Stories like this greatly depress me. I&#x27;ve been aware of the phenomenon since a young age, when my identically-aged first cousin and I were assigned to count yellow cars in the street in exchange for a small cash reward for each one we identified so as to temporarily relieve the adults of our company at the time. My cousin (whose parents are pretty jolly and easygoing) professed to detect three times as many yellow cars as I did. I&#x27;m pathologically honest (probably because I grew up in an abusive environment where even a small transgression was liable to result in a severe beating) and I was simply astonished at my cousin&#x27;s willingness to maximize his reward at what seemed to me to be an insanely high level of risk. I learned much later in life that my father had bullied my uncle growing up and that the uncle&#x27;s response was to develop peer-teaming strategies while my father went on to a successful but rather lonely and extremely competitive executive career.<p>To this day I have a very hard time dealing with any sort of economic activity that has more than a whiff of subjective advantage and am deeply uncomfortable accepting any sort of unexpected windfall, to the point of refusing well-earned and freely-offered promotions and having great difficulty enjoying gifts. I have literally gone hungry and been late on my rent because of an unwillingness to deposit a check (in payment for work) for an amount greater than I had expected to receive. Needless to say, this has had a pretty dire and cumulative effect on my career, material wellbeing etc. :-&#x2F;<p>I forgot to add that the one context where this does pay off for me, although I rarely indulge in it, is playing Poker - since elaborate bluffing and systematic dishonesty is actually a legitimate play strategy in that game I&#x27;m able to manufacture tells and run a &#x27;slow loser&#x27; strategy with ease and frequently walk off with the entire pot. I&#x27;ve never had the resources or risk tolerance to try it against professionals, though.