I wish I could agree with your thrust, but I can’t really.
Co-operation and competition are more like a sliding balance. You can have more or less of either. Investing in the technology of win-win games, both psycho-spiritual and systematic, is a sure way of improving our collective capacity to lean into the win win side of the scale.
God knows we spend TRILLIONS on the technology of win-lose games.
The simplest truth is that we play win win games every day. In our relationships, our families, our churches and social circles. Every charity or social institution is essentially a win win game in action.
So the answer is not to dismiss win win (our societies literally cannot function without cooperation) to try and dissolve it into playing nicer in the infinite game. But instead to play nicer in the infinite game AND increase our capacity for win-win problem solving simultaneously.
And as an aside, no one knows what the AI singularity will bring. But a reasonable assumption is that if ASI doesn’t kill us, it may make resource scarcity trivial in our lifetimes. Then it’s not much about there not being enough resources to go round, but more developing psycho-spiritual-cultural technology that keeps mimetic desire under control. No one really needs a floating sky fortress in the clouds while the peasants starve far below. Cooperation and coordination technologies will help us to solve or temper those game theoretic cunundrums.
I welcome your skepticism. I’m usually the first to question naive techno optimism. Im no expert but essentially the theory goes that IF artificial superior intelligence can be utilised to serve humanity, it will become several orders of magnitude more intelligent than us, due to exponential self engineering, and be able to solve enormous problems and invent new technological leaps equivalent to entire industrial revolutions at tremendous speed.
Even short of that totally unpredictable and unlikely scenario, near-AGI + reliable fusion power is like a productivity end game. Fusion is still arguably 30-50 years away, but it’s coming. Rapid AI development throws everything into a spin in terms of predicting long term outcomes. The real trick is avoiding a singularity. But given the pace of the AI race I’m not sure we have much hope of effectively coordinating that. At this point it looks like we’ll be rolling the dice.
AI is an information system. Information can allow optimization of material and energy resource use, but cannot create them. The astounding progress human intelligence has made in the past few centuries hasn't broken the laws of physics, just figured out how to transform matter and energy into more of what we want within physical laws.
Even assuming superhuman AGI and abundant nuclear fusion power becomes a reality, there are still physical limits to the types of transformations of matter that can occur, and limits to what resources the natural environment can provide and how much waste streams it can absorb without crossing ecosystem damage tipping points.
As Jamie said, when resources are abundant conditions suit win-win, and the population tends to increase. Of course infinite growth cannot occur with finite resources (no matter how vast). When we start flirting with any type of resource scarcity, whether it's land, food, water, minerals, etc, that's when the unfortunate necessity for win-lose interactions arises.
I appreciate this comment. I think something that stood out to me is the reorganisation of matter. In the unlikely event that we did have ASI at our disposal, developing materials and production methods that are non-polluting and highly efficient would likely be some of those informational problems ASI could solve.
Put that together with circular materials economy and commons-based sharing economy to replace our current individual ownership and linear materials economy, the amount of wealth available for every human being on earth could be astounding. Given that the population remains manageable. You know… we don’t all need to own a drill we only intend to use once or twice a year. I could imagine a system where each person has a fair allotment of raw material that can be reprinted into new forms or traded in for other forms. Even without ASI, I think we could achieve far greater efficiency. It’s just that such efficiency is inconvenient for wealth extraction, and so doesn’t really suit the current economic paradigm very well.
Except there is enough for everyone on this planet. The only reason there are losers is because a very small percentages of people on the planet have captured a majority of the resources to hoard.
While you would describe this as win-win logic, the reality is unless there is a natural disaster - there is enough bounty on this planet.
Yet our corporations and totalitarian govts plunder our shared resources, our .1% hoard the output and profits, and that leaves us in the win-lose scenario you now ascribe to.
While pragmatic - it's at the heart of pretty much all conflict within our colonized spaces.
So, while it seems we are doomed to this win-lose scenario it's only because we've rationalized the greed and predatory nature of the worst among us and decided to play along.
And that will be the end of us - as we accept losing as the only option.
I'll add your note re "treating the losers better" obviously reflects you believe you're in the winning club. Not for much longer. While well resourced relatively speaking, you and yours will lose in short order, too.
Thanks for that cheery note! To be clear, I personally don’t feel to be “in the winners club.” It’s more the privilege of the Global North I’m speaking of (and yes, those advantages are evaporating for all but the few)
It’s not a pure falsehood, but I do find the following reductive and misleading as well:
“Because at its rooty root, life is binary. Life/Death. Friend/Foe. Food/Famine. Lion/Gazelle.”
Life is a complex, coalescing, emergent fractal too complex for the mind to possibly comprehend. It’s just our brains that likes to quantise the near infinite complexity of the cosmos down into 1D binaries because it gives us a fragile sense of control and frame for understanding who we are and who we have to ‘fight’ to survive. The binary is the conceptual framework the ego prefers because it feels the safest. It might be an aspect or a feature of life for humans, especially those with -conventional- levels of ego complexity, but I wouldn’t for a second regard it as the ‘rooty root’.
Haha touché. But to either your approval or dismay I find I see myself as a temporary animation of the star stuff that was flowing through the river a month ago and will be ashes in the ground 100 years from now. The whole earth is ‘alive’ and I’m just one ripple in a larger wave. The life / death binary loses its definition for me when I soften beyond the I / thou separation of ego consciousness. But tonight I wonder why I even type this? I’ve read your books and deduct that you’ve experienced all this and more. Surely binaries aren’t your rootiest root?
I have to admit that despite the extracurricular experience I predominantly live a dual existence. I’m here taking sides and engaging in discourse rather than meditating on a mountain top after all. There is always some side to be played I guess 😁
Insightful perspective. I know what you mean about the “all are one” comments as they can be a bit over the top and completely ungrounded. What winning is for one person is not for another. What is losing for one is not for another. Context matters. The concept of having radical transparency to have a real conversation on the world stage sounds rather incredible. It is refreshing to even imagine it. I love the idea of the intentional focus on treating people with dignity and respect. For me, it is all about empowerment, about collective thriving (whatever that means to you). When I say the words win-win, that is what I mean. We are human so a competitive side to things is not necessarily bad. It can be fun, even invigorating. It is good to have more competition in business as it keeps people in a creative, flow zone as long as there are not disequilibriums of power. It is when it is all or nothing like we have now that it is really a problem.
I know this comment is late because I’m revisiting this post in relation to a book I’m writing.
I think i agree with you mostly.
Life is binary and yet there is a unified whole from which the 2 come into existence.
Beyond the 2 will be a third, I suspect. A creative from the 2.
I wonder if focus and perspective matters if that the Infinite Game actually contains all the smaller finite games we will always play.
My other curiosity is regarding the woman who sacrifices herself but might sacrifice her daughter. If it’s not okay for her to force her daughter to sacrifice, why are we condoning systems of force??
This is a piece I can understand. There seems to be a leap in logic.
Your point on how the availability of resources makes me think of Turchin’s use of cliodynamics and the quest for power. Alternatively some of the research on consensus and decision making in hunter gatherer communities seems to suggests that in smaller groups it’s more possible to create more equitable solutions.
What I like most about the way you present stuff is that you don’t lay down the words and claim it to be the only truth or even the truth.
What you typically do is say, “Here’s what I’m thinking….what say you?”
Let’s face it, there are always going to be winners/losers. Even biologically we are not all even from the start. (Brains/looks/able functioning bodies to name a few differences)
David Bowie pointed this out with his words describing Ziggy Stardust, “Well hung …with God-given ass”. I was 15 when that song came out. I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, “I need a plan B”.
I like the concept of at least a minimum understanding of what our responsibility is for those who are less fortunate than us.
Take the homeless for example. Maybe there were bad choices involved, maybe they were born with a predisposition toward a mental health condition, maybe they mortgaged their house to get the love of their lives the cancer treatments they needed (even though their partner didn’t win that fight).
Can’t we just find some basic solution to get these people the first layer of Maslow’s pyramid? I’m not going to label them with the “L” word…but I’m confident in saying they are not winning.
Isn’t that what you are getting at here? Isn’t that what we ourselves would appreciate if we were not winning?
Solving the world’s problems is overwhelming, but I like the approach of “what is the minimum we need to do for those not winning?” That collective society approach would make a world of difference for those who find themselves in that category.
And, the “world” is not the best place to start of course. The bigness of these problems often keeps most of us on the sidelines.
But what if we brought the concept a bit closer to home? What about that young middle school boy in our own cul-de-sacs that lost his father at a young age? Do we just let his life play out and see how he makes out? Or, do those of us who live on that cul-de-sac engage with him and show him how to throw a curveball (and perhaps more important stuff) as he grows into being a man?
The people who need us are often right in front of us. We are perhaps too busy winning ….to see them.
"Unlike certain countries aiming to split the world, and attempting to expand military alliances to seek absolute security, the BRICS cooperation focuses on injecting new impetus into maintaining world peace and promoting common development, and has demonstrated resilience and vitality by embracing the BRICS spirit of openness, inclusiveness and win-win cooperation, thereby cementing a new international alternative representing the right trend of history.
The BRICS resists the Cold War mentality and bloc confrontation, opposes hegemonism and power politics. It is committed to multilateralism, upholds the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, follows the historical trend of world multi-polarity and greater democracy in international relations, and builds a new type of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice and win-win cooperation."
I wish I could agree with your thrust, but I can’t really.
Co-operation and competition are more like a sliding balance. You can have more or less of either. Investing in the technology of win-win games, both psycho-spiritual and systematic, is a sure way of improving our collective capacity to lean into the win win side of the scale.
God knows we spend TRILLIONS on the technology of win-lose games.
The simplest truth is that we play win win games every day. In our relationships, our families, our churches and social circles. Every charity or social institution is essentially a win win game in action.
So the answer is not to dismiss win win (our societies literally cannot function without cooperation) to try and dissolve it into playing nicer in the infinite game. But instead to play nicer in the infinite game AND increase our capacity for win-win problem solving simultaneously.
And as an aside, no one knows what the AI singularity will bring. But a reasonable assumption is that if ASI doesn’t kill us, it may make resource scarcity trivial in our lifetimes. Then it’s not much about there not being enough resources to go round, but more developing psycho-spiritual-cultural technology that keeps mimetic desire under control. No one really needs a floating sky fortress in the clouds while the peasants starve far below. Cooperation and coordination technologies will help us to solve or temper those game theoretic cunundrums.
Nicely said! But I would for sure question a credible path where AGI abolishes material resource scarcity? That seems super optimistic
I welcome your skepticism. I’m usually the first to question naive techno optimism. Im no expert but essentially the theory goes that IF artificial superior intelligence can be utilised to serve humanity, it will become several orders of magnitude more intelligent than us, due to exponential self engineering, and be able to solve enormous problems and invent new technological leaps equivalent to entire industrial revolutions at tremendous speed.
Even short of that totally unpredictable and unlikely scenario, near-AGI + reliable fusion power is like a productivity end game. Fusion is still arguably 30-50 years away, but it’s coming. Rapid AI development throws everything into a spin in terms of predicting long term outcomes. The real trick is avoiding a singularity. But given the pace of the AI race I’m not sure we have much hope of effectively coordinating that. At this point it looks like we’ll be rolling the dice.
AI is an information system. Information can allow optimization of material and energy resource use, but cannot create them. The astounding progress human intelligence has made in the past few centuries hasn't broken the laws of physics, just figured out how to transform matter and energy into more of what we want within physical laws.
Even assuming superhuman AGI and abundant nuclear fusion power becomes a reality, there are still physical limits to the types of transformations of matter that can occur, and limits to what resources the natural environment can provide and how much waste streams it can absorb without crossing ecosystem damage tipping points.
As Jamie said, when resources are abundant conditions suit win-win, and the population tends to increase. Of course infinite growth cannot occur with finite resources (no matter how vast). When we start flirting with any type of resource scarcity, whether it's land, food, water, minerals, etc, that's when the unfortunate necessity for win-lose interactions arises.
I appreciate this comment. I think something that stood out to me is the reorganisation of matter. In the unlikely event that we did have ASI at our disposal, developing materials and production methods that are non-polluting and highly efficient would likely be some of those informational problems ASI could solve.
Put that together with circular materials economy and commons-based sharing economy to replace our current individual ownership and linear materials economy, the amount of wealth available for every human being on earth could be astounding. Given that the population remains manageable. You know… we don’t all need to own a drill we only intend to use once or twice a year. I could imagine a system where each person has a fair allotment of raw material that can be reprinted into new forms or traded in for other forms. Even without ASI, I think we could achieve far greater efficiency. It’s just that such efficiency is inconvenient for wealth extraction, and so doesn’t really suit the current economic paradigm very well.
Except there is enough for everyone on this planet. The only reason there are losers is because a very small percentages of people on the planet have captured a majority of the resources to hoard.
While you would describe this as win-win logic, the reality is unless there is a natural disaster - there is enough bounty on this planet.
Yet our corporations and totalitarian govts plunder our shared resources, our .1% hoard the output and profits, and that leaves us in the win-lose scenario you now ascribe to.
While pragmatic - it's at the heart of pretty much all conflict within our colonized spaces.
So, while it seems we are doomed to this win-lose scenario it's only because we've rationalized the greed and predatory nature of the worst among us and decided to play along.
And that will be the end of us - as we accept losing as the only option.
I'll add your note re "treating the losers better" obviously reflects you believe you're in the winning club. Not for much longer. While well resourced relatively speaking, you and yours will lose in short order, too.
Thanks for that cheery note! To be clear, I personally don’t feel to be “in the winners club.” It’s more the privilege of the Global North I’m speaking of (and yes, those advantages are evaporating for all but the few)
It’s not a pure falsehood, but I do find the following reductive and misleading as well:
“Because at its rooty root, life is binary. Life/Death. Friend/Foe. Food/Famine. Lion/Gazelle.”
Life is a complex, coalescing, emergent fractal too complex for the mind to possibly comprehend. It’s just our brains that likes to quantise the near infinite complexity of the cosmos down into 1D binaries because it gives us a fragile sense of control and frame for understanding who we are and who we have to ‘fight’ to survive. The binary is the conceptual framework the ego prefers because it feels the safest. It might be an aspect or a feature of life for humans, especially those with -conventional- levels of ego complexity, but I wouldn’t for a second regard it as the ‘rooty root’.
Sure…but you gotta be alive to think that thought ;)
Haha touché. But to either your approval or dismay I find I see myself as a temporary animation of the star stuff that was flowing through the river a month ago and will be ashes in the ground 100 years from now. The whole earth is ‘alive’ and I’m just one ripple in a larger wave. The life / death binary loses its definition for me when I soften beyond the I / thou separation of ego consciousness. But tonight I wonder why I even type this? I’ve read your books and deduct that you’ve experienced all this and more. Surely binaries aren’t your rootiest root?
I have to admit that despite the extracurricular experience I predominantly live a dual existence. I’m here taking sides and engaging in discourse rather than meditating on a mountain top after all. There is always some side to be played I guess 😁
Insightful perspective. I know what you mean about the “all are one” comments as they can be a bit over the top and completely ungrounded. What winning is for one person is not for another. What is losing for one is not for another. Context matters. The concept of having radical transparency to have a real conversation on the world stage sounds rather incredible. It is refreshing to even imagine it. I love the idea of the intentional focus on treating people with dignity and respect. For me, it is all about empowerment, about collective thriving (whatever that means to you). When I say the words win-win, that is what I mean. We are human so a competitive side to things is not necessarily bad. It can be fun, even invigorating. It is good to have more competition in business as it keeps people in a creative, flow zone as long as there are not disequilibriums of power. It is when it is all or nothing like we have now that it is really a problem.
Win-Lose is a part of life now, but Win-Win is a thing no doubt.
And we don’t have to participate in the win-lose games, right? I don’t feel Im it’s possible to me without feeling like a garbage human being.
I know this comment is late because I’m revisiting this post in relation to a book I’m writing.
I think i agree with you mostly.
Life is binary and yet there is a unified whole from which the 2 come into existence.
Beyond the 2 will be a third, I suspect. A creative from the 2.
I wonder if focus and perspective matters if that the Infinite Game actually contains all the smaller finite games we will always play.
My other curiosity is regarding the woman who sacrifices herself but might sacrifice her daughter. If it’s not okay for her to force her daughter to sacrifice, why are we condoning systems of force??
This is a piece I can understand. There seems to be a leap in logic.
Your point on how the availability of resources makes me think of Turchin’s use of cliodynamics and the quest for power. Alternatively some of the research on consensus and decision making in hunter gatherer communities seems to suggests that in smaller groups it’s more possible to create more equitable solutions.
Love Turchin! If it’s “use it or lose it” I’ll share it But if it’s “use it or store it” I’ll hoard it Clever monkeys are we
What I like most about the way you present stuff is that you don’t lay down the words and claim it to be the only truth or even the truth.
What you typically do is say, “Here’s what I’m thinking….what say you?”
Let’s face it, there are always going to be winners/losers. Even biologically we are not all even from the start. (Brains/looks/able functioning bodies to name a few differences)
David Bowie pointed this out with his words describing Ziggy Stardust, “Well hung …with God-given ass”. I was 15 when that song came out. I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, “I need a plan B”.
I like the concept of at least a minimum understanding of what our responsibility is for those who are less fortunate than us.
Take the homeless for example. Maybe there were bad choices involved, maybe they were born with a predisposition toward a mental health condition, maybe they mortgaged their house to get the love of their lives the cancer treatments they needed (even though their partner didn’t win that fight).
Can’t we just find some basic solution to get these people the first layer of Maslow’s pyramid? I’m not going to label them with the “L” word…but I’m confident in saying they are not winning.
Isn’t that what you are getting at here? Isn’t that what we ourselves would appreciate if we were not winning?
Solving the world’s problems is overwhelming, but I like the approach of “what is the minimum we need to do for those not winning?” That collective society approach would make a world of difference for those who find themselves in that category.
And, the “world” is not the best place to start of course. The bigness of these problems often keeps most of us on the sidelines.
But what if we brought the concept a bit closer to home? What about that young middle school boy in our own cul-de-sacs that lost his father at a young age? Do we just let his life play out and see how he makes out? Or, do those of us who live on that cul-de-sac engage with him and show him how to throw a curveball (and perhaps more important stuff) as he grows into being a man?
The people who need us are often right in front of us. We are perhaps too busy winning ….to see them.
A boring fact.
Politics took fitness to mean win win, when science took fittedness, too difficult to say, to maintain all the teeth.
Politics can only do shortcuts, not wonder.
I take it you're not a fan of BRICS.
how come?
because BRICS is all about win-win, non-interference and respectful relationships between countries. In other words not win-lose.
you would describe Russia and China's foreign and domestic policies as "win-win?"
"Unlike certain countries aiming to split the world, and attempting to expand military alliances to seek absolute security, the BRICS cooperation focuses on injecting new impetus into maintaining world peace and promoting common development, and has demonstrated resilience and vitality by embracing the BRICS spirit of openness, inclusiveness and win-win cooperation, thereby cementing a new international alternative representing the right trend of history.
The BRICS resists the Cold War mentality and bloc confrontation, opposes hegemonism and power politics. It is committed to multilateralism, upholds the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, follows the historical trend of world multi-polarity and greater democracy in international relations, and builds a new type of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice and win-win cooperation."
http://eg.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/zxxx/202207/t20220704_10715092.htm