Category: Social Strategy

Why is there such a drive for violence and aggression? In my imagination, the thought of fighting back, giving the finger, or arguing with someone seems desirable. As if it would accomplish something important. One explanation might be the desire for justice. When someone wrongs me, even in a trivial way, I feel compelled to settle the issue. If it remains unresolved and I access the memory later, it will be tainted with negative emotions. I will feel unfairly wronged by the individual or institution without the subsequent positive emotion of justice being served. However, if I could equally return justice upon them and walk away from the situation feeling it was properly settled with no permanent damage, then the memory would feel reconciled or neutralized. It would have the positive feeling of fairness. However, you’re unlikely to ever “equally” reconcile an injustice. The result will always either slightly favor you or the source. It should also be noted that if you took justice too far, and it became revenge, then you might not achieve the goal of reconciliation. The memory would load with a feeling of negativity assuming you felt guilty for taking such extreme action. Especially if it was outside the realm of legality and you were worried about criminal charges. This also brings up justice optimization and counter-attacks from the source. If you were a sociopath or less concerned about fairness, you might always try to seek justice slightly beyond what you really deserve to ensure it’s not only neutralized, but that it benefits you. Not enough to become revenge, but more than what’s fair. The problem with this strategy might be the recursive nature of the source then feeling injustice in return and taking action back towards you. Eye for an eye mentality until someone surrenders, or worse. I could see this being problematic for society as injustices propagate through citizens unable to reconcile with the original source or mistakenly identifying the source. Additionally, I can also see how people might harbor feelings of injustice towards abstract concepts and institutions. Especially if there is confusion or a lack of understanding. I’d imagine that these injustices could stack and severely skew your perspective on government, exclusive groups, different types of people, powerful individuals, and many other entities. Perhaps this is where blame comes in because there is no realistic way to resolve the injustices you believe exist. If all the government is to blame for not executing in your desired fashion, what could you possibly do to resolve that injustice? Complaints and blame allow you to feel victimized and shifts the burden of responsibility off of you. What if all that exists because you simply have unresolved injustices? And what if those injustices are not even accurate? You might be living inside a fantasy world of your own making where you feel marginalized by “evil entities” you don’t really understand.

Over the past year I’ve been learning more and more about human behavior and rationality. And as the lessons began to build on one another and clarify my vision of the world, I began to notice that this knowledge opened interesting doors. Doors that can be used to implement strategy or detect it. Every person moving about this world is playing a game. Some are managing pieces and controlling the battlefield, while others are simply being used by them. We are all playing regardless of whether you want to. This is “the game,” a complex and mysterious web of social interactions and manipulation that bring both order and chaos into our world.

Today’s upload attempts to cover the basics of this game and how to play it. It also brings up the ethics of manipulation and how important it is to be cautious with these tools. I can’t hope to cover everything in a single upload, but this should get you started.