https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=ZTNmk2aHLrc
So what I’d like to talk about today is participation, the idea of games and the world just being a bunch of games, and the concept that we don’t have to participate in everything, but also what participation is and why it’s important. Participation comes in many forms and a lot of people see other people doing things and they think that’s what they should be doing because we are primarily creatures that mimic other creatures and we need to do that, right? That’s cooperation, it’s built in, and of course I’ve talked about cooperation versus competition, right? That’s a cool video, you should check it out if you haven’t seen it, and you know participation is the act of cooperating. You can participate with yourself, you can participate with nature, you can participate with other people, right? You can also participate in structures. Usually when we’re participating in a structure, we call that a game. Games are structures for participation, that’s effectively what they are. Now you can look at something like baseball and there’s a structure to baseball, the bases are laid out in a certain way, it’s played in a certain type of field, there’s a pitcher’s mound, it has a certain height, right? There’s all these rules, those are all parts of the structure of the game. In order to have a game, you need a structure, otherwise it’s not a game, it’s just random whatever. So you know you can make up a game with your kids like the floor is lava, a favorite game of mine actually, although I prefer alligators, but whatever, it’s close enough. And then you know the goal is to get around without touching the floor, right? That’s a game. There’s no structure there, but there is. The structure is the rule that you can’t touch the floor or you die, or you know in your imagination hopefully the floor is not really lava, then you’ve got big problems and you’re not worried about games. So you can see a way in which the participation is reliant on the structure. And then because we’re cooperative creatures and we like to cooperate with one another, we like to mimic one another because together we’re better, right? Like two people can do stuff that one person can’t do alone, or one person may be able to do it alone, but two people can do it quicker or better, right? Or both, usually. And that’s not always the case. I understand that. There’s learning curves, there’s learning to cooperate with people, there’s learning to cooperate with individual persons, right? There’s learning to cooperate as such because some people are terrible at it. But once you get hang of those things, and you’ll notice there’s a lot there, I’ll be covering things where there’s a lot there later, once you get the hang of that, once that’s a skill that you have, the skill of cooperation, and it is a skill, it’s something that we have to learn and practice all the time, then you can enable things that are outside of yourself. I’ve sort of indicated this before, I’ve talked about the idea of distributed cognition or collective intelligence, you can’t do that alone by definition, right? And so having two or more people look at a problem is better than having just one person look at a problem, no matter how smart they are, because they’re limited in their perspectives, and they’re limited in their understanding. And two people has more perspective and more understanding, right? And three people has even more. And yeah, at a certain point, this gets to be a problem. And that’s what rules do. Rules enable us to get more people cooperating in a way that is more efficient. So for example, one person could be a good pitcher, a good hitter, and a good runner, and a good fielder, and play baseball by themselves. And it’s like, well, that doesn’t make any sense. Okay, but if you’re two people, they can play against each other that way. Except that doesn’t really work that well, right? And how do you know who to put where and why? Well, people have different skills, so you might be a terrible outfielder, but a good first baseman, right? Because you can’t run very fast. So you can see the way in which these rules, this structure, this format, right, enables people to play baseball together in a way that would be better than them trying to play by themselves. And you may think, well, that’s a contrived example. But I guess you could make that argument that then they’re all contrived examples. And that’s how we get into this idea of the world as a series of games. Now, I understand the game framing, where you can just say, oh, well, that’s just a game and whatever. But it’s actually really important to understand that that framing, while useful, is not entirely accurate. Because the implication is that those games are arbitrary and equal, and they’re neither. Some games don’t work, right? And some games will work for a long time, especially for a lot of participants, because a lot of participants can make something bad work for a lot longer than one person can, just like they can make something good work for a lot longer than one person can, right? So you have to do some discernment. And part of that discernment is determining whether or not you should play at all. And so one of my favorite movies to rewatch, and I do rewatch it, and that’s really unusual, is War Games. And at the very end of the movie War Games, it tells you everything you need to know. It was all right there all along. At the very end of the movie, the computer comes to the conclusion, because it’s a smart AI computer way before AI was a thing, that a strange game, the only way to win is not to play. And it’s like, hmm. So basically in the movie, the computer’s playing Global Thermonuclear War. It’s the name of the game. And it’s a simulation of Global Thermonuclear War, right? This is an 80s film. So very much topical. If Peterson talks about this, right, if you’re born in the 80s, the whole nuclear war thing was everywhere. Just as chemical war was everywhere after World War I and things like that. So these things sort of pop up, right? And the modern warfare is more like cyber war, right? That’s, oh no, it’s going to wipe out all my bitcoins. I’m going to get into all the banks and shut down or shut down all the electricity or whatever, right? So you can see these sort of apocalyptic images. In the 80s, it was nuclear war. So this movie talks about the computer learning that there’s no point to playing this game because there’s no way to make the number of casualties in the war reasonable. Or there’s no way to get it to zero. Or there’s no way to get it to where one side stops and gives an imbalance to the other side. Now, we can debate whether or not that’s actually true. But the point of the movie is that nobody wins in a nuclear war because too many people die. That’s effectively the point, right? In other words, there’s not an imbalance where you can say, aha, we won because we have twice as many population as you do, or we wiped out twice as many as you did or something. That doesn’t make any sense in the framing of the movie. And again, we can argue about the reality all day long, not interested, more interested in the point of the movie because whether the framing is correct or incorrect, the framing is designed to give you the point, which is it’s a strange game. The only way to win is not to play. So there’s a way in which playing these games, trying to cooperate with people, trying to participate with others is counterproductive, right? It doesn’t help them. It doesn’t help you. It doesn’t move the world forward. But it does move it backwards. Like it’s a negative. And determining these things is hard for a lot of people because you can’t always see the consequences of the game you’re playing down the road. And so it may look cool to, you know, play a game like Day Trading Stock Market. That’s a fun game. You can argue about the gaming framing, but I’m going to afford that anything can be thought of as a game just for the purposes of this video, even though I don’t believe that that’s true or at least not an arbitrary, arbitrary game. The day trading in the stock market game is fun, except as Nassim Taleb points out, a lot of trading and not just day trading involves small wins, small wins, small wins, small wins, small win, reasonable profit, you know, pretty significant profit, and then a loss in excess of all winnings, right? And then you get wiped out. You go to zero, as Peterson says. Zero is a funny number. That’s what Peterson says. I think he’s right. So that’s not a good long term game to play. But unless you understand the 10, 15, 20 year cycles of the market and where you are in those cycles, you know, you don’t understand the risk that you’re undertaking by playing the day trader game. So if you go in and day trade right after a big market crash and you’re fairly sure there’s not going to be another one, it could be a good deal because if you get out, within eight or nine years, you can maybe keep all those profits. That’s not a guarantee. I’m not recommending this. I’m just saying there’s a way in which that that is true. And therefore there are people who play that game successfully and say, ha, I did this. A lot of people though actually move on. They day trade for a while and they get enough money and then they swing trade or do some other kind of trading or they move into a different market like Forex or Futures or whatever. So the samples are really important when you’re trying to evaluate these things. How long can you play this game for? But the good news is you don’t have to play every game that comes along, right? You can say, oh, look, everyone’s buying from Amazon. So I have to buy from Amazon. No, you don’t. Buying from Amazon is great. I do it all the time. Amazon Prime number, good stuff. But Amazon is not the cheapest for everything. All right. So, hmm, that’s good to know. Sometimes searching on Frugal or some other site can reveal better pricing with free shipping. Same delivery timelines roughly on certain products, not all products, but certain products. Amazon is just not always the cheapest. Maybe they were at one point, but I doubt it because there’s a lot of variability in cost and payment throughout time. But you don’t have to play that game. Like you’re not forced to buy from Amazon. Did Amazon warp the market for everybody? Sure. But every mom and pop store warps the retail market, every single one, because everything’s connected. And you can’t just open a store in a vacuum because you don’t live in a vacuum and you’re never going to live in a vacuum. So understanding that is important. You don’t have to buy from Amazon. You don’t have to buy from Walmart. You don’t have to buy from Target. Like you could buy it from wherever you want. Now, I buy from Walmart because, man, they got some cheap stuff. And it’s the same stuff that they got everywhere else for more money. And I kind of like money. And the more I save, the better off I am. And I can control my spending way better than I can control my earning. So I control my spending with Walmart and Target and Amazon and not Amazon or Walmart or Target. Right. I buy things where and when I can from the cheapest place that I can when I have time to do that. Sometimes I don’t have time and I just go with the easiest thing. If I’m at Walmart, I’ll just buy it at Walmart because I’m there, even though it may cost me a few bucks. Convenience is worth some money. That’s why convenience stores generally charge more for milk than the grocery store, you know, two blocks away. So that game that you think you have to play, maybe you don’t have to play it. Maybe you don’t have to use pronouns. Maybe you don’t have to get a shot, wear a mask. Maybe you don’t have to bank with a conventional bank. Maybe you could use a credit union like I do. Maybe you don’t have to be trapped in some marketplace where people are mean to you because there’s lots of marketplaces and you can just move on. Maybe you don’t have to use Twitter. Maybe you can use one of the Twitter alternatives and you can argue, well, I’m missing out. Well, yeah, there’s tradeoffs to everything. I have a video on tradeoffs, by the way. You should check that one out too. It’s pretty good. There’s tradeoffs everywhere. Right. But the idea that you have to do this is different. Like I don’t have to play basketball, which is good because although I used to be pretty good shooting basketball, the other skills you need for basketball, eh, not so much. I’m not very tall. So that’s a problem. I’m pretty quick though. So I give up the ability to be a basketball star by not trying to play basketball. Yep, absolutely. But I don’t have to play basketball. Same with baseball or hockey or any other game. But that’s true for all things that might be games. Like all structures you can participate in or not participate in. The problem comes in and thinking that, well, I’m forced to participate in a structure. There are no structures on this planet you’re forced to participate in. Zero. None. Nada. Don’t exist. You don’t want to be part of the government? Go live in the woods. You can do it. Government won’t know that you’re living in the woods. They may find you or other people may find you and take advantage of that. But that’s a tradeoff. If you want to be away from the government and government protection, then you’re subject to whoever comes along. Because at the end of the day, you’re dropped into this world and you had no choice about that. That is true. Right. But that means you’re subject to the things around you. Whether they’re the weather or other people or your own proclivities as a human being. Right. So that’s you with yourself, you with nature, you with others. Talked about that before too. Right. Those are the three frames. Very important stuff that you’re not getting around those three frames. You’re just not. So if you want to think of it as games, you have the option not to play. You also have the option how to play. And the bad news about cooperating in general and participation in particular is that there’s an inequality in it. What I can do best as a basketball player, if I were to try to be a basketball player, is not the same as what somebody else can do best as a basketball player. For example, again, I’m not that tall. I’m not going to be dunk on the ball. That’s not going to happen. So, okay, do I need to? What if I’m the best three points thrower on the field? Right. What if I can do three points better than anybody else? There was a time when that actually was true. I don’t think I’m that good anymore, but I used to be really good at sinking three point shots. So you don’t have to. So that inequality is my advantage because I can use my skill to the maximum advantage, not only to myself, but to my team. And then, yeah, you know, maybe I don’t win the dunking contest, but I win the three point contest. Now there’s two contests to win in the same game. This happens with all forms of cooperation and participation. It happens in all games. Now a lot of contrived games like Monopoly or the Game of Life or whatever have a single winner. Fair enough. But if you actually look at the end of the game, there’s still a ranking. And some games don’t have a ranking like that. They have a more first, second, and third place sort of an ideal to them, especially games that we tend to gin up in the real world. So, for example, if you’re a day trader, yeah, you could make more or less money as a day trader than other day traders. But if you’re making money, why do you care if you’re the top day trader? Some people make contests out of these things. That’s fine. There’s probably only one or two winners to the contest. Also fine. Right. But that gives you a sense of where you are in the hierarchy. Having a sense of where you are in the hierarchy tells you whether or not you can improve and maybe how. And so cooperating, having that idea of cooperation, having the structure to cooperate in and the measurement of it is important and it’s helpful to you because it’s a way that you can make yourself better. So these structures, while they are oppressive, there’s no question about it. They also give you an advantage. They give you the specialization advantage. You get to be a specialist and specialize in something. It may not be the thing you’re best at, but it may be something that you can be better at and in being better at it, you may be better than anybody else at it or you may become better than anybody else at it. So inequality is not bad. People like to be good at things. That’s inequality. If you like to be the best at something or want to be the best at something, you want inequality. That’s what you want. I’m a big fan personally. I like to be good at things. I think it’s great and I also like to know what I’m bad at things and if you’re bad at something, there’s also inequality. The only way to fix that is for you to get better. It’s still going to be unequal, but at a certain point it doesn’t matter. The fact that people can do something better than you doesn’t really mean much because you can do some things better than they can. But these structures give you a way to cooperate together so that the best of both of you combined is better than either of you apart. That’s what structure gives you. That’s what cooperation gives you. That’s what proper participation looks like, where proper participation makes everybody participating better or maybe not absolutely everybody, but that’s what it strives to do and things happen so maybe it’s not perfect and maybe it’s not what you want, but I think it’s what you should want. You should want to participate. One of the ways in which structured participation helps you is that it enables you to focus on one thing and not worry about the other things because the other people are taking care of them. So if your thing is not get the rebound of the basketball, there you go. If your thing is not capture all the profits on the way down of the stock, you don’t worry about that. There are different ways that you can participate in the same game with others and without others that highlight your advantages and having a structure enables you to grab different skills like maybe I’m okay at accounting but I’m terrible at human resources like working with people in the company you can switch or you can switch companies, you can switch jobs and then you have a measurement. Oh I’m getting better at HR, I’m getting worse because you can measure against other incidents. All of these things enable you, having these structures enables you to measure and get better and I like getting better. I think that’s good. I think it’s good for you, I think it’s good for me, it’s good for everybody. So the fact of inequality only gives you a way to improve and it only gives you a way to avoid things where they’re dangerous for you because you’re not good at them. Like if you’re not good with tools, don’t use tools or use them carefully, use them less, use them differently, use different tools. Don’t use a saw if you’re not good with tools because saws are dangerous and you can hurt yourself. Right? Knowing that is important and that is actually is a structure. There’s a way in which you’re in the world and you get to pick the things you want to do and be good at and there’s nothing wrong with that and you can pick other things later once you get good at them. Having these games, having these spaces, having this structure, doing this cooperation, participating with yourself, with others, with nature is all good stuff and having control over what it is you have to worry about and don’t have to worry about is good and you can always say, look, I participated and the other person didn’t do their job and then my job was ruined. Yep, that’s going to happen. Things are not perfect. I’m not proposing perfect idyllic solutions for you. I’m just explaining what’s important and why and maybe the fact that it doesn’t work out doesn’t mean it could have been any better. Maybe the fact that it doesn’t work out means it worked out better than it could have any other way. I don’t know. I’m not making a claim. I’m just saying there’s possibilities there that maybe you need to consider and you can’t control others but you can always get better for yourself and that’s really important. Self-improvement is the thing you can do. You can enable yourself to become better than you are today, to become more than you are today, to improve continually and that’s what playing a game does but again just because there’s a game there doesn’t mean you have to play it. So if you find that trying to fix the world by framing everything in terms of race isn’t a game that you like, you don’t have to play it. If you don’t like the game of trying to figure out random pronouns that people want you to use when they’re not around and shouldn’t even know or care, don’t play that game. If the name of the game is some conspiracy theory where you’re trying to figure out whether or not lizard people run the White House, you don’t have to play that game. If it’s buying from Amazon, you don’t have to buy from Amazon. Nothing prevents you from doing that. If you don’t want to use money, don’t use money. If you don’t want to live with the government, don’t live with the government. Go live in the woods. There are trade-offs and you may be you know you may suffer for that decision in some way right or that decision may weigh on you but that’s unavoidable. Like it’s not going to go away just because you don’t want it to be there. Things are there as a result of your birth. You were born into a world in a particular place at a particular time and a bunch of people that came before you built that. They built a bunch of stuff some of it’s great and some of it sucks and some of it was great and is degrading and that might be partly your fault because you’re not revivifying it right and it’s everybody’s responsibility but we all have to take responsibility for the games that we do engage in and the games that we choose not to engage in. There are serious penalties to things like cancel culture but if no one stands up then there’ll be nothing but cancel culture. It’s a terrible game to play but you can make yourself uncancellable. It’s not hard to do. You have to be willing to do it instead of acquiescing to the framing of that particular game but you can do it. You can do it and you can find a game a place of cooperation participation that suits you the best and one way that you can cooperate and participate is by engaging in the comment section of my videos hopefully all of them and letting me know if I’m being clear if there’s a subject you’d like me to cover if there’s something that you need to know or that I hinted at that you want to know more about any of that please feel free to comment and just a quick reminder I’m always very grateful for your participation in my videos because you’re giving me the thing that I value the most which is your time and attention.