This page captures our evolving sense of the landscape and the factors we have to grapple with to see Game B thrive. As a group we are in the business of developing intuitions about this landscape and more sophisticated senses of what might be possible in it. See bottom for todos.
- False Hopelessness - Internalized Scarcity - Internalized ideas about status - Consumerism & false aspirations (i.e., limited lifestyle images and options in our heads) - Cures/treatments over prevention
- missing a well articulated alternative model (of an achievable higher self or whole self at future best, in an ecosystem of peers)
- lack of perspective on game a's limits - our limitless capacity for "suffering evils" - we are schooled to play game a and not game b - the necessity of change is not felt by the public - the mainstream conception of money as the route to all aspirations - we are wired to imagine scarcity even when it doesn't exist, even aside from conditioning - tendency to base buying decisions largely on purchase price, with insufficient consideration of delayed costs and rewards (considerations like longevity, quality, and operating costs) - information Overwhelm - residual trust in big media's framing of issues and adjacent possibles
Stuff about consumers/citizens' real situations:
- Need for a dayjob / real lifestyle insecurity
- Actual need to be high game-a status to get things (e.g., women?) we want - alienation of labor + entertainment -- commute, workweek, and tech-based entertainment are the whole of waking life is a local maxima - cultivated stunted cognition, filling every bit of mental real estate with a constant stream of created wants, pre-packaged everything, including entertainments - High costs to drop-outs in status - credit scores run our lives and keep us subservient to game a - it is just totally impossible to know who to trust "long range" - artificial (but real situational) scarcity via rent-seeking mechanisms, fraud, and regulations blocking DIY/DIO options (co-housing, microfarming, etc) - many are trapped by unrepayable debts (notably student loans, underwater mortgages) - secure jobs are vanishing (displaced by automation, emergence of DIY, voluntary peer production, global offshoring, and reverse auction freelance marketplaces) - millions have criminal records for past victimless crimes, constricting Game A prospects - current household assets are at risk of wipeout from new black swans or runaway inflation
- deep "transmedia landscape" cultural constructs like the nuclear family which are extremely strong false attractors not just for individuals but for groups and societies - actual helplessness that leads to learned helplessness - Limited causal information - the global and interpersonal consequences of your personal actions will tend to get lost in social noise and will therefore tend to fail to reflect on your personal wellbeing
Stuff about power dynamics, nations, or govt+industry:
- massive plunge in trust re public institutions (imploding Game A's http://is.gd/intangiblewealth) - elites want to hold on to their privilege and situation (and have zero-sum fallback strategies for this, both towards public and towards one another) - regime can (still!) borrow against an over-mortgaged future to prop up system
- proprietary money supply and corp welfare used to deincent local production, feeding into consumer situation - war! men with guns! police and prisons! violent attacks on those with ideologies that are different than game-a. - 42% of GDP / most of our economic surplus is hard allocated by gov't in a very non game-b friendly way, so there is no room - our monetary and financial system that extracting at least $1 Trillion a year, so there is no room - ability to stay opaque (albeit diminishing) and punish whistleblowers
Stuff about the nature of organization:
Game A - Game A moves faster in power/org vacuums because it has well-understand operating procedures and reinforced, solid social structures. - It lacks effective ways to deal with stigmergic challengers running on faster OODA loops Game B
- Game B ventures don't know how to be high quality (or high "competitive value") in the same way as Game A, so they lose in the market. Perhaps they are lower quality because these ways of working are less refined?
Loops & Emergences [this is a bit unclear - definitions/examples?]
- game a solutions outcompete other solutions in situations of scarcity and also replicate situations of scarcity! - Leviathan - everything rings with one way of operating (involving power, scarcity, etc) and reinforces that way
----
TODOs
- Coalesce these things into packages that are easy to reason about and that we pretty much agree what we are talking about. - For each package, guestimate how much energy it would free up for Game B if the package/dynamic was interrupted. For instance, we could imagine that if people were guaranteed security many of them wouldn't go to their day jobs. Day jobs account for 200B hours / week, but maybe only 70% of people would leave their day jobs if guaranteed security, and half their time would be lost to watching TV rather than participating in game B, so the everyone-has-security play would immediately free about 70B hours/week for Game B participation. - For each package, guestimate how many people might relocate into Game B areas as Game A unravels – http://www.gallup.com/poll/124028/700-million-worldwide-desire-migrate-permanently.aspx - For each package, guestimate how much flight capital from Game A can be converted (without any attached strings) to Game B benefit - For each package, guestimate risks of provoking hard power retaliation by Game A regimes
- Generate within the group some intuitions of what might be possible.
Stuff inside individuals' minds/genomes/decision processes:
- False Hopelessness
- Internalized Scarcity
- Internalized ideas about status
- Consumerism & false aspirations (i.e., limited lifestyle images and options in our heads)
- Cures/treatments over prevention
- missing a well articulated alternative model (of an achievable higher self or whole self at future best, in an ecosystem of peers)
- lack of perspective on game a's limits
- our limitless capacity for "suffering evils"
- we are schooled to play game a and not game b
- the necessity of change is not felt by the public
- the mainstream conception of money as the route to all aspirations
- we are wired to imagine scarcity even when it doesn't exist, even aside from conditioning
- tendency to base buying decisions largely on purchase price, with insufficient consideration of delayed costs and rewards (considerations like longevity, quality, and operating costs)
- information Overwhelm
- residual trust in big media's framing of issues and adjacent possibles
Stuff about consumers/citizens' real situations:
- Need for a dayjob / real lifestyle insecurity
- Actual need to be high game-a status to get things (e.g., women?) we want
- alienation of labor + entertainment -- commute, workweek, and tech-based entertainment are the whole of waking life is a local maxima
- cultivated stunted cognition, filling every bit of mental real estate with a constant stream of created wants, pre-packaged everything, including entertainments
- High costs to drop-outs in status
- credit scores run our lives and keep us subservient to game a
- it is just totally impossible to know who to trust "long range"
- artificial (but real situational) scarcity via rent-seeking mechanisms, fraud, and regulations blocking DIY/DIO options (co-housing, microfarming, etc)
- many are trapped by unrepayable debts (notably student loans, underwater mortgages)
- secure jobs are vanishing (displaced by automation, emergence of DIY, voluntary peer production, global offshoring, and reverse auction freelance marketplaces)
- millions have criminal records for past victimless crimes, constricting Game A prospects
- current household assets are at risk of wipeout from new black swans or runaway inflation
- deep "transmedia landscape" cultural constructs like the nuclear family which are extremely strong false attractors not just for individuals but for groups and societies
- actual helplessness that leads to learned helplessness
- Limited causal information - the global and interpersonal consequences of your personal actions will tend to get lost in social noise and will therefore tend to fail to reflect on your personal wellbeing
Stuff about power dynamics, nations, or govt+industry:
- massive plunge in trust re public institutions (imploding Game A's http://is.gd/intangiblewealth)
- elites want to hold on to their privilege and situation (and have zero-sum fallback strategies for this, both towards public and towards one another)
- regime can (still!) borrow against an over-mortgaged future to prop up system
- proprietary money supply and corp welfare used to deincent local production, feeding into consumer situation
- war! men with guns! police and prisons! violent attacks on those with ideologies that are different than game-a.
- 42% of GDP / most of our economic surplus is hard allocated by gov't in a very non game-b friendly way, so there is no room
- our monetary and financial system that extracting at least $1 Trillion a year, so there is no room
- ability to stay opaque (albeit diminishing) and punish whistleblowers
Stuff about the nature of organization:
Game A
- Game A moves faster in power/org vacuums because it has well-understand operating procedures and reinforced, solid social structures.
- It lacks effective ways to deal with stigmergic challengers running on faster OODA loops
Game B
- Game B ventures don't know how to be high quality (or high "competitive value") in the same way as Game A, so they lose in the market. Perhaps they are lower quality because these ways of working are less refined?
Loops & Emergences [this is a bit unclear - definitions/examples?]
- game a solutions outcompete other solutions in situations of scarcity and also replicate situations of scarcity!
- Leviathan - everything rings with one way of operating (involving power, scarcity, etc) and reinforces that way
----
TODOs
- Coalesce these things into packages that are easy to reason about and that we pretty much agree what we are talking about.
- For each package, guestimate how much energy it would free up for Game B if the package/dynamic was interrupted. For instance, we could imagine that if people were guaranteed security many of them wouldn't go to their day jobs. Day jobs account for 200B hours / week, but maybe only 70% of people would leave their day jobs if guaranteed security, and half their time would be lost to watching TV rather than participating in game B, so the everyone-has-security play would immediately free about 70B hours/week for Game B participation.
- For each package, guestimate how many people might relocate into Game B areas as Game A unravels – http://www.gallup.com/poll/124028/700-million-worldwide-desire-migrate-permanently.aspx
- For each package, guestimate how much flight capital from Game A can be converted (without any attached strings) to Game B benefit
- For each package, guestimate risks of provoking hard power retaliation by Game A regimes
- Generate within the group some intuitions of what might be possible.