From: jimruttshow8596
The distinction between genuine thinking and simulated thinking is explored as a foundational concept for understanding societal challenges and potential futures. This concept differentiates between an open, exploratory mode of thought and a more habitual, often artificial, form of processing information [01:00:00].
Thinking (Contemplation/Seeking Mode)
Genuine thinking, also referred to as “contemplation” or “seeking mode,” is characterized by an open and exploring awareness [01:16:00]. It involves an endeavor to bias perception [01:28:00] and to truly, deeply contemplate what is happening [03:47:00]. This mode is essential when confronting novel or uncertain environments, such as tracking in hunting or operating in a combat environment where signals may be obfuscated [02:15:00]. In such scenarios, a wide-open awareness, sensitive to non-obvious signals, is crucial [02:22:00].
Simulated Thinking (Habit Mode)
Simulated thinking is a state where the “habit mind” takes itself as the whole of thinking [03:28:00]. This mode is extremely efficient for behaviors or functions that are well-understood or reduced to habits [01:38:00].
Key characteristics and examples of simulated thinking include:
- Efficiency over Understanding [03:01:00]: In educational settings, the focus often shifts from true understanding to the ability to repeat back correct answers with precision and speed [03:05:00].
- Operating from Schema [03:33:00]: Individuals use pre-loaded schema to respond to conversational gambits or environmental events, acting almost exclusively out of habit [03:42:00].
- Effectiveness in Ordinary Circumstances [03:58:00]: Simulated thinking can be very effective in predictable, “ordinary” environments, such as performing accounting tasks [02:04:00] or routine driving [01:41:00].
- Ineffectiveness in Novel Environments [04:04:00]: It becomes extremely ineffective in novel or complex situations, as the habit mind is less fluidly related to genuine seeking mode [04:05:00].
A significant portion of modern culture has been described as artificial and optimized, fostering simulated thinking over genuine thought [02:47:00]. This can lead to a “trap” where individuals assume their habit mind encompasses all of thinking [03:54:00].
Implications in Organizations and Society
Simulated thinking is prevalent in large organizations, where conversations often lack true contemplation and dominate interactions [04:26:00]. This can lead to organizations being caught unprepared for change, as seen with the collapse of Hechinger’s due to its inability to adapt to Home Depot and Lowe’s [04:34:00]. The inability to engage in genuine thinking, especially during times of exponential change, can lead to collapse [06:33:00].
Game A and Simulated Thinking
The concept of “Game A” refers to the current societal operating system, characterized by conditions that tend to give rise to simulated thinking [07:17:00]. This system is described as operating “relatively far from nature, relatively far from the uncertain or from the wild from complexity” [07:31:00]. In “King’s Landing” (a metaphor for highly structured society), simulated thinking is a good strategy [07:48:00]. However, when faced with “winter” or nature, simulated thinking can be catastrophic [07:52:00].
Game A is fundamentally vulnerable to “defection,” or free-riding, due to its reliance on “society” (formal, scaled relationships) and “identity” (formal, generic labels) [25:27:00]. Society, as a “complicated” system, is fragile and vulnerable to corruption from within and changes in the physical environment [34:50:00].
As society becomes more complicated, it struggles to manage the “complex” reality of human beings [35:32:00]. This leads to kludges, gaps, and fissures that are exploited by individual or group defection, causing a downward spiral [35:45:00]. This pattern is observable in historical collapses like the Roman Republic or Chinese dynasties [41:18:00].
Modern society, particularly in the West, is seen as being in the late stages of Game A, with increasing corruption in areas like finance and politics, and a collapse in collective sensemaking [01:01:07]. The proliferation of ideas like climate change denial, and the increasing permissibility of public lying, are symptoms of this decay [01:01:30].
China’s “Social Credit” system is identified as a “last gasp Game A” effort to maximize complication using sophisticated AI to manage human choice-making, creating a highly granular and policed social system [01:07:11]. However, this is predicted to collapse within a relatively brief timeframe due to the inherent flaws of Game A [01:08:06].
Moving Beyond Simulated Thinking: The Promise of Game B
The concept of “Game B” proposes an alternative to the current Game A system, requiring a new “collective intelligence toolkit” [01:10:13]. Game B aims to solve human needs without being constrained by the problems of complicated systems, and thus, without relying on society or identity in the Game A sense [01:11:07].
Game B seeks to maintain the level of coherence and complexity found in early hunter-gatherer bands (operating within Dunbar’s number) but scale it up to include billions of people [01:11:58]. This involves:
- Personal Transformation: Acknowledging that individuals need “healing” from the “Holocaust level nastiness” inflicted by Game A’s educational systems and psychology [01:13:50]. This means enabling people to be mature adults capable of using their “whole mind to be thinking and not simulated thinking” [01:14:30].
- New Institutions and “Psycho-technologies”: Developing technologies for effective group facilitation, enabling individuals with distinct epistemological frameworks (e.g., Christian fundamentalists and atheists) to engage in “truly functional collective intelligence” [01:15:37]. This would allow for a synergistic capacity where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts [01:17:01].
- Leveraging Global Connectivity: Utilizing global connectivity to identify and connect individuals with unique “asymmetric information or capacity” (like the mathematician Ramanujan) and bring them into collective intelligence environments supported by these new psycho-technologies [01:18:40]. This addresses current limitations of AI.
Game B is envisioned as a system that is “theoretically optimal conditions for maximal innovation” and “maximum creative collaboration” [01:32:40], offering an “escape velocity in techno utopia space” without the catastrophic consequences of exponential technology [01:32:57]. It is founded on living in relationship with “what is actually real and true,” offering a significant competitive advantage over Game A [01:30:10].