Like many people these days, I play poker. I won’t get into the strategy, but I do want to talk about bluffing. It is essentially making a play to win a hand by representing something. The goal is to fake out your opponent. While some people associate such a play with morals, it is a perfectly acceptable way to try to win. It is not a form of cheating, although some people (in particular those unfamiliar with poker) feel it is a form of lying.
I sometimes think about bluffing in real life. I have been known to tell tales and occasionally make stuff up. However, I am not a liar. Here is what I mean. Suppose I am talking to someone that I don’t know well in a borderline awkward situation and I tell them something that is not true. I might make up some BS story about something that happened my freshman year at Duke (being careful to avoid anything about a party with the lacrosse team…) or that I tried out for a reality show, or that I used to jump rope professionally… you get the idea. The point is it is not out of this world for me to be creative to enhance the fun of a given situation. I am tricking the other person but I am not in any way harming them. Most of the time I will come clean and tell them that what I just told them is not true.
The other type of real world bluffing I can think of is when someone asks an obvious question. Imagine I showed you a picture of a purple basketball and you immediately said “is that a purple basketball?” There is only one answer to this question, which I do not consider a rhetorical one. The answer is no. Of course it’s a purple basketball, that’s why I am showing it to you. It reminds me of when someone asks you an opinion or a question where they are looking for a specific answer.
I have realized after writing this that I am not making the point which I was orginally intending to make. The point was going to be that you should be able to bluff in real life. I was thinking there could be a distinction between lying for real (for lack of a better phrase) and jokingly misleading them for fun. Then through my discussion I recognized that the enjoyable tales that I may sometimes tell are not bluffs.
Sweet post. Gulp.
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2 comments:
I once had an entire conversation with a girl in a bar talking about the kindegarten class that I taught. And another time me and Mike went an entire night speaking in Irish accents, and more than a few people actually bought it. Mike's was way better than mine though.
I don't think I can do my Irish accent anymore. I lost it. The last couple times I've tried I can't get it to sound right.
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