Game B Eli5
An super simple Game A/B explainer
I just read this and it's the most important thing I've ever read. It's pretty disorganized and complicated though, so I tried to pare it down. Full credit for everything goes to that doc and it's authors.
To understand Game B, it's useful to start by understanding Game A and it's shortcomings.
What is Game A?
Game A is society's method of self-preservation. Civilization was created to make us conform. Think of humans like individual cells in a body. When the cells work together in concert, the organism lives. Dissenting cells are cancer and have to get killed. Game A/civilization is humanity's chemotherapy and removes dissenting humans (criminals and similar).
Section tl;dr: Game A allows humans to form societies and live together.
How did Game A/civilization accomplish this?
👑 Formal hierarchies: People are ranked and given power in accordance to their ranking. Those with high power are responsible for keeping the people below them in line. (Ex: Kings, presidents, college graduates, etc.)
✝️ Formal narratives: These are our cultural values that are used to keep people in line. (The Bible, consumerism, etc.)
⚖️ Formal law: Laws. Duh. (The Constitution, no murdering people, etc.)
💸 Markets: Markets are essentially a language that we use to talk about resource distribution. In the Market language, people with more power (money) get more say. (This is similar to Chinese, where your parents yell at you and you stfu)
Section tl;dr: Game A uses hierarchies, cultural values, laws, and markets to keep people in line.
What are the effects of Game A?
Game A works, but it's created huge power differences between people. Also, the "game" in Game A is the game of power. Everyone tries to accrue as much power as possible. No one can control this. Civilization has become a "📎paperclip maximizer📎" with power continuously accruing at the top. (fun fact! Steinbeck wrote about this a looooong time ago in Grapes of Wrath. He describes the bank as "something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it." He also talks about these scary tractors [machine imagery]. Thanks high school english!) Game A is so deeply ingrained into our society that it’s a struggle to deconstruct it.
Game A is a zero sum game. There are winners and losers. We can think of our civilization as a large scale Prisoner's Dilemma. In the Prisoner's Dilemma, if both prisoners decide to cooperate with the jailer (which means that they DO NOT trust each other and DO NOT cooperate with each other), then they both go to jail for a long time. This is what's happening with Game A. We do not trust each other, we do not cooperate, and individuals only try to get the best results for themselves. Unfortunately for us, because of existential risk, our jail is not a prison term, it's a death sentence.
Section tl;dr: Game A is Prisoner's Dilemma where we are all prisoners that continuously attempt to betray everyone else.
What is Game B?
Game B isn't a thing. Game B is a goal that seeks to discover how we can create an "anti-fragile, scalable, ever-increasing omni-win-win civilization".
We need to find a way where civilization is positive sum but also allows humanity to keep advancing and prevents us from killing ourselves.
Bret Weinstein uses Wikipedia as an example. Encyclopedias were in a zero-sum game with each other, but then Wikipedia came along and gave knowledge away for free. Wikipedia won.
In order to discover the solution to Game B, we need to play and experiment with new forms of governance, markets, and every facet of our society. For example, my startup is exploring new forms of corporate governance and democracy by using esports as a testing ground.
Section tl;dr:
Encyclopedias are Game A. Wikipedia is Game B.
Game B looks to discover the scenario in Prisoner's Dilemma, where through cooperation, both prisoners go free. Maybe the prison doesn't exist in the first place. Or maybe, there isn't even a need for the concept of prisoner and jailer.
If we go back to our "humans are cells" metaphor, in Game A, our cells form a monkey. Solely focused on survival. Game B seeks to form our cells into a human. We've transcended the focus on survival and can make cool things like art and this post.
What can humanity become once we've evolved past monkeyness🙈?
Note: A really really really good resource on further understanding Game A/B is Tim Urban's new series. Game A seeks to control our Primitive Mind. Game B seeks to use our Higher Mind.