Why is there a culture of cheating in some games and not others? Do some teams cheat more than other?

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Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast, where we look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm Fraser McGruer and I'm here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. And this week we're discussing why it's okay to cheat in water polo, but not okay to cheat in football. So yeah, I want to start us off on this one. So I was, we're in the middle of the World Cup and I was watching, I've watched a number of games where, where what really annoys me is the amount of cheating that goes on in football. With people... I think this is already a bit preloaded.

Well, well, no, bear with me, bear with me. Okay, let's run with cheating for now.

Yeah. Where people essentially are breaking the rules of football by doing things like diving, i.e. they look like they've been, they're pretending they've been tackled and really hurt but actually they've not been touched or they're exaggerating it or they're pushing. There's just a lot of skullduggery, let's say, right? And being a sort of... High Japes. No. No High Japes. You mean High Jinks. High Jinks, rather. Yeah. High Jinks. Yeah. And just a lot of cheating. And as it brings out the sort of, the little Englander in me that is, oh, bloody foreigners. Like why don't, you know, there's good British values. I've got some interesting stats about that. So have I, actually. Okay. Okay. However, this made me ask the following question to myself, which is when I was younger, I used to play a lot of water polo. And in theory, for anyone who's not terribly familiar with it, in theory, water polo is a non-contact sport. However, it is the most vicious, physically aggressive game that I've ever played. And there's a lot of fouling that takes place and there's a lot of skullduggery. There's a lot of faking that you've been tackled and doing all sorts of things. And it's underwater, so presumably it's hard to... So you can't see it. However, the kind of, the prevailing culture of it is, well, that's just part of the game. But I once had a furious argument with a friend of the podcast, Andres Taxer, an Argentinian, precisely on this topic. And he said to me what I've just said about water polo, which, regarding football, which is, well, it's just part of the game. Okay. So why is it, I was questioning myself, I questioned myself, why is it I get so annoyed and hung up in football with precisely the same behavior in water polo just makes you go, well, that's just part of the game? Am I a total hypocrite?

For those who know nothing about water polo, it's very unlike polo. There are no horses involved at all. Not usually. Not usually, no.

No sticks. No sticks. There is, is there water involved? There is water. There is water. Sometimes, yeah. But the fact that... It's basically underwater football.

Yeah, there are two teams. Yeah, pretty much. And there's a ball and that's about all it has in common with water polo. With polo. With polo, rather.

Yeah, that's about it. Yeah. So what's going on with... What's going on with me here? Sort me out. What's going on? Why, why do I have these double standards?

Uh, well, uh, that's, I feel like that's something we should tackle a little bit after we get through the issue of what we're talking about here, which is, um, in football, uh, you are allowed to attempt to take the ball off someone. What you're not allowed to do is attack the player and try and trip them up and all of that sort of thing. Same in water polo. Okay. I'm not disputing that. I'm simply saying that we'll tackle that issue in a bit. But for the people like me who don't know anything about football, it's worth covering a bit of why this is an issue. Now, there is a widespread perception that people pretending that they've been fouled. So a foul being when someone has not simply tried to take the ball, you know, in a good fair and square sort of way, but has tripped the player up or, or hit them or, you know, wrestle them to the ground or whatever, um, that's a foul. In football and in football, if you are fouled, then you get, might be a free kick, could be a penalty. You get some sort of tactical reward from being fouled, right? So that's the issue here is that, is that players, there is an advantage in looking like you've been fouled by the opposition. Okay. So, uh, it, there is a perception that this is increasingly prevalent that people are pretending to have been fouled by falling over and writhing around, um, more than they did in the golden age, uh, of football, which is whenever you were a kid or 20 years previous

from where you are now. Yeah.

Look, I just, uh, I mean, so, so that's, that's the issue. You're loading this. But anyway, keep going. Yeah. No, but is now the question is, is that true? And I have to say, you know, I can't find any, I think it's a false premise you're setting up.

But go on. What, which bit? The bit that there's, when you talked about that there's a golden age, I don't know.

I was just being, there was a throwaway comment. I think, but I do think there's a, um, I think there's another podcast in what is a golden age. Yeah. Okay. So the thing is that, um, everyone thinks this has got worse and everyone, we all know who to blame. The Argentinians. It's Latin Americans. They brought their slimy, slimy cheaty ways to the English, to the good old fashioned English game. Can I, can I jump in there? Jump in.

So, yeah. So this is, uh, some stats I found. It made it difficult to find data on, um, the penalty, uh, the penalty that a yellow or red card was awarded for. It's just, I can't find decent data anywhere. So I have to rely on other pundits, um, aggregations and their best guesses. But there was an article I found, uh, that talks about the number of bookings for diving. So there was a rule change. I can't remember. I don't know when the meant that you can be booked for diving, you can be booked for faking, uh, for faking that you'd be being booked for.

It was about 10 years ago, but they brought in new punishments last year.

So you can be awarded a yellow card if you dive essentially. And, um, and this article was looking primarily at the English premier league. I don't think it was looking internationally, but English premier league players, they come from all over the world. Right. Um, but so with that in mind, um, the, the, in the top six, four of them are also England international as there's one German and one Spanish, uh, one, one, one, one Spanish person on there. All the, they're all, so they're all English. So yes, bearing in mind that this English premier league is probably going to have more English players than others, but there's not a single one single South American or

no. Right. But I mean, that could, all that could indicate is that, um, that coming to this sort of more civilized, uh, league that they've, um, they've formed their ways. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

I heard somewhere that something like 45% of, um, someone I think had created their own data set, something like 45% of dives, um, are by English players. And that is apparently the same proportion as English players in the premier league. Uh, so, so in other words, English players are as big divers as, um, these, uh, slimy foreigners is what I'm saying according to this data set. And I got no means of verifying.

I just don't believe this because have any of you watched any world cup games recently?

Yeah. I mean, there was one last night between a country called Columbia and England and mind you, I'd say I don't think it was very much diving. There was a lot of wrestling going on, but, uh, there was some diving, but you're right. There was a lot of wrestling. Um, and people, people who've looked at it, you know, looked at, um, sort of whether or not these rules against diving are having any effect. Um, I think, you know, there's all your chance of being booked for, for, um, for diving is minuscule compared to the chance that you'll get awarded, let's say a foul. So I think the, to wrap all of this up, diving is good. It's good play. If you want to win, right. You should, because the costs, the potential costs are minuscule, very unlikely to, to affect you compared to the benefits that you get, um, you know, tactically in terms of your chances of winning. So, so I think, I think the most commentators agree it is, uh, you know, the, the reason that the game has evolved in that direction, if it has, but the point is that the reason it exists and it's prevalent is because, um, is because it makes sense to do that. So, so I think, and this is where I think the crux of it, of your original question phrase, it comes in, which is to what extent, this is the way I'm going to phrase it. To what extent the meta rules are part of the rules. So you have the rules of football tells you how to behave. The meta rules tells you about the enforcement of those rules, who enforces it, what incentives they have to enforce it properly, what the punishments are for infringing the rules, et cetera. And now are those meta rules still part of the rules? Are you allowed to optimize and say, well, okay, I mean, I'm only going to get, I might get, there's a one in a hundred chance I might get booked, but there's a one in two chance I might get a free kick. So I'm, I'm gonna, it's almost my duty. My duty as a football player is to try and help my team win. And if the best thing to do is to pretend to have been injured, then, uh, that's what I ought to do. Now that's one view. Why is that wrong? What is it wrong? Is it, you know, that's, that's the question. Why are the rules part of the rules?

And is that, I mean, I think it does go back to a cultural thing of, you know, the, let's say in football, for example, you know, on one level, yes, the point of football is to, to win the game. Um, but there are larger, potentially more important, um, values to consider, like good sportsmanship for example. And that's more important culturally in some countries than others. Is that a fair way to say it?

And I think this reminds me of a, um, discussion I had with a friend of mine, former colleague who is of Italian ancestry, who told me about the concept in Italian culture of the furbo, the furbo, who is basically a guy who kind of pulls off stunts and gets away with it. And it's considered to be, that's considered to be a good thing. You know, you're gaming the system, you've got, you found a loophole, you're exploiting it. Well, good. You're getting one back at the man. And, and, uh, you know, I feel like this is the same, the same sort of, uh, thing really is, you know, are we, are you meant to just abide by the rules or in your decision, is your decision to abide by the rules? Is that something that should be influenced by how the rules are enforced? And as a big board gamer, I mean, this is a big issue in board game design as well, that you, you look at, um, and it's particularly an issue where you have, um, where you have sort of hidden information. So where you are perhaps acting in a way that I can't verify whether you're, whether you're abiding by the rules. And uh, normally good, good board game design will just, it will give the people who stand to lose by cheating a means of enforcing the rule. So, you know, there's a game called Twilight Struggle where you aren't allowed to hold on to certain cards. You have to play them at some point during your turn. You can't hold them over till the next turn. And, uh, and they've designed a way that you can, you can show me that the cards you have aren't scoring cards without me knowing what the cards you have, for example. So there's, you know, good board game design will involve including enforcement mechanisms for those things. Um, and, uh, where you don't have that, you know, you just have to trust the people you're playing with. Okay. Where do we go from here?

Uh, well, yeah, but football is quite different from board games because you in theory have perfect information as the rule, as the rule enforcer, the referee and the linesman. And now with, uh, replays and things, you have perfect information about how to inform your decision. So, um, so that's, uh, that's, yeah, how the hell is this a thing?

How are we able to look at people obviously diving during football games and they're getting away with it? I don't understand.

Well, the, yeah, but I think the, so correct me if I'm wrong, know nothing about football. The replays are only used, um, when it's a goal decision. Is that right?

No, it's, I mean, so a big thing at this world cup now is the, um, anywhere on the pitch. Okay.

So they can call for a replay anywhere.

And actually, so, uh, what a lot of pundits have been saying is, oh my God, this was meant to clarify things and sort of clear it all up, but actually it's making it even worse. And there's an, and now a new level, a higher level of, oh my God, what's going on. It's just not consistent.

Well, I think this new rule change from last year, uh, why it was significant. This is just, I think the, the football association, so in the UK, um, is that you can be subsequently banned for two games if you're found to have deceived a match official. And that's, so instead of being booked for diving, which relied on the referee, uh, you know, knowing what was going on and enforcing it on the pitch at the time, um, this is a, this has been applied to people, but it basically, uh, if afterwards, you know, the referee couldn't have seen whether or not you've got kicked and you acted like you did, but you weren't, then you can be banned for two games. So it seems like a good, sensible way of doing it.

Yeah. Um, I, I think what people complain about is that actually this stuff is rarely if ever enforced. Um, it kind of never happens.

Is it worth mentioning the Ford Pinto? Yes. Okay. What is it? The Ford Pinto was a car from the, I believe late sixties to mid seventies.

Wasn't it a complete design failure, a huge flop or something?

Right. So it was, this is what's interesting is that, uh, they had designed the car with the fuel tank in the front of the, in the, and that was, I think led to some efficiency, some efficiency valued, shaved something like $10 off the cost of manufacturing a car. But obviously it greatly increased the, or at least significantly increased the chance of you burning to death in the event that you crashed your car, because most collisions are head on, or at least you're, you're going to be driving forward. Um, now it's Ford, there's a thing called the Pinto memo where, um, the Ford company just in value, they didn't have straight up cost benefit analysis. And they said, well, look, we can change the production line and all the designs and everything. And that'll be, you know, that'll cost us 150 million quid. Um, but if we leave it as it is, uh, then, you know, we, we, okay, fair enough. There's going to be some more people burning to death, but we reckon that's probably only worth about 50 million quid, um, dollars, I should say. And um, you know, in terms of fairly reasonable, fairly reasonable life valuations. Well, in lawsuits, what do they expect to get sued by, uh, that kind of thing. I'm interested. I'm curious to see how this leads back to our discussion, but yeah, go for it. I'm amazed. You can't see why this is. So, so the point is that this was, this was Ford effectively playing the meta rules. They were saying, you know, we, we, um, there's a kind of rule about car design, which says don't design your cars to let people burn to death. But they were saying, well, okay, well, how much does that rule cost us? Like, why don't we try and think of a way of, or why don't we at least just sort of say, well, how much is it worth sort of adhering to that rule? And you know, what would it cost us if we didn't? And, um, and the fact that they did ended up, they ended up with, I think, a huge fine. And, uh, as a company, you know, lots of people did die as a result of the, uh, of the, of the design. Um, whether or not you think now the question is, do you think it's an acceptable type of, uh, analysis to do to say, well, okay, you know, we're not valuing human lives as infinite or we put roll bars and five point harnesses in all our cars, right? We clearly are putting a value on it.

We wouldn't sell cars if we sold trainers or something.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so, you know, and that to me is, it's the same, same issue. It's hard to explain why what they did was wrong in the same way. It's hard to explain why it's wrong for someone to, um, you know, to pretend to be injured when that increases their chance of winning the game. And then, you know, you can also start thinking about, well, morality in the law. Now, are you, you know, when you could, you can take one view, which says you shouldn't murder people who you don't like. That's one view I don't necessarily subscribe to, but the point is that there's one view which says you shouldn't murder people who you don't like. Um, another view might be to say, well, you, you should take into account, you can do that. You can go and murder people. That's fine. No one's stopping you doing that, but you should take into account in when you're deciding whether to do it or not, the probability of you getting caught and the downside of being in prison for 25 years. Uh, so you know, now which of those views we tend to think that the former view is the more moral view. Just don't do it in the first place, but it's hard to say that someone taking the latter view is wrong. It's hard to say that it's, it's not mad, is it to say, well, okay, murdering someone has a benefit to me because I really don't like them. But there's this potential downside that I need to take into account. Well, now I think I can get away with it. There's probably only a 20% chance I'll get caught. You know what? That's an average of four years expected life loss, you know? So, uh, I'll go do it. That to me is the same. It's the same thought process. It's looking at the meta rules. It's the enforcement mechanism and whether you can gain that versus looking at just the rules and saying, well, we ought to abide by the rules full stop.

Unless hypothetically that kind of decision making happens. You think it's hypothetical? It happens in business, in energy companies, big companies who are contributing arguably to pollution of the world and global warming and things, but they are balancing the decision. Well, we could, we know it's probably a good idea not to do this anymore, not to pollute this river or to not spill these chemicals everywhere. But what are the, what's the cost of the litigation we can expect and where's the balance point? When, when does it, when does it, when does it become profitable to start being good?

I should say, by the way, I feel like in this discussion, I might've come over as though I'm in any way, in some way, understanding of divers and cheaters. I'm not, I detest them. And particularly like, even though he's a psychopath, he detests it. Particularly, I mean, I know there are people who grew up in board game, it's sort of cheaty families where if you could get away with it, then it was okay. And it was considered to be part of the fun was, you know, you would all be secretly trying to, you know, you cheat, you'd move your account to one less square and you'd stash away a little bit of money that people didn't know about. And you know, like the four ball, you could get away. If you get away with it, that's good. That's part of the fun. I very much take the opposite view, which is it simply means that people spend all their time trying to enforce rules. It just means that you are constantly counting, you're checking everyone, watching for cheating. And it does. And, and this is the argument that people make about football. The point is that, you know, people oughtn't to be doing it. We shouldn't be saying, well, what's the right punishment for these people or what's the, they just shouldn't do it. You know, we shouldn't be trying to work out what the optimal cost benefit ratio is for diving versus being genuinely injured or whatever. They just shouldn't be doing it because it makes the game worse.

If everyone, if everyone playing the game is okay with the idea of the four bow, then it's okay. And if everyone's playing the game, doesn't like cheaters, they want to play the rule, the game by the rules, then that's okay. But it's when you get the mix, that's the problem. No, but I'm saying it's worse.

Which is why I see it more in World Cups, because I'm usually get sort of cultures coming together, different footballing cultures that don't usually meet. They just meet once every four years, quite randomly. So you get that clash. Sorry, I interrupted you, Nick.

No, I just think, I don't think it's kind of like all equivalent. And to me, it's a bit like the discussion we've had before about queuing, you know, that I think there's just no, it's very hard to make an argument that not queuing, that having a scrum is better than a queue. It just isn't. On average, it's more costly, and everyone still gets to serve the same time anyway, on average. And I feel like with cheat, if you have a game where, you know, cheating is kind of okay, it simply means that we all have a cost that we have to bear, which is the cost of, you know, enforcing the rule of keeping an eye. We've got to be constantly watching to see if someone's cheating. And we're no better off. We're all, you know, where we were before. We're all still playing the game. But now we're spending, investing resources in enforcing rules. Whereas if we could just all behave ourselves, we wouldn't have to do that. We could just spend those resources enjoying ourselves. And I think I can totally see the argument. Football is not a game of getting away with, you know, free kicks. It's a game where you should, you know, what do you want to see from a football match? You want to see people put a ball in the back of the onion bag. You don't want to see a bunch of people, you know, writhing around on the floor like idiots.

But you can imagine a scenario where people actually take joy in that kind of cat, being, catching somebody who's seen as be cheating is potentially fun in the right sort of circumstance. So a culture of playing a ball game where you are playing also this metagame adds another dimension to it and is potentially fun. If you, if you can, if you, you can gain some social kudos by being the guy who catches the guy who's cheating.

There's some fun in that. No, well, I mean, it's just what I'm saying is that taken as a whole, it's less fun, certainly for me. And I would argue for everyone. In fact, it's just empirically speaking is less fun to play that game than it is just to play the sodding game. Just play the game. Don't play the rules. You know, I think we've nailed it. I think we've got to the bottom of it. I feel satisfied. Yeah, I'm glad I got that off my chest because I was rationalizing cheating. And then I thought, no, basically, look, it's still worse. I think I get, I get, I get why people do it and it makes sense, but it's just makes everything worse.

Yeah, I think sort of Peter made a good point, though, it's about whether everyone agrees that actually that's really part of the game or not. You know, yeah. And that's so I think, you know, with myself going back to how we started with water polo, you know, the things that I did as a water polo player, actually all other water polo players kind of thought it was all right. And everyone did the same kind of thing. So, so, yeah.

Yeah, and that's the main reason that Nick never plays water polo.

That's right. I just can't stand all this, all this, all this, you know, he's got the body for it, but he's just not. Yeah, you better believe it. Yeah, well, yeah, I don't I don't even know what it is. I think I played it once at school, but I don't remember lots of fighting and cheating. But then I probably didn't even know what the rules were, by the way, by the way.

Once a year, there was always a highlight in the water polo calendar, OK, at my school, which was we got to play the local girls school and we were an all boys school. And it was a highlight because they were also another skilled team. That's the reason why I say is, you know, happy memories from my adolescent years with those water polo games, with with with the high school. Yeah, it's the one time of the year you get to touch a girl. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

OK, let's wrap it up there. Actually, sorry, there might be something which would be good to end on. Go on. I think it's worth saying, you know how we think that American sports are for wusses because they, you know, we always say, well, all those American football players, they go around wearing armor and, you know, they sort of it's, you know, whereas rugby, they all just punch each other. And we're tough guys. I don't think that.

My problem with American sports is they're incredibly legalistic and full of regulations.

What I what I do want to say, though, is that it is a source. And this may be a motivator for people to stop cheating at football. But a lot of Americans see this sort of behavior in in what they call soccer and despise it. I think quite rightly to look at it and say, well, this is pathetic. How can you call this a sport? All of all you're doing is like riding around on the floor all the time. And, you know, I think I think football, in order to be more acceptable to countries which don't play it, does have an incentive to sort itself out. Yeah, become become really a game where you kick balls to people and then get them in the goal rather than, you know, pretend to have been kicked and fall over.

So it sounds like some sort of manifesto you're running for political office.

I never thought I never thought that I'd stand on a football commission. Fast forward 10 years, Nick is head of FIFA. I think, you know, I might be that I might have the right sort of objective outlook for them.

Well, OK, gentlemen, thank you as always to our listeners. So thank you for listening to the Cognitive Engineering podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights. Until next time, goodbye.