# Fair games are self-limiting [[Fair games have legible rules]] and if a game has legible rules, it’s easier to predict whether you have a shot of winning. Marathons have extremely legible rules and I will bet a lot of money that I will never be world class marathoner. As a result I’m not even going to try. In other words, games with predictable success are self-limiting. In the name of fairness, people have been pushing for more legibility in the form of transparency, metrics, and explicit criteria. However, for disciplines that haven’t been systematised, like science or starting companies, [[The Map is not the Territory]] and these attempts to create legibility do not (cannot?) capture all the important things. However, the fairness measures will still create the self-limiting effect and people who could potentially crush it at the illegible unfair game don’t even play. For example [[Months of grant writing is one of the things that makes people think twice about academia]]. In a way, making a game fair actually *raises* the barriers to entry: only those who can afford to optimize the game can get over the high, but uniform, wall. [[Fair games can be gamed]]. Of course, the fairness measures are in place to try to get rid of other things that freeze people out of a game - the classic illegible example is “it’s all about who you know.” This is tricky. While it is not fair, ‘who you know’ is actually a reasonable rule *in a healthy institution.* In that situation, the people in the institution should want to maximize the game’s output, so they should be open to knowing people who might be great at it, even if they aren’t in their social circle. You see this throughout history - the young outsider pounding down the door of the master who recognizes their talent and helps them win. It is *completely unfair* and yet creates some amazing outputs - Alexander Hamilton, Warren Buffet, etc. However, [[Most institutions have become cancerous]] - so the drive towards fairness is not unreasonable but won’t fix the underlying problem. Another way to look at the effect of fairness measures is that they homogenize the people playing the game around ‘people who are good at whatever is being measured.’ For marathons, this is fine because you’ll homogenize around people who are really good at running 32.5 miles as fast as they can. That’s literally all a marathon is so in this case, the map *is* the territory. In science, on the other hand, you’re homogenizing around people who are really good at publishing highly cited papers in prestigious journals, pulling in grant money, and getting attention ([[Successful professors are not necessarily the best researchers]].) Is that all science is? ### Related * [[When ‘talent’ isn’t code for ‘specialized training’ it means the role or industry has not been systematized]] <!-- #evergreen --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Fair+games+are+self-limiting) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Fair+games+are+self-limiting)