Powerless?

I'm reading a profile of Allen Bari in the July 13 issue of Card Player magazine. I had not been aware of him prior to this year's WSOP, but I've quickly learned to dislike him intensely. His reputation for misconduct is already tightly associated with his name, and he seems not only OK with that, but bound and determined to make himself the game's number-one arrogant, trash-talking asshole--as if we need another one of that ilk.

In this interview he says, "When you have an elite understanding of the game like I do, and you sit back and watch these morons who know absolutely nothing, it's near impossible to stay quiet, especially when their stupidity costs me chips or my tournament life. I completely understand that they are the people who fuel this industry and enable me to make a living playing poker, but I just can't stop myself." [Emphasis added.]

This is pure bullshit. Of course he could stop himself if he wanted to. Most poker players manage to take bad beats without berating opponents' bad play. If Bari can't, then there's something specifically defective about him. It is certainly not true, as a generalization, that "it's near impossible to stay quiet" in such circumstances. I find it almost trivially easy. If Bari finds it so difficult, again, that indicates that there's something wrong with him; it is not the case that everybody is similarly situated.

But even that statement of things is giving him too much credit. I'm not willing to blame his lack of self-control on some intrinsic flaw that he is powerless to change. I can't prove this, but I am nevertheless virtually certain that it's true: If some rich philanthropist offered Bari one million dollars for every time he managed to stifle an impulse to berate another player, I suspect he would suddenly find that he could, in fact, manage to pull it off pretty consistently. Let's alter our hypothetical contract further, and put in the additional the stipulation that every time Bari says anything negative to or about another player, he has to pay a one million dollar fine. Now if he yields to his impulse it costs him $1 million out of pocket, plus foregoing the $1 million that he could have won by suppressing his comments. Think he'd change his behavior? Of course he would.

The purpose of the thought experiment is to demonstrate that his outbursts are choices that he makes, and that he could choose not to make, if he deemed it sufficiently important. His words are not attributable to demons that suddenly take over all voluntary control of his brain's speech center. If he could choose to behave different for money, he could choose to behave differently for any other reason, too. He just doesn't really want to.

The words "I just can't stop myself" are always a lie, or at least a deep level of denial and self-deception. If the one uttering them were being honest, he would say instead, "I choose to act that way, and I don't really want to change." So in addition to being a pompous, rude jerk, Allen Bari is a liar.