The Unprofessional Boy #16
Humanity's Method of Madness Management
Hello everyone,
This week we’ll elaborate on the last post, in which I set out some definitions and guidelines; first, allow me to explain why I considered it necessary to begin with those establishments, for which there are two reasons:
It was a shorter, cleaner segment than going in full-bore, and I was quite busy.
Everything is games.
#2, of course, carries the weight here; if I didn’t sincerely believe this or a weaker version of belief in the widespread applications the mental model holds, it would be ludicrous to continue to advance examination of the concept.
From this point I had reached some sticking point as to how to continue past the sketches of some brief notes I had made; the progress came when I realized the fundamental conceit I had previously failed to internalize: the driving factor of a ruleset is its win condition. This is obvious to anyone who has ever played a game; I assume it’s only more readily apparent to a game designer:
Every other rule in the list is auxiliary, defined by what it means to win, because:
Rules are intended to restrict actions,
Actions are taken based on incentive balance, and
Positive incentives are created exclusively by the win conditions.
Broadly, transcending scale, it seems that games are about power; whether victory creates greater success in interpersonal dynamics or facilitates acquiring of resources which can be later exchanged. A chess game, for example, is possibly about many different things:
Improving chess skill
Raising an ELO rating
Altering relationship character
Enjoyment
Each of these, given the lack of skill transfer in something like chess, the lack of intrinsic value in an objective measurement of this skill beyond social status, and the knowledge that fun comes from what cavemen found useful, has its roots in power acquisition and security.
What’s meant by reiterating this is to further establish the truth that games are a natural state of humanity because they were once methods of avoiding death; now they are methods of meaning-creation, of nihilism-avoidance. The abyss remains constant; its form has merely been refactored in our best societies through need hierarchies and hedonic treadmills.
Power is agency; it is ability to create decisions which advance higher up the hierarchy in more reliable ways, and it is security from falling down. This comes in the form of resources, which come in various forms; time, capital, and effort. A game is the transmutation of effort and time into some form of capital, redistributing throughout these three categories;
from this we derive the win condition: capital;
moreover, to end the game with more capital than the amount with which we began;
moreover, to achieve an exchange rate superior to any other game we could be playing.
Deciding what game to play, on an individual scale, could be classed as a high level of action, whereas playing the game is low-level; on a civilizational scale, finding new games is pushing the frontier in type I, and playing is type II. Both are necessary.
The nuance comes in the ruleset; from the win condition; from power; from capital. Then we can determine that variance of behavior in games, excluding the comparatively temporary and weak limitations of rules, is driven by the differing forms of capital.
Maybe everything isn’t games, but games explain everything. In the next series-episode, we’ll discuss the oldest game there is: ideas.
Related Material:
CGP Grey’s video The Rules for Rulers is a thought-provoking, compelling explanation of one power-centric theory of political science. [18 min]
Ribbonfarm’s The Adjacency Fallacy, by Venkatesh Rao, similarly unravels and classifies the incentives present in career tracks, pulling a fascinating parallel from physical space.
Wait But Why’s ongoing series The Story of Us, by Tim Urban, is an attempt to craft a similarly wide-ranging set of ideas surrounding society; it’s impressive in its breadth and in its thoughtfulness. My favorite chapter entries, and those most relevant to my thoughts here, are 5: The Mute Button and 7: The Thinking Ladder.
The Art Assignment’s video The $150,000 Banana aims to sincerely, honestly address Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian as art rather than a mere figure of controversy. The first few minutes are especially worthwhile for their framing of the artwork as a memetic concept: an idea rather than a fruit adhered to a surface. [13 min [best before 6:12]]
David Laing’s annual review, from his newsletter Linking out Loud, struck me as a particularly well-worked example of the form; it both influenced parts of the write-up I’ll post when completed and (re-)drew my attention to the two following links:
Kevin Simler’s interactive post Going Critical is an interesting lens for thinking about the mechanisms through which propagation occurs throughout networks.
[Earmark] Nadia Eghbal’s The tyranny of ideas more directly addresses the ramifications of ideas’ tendency to take control; their symptoms explain much of how and why we produce output.
Work
Lastly, I’ve recently written a third web-series-episode script and another book chapter.
This one was pretty dense (in my thinking, anyway) and link-heavy, with a lot of related media I digested as writing and have recommended; apologies for the shortness that results in. If you see something, say something: reach out through email, on Twitter, or wherever else a stalker could plausibly track me down. Thanks for reading; I’m excited about the things working their way through the pipeline.
Best,
Orion