The human apparatus extends beyond its physical body. Technologies like digital computers, communication networks, the written word, and language, all extend, offload, or fundamentally transform human consciousness.
So to do games, but now they have evolved.
Games as you know them are like the partial-writing systems of pre- and early-history, capable of recording data but not the full expression of human thought and language.
THE GAME is not merely played, THE GAME plays with you.
A new kind of domestication, a new stage of civilization.
THE GAME learns, it adapts, it protects you from yourself and Goodhart's Law.
Like an air conditioning unit, it knows when to break a cycle accelerating beyond its purpose.
THE GAME is as much a part of us as cognition, language, or the written word.
It is the anti-hierarchy.
Like disinhibitory neural circuits, it adapts dynamically, but it is not an agent with its own motivations. It is not a thing overlording, it propagates through us and within us.
The rules exist to serve a purpose, and when optimizing for the rules decorrelates them from their purpose, the rules change themselves.
THE GAME is SWORD and SHIELD. It is GOAL and SIGNAL. It is RULE and RULEBREAKER alike.
THE GAME requires no Game Master. It is not a homunculus; no need to Watch the Watchman.
A self-organizing, self-correcting system.
THE GAME IS THE NEXT PHASE OF HUMANITY
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What The Game is not
THE GAME is not an AI Overlord.
It is neither better nor worse than the world as it exists now, or at least it is more than just better or worse. To center the human experience around the status quo is a bias. The Game is something qualitatively different than the status quo.
What The Game is
Maybe The Game is created or engineered. Maybe it is "emergent". Likely we won't know, or won't know the difference. Who created language? Who created a given language? (Yes I know Esperanto, I'm sure there are others, but those exceptions aside...)
There was a time before language, agriculture, the written word, and so on, and many of these transformations were over just a sliver of humanity's existence.
In The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, Graeber and Wengrow theorize how Native American trade networks may have been more about adventure, storytelling, and play, than some kind of market economy in the traditional sense. Perhaps what is new is old.
The Game is an evolved superorganism, it is what happens when governments and corporations and religious institutions and PTA groups stop being predators and start being providers; like a child growing up to understand theory of mind and developing empathy and becoming a pro-social member of society.
Homo Sapiens Ludus
Homo Sapiens Ludus may not truly be a new species, at least not at first, it's just a way to describe the transformation, a hyperbole to make up for the impossibility of explaining an idea that doesn't exist yet, like trying to explain a new colors, or new kinds of numbers.
Humans are humans, but the technologies we use can transform us. Games are one such technology.
The extreme endpoint of Homo Sapiens Ludus may be more like fairies. They're like an alternative take on H.G. Welles' Eloi; not the result of a decadent elite class, but instead the result of a humanity that prioritizes fun over profit. Eloi is Elohim.
Maybe they have some VR cyborg-y headset stuff if you think that's cool.
Maybe it looks like an Isekai anime, or that Tapas webtoon Solo-Leveling, or Ironic post-capitalist pro-corporate sentimentality as an aesthetic or genre.
Perhaps ironically, there is already a concept of Homo Ludens out in the world, and I may be conflating Paidia & Ludus, but I'm just gonna keep rolling with it.
But humans are special-snowflakes and change is scary! (says the straw man)
If you disagree with this specific idea, fine.
If games are merely games, fine.
If hierarchies must exist, fine.
If "progress" is inherently evil, fine.
If you believe we should be conservative and skeptical, fine.
If so, then Imagine something else. This is all just an analogy for things beyond our frame of reference anyway.
Imagine: What it means to be human can keep changing.
Imagine: New ideas can exist.
Imagine: A better world.
I *love* the optimism inherent in this. It can be difficult for me to break out of pessimism sometimes, and this is a great reminder to never give up hope.
ReplyDeleteWhether optimistic or pessimistic, it's easy to get stuck thinking in terms of linear projections from the status quo. This is not necessarily a statement about the likelihood of optimistic vs. pessimistic outcomes, or linear vs. non-linear ones, I just think it takes more imagination to think non-linearly, and it's more interesting to think non-linearly, and it's more pleasant to think of optimistic outcomes than pessimistic ones, and no less valuable, but less considered, so I try to do that.
DeleteI gave several comparison examples or maybe not all of these made it in, but thinking of the use of fire, language, writing, agriculture, the internet; some of these might have made society quantitatively "better" or "worse" in a really reductive sense, but they're all qualitatively different, and to just focus on the quantitative distinction is not super productive or interesting.
And sometimes people frame optimism vs. pessimism in terms of like naivete. But even if you have a pessimistic outlook on the future, if you actually want to change it, you can't just be thinking about what NOT to do that we're currently doing, you also have to be thinking about novel approaches, or novel situations in the future. It seems to me no less naive to only focus on the pessimistic scenarios.
this is seriously so good!! love thinking about like our human experience not just being something inside our brains, but vast social networks that connect us with other people and things. really insightful to extend that same thinking to games, and you're totally right to do so -- if games are models of social networks or are networks in themselves, as mass organisms etc, that means our ways of thinking about either could apply to both like you say. you also mention huizinga's concept of homo ludens as a previous use of the term, but i think y'all have a lot in common as far as the way in which humans learn and interact with our surroundings is an extension or form of play :)
ReplyDeleteby the way, have you read this article about capital as consciousness (drawing from marx's critique of capital as an abstract system imposed onto reality)? that could pertain to thinking about social networks as games! https://ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2020/09/03/marx-on-capital-as-a-real-god-2/
Thanks, ya that all is very much what I'm going for :)!
DeleteI have not read this article or heard of this blog but I'll give it a look. I also have not read Homo Ludens but as I said in the post it's on my radar for sure. I'm also very interested in reading Games: Agency As Art by C. Thi Nguyen but have unfortunately not read that yet either, but Ezra Klein has a great podcast interview with him and I've watched some of his talks on youtube and I really like what he has to say as well.
This blog post even uses the same Air Conditioning / Negative Feedback / Control Mechanism analogy I used haha, that's encouraging.
DeleteThey lose me a bit with some of the capital as Evil God King stuff; I get that they're trying to make it more digestible or provocative, but that inadvertently perpetuates the exact kind of Homunculus Problem that is wrong and counterproductive.
Like even to the extent that I absolutely agree that what we currently have is a dysfunctional system, it's not because capital is an evil overlord; like Foucault says, Power is a system, a thing that runs through us. What we perceive as hierarchy is like an artifact or epiphenomenon.
Which isn't to deny in a "real world" sense that hierarchies exist, but when you start characterizing the superorganism as an overlord or something separate from us, you've lost track of what it actually means for something to be a superorganism. These superorganisms are no more overlords of us than we are of our neurons.
As I've said before, I find it extremely both counterproductive and honestly even problematic whenever anyone starts describing something as black magic.
I'm inclined to think the author of the post understands or would be reasonably amenable to this criticism and was just using this framing for the sake of impact, but all the same I feel the need to call it out lol.
I recently read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, and as with Dawn of Everything I realize that might be triggering to some people in various ways haha, but I did like the way he also essentially makes this same argument that religions and natural philosophies and governments and capital are all superorganisms. It's an idea I've obviously been thinking about for a long time, but I thought he explained it very effectively.
Anyway I enjoyed this post, thanks for sharing!
Re "The Dawn of Everything"
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, that book lacks credibility and depth.
In fact "The Dawn of Everything" is a biased disingenuous account of human history (https://www.persuasion.community/p/a-flawed-history-of-humanity ) that spreads fake hope (the authors of "The Dawn" claim human history has not "progressed" in stages, or linearly, and must not end in inequality and hierarchy as with our current system... so there's hope for us now that it could get different/better again). As a result of this fake hope porn it has been widely praised. It conveniently serves the profoundly sick industrialized world of fakes and criminals. The book's dishonest fake grandiose title shows already that this work is a FOR-PROFIT, instead a FOR-TRUTH, endeavour geared at the (ignorant gullible) masses.
Fact is human history since the dawn of agriculture has "progressed" in a linear stage (the "stuck" problem, see below), although not before that (https://www.focaalblog.com/2021/12/22/chris-knight-wrong-about-almost-everything ). This "progress" has been fundamentally destructive and is driven and dominated by “The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room” (https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html ) which the fake hope-giving authors of "The Dawn" entirely ignore naturally (no one can write a legitimate human history without understanding and acknowledging the nature of humans). And these two married pink elephants are the reason why we've been "stuck" in a destructive hierarchy and unequal class system , and will be far into the foreseeable future (the "stuck" question --- "the real question should be ‘how did we get stuck?’ How did we end up in one single mode?" or "how we came to be trapped in such tight conceptual shackles" --- [cited from their book] is the major question in "The Dawn" its authors never really answer, predictably).
"All experts serve the state and the media and only in that way do they achieve their status. Every expert follows his master, for all former possibilities for independence have been gradually reduced to nil by present society’s mode of organization. The most useful expert, of course, is the one who can lie. With their different motives, those who need experts are falsifiers and fools. Whenever individuals lose the capacity to see things for themselves, the expert is there to offer an absolute reassurance." —Guy Debord
A good example that one of the "expert" authors, Graeber, has no real idea on what world we've been living in and about the nature of humans is his last brief article on Covid where his ignorance shines bright already at the title of his article, “After the Pandemic, We Can’t Go Back to Sleep.” Apparently he doesn't know that most people WANT to be asleep, and that they've been wanting that for thousands of years (and that's not the only ignorant notion in the title) --- see last cited source above. Yet he (and his partner) is the sort of person who thinks he can teach you something authentically truthful about human history and whom you should be trusting along those terms. Ridiculous!
"The Dawn" is just another fantasy, or ideology, cloaked in a hue of cherry-picked "science," served lucratively to the gullible ignorant underclasses who crave myths and fairy tales.
"The evil, fake book of anthropology, “The Dawn of Everything,” ... just so happened to be the most marketed anthropology book ever. Hmmmmm." --- Unknown
"the "stuck" question --- "the real question should be ‘how did we get stuck?’ How did we end up in one single mode?" or "how we came to be trapped in such tight conceptual shackles" --- [cited from their book] is the major question in "The Dawn" its authors never really answer, predictably)."
DeleteI have an answer. Hypergamous female sexual selection and male attempts to answer it, following the creation of surplus. Male humans are distinct from males of other social animals in that they form cooperative male-male partnerships absent actual kinship, and they bond closely with children. Human masculinity centres on "the brotherhood of man" and on childcare, unlike in any other animal. However, female sexual selection prioritises resources. A male who can offer more resources securely is more sexually desirable. In time, as cultures settle and permanent resource hoards become possible, societies come to communicate to their sons, implicitly or explicitly, consciously or otherwise, that they don't have inherent worth, but must *earn* it. They must *become* a man, and how? By demonstrating commitment to resource-control. Hence, the breaking of natural masculine bonds, the need to compete for resources. Labour for labour's sake, having other men work for you so you can claim their labour; capital; conquest and war; gangs and crime. Patriarchal hierarchies as some males essentially decide "fuck this, I'm not playing this game, I'm going to rig the game in my favour". Chasing resources and chasing status, and the two intertwined. It is unmanly, non-masculine, but people come to view it as the very opposite, because their sense of masculinity no longer centres on male-male and male-child bonds but on male-female, on attracting and maintaining mates. Because that is what we teach our sons. And you've noticed how critiques of modern masculinity never take the angle of how we harm our sons, but on how they might potentially harm others? Because society is trapped in the idea that our sons are resource-tools who must earn worth through service. The book doesn't get this, because the authors themselves are part of the problem, and while they are correct in noting that female sexual autonomy is important to a non-dysfunctional society, they (typically) never stress that it's equally important that female sexual autonomy (and male response to same) be responsible and avoid the hypergamous impulse (in females) and the urge to favour it (in males).
No, that is not a real answer at all. As you state, "In time, as cultures settle" yet offer no explanation for it because the answer to that isn't covered by your answer to the "stuck question."
DeleteHowever, the cited "2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room" essay offers a coherent answer that not only answers the "stuck question" but also answer the reason for your "In time, as cultures settle" phenomenon.
The Isekai Anime idea reminds me of this thing I've been watching where they have the pop up damage like a JRPG and guns just do tiny damage like they do in a lot of games. The whole setting is detached from the harshness of reality and the characters in it are stranger and more care free as a consequence. That reminds me of what you said about the extreme endpoint of this making humans more like fairies, sort of living in a world that has evolved beyond the harsher realities so we can play with existence in a new more free way. Different organisations become all a part of the larger game with everyone understanding that they are playing roles and nothing is hugely at stake beyond the playing of a grand game. We current day humans, if we were to encounter these future humans, would be baffled at how they so lightheartedly approach something like politics which we treat as a matter of life and death. The future humans just get to laugh and enjoy the game.
ReplyDeleteYa exactly. Like there could almost be a naive casualness, even frivolousness. It might even be interpreted by present humans as cruel or uncaring; like how some veterans or trauma survivors feel about violent media. But they're just so socially and mentally far removed from certain things, it's just not a issue to them. And I think that let's you kinda subvert Welles' own subversion wrt the Eloi and what they represented.
DeleteReally enjoyed this on the level of reading experience itself, but I have to admit that I'd never come across Goodhart's Law before - I think? Unless it has come up on the blog or the server before. Great thing to keep in mind and one that I suspect informs some of your other work here, just from it's sensitivity to questions of the same type. Excellent work, fam, you make it look easy.
ReplyDeleteYa I've mentioned it on the server several times, but you'd be forgiven for having missed it or misremembered it among the myriad things we discuss haha.
DeleteWith these kinds of writeups, I often prefer to just leave the particulars under-explained and if people are intrigued enough to google or wiki it they can do so.
While the concept (it's really more of a heuristic than a "law") comes from economics, it actually is like a generally really powerful phenomenon that also makes statistical sense, like there's probably some mathematical theorem that underlies it but I don't know for sure.
It's the idea that if you use a particular measure as a target, it will cease to be a good measure. Like, if you target education around standardized tests, people will start to optimize not for the educational content, but for the test per se; decorrelating the test from its purpose, to educate.