Can Philosophy Help You Win Deal or No Deal?

On a recent episode of NBC's "Deal or No Deal," Korean native Pyong Kong tried to capture the American Dream. Wincing as each model opened his cases of fate, he looked to his immigrant parents seated in the audience -- a couple who had come to the United States with a mere $750. Eerily, Kong narrowed his choices down to numbers that were all multiples of $75. Unsure of what that fate was telling him, he took the banker's offer of more than $200,000. He quickly learned that one of the remaining cases coincidentally held the same amount his parents brought with them to the U.S. and that he had, in fact, made a good deal.

Was it luck or strategy that brought Kong his fortune? Moreover, why do we find ourselves rooting for the contestants like Kong that we deem more deserving than others?

Public relations 101 tells us that, in order for a show like "Deal or No Deal" to succeed, we have to care. We don't care as much about the biographies of contestants on Jeopardy!, for instance, because we get to use our skills when we play along. The audience of "Deal or No Deal," however, has little invested in the result (except for those who play the Lucky Case Game or those who attempt to mathematically predict the banker's offers), so there has to be a hook. Watching story-less people chance their way to the elusive $1 million would not gain ratings. So, the producers pair "Deal or No Deal" contestants with their idols (Joe Torre and Magic Johnson have made recent guest appearances) and fly long-lost family members around the globe to watch their unsuspecting contestant, who, all the while planned to use his or her winnings to fund the same reunion. The hoopla keeps us watching, but do people come out on top because they are morally good or fantastically lucky? Is our pursuit of the real answer to that question the reason we tune in more than once a week?

Even history can't fully answer the question of luck vs. divine purpose, but it's interesting to look to some of the great thinkers who have tried:

1. Aristotle, in Physics, said "the theory of chance does away with the whole order of Nature, and indeed with Nature's self. For natural things which do move continuously, in virtue of a principle inherent in themselves, toward a determined goal; and the final development which results from any one such principle is not identical for any two species, nor yet is it any random results, but in each there is always a tendency towards an identical result, if nothing interferes with the process."

In other words, chance is not natural and there is an order to Deal or No Deal. Good! I wonder what that order is ....

Aristotle continues ..."But when the desired result is effected invariably or normally, it is not an incidental or chance occurrence; and in the course of Nature the result is always achieved invariably or normally, if nothing hinders it. It is absurd to suppose that there is no purpose because in Nature, we can never detect the moving power in the act of deliberation ... That Nature is a cause, then, and a goal-directed cause, is above dispute. "

Basically, Nature could dictate that we'd get the $1 million, but there is always that undetectable moving power present. To win, you have to eliminate that power. Is it Howie Mandel? The audience? His or her cast of cheerleaders? Do the the contestants get in their own way? Or maybe it was never natural for a human to win $1 million on a game show and those lucky ones defy the course of the universe? Hmmmm.... So, to win, a player has to keep that moving power away!

2. Max Planck may have the answer to the puzzle of how to win the $1 million: go to church. He asserted the idea of divine intervention in chance in the Philosophy of Physics, "The most perfect harmony and consequently the strictest causality in any case, (NOTE THE WORD CASE!), culminates in the assumption that there is an ideal spirit having a full knowledge of the action of the natural forces as well as the events in the intellectual lives of men; an knowledge to every detail and embracing present, past and future."

The models, Howie, the banker, the producers, the audience and certainly the contestants have absolutely no idea what's hiding in those silver briefcases, but God does! Of course, Planck didn't bother to tell us if believing in God had any bearing on who wins, so we have to look further.

3. Karma, according to another NBC show, "My Name is Earl," would teach us that yes, being good does lead to good things. Every time Earl crosses an item off of his list of wrong-doings, fortune befalls him. He returns a stolen cat and finds a girlfriend for his loyal brother; he teaches a group of immigrants English and is saved from a crazy ex-girlfriend; he proves time and time again that karma is not only real, but a force to be reckoned with. So, maybe if you make a list of all of the bad things you've done and you try to rectify them, you'll have a chance at the $1 million.

We can think ourselves in circles (thanks, Plato) about who wins and why, but we probably won't come any closer to an answer than any of these other thinkers have. At least considering the philosophy behind shows like "Deal or No Deal" make us more intelligent viewers ... and even more human.