# ‘Have your cake and eat it too’ life-games have led to a toxic society *Everybody* wants to play a game with no tradeoffs. [[People and organizations are all playing some game that has different ways of gaining status and power]]. In the past all ‘life games’ had perceived tradeoffs. If you were nobility or wealthy, you traded off religious purity (“It is harder for a wealthy man to enter heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.”) If you were royalty, you were expected to be at the greatest risk of physical death. If you were clergy, you were supposed to renounce earthly possessions. Merchants could accumulate great wealth, but had little political power. The idea of these tradeoffs is built into western culture. Of course, the reality often differed from the ideal - Popes accumulating great wealth, Kings buying indulgences etc. but the *idea* that this was wrong is still powerful because it means the system would regress to a mean that enforced the tradeoffs. [[Having more separate games is good for society]]. Life-game tradeoffs were the perceived norm in the 20th century as well. Scientists could achieve great acclaim, but didn’t make that much money. Businessmen could make lots of money but weren’t held in great esteem. Politicians had power but it was understood that they wouldn’t make much money. Journalists kept everybody in check but claimed few of the spoils. Now, it seems like the winners in all the categories bleed into each other and everybody is now playing a single game where you can have your cake and eat it too. No tradeoffs. Famous scientists start companies and become fabulously wealthy. Politicians leverage their positions to get paid a ton by lobbyists and speaking tours. Successful entrepreneurs are also celebrities and can now pivot to whatever they want - science, politics, entertainment. The two questions that demand answers are “why did this happen” and “why is this bad?” ### Why is this bad? Shifting to the evolutionary analogy the single societal game breaks down the group selection hierarchy. [[Institutions are the second level of a group selection evolutionary system]]. It would be like all the cells of all the animals in the world all of a sudden competing with each other. It breaks the brain a little to think about. Is it a return to a primordial ooze? A [gelatinous cube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelatinous_cube)? Some kind of [ooze monster](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/89/99/ce/8999ce8a21742d46e495c4e90c9605ce.jpg)where all the animals have melded together?  Regardless, a single game means that every individual is competing with every other individual, which removes all the advantages of group selection, especially the [[Slack - concept]] to work on things that are not immediately valuable. You could also look at the situation as every individual now being a member of every institution, which might be more accurate. Everybody is in business, everybody is a journalist, everybody is a scientist. We’ve been conditioned to think this is a good thing - democratize all the things. I think that would be true *if* people learned and respected the rules of whichever institutional capacity they were acting in and could firewall between the different roles in their lives. Instead it’s all become mushed together (see ooze monster picture.) This admonition to firewall between different roles in the same person is never going to be followed perfectly but it is an ideal that is no longer being strived for at all. For example, Ben Franklin was a man of *many* institutions: business, journalism, science, politics. He did a poor job firewalling between his role as a businessman and his role as a journalist - using kind of sketchy business practices to force competitors out of business. However, as far as I can tell, he *didn’t* use his position as a journalist to push his scientific theories or his position in politics to enhance his business. So there was at least some personal fireballing going on. Additionally, he knew and respected the rules of the different games he was playing. So while he was in many institutions he did not break down the barriers between them. When everybody wants to be an ‘entrepreneur’ or ‘influencer’ regardless of what they actually want, it increases the noise in the system and basically creates a lottery. A toxic situation. ### Why did this happen? Some of these reasons will inevitably overlap with [[Most institutions have become cancerous]]. It’s also interesting that many of these points are the tails side of a coin - they can be seen as good things as well. 1. Social media and the internet enabled people to start participating in different institutions - politics, science, journalism - without any sort of introduction to what the rules of the game were. Again, lowering barriers to entry, in and of itself is not a bad thing, but without an additional … *something* (learning? Guidance?) it breaks down the walls between the institutions and creates a single game. 2. The internet enabled people to not only participate but become major players in a game without needing to pass through any gatekeepers. Again, in a way this is a good thing, but the benefit of gatekeepers is that they can ensure that rules are at least understood before they are broken. It also causes a situation where anybody can try to set themselves up as a gatekeeper. [[Full-time thought leaders try to become gatekeepers to knowledge]]. My sense is that some sort of stability of gatekeeper succession is a good thing. 3. *Fuzzy* An increasing sense that all institutional games should be fair, and therefore legible to people outside the institution. [[Fair games have legible rules]]. Legible rules made people inside the institution directly answerable to everyone outside of it. This all sounds good so far! Light is the best disinfectant! However, the exposed rules could not capture all of the implicit rules of the game ([[The Map is not the Territory]]) so all the players are now incentivized to optimize for whatever those legible rules are and ignore all of the illegible rules. This leads to scientists chasing citations and politicians saying “well it’s not strictly illegal!” 4. Institutional democratization created a common currency between institutions: attention. If you can amass a large enough group of followers, people in other institutions will take you seriously. Thus, everybody is now playing the attention game. ### Related * [[Institutions shape how individuals interact]], which used to create ‘firewalls’ between different games but [[Most institutions have become cancerous]] so everything bleeds together. * [[Nobody is resigning for failing to do their institutional role]] * [[Intra-Elite Competition: A Key Concept for Understanding the Dynamics of Complex Societies]] * https://twitter.com/ArtirKel/status/1284940928805994497