassessing stuff, of course.
The thing is, there’s a reason your brain does this. A lot of information flies around you at speed at any given point in time, and your brain is sifting through it and presenting it to you so you can best handle it.
I know one of my readers is an ADHD sufferer. I’ve dealt with many myself, thanks to my school background. And the thing that seems to unite them is that they do not get that information filter. Their attention is equally caught by the math problem on the page in front of them, the color of your pen, the book in the bookshelf nearby, the bird flying past the window outside, and the way the trees are moving in the wind.
Now imagine playing Magic like that. Imagine processing every artist’s name on every basic land, of noting every mana added to the mana pool and every mana out of the mana pool, all without any heuristic to short-cut it for you!
You’d go mad.
This kind of behavior is remarkably easy to fix, though. You just need to pay attention. Stop yourself from slipping into the Easy Patterns. Make new patterns. Determine new heuristics. Testing is a great way to do this. When you test, you start to create plans and patterns in your mind, as the opponent’s deck becomes more familiar. The simple play of knowing to Shock a first-turn Birds of Paradise suddenly becomes intuitive. Using instants on your own turn to limit your opponent’s responses to them is another one.
The ability to make these heuristic changes on the fly is what separates good players from great players. Instead of losing and taking the lesson away, seeing the lesson and learning the lesson — then passing the test the first time.
Another way to make new patterns is to play weird formats. Play Type Four for a bit, for example. As you improve, cards start to take on new meaning. You start to appreciate big effects and small effects, timing and the stack. By removing one part of the resource management and replacing it with another, simpler, one, you begin to appreciate He Who Blinks First Loses.
A different format’s a great way to do it, too. I play the occasional Extended game, just to remind myself what it’s like to play around hard counters, and how careful you have to be in the opening turns to prevent some out-of-control threats.
Ultimately, your brain is a muscle you use in playing this game. Exercise it. Study and grow strong.
Hugs and Kisses
Talen Lee
Talen at dodo dot com dot au