From: jimruttshow8596
The current societal model, often referred to as “Game A,” is undergoing a world historical transition that poses existential risks to humanity, leading to a potential “Mad Max” future, though it might also lead to an “amazing future” akin to “Star Trek” [00:02:07]. Jordan Hall, a deep thinker on the future of society, suggests this transition requires a significant upgrade in humanity’s individual and collective capacity for thought and action [00:02:20].
The Cracks in Game A
“Game A” represents the traditional way civilization has operated, characterized by inherent competition and a reliance on fighting things out when disagreements arise [00:03:09]. Historically, this approach escalated after World War II with the advent of nuclear weapons, creating an existential awareness that peace was no longer merely a goal but a necessity to prevent global catastrophe [00:03:29].
The fundamental “deep code” of Game A involves increasing technological capability within a context of competition [00:04:44]. While this has led to improvements, it has also enhanced the capacity for destruction [00:05:01]. Examples include:
- Biological Warfare: Technologies like CRISPR are crossing thresholds, making biological warfare capabilities accessible to large criminal enterprises, akin to what only superpowers once possessed [00:05:18].
- Technological Fragility: A deeply technological civilization builds in a lot of fragility; for instance, shutting down a power grid today would be catastrophic, and the means to do so are increasingly distributed and sophisticated (e.g., EMP, drone swarms, cyber warfare) [00:06:33].
- Arms Race Problem: Industries like AI research are driven by an “arms race” mentality, leading to heedlessness or recklessness where corners are cut on safety, motivated by the fear of falling behind competitors [00:07:46]. This represents a “game theoretical trap” [00:08:39].
- Ecological Limits: Game A is reaching or has exceeded the long-term carrying capacity of the ecosystem, with a global population peaking at 10-11 billion, and more people adopting resource-intensive lifestyles [00:09:00]. This environmental impact can be seen as “blowing up” through toxicity and breaking homeostatic feedback loops [00:09:41].
- War on Sense-Making: AI-enhanced marketing and political propaganda use sophisticated cognitive neuroscience to manipulate choice-making, eroding individual capacity to make sense of the world and act effectively [00:12:00]. This is likened to an “autoimmune disease on sense-making,” where tools meant for understanding turn against themselves [00:14:09].
These factors suggest that Game A, with its “unconscious drive” and “game theoretic drive,” is self-terminating, “careening towards the edge of the cliff” [00:10:57]. Humanity is approaching the “power of gods without the wisdom of gods” [00:11:29].
Introducing Game B: The Path Forward
Game B represents a trajectory towards a better world, a “meta protocol for hyper collaboration” [00:17:16]. It’s notoriously difficult to define precisely, as using Game A’s conceptual structures can “poison the well” [00:15:16]. Instead, it’s better understood through a “parallax perspective,” combining multiple succinct constructions [00:15:42].
One way to define Game B is “building or developing capacity to navigate complexity without resorting to complicated systems” [00:16:08]. This involves:
- Emergent Distributed Cognition: Game B’s emergence is spontaneous, with people co-discovering and co-creating its principles without formal top-down coordination [00:17:35].
- Boot Protocol for Participation: It acts as a “boot protocol” allowing anyone to self-orient and participate meaningfully, discovering what is going on and adding value on their own terms [00:19:14].
- Hyper Collaboration: This concept suggests everyone is already playing Game B, perhaps at “level zero,” meaning it is omnipresent and one can consciously choose to step into it and increase skillfulness in collaboration [00:21:15]. It involves “synchronicity,” where distributed efforts align without explicit coordination because all participants are addressing a shared, real-world problem [00:22:04].
Core architectural attributes of Game B are non-hierarchical, network-oriented, and long-term metastable [00:24:40].
Optimism for Game B’s Success
Despite Game A’s massive current power and Game B’s nascent state, there is optimism for Game B’s success because it operates with a “higher exponent” [00:43:04]. This relates to Stuart Kauffman’s concept of the “adjacent possible,” where novel capacities emerge from combining existing components, leading to faster-than-exponential growth [00:26:42].
Game B is designed to be “substantially better at innovation” than Game A [00:44:41]. While Game A optimizes for production (like a factory), Game B prioritizes “creative collaboration,” where extrinsic motivation and hierarchical organization inhibit free exploration [00:31:09]. Game B fosters maximum “sovereignty” and the capacity to “rapidly enter into coherence,” enabling individuals to be in integrity with themselves and others in a “liminal relationship” for insights [00:32:30].
Game B’s primary innovation capacity must be oriented “first and foremost towards cultivating individual and collective sovereignty,” which means wisdom and maturity [00:48:59]. This is because simply accelerating technological progress without wisdom would lead to faster destruction [00:48:15].
Key Concepts for Transition
- Liminality: A “state of not-knowing” or “child’s mind,” where one is deeply receptive and trying to perceive without prefiguring meaning [00:33:20]. It involves consciously choosing to listen and “still hunting” for subtle signals, especially when in a new environment [00:34:15]. This contrasts with “premature convergence” on exploitation, which is characteristic of Game A [00:35:40].
- Humility: The handmaiden of liminality, crucial for playing Game B well [00:41:40]. It involves recognizing the richness, depth, and complexity of domains that cannot be learned from a “users guide” [00:41:55].
- Meaningfulness: The “wholeness of your entire mode of being in the world,” where responses to stimuli increase one’s capacity to respond well in the future [00:58:18]. It’s about discerning what feels more meaningful to oneself and aligning choices with deeply held values rather than external ideologies or consumerism [00:53:20]. This pursuit often reveals a “sense of wrongness” in Game A’s short-term trade-offs [01:02:50].
- Integrity: Relates to the “structural integrity” of self and systems, where all pieces fit well together [01:05:11]. Alienation and inauthenticity, problems in Game A, represent fragmentation or a lack of integrity [01:05:26]. Game B aims for an ongoing movement towards greater integrity, acknowledging non-utopian, continuous growth [01:06:44].
Experimenting with Piece Parts for Game B
The transition to Game B requires experimenting with and developing specific “piece parts” [01:09:37]. This is not a linear process, as all elements are non-linearly interrelated [01:10:06].
Core Areas of Transition
- Finding the Others: Connecting with like-minded individuals interested in Game B, through platforms like Twitter and Facebook [00:50:28].
- Personal Changes: Making changes in one’s life to be “Game B ready,” including building courage, optimism, integrity, and honesty [00:51:00]. This involves escaping status-oriented consumerism and psychological manipulation by mass media [00:51:09], and cultivating a “transparent agentic mind” that can shift between paradigms [00:52:01]. Getting one’s “financial life in order” by spending less, rather than making more, is also key to gaining freedom [00:56:12].
- Parenting: Embracing a relationship with children based on deep symmetry, acknowledging the child as a “fully realized soul” [01:11:13]. The parent’s role is to support the child’s self-building capacity, not just impress propositional knowledge [01:11:47]. Both parent and child teach each other meaningfulness [01:12:23].
- Making a Living: Emphasizing “vocation” or “calling,” where individuals perceive and pursue what they are uniquely capable of doing with “exquisite care and capacity,” and what aligns with their deepest sense of meaningfulness (ikigai) [01:13:02]. This “right livelihood” is about playing one’s unique role in Game B [01:14:10].
- Conviviality: Literally “living together,” it’s the conscious design of culture (including rituals, tools, gatherings) to fully support personal growth, relational growth, and connection with the larger whole [01:15:07]. A strong emphasis is placed on face-to-face interaction and enjoying each other as humans [01:16:23]. Conviviality treats “relationship as being sacred” and realized in the “absolutely ordinary” [01:16:59]. Research indicates that a “potluck picnic was universally perceived… as much more fulfilling than a fancy dinner or an expensive vacation” [01:18:41].
- Health: Envisioned as a whole-systems approach, encompassing physiological, psychological, and relational health [01:21:02]. It requires supporting all dimensions without creating externalities or falsely optimizing for certain subsystems [01:22:12]. Well-being extends this to an ongoing context that supports healthy practices through time and diverse circumstances [01:22:31].
- Policing and Justice: In Game B, this involves approaching violations with curiosity, seeing them as opportunities to increase capacity and meaningful relationships [01:27:19]. It prioritizes healing hurt feelings and understanding deeper issues before considering imbalance or retribution [01:28:29]. The goal is to build communities that are “anti-fragile to injustice” [01:29:34]. Dealing with defectors, free riders, predators, and sociopaths requires setting boundaries from a “deeply mature place,” intending to support the individual’s well-being while protecting the larger conviviality [01:31:06]. This requires “discernment” – a reality-based understanding of human behavior rather than raw non-judgmentalism or steely-eyed pragmatism [01:34:20].
- Coherence: A synergistic relationship where distinct parts generate an emergent whole greater than the sum of its parts [01:37:39]. This whole simultaneously enhances the autonomy of the parts, increasing synergy [01:38:00]. This “coherent pluralism” is a challenging design problem, requiring careful balance between agreement and liberty [01:39:15]. This capacity for coherence is seen as a “superpower” that allows for enormous specialization and division of labor while maintaining the integrity of the whole [01:40:53].
Scaling Beyond the Dunbar Number
The “hard problem of Game B” is how to make these principles work for groups much larger than the Dunbar number (approximately 150 people), which represents the cognitive limit for maintaining face-to-face social networks [01:42:40]. The solution may involve discovering an “attractor in reality itself” that links the accelerating curve of the adjacent possible with the characteristics of a distributed cognition group that can maintain continuity [01:44:02]. This is about “meta-learning” – learning how to learn more effectively [01:47:23].
Proto-Game B: Initial Attempts and Evolution
“Proto-B” communities are initial attempts to create integrated Game B life [01:49:04]. These early communities will likely still depend on “Game A” infrastructure (e.g., computer chips, hospitals, public schools) [01:50:10]. A key strategy for early Proto-Bs will be “consciously and hopefully talented at parasitizing Game A,” meaning pulling energy and resources out of Game A to build Game B [01:50:27].
The emergence of Proto-Bs may feel like a surprise, as individuals living Game B principles increasingly find “certain pieces have dropped” that enable new capacities [01:51:59]. Unlike past intentional communities that failed by operating at Game A’s lowest levels (e.g., selling artisanal crafts), Game B experiments can leverage the “highest level capacity” of the creative class (software developers, designers, scientists) to generate highly disruptive economic innovations [01:53:50]. This creates a “decisive strategic advantage” against Game A [01:55:04].
While Game B’s emphasis on conviviality suggests geographic anchoring as face-to-face communities, other models may exist:
- Episodic Physical Relationships: Regular, short-term physical meetings can build strong bonds, with ongoing virtual collaboration [01:56:40].
- Inter-group Collaboration: Anchor communities (e.g., in Santa Cruz and Southern France) can collaborate virtually, maintaining synergy and accelerating innovation [01:57:47].
Multiple, diverse Proto-Bs are expected to emerge, each with different selections and versions of piece parts [01:58:31]. Some will fail, and this is crucial for evolution. “Honorable failures” – where the group fails but individuals gain deep learning and “wisdom” – are beneficial, as this wisdom can then be carried to other Proto-Bs, strengthening the overall Game B effort [01:59:30]. This concept aligns with the idea of hiring individuals from failed startups, as they bring valuable experience [02:01:13].
The challenge of Game B is immense, akin to the multi-decade scientific and engineering effort to create lasers [02:02:06]. It requires recognizing that the work is “a whole lot harder and with a whole lot less resource” [02:02:43]. However, each effort, even with imperfections, moves the game forward [02:03:04].