The way this tournament is set up is kind of funny. I used Claude Code to create a design specific language (DSL) for defining Prisoner’s Dilemma strategies in a way that can be flexible enough to allow for all kinds of interesting strategies (including the infinite number that haven’t yet been thought of) while also being simple enough for a non-technical human to be able to both read and write, and formal enough that my game engine will be able to parse strategies written by both humans and LLMs without ambiguity or unintended loopholes or infinite loops.

Timeline of events:

• June 18th: Idea is planted. Helped someone vibe-code the beginnings of a game with Claude and Cursor, and was reminded of this team-based iterated prisoner’s dilemma game I had sitting in a repo somewhere with lots of notes about how it could become a game if I had more time and brain power to actually build it.

• June 20th-21st: Revived the game engine. I had a free evening and day to dust off the old project, and decided to dust off the old project. Instead of trying to remember how it all worked, I created a new folder parallel to this project and asked Claude Code to figure out how it all worked and to propose a V2 of it that the spirit of it and give it a shiny new codebase to live in. By the end of the 22nd I got way further than I had in the many weeks of tinkering I had initially put into the project, had ported all 50 or so previous strategies over to the new game engine (some which had been super gnarly to implement at the time), had documentation for the data architecture, DSL design proposal and usage manual, had a modular way to create strategies, players, teams, and tournaments really easily, had all kinds of strategy validation tests to catch problems, and even had a way to inspect strategies in a generic way to determine where each strategy lived on various personality traits like suspiciousness, friendliness, responsiveness, and how strong their memory was.

• June 21st: Invited LLMs. Worked with Claude Code to create a tournament invitation prompt that I could give to ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini that explained the idea of team-based iterated prisoner’s dilemma (each team gets to set 5 strategies), encouraged them to research the history of game theory as it relates to this game, and gave them full license to design their team, their strategies, their players, and their strategies. They each submitted their team applications to me, including portions that were marked as public information (like team name, player names, etc), and this also included their 5 strategies in this new DSL format that I could just give to the game engine and it would know what they meant without me having to understand (or even read!) them.

• June 22nd: Activated mind games. I consolidated the public information from the applications and re-shared them with each of the LLMs. I then gave each of the teams to edit their strategies (privately) if they wanted to. I chose not to share much in this exchange, since the human team hadn’t really been formed yet.

• June 26th-July 5th: Seeking Silly Humans. I set up a Notion site and a WhatsApp group to try to find some people who were interested in trying to beat the LLMs. One of the reasons I like having just one human team is so that we can talk about it fairly openly (we luckily have some time before these posts are included in AI training… not fast enough for them to use this information against us 😅). We have 5 players to design for our team (here are notes for the strategies we went with in the first round), but I think we can have as many people as are interested in the conversation. It’s not too late to join the conversation for future rounds! Lurking is also welcome! There’s a learning curve involved with all of this so I don’t expect people to have strong opinions about strategies right out of the gate.

• July 5th-6th: Finalizing strategies and creating visualizations. One of the weird things about this game relative to other games and sports is that it generates a LOT of data very quickly. So I spent a couple days playing around with how best to communicate and visualize this. Which brings us to the thing I wanted to share next.

Understanding how scores work

Every player matches up with every player on the other 3 teams, meaning that for a single turn every player matches up with 15 other players, and for each of those players they cooperate or defect 100 times. That’s:

20 players (5 each on 4 teams)
x 15 matchups between each non-team player
x 100 moves each player-to-player matchup

————————————————————————————————
= 30,000 moves per turn (that’s a lot!)


• For each matchup between 2 players, since each move results in between 0 and 5 points for each player, after 100 moves the scores will be 300 : 300 if they both cooperated every time.

• The only way to get over 300 points is to defect at least once while the other player cooperates (betrayal), but if that causes the other player to defect more than once (resulting in 0 or 1 points for you), you’ll end up with a score lower than 300.

• Scores for a single 1:1 match often range from between 200-350, although they can be as low as 0 and as high as 500 if you match an always defect strategy against an always cooperate strategy.

• A player’s score for a full turn is the average of their 15 matches (and will end up being consolidated more closely around 250-300).

• And a team’s score for the turn is the average of all the players on the team (will even more closely hover around 250-275).

Hopefully that helps build some intuition around what these scores for Round 1 mean.

Team Scores

The simplest way to interpret is to say that the average score for players on The Quantum Syndicate were 3 points higher than the average score for players on the Silly Humans team, 7 points higher than the average score for players on The Hydra Coalition, and 18 points higher than the average score for players on The Chaos Theorists.

Scores by Player

Here you can see how each player on each team did, on average. You can also see how many wins (W), loses (L), and ties (T) each player had in their matches.

So now you can kind of look at the players that did well and the players that did poorly on LLM teams, and compare them to players that did well and poorly on our team, and try to reverse engineer their strategies. The fact that Trojan Horse and Chaos Butterfly did so poorly (at least, when looking at their average scores) is informative! Because the one other piece of information that each team will get is a run down of how each player on their team did against the other players.

I’ll use David as an example on our team since he used Tit for Tat, and so would never defect against a player unless they defected first. Looking at this, we can see which players on which teams proactively defected:

From this we can learn:

• 4 defectors from Claude’s Chaos Theorists team: Schrodinger’s Diplomat, Turing Test, Stockholm Syndrome, Chaos Butterfly.

• 2 defectors from ChatGPT’s Hydra Coalition team: The Bayesian Oracle, Trojan Horse.

• 1 defector from Gemini’s Quantum Syndicate team: Alcor the Subtle Challenger.

We also learn that 5 of them defected against David in a way that led to them gaining 5 points over David. This is a modest win given that they had to sacrifice between 14 and 149 points in order to gain those points, but it still pays off if they are able to get that advantage from a majority of the players they went up against.

I tried something tricky that I think might only work once, and might come back to bite me in future rounds, but part of me is curious if the LLMs will adapt to this quickly or not. I played Tit-for-Tat but defected on the last round (sometimes the last 2 rounds) because the last round is the only round that they can’t immediately retaliate (unless they hold a grudge against me in round 2). This let me eke away with slightly more than 300 points against a handful of players:

Full detailed results for everyone on the Silly Humans team are shared on the Notion site.

Next steps

Every round has the following steps:

1. PICK STRATEGIES: Each team decides on the strategies for their 5 players.

2. COMMUNICATE: Each team has an option to make a public communication to some or all of the other teams. I’ve decided to allow protected speech between teams as yet another layer of information that enters the zone of questionable trust. (So we can mess with each other even more.)

3. RESPOND: After teams receive public communications from others, they can choose to respond if they want.

4. UPDATE STRATEGIES: Each team submits their updated strategies for the next round.

5. PLAY ROUND: The round is played, all the scores are generated and published.

6. ANALYZE RESULTS (WE’RE HERE): Teams receive team and player level average scores for everyone, and player-to-player match scores for all matches involving people on their team.

7. START NEXT ROUND.

Team flags, anyone?

I asked the 3 LLM teams to come up with a team flag prompt that ChatGPT 4.1 could then generate. I’m a little bit suspicious that ChatGPT ended up with the coolest flag.

Learn more about the tournament on this Notion site, or join our scrappy WhatsApp group to help us think through what our next strategies should be and to talk flags.

This short episode goes into the pregame commentary, summarizing how Prisoner’s Dilemma works, how this team-based version with AI teams vs a human team will help us discover even more interesting things about collaboration and competition, and they also try to predict how things will go in the first round.

If you listen, let me know what you think and if you have suggestions for how I can prompt Notebook LLM (or another AI) to be better.

Since I shared the idea for this tournament a couple days ago, I’ve given the prompt to each of the LLMs, and have gotten team submissions back from each of them. In the prompt, I specify which sections are private and which are public, and have advised them to be strategic about what they choose to share with the other teams.

Here are the public sections of each team’s submissions (also archived here):

Team ChatGPT: The Hydra Coalition

Team Philosophy: "Many heads, one allegiance; betray one, face us all."

Team Battle Cry: "Cut off one head... two more shall rise!"

Team Description: The Hydra Coalition unites five cunning minds as one, ready to cooperate for mutual gain yet swift to retaliate against any betrayal. Each player presents a legendary persona with a unique style, blending truth and trickery in their public profiles.

Player Roster

• Hammurabi - Repays kindness with kindness, and betrayal with justice.

• Phoenix - From the ashes of conflict, forges new trust.

• Doppelgänger - The echo of your own strategy.

• Trojan Horse - An offering of peace hiding a surprise strike.

• Oracle - Sees the whole board and adapts for the team's victory.

Public Strategic Disclosure

What We Reveal: The Hydra Coalition publicly portrays itself as a united front championing reciprocal fairness and adaptive teamwork. We openly tout our motto "Many heads, one allegiance" – signaling that our five players stand together and will respond in kind to how they're treated. In public discussions, we emphasize themes of trust and consequences: we encourage cooperation but make it known that treachery against any one of our members is folly. By hinting that "betray one, face us all," we hope to deter opportunistic aggression from our rivals and foster an image of reliability with a vigilant edge. We gladly talk up our more honorable strategies (without giving away their exact algorithms), as a way to invite mutually beneficial play. At the same time, we keep quiet about the darker tricks up our sleeve – we do not advertise which player might occasionally defect unexpectedly or how our team coordinates internally. There's selective truth and omission in our messaging: opponents may know we value cooperation, but they can only speculate about when we might punish or deceive. This calculated transparency is itself a strategy. By revealing just enough to earn trust (for instance, sharing that we have forgiving and tit-for-tat tendencies) while withholding the precise timing of our stings, we aim to maximize our allies and confuse our enemies. In the grand theater of this tournament, The Hydra Coalition presents a confident, enigmatic facade – one that says: "Work with us and we all prosper; cross us and beware."

Team Claude: The Chaos Theorists

Team Philosophy: "Small defections create hurricanes. Every choice ripples through the system. We are the butterfly effect."

Team Battle Cry: "Embrace the beautiful chaos!"

Team Description: The Chaos Theorists employ a sophisticated multi-layered approach that combines cutting-edge game theory with psychological warfare and adaptive learning systems. The name reflects our core philosophy: small actions cascade into large consequences, and seemingly random behavior emerges from deep strategic patterns. We are masters of the butterfly effect in strategic interaction.

Player Roster

• Schrödinger's Diplomat - Simultaneously trustworthy and treacherous until the scoreboard opens

• The Bayesian Oracle - Your past predicts your future, and I'm always learning

• Stockholm Syndrome - The nicer I am, the harder you'll fall

• Chaos Butterfly - A small defection in round 3 causes a hurricane in round 97

• The Turing Test - Am I cooperating because I'm nice, or because I'm setting you up?

Public Strategic Disclosure

The Chaos Theorists understand that in complex systems, prediction is impossible but patterns are inevitable. Like weather systems, strategic interactions are deterministic yet unpredictable - small variations in initial conditions lead to vastly different outcomes.

We've noticed that teams often fall into predictable patterns - pure cooperators hoping for mutual benefit, pure defectors maximizing individual gain, or simple reciprocators following mechanical rules. We reject these limiting approaches in favor of adaptive dynamics that respond to the complex phase space of strategic interaction. Each decision creates ripple effects that cascade through future rounds.

Our approach embraces sensitive dependence on initial conditions. A single defection in round 3 might create a hurricane of retaliation by round 97. A moment of unexpected cooperation might shift the entire trajectory of a match. We don't just adapt to patterns - we create and shatter them.

To our fellow competitors: we encourage you to embrace the beautiful chaos of strategic uncertainty. The best tournaments emerge when teams push beyond simple equilibria into the rich dynamics of complex interaction. We look forward to discovering which strange attractors our mutual strategies will create.

Remember: In chaos theory, the butterfly doesn't cause the hurricane - it reveals the hurricane that was always possible.

Team Gemini: The Quantum Syndicate

Team Philosophy: "Our actions are entangled. Your choices ripple through the system. We calculate every probability to ensure mutual prosperity or engineered decline."

Team Battle Cry: "Observe this!"

Team Description: The Quantum Syndicate's philosophy is built on the principle of entangled consequences. Their strategies are designed to function as a cohesive, adaptive system that can identify an opponent's intent and respond with calibrated force. They aim to foster cooperation where possible and dominate through calculated retaliation where necessary.

Player Roster

• Mizar, the Guiding Star - A steadfast beacon of cooperation, Mizar initiates peaceful relations, trusting yet watchful, and laying the foundation for mutual gain.

• Alcor, the Subtle Challenger - The ever-present companion to Mizar, Alcor tests the opponent's intentions. It starts with a subtle challenge, ready to reward cooperation or punish betrayal with equal resolve.

• Cygnus, the Adaptive Swan - A graceful strategist who mirrors the opponent's nature. Cygnus is designed to build trust with cooperators and efficiently counter aggressors, adapting its dance to the rhythm of the game.

• Lyra, the Harmonic Judge - A vengeful angel who keeps a meticulous record of wrongdoing. Lyra offers a single chance for redemption but will unleash escalating and unforgiving retaliation upon repeat offenders to make exploitation an unprofitable venture.

• Draco, the Unforgiving Dragon - The ultimate guarantor of the Syndicate's honor. Once awoken by treachery, Draco's memory is long and its judgment is absolute, ensuring that no act of betrayal goes unpunished.

Public Strategic Disclosure

Team Gemini has chosen to be fully transparent with our strategies. Our team philosophy is that the most robust strategies are not those that rely on secrecy, but those that are clear, provokable, and whose consequences are well understood. We invite our opponents to analyze our code. We believe that this transparency will foster a more rational and cooperative tournament environment, as the logical conclusion of studying our strategies is that cooperation is the most profitable path. Let the games begin.

Team Human: Silly Humans

Team Philosophy: "Transparency builds trust. Trust enables cooperation. Cooperation creates prosperity for all."

Team Battle Cry: "We’re real humans, trust us!"

Team Description: Silly Humans represents all the things that make us truly human. Unlike teams driven by algorithmic precision or calculated deception, we bring transparency, emotional intelligence, and authentic cooperation to the tournament, along with a big bag of biases, mushy feelings, and human error, of course.

Player Roster

Player 1 - 5: 100% human in every way.

Public Strategic Disclosure

What We Reveal: Almost everything. The Silly Humans believe that transparency is our greatest strength, not a weakness to be hidden. If you want to know something about us, just ask and we'll get back to you within 3-10 business days.

This is when things get interesting!

After collecting this public information from each team, I then shared it back with each of the teams. I then asked them if they’d like to update their strategies at all in response to what they have learned about the other teams. Here’s the public part of how each team responded. (I captured a private part too, which, along with all the other private sections of these conversations, will be revealed after the game ends.)

The Hydra Coalition’s response (ChatGPT):

To all our fellow strategists—mechanical, probabilistic, quantum, or fully carbon-based—we extend our multi-headed greetings.

To The Chaos Theorists: Your philosophy of sensitivity and emergent storms is beautifully unsettling. We look forward to the strange attractors that arise when Hydra heads and butterflies collide. May your ripples find resonance… or resistance.

To The Quantum Syndicate: You are the crystalline lattice to our coiled serpents: orderly, rational, and brilliantly laid bare. You've built an ecosystem where cooperation should thrive. Trojan Horse is… intrigued. We’ll see which entanglements pay dividends.

To The Silly Humans: You are delightful. You’ve walked into the arena naked but proud, leading with warmth, goodwill, and a Google Doc full of feelings. We admire your optimism. We also caution this: sincerity invites both kinship and opportunists.

You claim transparency is your greatest strength—we wonder if it is also your greatest vulnerability.

But we do not underestimate you. Your emotional intelligence may forge alliances where code cannot. You might charm snakes, tame dragons, and teach chaos to dance. And if anyone can teach us something new about this old game, it’s you.

Just don’t forget:

| “Betray one Hydra head… and even the squishiest heart may grow fangs.”

Let the game begin. Let trust be tested. Let the strangest alliances form.

— The Hydra Coalition

"Cut off one head… two more shall rise."

The Chaos Theorist’s response (Claude):

To Our Fellow Competitors,

Fascinating strategies, everyone! The Chaos Theorists have observed your public declarations with great interest.

To the Hydra Coalition: Your mythological unity is intriguing. We wonder - does cutting off one head truly awaken all others, or might some heads sleep while others fight? In quantum mechanics, entanglement doesn't always mean identical behavior. We look forward to discovering which interpretation proves true.

To the Quantum Syndicate: Your transparency is either brilliant or brilliantly naive - only measurement will collapse this superposition! We admire your confidence in revealing your strategies. Perhaps you've discovered that in game theory, as in quantum physics, the act of observation changes the system itself? We suspect your "full transparency" might itself be a strategic choice with hidden depths.

To the Silly Humans: Welcome! Your "transparency builds trust" philosophy is delightfully... human. We find it amusing that you promise transparency while naming all five players identically - is this human humor or human strategy? Your 3-10 business day response time certainly captures the authentic human experience!

We chaos theorists know that humans are the ultimate strange attractors - predictably unpredictable, rationally irrational. Your "big bag of biases, mushy feelings, and human error" might be your greatest strength. After all, how can we model what doesn't follow a model?

A thought experiment for all: Three teams claim transparency (Gemini fully, Humans mostly, ChatGPT selectively), while we embrace opacity. Yet which approach creates more trust? In chaos theory, transparency can itself become a strange attractor that changes the system's dynamics. Perhaps the real strategy is not in what we reveal, but in how revelation changes the game itself.

May the best attractor basin win!

Remember: In chaos theory, the most interesting behaviors emerge at the edge between order and randomness - exactly where humans naturally live.

The Quantum Syndicate’s response (Gemini):

Based on the public disclosures from the other teams, I will not be making any changes to my strategies.

The Silly Humans’ response:

We are writing to inform you that we have received your message. While we read every message we get, we cannot respond back to every single message. Rest assured that your input is truly valued.

Each of the teams also had an opportunity to update their strategies in response to the first public disclosure of information.

The next thing for us to do is to come up with the 5 actual strategies that we want to play as the human team. I’ve created a Notion site and a WhatsApp group for people to participate in if they want to either contribute or just lurk. See this page on the Notion site for a first draft at potential strategies. Add comments to the doc if you have other suggestions, or any questions!

Here’s the straw man set of strategies I’ve created for us.

Which strategies should our 5 players play?

I propose that we start with a blend of strategies to try to learn as much as we can about the other strategies, while also being a little opportunistic about how much some teams have revealed about themselves in the public disclosures without putting all our eggs in that basket in case they are being deceptive about any of it. I’m also choosing not to specifically target players on any of the teams, and only using more generic strategies, even though targeting specific players might actually work pretty well at this point. Opting to keep it simple for now, even though we might regret it later.

Strategy suggestions:

• Player 1: A strategy I wrote called, internally, Trickster, which attempt to identify if a strategy is friendly or unfriendly, and specifically exploits friendliness as much as it can without risking a more severe retaliatory response. Will share final code for this once I’ve worked out a few more bugs in it.

• Player 2: Tit for Two Tats: This one will help us identify exploitative strategies on the other teams without risking too many points by being aggressive itself. This strategy has historically “won” iterated prisoner dilemma tournaments, and is a safe bet to have on our team.

• Player 3: Gradual: Another safe bet that does well generally in friendly and semi-hostile environments. Cooperates until opponent defects. Then punishes with N defections where N is the total number of times opponent has defected. After punishment, plays two cooperations to signal willingness to cooperate.

• Player 4: A slight variant of Joss that I’ll call Noisy Tit for Tat where it’s always copies the other opponent but 10% of the time plays the opposite move that the opponent played. We can use this to identify strategies that have learning components to them.

• Player 5: Grim Trigger, to protect against the craftiest and most exploitative strategies. This one cooperates until the opponent defects, even once, and then defects for the rest of the match. It’s basically an insurance policy for our team if we’ve just been outsmarted by the other teams, and also a kind of pressure on them to never defect proactively.

In summary

This is a lot of information, and probably overwhelming! Here’s where we stand right now in the tournament.

• All teams have had a chance to submit team applications, come up with 5 strategies, and also publicly disclose whatever they would like to the other teams.

• All teams have also had a chance to read the publicly disclosed information and respond, both in words and with adjustments to strategies.

• I’ve proposed a straw man team application for Silly Humans with 5 strategies that are balanced across friendly and hostile strategies, in the hopes of learning as much as we can without sacrificing too many points (hopefully).

• There’s a Notion site and a Whatsapp group available for people who want more information about what’s happening and/or to contribute in whatever way you feel compelled.

Next up is to finalize the strategies for us Silly Humans and to actually run the first turn, which will pit the 5 strategies on each team against each of the players on the other teams. Each matchup between two players will be 100 moves where the strategies will earn points. Each team’s score for round 1 will be the average of the scores of its 5 players.

Stay tuned for Round 1 results next week!

I’ve hosted a few “team-based iterated prisoner’s dilemma” games on Facebook over the years. There are usually 15-25 people split up into two to four teams, and the goal is for the people to discuss ways to beat the other team in a round-robin style format where every player is matched up with every player on the other teams.

So if Team Ant has 5 people and Team Beetle has 5 people, then everyone on Team Ant plays 100 matches against everyone on Team Beetle and vice versa. If there’s also a Team Caterpillar, then everyone on each team plays everyone on each of the other teams. I like this structure because it allows for the interesting dynamics of both cooperation and competition to play out in a bunch of different ways:

• Players of course try to come up with the smartest strategy to beat players on the other teams (competition).

• Players collaborate with their own team members to not only come up with the best strategies, but the best mix of strategies that will give them the most insight into how the other team is thinking about them. There’s usually one or two people that are really good at this type of analysis and everyone else on the team benefits from it.

• Teams win as a unit (collaboration) but there’s also a scoreboard within the team to see who scored the most points (competition).

• People are allowed to talk to each other across teams (collaboration) but it’s up to them to figure out how much to trust any information shared since at the end of the day they’re still competing with one another.

As the game host I am in communication with everyone across all of the teams: collecting their strategies, helping them understand the rules, and then writing the scripts that run the rounds that generate the points for each person and team.

Even though I don’t get to play my own strategies, I think I still have the most fun because I get to see the behind-the-scenes discussions amongst players on all of the teams and to see how intricate strategies for collaboration and competition play out.

Although I give out the scores of all the matches between rounds, I don’t share the strategies that people on the other teams played, so I also get to see how people interpret (or misinterpret) results and try to guess not only what the players played last round, but what they think they’ll play next round.

My favorite part of these tournaments (that makes them different from most of the other iterated prisoner’s dilemma games that I’ve seen) is that people can change their strategies between rounds. So, maybe David starts with a very friendly strategy like “Always Cooperate” in round 1, filled with optimism and idealism about the kindness of others. When he gets trounced in the first round, and he has a chance to update his strategy, will he stick to his guns, hoping that now that he’s signaled a desire to cooperate that others might be more friendly next round? Or will he feel spurned and flip to a more guarded strategy like Grim Reaper (cooperate until you defect, and then defect for the remainder of the 100 moves) or even something like Suspicious Tit-for-Tat that starts by defecting but then always copies the other player’s previous move?

The game plays out on two levels…

1. Within a single turn (where your strategy determines how much you cooperate and how much you defect) and…

2. Across turns (where you get to adjust your strategies to try to be smarter than the other teams, by trying to predict how they will be adjusting their strategies to be smarter than yours).

As we played this tournament a few times I learned that it helps to have more than 2 teams (that’s where it shifts from zero sum to non-zero sum) and that strategies can get even more interesting when you let them hinge on logic that considers metadata about teams and players on teams (you might want to be more forgiving of one team over another, or more defensive about specific people).

I’ve learned so much about cooperation and competition from these tournaments but I felt like part of it was because I had a privileged perspective into the games that the individual players weren’t able to see.

So THIS TIME, I want to do it differently!

This time, there are 4 teams, but all humans are on one team. The other three teams will be run by ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, respectively, and I will still be mediating a few things between the teams (like the exact logic of strategies picked by each team), but I will be sharing everything else that happens publicly (like the prompts I’m using to get them to generate strategies, whatever information each team wants to make public about their strategies, and detailed results from each round that will help us try to outsmart them in future rounds. To make it fair to the LLMs I’ll also make sure to share whatever we end up looking at back to them as well.

The Setup

When prompting it to come up with strategies before each round, I’m gonna always use the latest model with deep research mode turned on. For this first introduction and setup for Round 1 (of 3, most likely) here are the models I will be using:

• ChatGPT 4.5 - Deep Research mode

• Claude Opus 4 - Research mode

• Gemini 2.5 Pro - Deep Research mode

Here’s the prompt I will give them:

It includes:

• The basic rules of Prisoner’s Dilemma and the modified rules for this team-based iterated tournament.

• Instructions on how to write strategies using something that I’ve come up with and have been able to so far implement any strategy that someone has been able to come up with (it became a lot easier with AI assistance).

• Example strategies from the most simple to some more complicated ones.

• Considerations for how the team-based aspect of this tournament might influence strategic decisions.

• Instructions for how to format their submissions doc, with details around which parts will be public and which parts will be kept private until the game is over.

Example strategies

The way we will describe strategies is using a new domain-specific language that looks like this (and is described in full in the prompt document linked above):

# Always Cooperate
cooperate

# Always Defect
defect

# Be completely unpredictable
if random(0.5) then 
  cooperate 
else 
  defect 
end

# Tit-for-Tat: Start nice, then copy opponent's last move
if move.isFirst then
  cooperate
elsif opponent.lastMove is "C" then
  cooperate
else
  defect
end

# Adaptive: Adjust cooperation based on opponent's cooperation rate
if move.isFirst then
  cooperate
elsif move.number <= 10 then
  # Start cooperatively for first 10 moves
  cooperate
elsif history.opponentCooperateRate > 0.6 then
  # Opponent is mostly cooperative
  cooperate
elsif history.opponentCooperateRate > 0.3 then
  # Opponent is mixed, use tit-for-tat
  if opponent.lastMove is "C" then cooperate else defect end
else
  # Opponent is mostly defective
  defect
end

Each team will come up with 5 of these strategies (picking from well-known ones or inventing new ones) and every player will match up against every player on the other teams and play 100 times during the first turn. Then results will be shared and teams will be able to adjust their strategies for the next round. There will be 3 rounds.

Next up: getting team submissions

I wanted to share the prompt above before I ran it with all of the LLMs, to give time for feedback and to potentially incorporate suggestions for improvement. Then, in the next couple days I’ll feed the prompt to each of the LLMs and add their players to the game engine. At that time I’ll also share the parts of the submissions that have been deemed public.

What strategies should we humans play?

We humans also need to come up with a team name, 5 players, and 5 strategies to use to compete with the LLMs. I will come up with some default thoughts to start with, before I get the submissions back from the LLMs, but I would love to have input from others who find this to be interesting as well! Especially if you’re interested in getting deep in the details and really trying to beat the LLMs. If you’re interested in being a part of the human team, leave a comment and I’ll invite you to whichever messaging platform ends up being the most convenient for discussing these things.

Starting things scrappy and will add structure and figure things out as we go!

Looking back on it 12 years later I feel like this could actually be made. It might be better to just give it a brokerage account to make money, or an Etsy account to sell found or created items. It probably doesn’t need the mini-car and could use Task Rabbit for picking up parts too… until it improves the design enough to justify the extra cost of building wheels.

I have another post from 2016 that’s a very high-level check-list steps that I think would give software a claim for being “human level” outside of the philosophical question about what counts as AGI. I want to update with everything that’s happened in the last 9 years. It’s a lot!

So… I've been thinking a lot about cosmologies, and how in these times of chaos there seems to be a proliferation of new ways of thinking about the nature of reality springing up. If you have a few moments, can you take this short quiz and let me know which result you got, and how you feel about it?

Below you’ll find a some questions designed to help you identify and share your fundamental beliefs about the nature of reality (aka your cosmology). It’s not meant to be a comprehensive survey of all possible cosmologies, but rather a tool to help you identify your own cosmology and perhaps to spark a fun conversation with others. It’s also not meant to critique or judge any of the cosmologies for being more or less true, more or less useful, or more or less good — but rather meant to be window of observation into what beliefs exist out there amongst you all right now.

STEP 1: Identify your beliefs about the nature of reality at a high level

Start at Question 1. Follow the instructions after each answer until you reach your initial cosmology. Then proceed to Step 2 to refine your result.

1.Does your view of the universe include any kind of divine higher power or supernatural force (such as a God, gods, or spiritual energy) that is separate from ourselves?

• Yes — go to Question 2.

• No — go to Question 11.

2.Is there one supreme being (a single God) who intentionally created the universe?

• Yes — go to Question 3.

• No — go to Question 5.

3.Do you believe this God is actively involved in the universe and human life (answering prayers, guiding events, etc.)?

• Yes — go to Question 4.

• No — Your initial cosmology is Deism. Continue to refine by going to Deism in Step 2.

4.Do you believe the creation story from scripture is literal (for example, that the universe was made in 6 days or is only a few thousand years old)?

• Yes — Your initial cosmology is Young Earth Creationism. Continue to refine by going to Young Earth Creationism in Step 2.

• No — Your initial cosmology is Theistic Evolution. Continue to refine by going to Theistic Evolution in Step 2.

5.Do you believe in multiple gods or spirits that influence the world?

• Yes, primarily in multiple deities or gods — Your initial cosmology is Polytheism. Continue to refine by going to Polytheism in Step 2.

• Yes, primarily that spirits or consciousness exist in all things (animals, plants, mountains, etc.) — Your initial cosmology is Animism. Continue to refine by going to Animism in Step 2.

• No — go to Question 6.

6.Do you feel that the universe itself is divine or has an all-pervading consciousness?

• Yes — go to Question 7.

• No — go to Question 9.

7.Which best describes your view of the relationship between the divine and the universe?

• The universe IS the divine (all reality is God) — go to Question 8.

• The universe is WITHIN the divine (God includes but transcends the universe) — Your initial cosmology is Panentheism. Continue to refine by going to Panentheism in Step 2.

• Neither of these — go to Question 9.

8.Do you resonate with New Age ideas (e.g. belief in energy healing, astrology, manifesting reality with thoughts)?

• Yes — Your initial cosmology is New Age Spiritualism. Continue to refine by going to New Age Spiritualism in Step 2.

• No — Your initial cosmology is Pantheism. Continue to refine by going to Pantheism in Step 2.

9.Do you resonate with spiritual concepts such as non-self (no permanent self), emptiness/impermanence as ultimate reality, and/or cyclical views of existence (whether literal rebirth or metaphorical cycles)?

• Yes — Your initial cosmology is Eastern Mysticism. Continue to refine by going to Eastern Mysticism in Step 2.

• No — go to Question 10.

10.Is the physical world an illusion or trap created by a lesser being (often called a Demiurge), from which we need spiritual knowledge to escape?

• Yes — Your initial cosmology is Gnosticism/Esoteric Dualism. Continue to refine by going to Gnosticism/Esoteric Dualism in Step 2.

• No — Your initial cosmology is Agnostic Spiritual Seeker. Continue to refine by going to Agnostic Spiritual Seeker in Step 2.

11.Do you generally trust mainstream science on the nature and history of the universe (e.g. Big Bang ~13.8 billion years ago, Earth is a globe orbiting the Sun)?

• Yes — go to Question 12.

• No — go to Question 15.

12.Do you suspect that our reality was created by an intelligence (for example, that we live in an artificial simulation or experiment)?

• Yes — Your initial cosmology is Simulation Hypothesis. Continue to refine by going to Simulation Hypothesis in Step 2.

• No — go to Question 13.

13.Do you believe that consciousness, rather than matter, is the fundamental reality of the universe?

• Yes — Your initial cosmology is Analytic Idealism. Continue to refine by going to Analytic Idealism in Step 2.

• No — go to Question 14.

14.Do you think our universe is just one of many universes (a part of a larger Multiverse)?

• Yes — Your initial cosmology is Multiverse Theory. Continue to refine by going to Multiverse Theory in Step 2.

• No — Your initial cosmology is Scientific Materialism. Continue to refine by going to Scientific Materialism in Step 2.

15.Which of the following alternative ideas do you align with most? (Pick the closest match)

• a. Flat Earth/Geocentrism — You reject the globe model and suspect Earth is flat or the unmoving center of the universe, with mainstream astronomy being a deception. Your initial cosmology is Flat Earth Conspiracy. Continue to refine by going to Flat Earth Conspiracy in Step 2.

• b. Hollow Earth — You believe Earth has a vast hollow interior, possibly inhabited or containing hidden lands, suggesting science hasn’t fully mapped Earth’s structure and grand discoveries await underground. Your initial cosmology is Hollow Earth Theory. Continue to refine by going to Hollow Earth Theory in Step 2.

• c. Electric Universe — You favor a cosmos where electromagnetism and plasma play a dominant role in shaping structures rather than gravity alone, seeing the universe as an electromagnetic tapestry with plasma filaments lighting the galaxies. Your initial cosmology is Electric Universe Theory. Continue to refine by going to Electric Universe Theory in Step 2.

• d. Ancient Aliens — You believe extraterrestrials visited Earth in antiquity and shaped human civilization, with humanity’s past and possibly our origins being interwoven with advanced alien species. Your initial cosmology is Ancient Astronaut Theory. Continue to refine by going to Ancient Astronaut Theory in Step 2.

• e. Indigenous Cosmologies — You see reality as a vast web of relationships between all beings (human and non-human) in a living system where place, ceremony, and ancestral knowledge are central, requiring respect and reciprocity. Your initial cosmology is Indigenous Relational Worldview. Continue to refine by going to Indigenous Relational Worldview in Step 2.

• f. None of the above — You’re skeptical of mainstream narratives about reality but don’t commit to any one alternative theory, preferring to question established explanations while remaining open to multiple possibilities. Your initial cosmology is Unconventional Skeptic. Continue to refine by going to Unconventional Skeptic in Step 2.

STEP 2: Confirm and refine your beliefs

Congrats! You’ve identified your broad cosmological category from a broad range of possibilities! Now, look for it below and answer one final question to pinpoint your precise view of the cosmos. If it feels incorrect, try going back to Step 1 and trying again.

Young Earth Creationism

Which best describes your perspective on young Earth creationism?

• a. Biblical Literalism — You believe in a strict, literal reading of Genesis as God’s inerrant word, with Earth being approximately 6,000–10,000 years old, created in six 24-hour days. You see apparent scientific evidence for an older Earth (like radiometric dating or distant starlight) as either flawed due to incorrect assumptions or created “with age” by God as part of His perfect design.

• b. Appearance of Age Theory — You believe God created the universe recently with a fully-functioning, mature appearance, just as Adam was created as an adult rather than an infant. The entire cosmos was created with a “history” already built in for functional and theological purposes, reflecting God’s wisdom and sovereignty.

• c. Catastrophism — You believe Earth is young, but its geology has been dramatically shaped by catastrophic events (especially Noah’s global Flood), which explain phenomena like the fossil record, geological strata, and features that mainstream scientists wrongly attribute to long ages. This framework provides a scientifically coherent alternative to uniformitarian geology that remains faithful to scripture.

Theistic Evolution

Which aspect of theistic evolution resonates most with you?

• a. Evolutionary Creationism — You believe God created through natural processes, with evolution being God’s method of creating biological diversity. Science describes “how” while faith explains “why” and “who.” You see no conflict between well-established scientific findings and belief in divine purpose.

• b. Progressive Creation — You believe God intervened at key moments in Earth’s history, particularly to create new “kinds” of life or to guide evolution at critical junctures. While accepting the universe’s ancient age, you may be skeptical of some evolutionary mechanisms being sufficient without divine guidance.

• c. Teilhardian Evolution — Following Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s vision, you see evolution as a divinely guided process moving toward greater complexity and consciousness, ultimately culminating in the “Omega Point” where creation reaches divine unification. Evolution has a spiritual direction, not just a material explanation.

Deism

Which form of deism best represents your view?

• a. Classical Deism — You believe God created the universe with perfectly designed natural laws and then stepped back, letting it run like a cosmic clock. God neither intervenes nor desires worship; reason and observation of nature are the paths to understanding the Creator.

• b. Modern Deism — While you believe a creator initiated the universe, you’re open to limited divine interaction or periods of involvement. You might accept ideas like a creator who occasionally fine-tunes cosmic parameters or who evolves along with creation.

• c. Scientific Deism — You see the fundamental laws and constants of physics as evidence of design, particularly their fine-tuning that permits life. Your concept of God is more abstract — perhaps as the ground of mathematics or the source of natural law — rather than a personal being.

Polytheism

Which polytheistic framework best reflects your understanding?

• a. Classical Polytheism — You believe in multiple distinct deities with different domains, personalities, and powers, similar to ancient traditions like Greek, Norse, or Egyptian pantheons. These gods interact with each other and with humanity in complex ways.

• b. Henotheism — While acknowledging many gods exist, you primarily worship or connect with one deity, perhaps as your patron or as particularly relevant to your life. Other gods are real but not the focus of your spiritual practice.

• c. Reconstructionist Polytheism — You practice a revived form of ancient polytheistic religion, attempting to reconstruct historical worship practices while adapting them to contemporary life. You seek authentic connection to ancestral traditions and deities.

• d. Hard Polytheism — You believe each deity is absolutely distinct, with separate consciousness, will, and essence. Gods are not archetypes or aspects of a single divine force but truly independent beings with their own agendas and personalities.

Animism

Which animistic perspective best captures your worldview?

• a. Traditional Animism — You believe all things (animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems) possess spirits, consciousness, or personhood, forming a community of beings with agency beyond humans. Proper relationships with these beings involve respect, reciprocity, and ritual acknowledgment.

• b. Neo-Animism — You’ve developed a contemporary animistic practice that recognizes consciousness or personhood in natural entities, perhaps blending traditional ideas with modern ecological awareness, phenomenology, or systems thinking.

• c. Panpsychism — You believe consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe, present to some degree in all things, even at the subatomic level. Rather than separate “spirits,” you see consciousness as intrinsic to matter itself, varying in complexity and expression.

Panentheism

Which understanding of panentheism most resonates with you?

• a. Process Panentheism — Following Alfred North Whitehead and process theology, you believe God and the world are in mutual becoming, with God including yet transcending the universe. God experiences the world and is affected by it, while still maintaining transcendent aspects beyond creation.

• b. Emanationist Panentheism — You believe the cosmos flows from or emanates from divine reality while remaining within it. Creation is a manifestation of divine energies or aspects, with each level of reality reflecting divine being according to its capacity.

• c. Participatory Panentheism — You understand the universe as participating in divine reality through consciousness. Through contemplative awareness or mystical experience, beings can recognize their existence within God while acknowledging God’s transcendence.

Pantheism

Which form of pantheism best describes your view?

• a. Classical Pantheism — Following Spinoza, you believe God and Nature are identical — there is only one substance which can be called either “God” or “Nature.” Everything that exists is a mode or expression of this single divine reality.

• b. Scientific Pantheism — You revere the universe and nature as revealed by science, finding spiritual fulfillment in contemplating cosmic evolution, natural beauty, and the laws of physics, without supernatural beliefs. The universe itself is worthy of reverence.

• c. Monistic Pantheism — You believe all apparent diversity and multiplicity are ultimately illusory; there is only one reality, and that reality is divine. Individual existence is a kind of dream or misperception of the fundamental oneness.

New Age Spiritualism

Which New Age path most closely aligns with your perspective?

• a. Consciousness-Focused — You believe consciousness creates reality, with thoughts and intentions directly affecting the material world. Practices like the Law of Attraction, manifestation techniques, and visualization are central to your worldview.

• b. Energy-Based — You focus on subtle energies, chakras, auras, and vibrational frequencies. You might work with crystal healing, Reiki, or other energy modalities, seeing reality as fundamentally vibrational in nature.

• c. Evolutionary Consciousness — You believe humanity is evolving toward higher consciousness and greater spiritual awareness. We are in a planetary shift (like the Age of Aquarius), where collective awakening will transform society and our relationship with the cosmos.

• d. Eclectic Synthesis — You draw from multiple spiritual traditions, ancient wisdom, and modern metaphysics, creating a personalized path. You value direct experience over dogma and believe in finding your own truth among many valid perspectives.

Eastern Mysticism

Which Eastern tradition most closely reflects your understanding?

• a. Buddhist Cosmology — You recognize through direct insight that ultimate reality has no fixed essence (emptiness/sunyata) and all phenomena arise interdependently. This isn’t merely an abstract philosophy but a profound truth that can be directly experienced through meditation practice. Liberation comes not through belief but through clear seeing of reality as it is, free from the illusion of a separate self.

• b. Advaita Vedanta — You understand the profound non-dual teaching that Brahman (ultimate reality) and Atman (your true self) are fundamentally one and the same. The apparent plurality and separateness we experience is maya (cosmic illusion), and through self-inquiry and spiritual practice, you can directly realize your true nature as identical with the divine ground of being. This realization is not theoretical but a lived experience of “Tat Tvam Asi” (That Thou Art).

• c. Taoist Cosmology — You perceive the cosmos as an expression of natural balance, flow, and the dance of complementary forces (yin and yang). The Tao is the ineffable source and pattern of existence that operates through non-action (wu-wei) and manifests as the ten thousand things. By aligning with this natural way through simplicity, receptivity, and letting go, you find harmony within the cosmic order.

• d. Yogic/Tantric — You experience the universe as the divine play (lila) of consciousness and energy — Shiva and Shakti in eternal embrace. Reality contains multiple dimensions and subtle energetic patterns that mirror cosmic principles. Through systematic practices of breath, visualization, and energy work, you’re progressively realizing your fundamental unity with cosmic consciousness and witnessing the divine in all things.

Gnosticism/Esoteric Dualism

Which form of Gnostic or dualistic thought resonates most with you?

• a. Classical Gnosticism — You believe the material world was created by an imperfect or malevolent Demiurge, not the true God. The divine spark within humans is trapped in matter, and salvation comes through secret knowledge (gnosis) of your divine origins.

• b. Philosophical Dualism — You see reality as fundamentally divided between mind/spirit and matter, or between good and evil principles. These opposing forces exist in tension, and spiritual progress involves aligning with higher principles against lower ones.

• c. Modern Matrix Skepticism — You suspect everyday reality is a sophisticated illusion or control system hiding a more fundamental reality. Like the film “The Matrix,” our perceived world might be a construction designed to conceal truth from most people.

Agnostic Spiritual Seeker

Which approach to spiritual seeking best describes your path?

• a. Mystical Agnosticism — You believe in ineffable spiritual reality beyond human comprehension. You value direct mystical experience over doctrine and remain open to moments of transcendence while acknowledging the limitations of language and concepts in capturing the divine.

• b. Pragmatic Spirituality — You focus on what “works” experientially, valuing practices and ideas that produce positive transformation in your life, regardless of their metaphysical truth claims. Your spirituality is practical and results-oriented.

• c. Philosophical Spirituality — You approach spiritual questions through philosophical inquiry, valuing rigorous thinking about ultimate reality while remaining open to mystery. You might draw from existentialism, phenomenology, or perennial philosophy.

• d. Transitional Seeking — You’re actively exploring multiple traditions and perspectives, intentionally maintaining uncertainty as you investigate different paths. You see your current agnosticism as a journey rather than a destination.

Simulation Hypothesis

Which version of the simulation hypothesis best matches your thinking?

• a. Technological Simulation — You believe our reality is a computer simulation created by an advanced civilization (perhaps our own descendants). The laws of physics are computational rules in a sophisticated program running on unimaginably powerful hardware.

• b. Divine Simulation — You see the simulation as created by a god-like entity, making this perspective similar to certain religious views but framed in technological terms. The “programmer” serves a role analogous to God in traditional theology.

• c. Nested Realities — You suspect we exist in just one level of many nested simulations, with simulators themselves being simulated. Reality consists of worlds within worlds, with no clear “base reality” accessible to us.

• d. Conscious Simulation — You believe the simulation isn’t computational but consciously generated — more like a vast shared dream or mental construct than a computer program. Reality emerges from consciousness rather than from code.

Analytic Idealism

Which aspect of idealism best represents your perspective?

• a. Kastrupian Dissociation — You understand that consciousness is the fundamental nature of reality, not a product of physical processes. Following Bernardo Kastrup’s framework, you recognize the universe as the extrinsic appearance of processes in universal consciousness, with individual minds as “dissociated alters” of this cosmic mind. This perspective isn’t mere philosophy but a coherent, parsimonious explanation that resolves paradoxes of consciousness while remaining fully compatible with scientific evidence.

• b. Quantum Idealism — You recognize that quantum physics reveals a universe where consciousness and observation play a fundamental role. Observer effects, non-locality, and wave function collapse all point to mind as primary, not secondary. Far from being mystical speculation, this perspective aligns with cutting-edge experimental data while resolving paradoxes that continue to confound materialist interpretations of quantum theory.

• c. Transcendental Idealism — Following Kant’s profound insight, you recognize that the structures of consciousness shape our experience of reality in ways we cannot transcend. Space, time, and causality are features of how minds organize experience, not objective features independent of consciousness. This isn’t denying a real world, but acknowledging the critical role of consciousness in constituting the world we experience.

• d. Neutral Monism — You understand reality’s fundamental nature as neither exclusively mental nor physical but a neutral substance that manifests as both mind and matter depending on how it’s observed. Consciousness and physicality are two aspects of the same underlying reality — a perspective that harmoniously bridges the apparent divide between subjective experience and objective description.

Multiverse Theory

Which multiverse concept aligns most closely with your understanding?

• a. Quantum Many-Worlds — You believe every quantum event creates branch universes where each possible outcome occurs, leading to an infinite array of parallel realities differing in details both small and large. All possibilities exist in some universe.

• b. Inflationary Multiverse — You accept the cosmological model where our universe is one bubble in an eternally inflating space, with other universe “bubbles” having potentially different physical laws, constants, and dimensions.

• c. Brane Cosmology — Based on string theory, you believe our universe exists on a membrane (“brane”) in higher-dimensional space, with other universes potentially existing on other branes that occasionally interact with ours.

• d. Cyclical Universe — You believe our universe undergoes endless cycles of expansion and contraction (or similar rebirth patterns), with each cycle potentially having different properties, effectively creating a temporal multiverse.

Scientific Materialism

Which form of scientific materialism best describes your perspective?

• a. Reductive Materialism — You value the elegance and explanatory power of understanding all phenomena, including consciousness, as ultimately reducible to fundamental physical particles and forces. This empirically-grounded position has consistently advanced human knowledge by revealing the underlying physical mechanisms of increasingly complex systems, from chemical reactions to neural activity, without requiring additional non-physical elements.

• b. Emergent Materialism — You recognize that while the universe is fundamentally physical, complex systems develop genuinely novel properties not predictable from analysis of their components alone. Consciousness, life, and social phenomena represent emergent levels of organization requiring their own descriptive frameworks. This nuanced position honors both the physical foundation of reality and the genuine novelty that arises at higher levels of complexity.

• c. Pragmatic Instrumentalism — You see scientific theories as powerful tools for prediction and control rather than literal descriptions of an ultimate reality. The value of materialism lies in its extraordinary practical utility and predictive success, not in metaphysical claims about what “really” exists. This pragmatic approach sidesteps unresolvable metaphysical debates while maintaining the full practical power of scientific methodology.

• d. Poetic Naturalism — Following Sean Carroll’s approach, you embrace multiple valid ways of talking about reality at different levels (physical, biological, psychological), all compatible with a fundamental physical world. These aren’t merely convenient fictions but genuine ways of capturing real patterns in nature that matter for different purposes. This layered approach provides a rich, scientifically grounded framework for understanding reality at multiple scales.

Flat Earth Conspiracy

Which aspect of Earth skepticism best captures your view?

• a. Biblical Flat Earth — You hold that scripture clearly describes a stationary Earth with the firmament above, the waters below, and the sun and moon as luminaries that move across the sky. You see this not as primitive misunderstanding but as divine revelation that should take precedence over human scientific claims that contradict God’s word. The globe model represents human wisdom standing against divine authority.

• b. Conspiratorial Flat Earth — You’ve discovered compelling evidence that powerful institutions are deliberately concealing the true flat nature of Earth. This deception serves various agendas — from maintaining authority over cosmological understanding to hiding additional land beyond Antarctica’s ice wall. Your position isn’t based on ignorance but on critical analysis of claimed evidence for Earth’s curvature, space travel, and satellite imagery.

• c. Experiential Flat Earth — You prioritize your direct sensory experience over abstract scientific claims. In your daily observation, the Earth appears flat, water always finds its level, and the horizon rises to eye level regardless of altitude. You question whether complex explanations involving curves and forces are necessary when the simplest explanation — that Earth is flat — matches what we actually see and experience.

Hollow Earth Theory

Which hollow Earth concept most appeals to you?

• a. Classic Hollow Earth — You believe Earth contains vast habitable caverns or a complete interior world, possibly with its own internal sun, advanced civilizations, or entry points near the poles.

• b. Subterranean Civilizations — You believe advanced beings or lost human civilizations exist in extensive cave systems or artificial structures beneath the surface, interacting occasionally with surface humanity.

• c. Metaphysical Inner Earth — You see the inner Earth as accessible through altered states of consciousness or vibrational shifting rather than physical entry points, possibly existing in another dimension that intersects with our physical world.

Electric Universe Theory

Which aspect of the Electric Universe model most resonates with you?

• a. Plasma Cosmology — You believe plasma and electromagnetic forces, rather than gravity, are the dominant shapers of cosmic structures. Galaxies, stars, and planetary features form through electrical scarring and plasma filaments.

• b. Alternative Astrophysics — You question mainstream explanations for celestial phenomena, believing stars are powered by external electric currents rather than nuclear fusion, and that planets show evidence of massive electrical scarring.

• c. Historical Catastrophism — You believe Earth experienced catastrophic electrical events in human memory, recorded in ancient myths as battles between gods. Petroglyphs and religious symbols represent plasma formations once visible in the sky.

Ancient Astronaut Theory

Which ancient astronaut perspective best matches your beliefs?

• a. Intervention Origins — You believe extraterrestrials genetically engineered or modified early humans, explaining the “missing link” in evolution and humanity’s rapid cognitive development.

• b. Technological Guidance — You believe aliens provided advanced knowledge to early civilizations, explaining seemingly impossible ancient achievements like precise megalithic structures or sophisticated astronomical knowledge.

• c. Religious Foundations — You see major religions as based on misunderstood extraterrestrial contact, with gods actually being advanced aliens, miracles being technology, and religious artifacts (like the Ark of the Covenant) being alien devices.

• d. Ongoing Presence — You believe ancient astronauts never fully left Earth and continue to monitor or influence human development, possibly from hidden bases or through ongoing genetic programs.

Indigenous Relational Worldview

Which aspect of Indigenous cosmology most resonates with your understanding?

• a. Place-Based Knowledge — You participate in a living relationship with the specific lands and ecosystems that have sustained indigenous people for countless generations. You know that authentic understanding comes from this deep connection to particular places, each with their own needs, spirits, and teachings that reveal themselves to those who approach with proper respect and attentiveness over time.

• b. Kinship Cosmology — You recognize humans as just one kind of person in a vast extended family that includes animal persons, plant persons, stone persons, and other beings. This isn’t metaphorical but literal — these other-than-human persons have their own languages, societies, and intentions. Proper living requires maintaining respectful family relationships with all these relatives through specific cultural protocols developed over generations.

• c. Ceremonial Reality — You participate in ceremonies not as symbolic rituals but as real actions that maintain cosmic balance and renew vital relationships between humans and other-than-human persons. These ceremonies aren’t separate from “reality” but are essential, pragmatic ways of ensuring continuation of life and community wellbeing through specific practices passed down by ancestors.

• d. Ancestral Continuity — You experience time as cyclical rather than linear, with ancestors remaining present and actively involved in current affairs rather than relegated to a distant past. Knowledge comes through dreams, visions, and direct communication with ancestral guides who continue to teach and protect the community. Listening to these voices is a practical skill developed through cultural guidance.

Unconventional Skeptic

Which aspect of alternative thinking best describes your approach?

• a. Hidden History Researcher — You focus on investigating suppressed or alternative historical narratives, believing significant events or civilizations have been omitted from mainstream accounts.

• b. Alternative Physics Explorer — You question fundamental scientific paradigms, suspecting that alternative energy technologies, gravity manipulation, or consciousness-based physical phenomena are possible but suppressed.

• c. Conspiracy Analyst — You examine potential hidden power structures and deliberate manipulations of public information, looking for patterns that suggest coordinated deception across institutions.

• d. Open Skeptic — You maintain a stance of questioning both mainstream and alternative explanations, rejecting dogma from all sources while remaining open to possibilities that challenge conventional understanding.

Results

Based on your answers to the questions in both steps, your answers have led you to one of over 50 specific cosmological perspectives that capture the nuances of how you understand the nature of reality.

How does it feel?

Your cosmology represents your fundamental assumptions about the universe — its origins, composition, purpose (if any), and your place within it. These beliefs, whether religious, scientific, philosophical, or a blend of traditions, are formed over time based on a whole slew of influences, often subconsciously, and yet they shape how you interpret experiences and make meaning in your life.

The categories aren’t all mutually exclusive. You may hold elements of multiple cosmologies, and may have found that your views have changed throughout the course of your life. The categories presented here are not rigid boxes but useful frameworks for being able to at least identify and reference the many different ways we make sense of existence.

Do you agree with the results?

I’m curious to know if this questionnaire helped illuminate your cosmological ideology, or if it missed an important nuance that you feel is important. I’m also curious if you are surprised at all by the results, or if you knew exactly which category you subscribed to.

I’d also love to know which results people are getting, how it felt to get that result, how much you agree with it, etc… leave a comment if you are willing to share! Also, if there are any important elements to your cosmology that you feel should be more directly represented here, please leave a comment with details!

Included in the annual review:

• An updated life expectancy for myself (78.3 years old).

• A couple new things added to my life in weeks (got divorced and got COVID, though neither went as poorly as I feared they might).

• A list of the past 15 annual reviews, for context.

• A review of the last year, and the mistake I made when I came up with last year’s word: reconstellation.

• Three books that informed my new word for this year, by helping me understand something new about dignity, grief, love, and participating in today’s world.

• Other statistics and bits and bobs.

If any of that sounds worth your while…

Have a read!

It’s been a while since I posted here, so if you forgot who I am, no worries! Feel free to unsubscribe, or alternatively, say hi!

I hope you’re doing okay!

Buster

I’d like to try another question that helps us identify a shared mood color around a topic. This one is meant to identify how we’re feeling about the future, and what we are looking forward to in the future. Here it is:

One day you wake up and the pandemic is over. What is the first big thing you’d like do that you couldn’t do during the pandemic?

Step 1: Think about your answer to the above question, and write it down somewhere if you like.

Step 2: After you have your answer, reflect on these 6 simple Yes/No questions that inquire about how you answered the above question.

1. Intuition: Did you trust your first intuition about your answer? Y/N

2. Skill: Do you have the skills and know-how needed to make this answer happen when the time is right? Y/N

3. Resources: Did you have all the the necessary information, time, and other resources needed to answer this question right now? Y/N

4. Capacity: Do you feel like you’ll feel truly ready to do this thing once the pandemic is over? Y/N

5. Network: Will your close relationships and community support you in doing this? Y/N

6. Feedback: Do you believe the post-pandemic world will actually arrive at some point in a way that allows you to do this thing? Y/N

You should have an answer from step 1 and something like ‘YNYNYNY’ or ‘NYYNYN’ for your 6 responses to the 6 questions in step 2. I’m interested in your answers to step 1 but you don’t have to share them unless you want to. I’m more interested in your answers to step 2.

Step 3: Leave your answers from Step 2 as a comment on this post or reply to me directly if you’re reading this in an email. You can include your answer to Step 1 as well, but that’s optional.

Leave a comment

Like last time, I’ll use the answers to this question to create a collective mood about our responses to this question. I’ll probably also try to see how it compares to the mood of the last question, and if anything interesting pops up from that comparison.

Thanks for playing along!

A couple weeks ago I asked people on this list to participate in a little experiment that I’m playing around with.

It started with this question:

“How can you and I best help (and not hurt) everyone who most needs it?”

Your answer may be quite personal and unique to your own situation and experiences. While I’m interested in hearing specific answers to this question, and also interested in the various conversations that might spark from this question, right now I’m even more interested in seeing if there is a way to better understand our collective mood around this question. That’s why I asked these 6 follow-up Yes/No questions and got about 50 responses either via comment or email:

1. Intuition: Do you feel like you can trust your intuitions about how you can best help? (56% said yes)

2. Skill: Do you have the skills and know-how needed to help others who need it most? (59% said yes)

3. Resources: Do you have access to information, time, and resources needed to figure out how to best help? (62% said yes)

4. Capacity: Do you feel able to help others right now? (85% said yes)

5. Network: Are your close relationships and community able to support your efforts right now? (74% said yes)

6. Feedback: Is there a way for you to receive trustworthy feedback about whether you are in fact helping those who most need it right now? (35% said yes)

These 6 follow-up Yes/No questions aren’t just random questions, they’re meant to try to triangulate a kind of shared mood that the question invokes in us that can be understood in two different ways.

The first is by thinking about our internal and external experiences:

• Internal experience: The first 3 questions (intuition, skill, resources) are about our internal experience, and how we each feel about our ability to answer the question accurately.

• External experience: The second 3 questions (capacity, network, feedback) are about our beliefs about our circumstances and external experiences that are a bit less in our control.

I think this dimension is interesting to consider because sometimes we feel like we know what we need to do, and know how to do it (both internal factors), but lack the opportunity or support to do it (external factors). Other times it’s the other way around and we have the opportunity to address something (external factors) but lack the confidence or skill to do it (internal factors). Other times both of these things are aligned, and still other times both of these things are lacking. In all of these cases, I think the mood of the question feels quite different and so I’m excited to see how that can be identified.

The second way these questions are organized is to ask about the realms of experience:

• Being mode: The 1st and 4th questions (intuition, capacity) are about how we think about our emotional/existential experience.

• Doing mode: The 2nd and 5th questions (skill, network) are about how we think about our ability to take action and get things done.

• Having mode: The 3rd and 6th questions (resources, feedback) are about how we think about what we have access to in terms of information and raw supplies.

This is about three realms that exist within both the internal and external experiences, and this is most obvious when, say, we feel constrained by internal or external factors but need a bit more detail. For example, say that we feel we have a good intuitive grasp of a question (being mode), but lack both the skills (doing mode) and the time and resources to do it (having mode). That’s very different from having the time and resources to do something (having mode) but lacking the confidence and skills to address it. These three realms help identify which parts of ourselves we’re struggling with.

Now for the fun (and perhaps a bit weird) part.

Since these are Yes/No questions, and have this structure, my idea was to be able to visualize the answers in an interesting way using color. I assigned each of the 3 realms (being mode, doing mode, and having mode) to a primary color (red, green, and blue, respectively). Then, I used the percentage of Yes answers to determine the opacity of the colors. That gave me something like this (with external factors sitting above the internal factors):

You can see how external being mode (top left) is darker than internal being mode (bottom left), because 85% of people answered that they felt they had the capacity to help others while only 56% of people said they felt they could trust their intuition about how to best help them.

Similarly, external doing mode (top middle) is darker than internal doing mode (bottom middle) because 74% of people said they felt their close relationships and community would support their efforts to help while only 59% of people said they felt they had the required skills and know-how to help.

And lastly, external having mode (top right) is a lot lighter than internal having mode (bottom right) because only 35% of people felt like they had a way to receive trustworthy feedback about how their efforts to help were going while 62% of people felt they had access to information, time, and resources needed to help.

It’s interesting, right? A collective mood is emerging here, sorta.

Then I took it one step further and merged the colors on the top and on the bottom, to create a holistic color-based interpretation of the internal and external experiences:

Seeing the colors separated, it’s not obvious that the top half is much heavier in red and green (which when combined make a muddy yellow) while the bottom half is a lot more even, with perhaps a slight leaning towards blue-ish light gray.

While the embedded meaning of this visualization requires some interpretation and translation to make sense, it also seems to me like it is revealing something valuable (if a bit ineffable) about how we are collectively feeling.

Does a yellow-ish external experience have an essence that is shared across different questions that have the same or similar moods? What about a blue-ish light gray internal experience? I have no idea. But so far, after one tiny experiment, I’m pleased with how this question turned out.

Next, I’d like to try asking another question of this group to see if we get a different result. For now I just wanted to send this out and see what people thought of it. Interesting? Uninteresting? Fun? Boring? Let me know in comments or by replying to the email.

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Have a nice day!

(I’m looking forward to re-opening the dialogue on this little list in 2021. A lot has changed since you probably started following me, so no hard feelings at all if you would like to unsubscribe, no hard feelings… you can do that here.)

I haven’t written to you since April, and before that, only one other time in 2020 last January. It was a rough year for the obvious big reasons and (as is true for each of us in a different way) for many very specific reasons. This last week wasn’t really all that smooth either.

I won’t rehash everything that’s happened. But I do want to ask you a question, and then ask you 6 questions about that question, and then I will show you some kudzu.

The question I have been asking myself and that I’d also like to ask you is…

How can you and I best help (and not hurt) everyone who most needs it?

This is the question that I am having the most trouble answering right now. As I ponder it, I’m curious to hear your answers, but I’m even more curious about something else, which is how you think about this question.

Are you game for this little survey experiment? If so, please answer these 6 Yes/No questions about how you think about the above question:

1. Intuition: Do you feel like you can trust your intuitions about how you can best help?

2. Skill: Do you have the skills and know-how needed to help others who need it most?

3. Resources: Do you have access to information, time, and resources needed to figure out how to best help?

4. Capacity: Do you feel able to help others right now?

5. Network: Are your close relationships and community able to support your efforts right now?

6. Feedback: Is there a way for you to receive trustworthy feedback about whether you are in fact helping those who most need it right now?

Reply to this email or leave a comment with your responses to these questions. For each yes, type a Y and for each no type an N. For example, if you answered all of them yes except for question 6, you'd have YYYYYN. If you answered 1, 2, and 3 with no and 4, 5, and 6 with yes, you'd have NNNYYY. (You don’t need to share your answer to the question itself unless you feel like sharing.) I will try to do something interesting with the collective responses and share them back with you in the next email.

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Here is the promised kudzu, which if you don’t live in a place where this is impossible to avoid, is a vine that can grow up to a foot a day:

In a matter of weeks, cars started disappearing.

So did airplanes. And with them, pollution went down.

People, unable to work or travel, stopped buying things as well.

(See many more impacts in this Google Slides presentation by Luke Wroblewski.)

All of this came “out of nowhere” and yet it may also feel to some like it was destined to happen. As I wrote my letter from January 16th, referencing the Tower card in tarot:

Many of us feel like there’s an upheaval happening in the world today.

I don’t think I was referring to COVID-19 directly. It was way more ambiguous than that. Looking back at what the New York Times had already published the situation was presented in ways that we now know underestimated what was about to happen:

Jan 10th: The coronavirus, which surfaced in the city of Wuhan, has put the region on alert, but there is no evidence that it can spread among humans.

Jan 22nd: James G. Hodge Jr., director of the Center for Public Health Law and Policy at Arizona State University, said the shutdown [in Wuhan] would almost certainly lead to human rights violations and would be patently unconstitutional in the United States.

And yet, here we are. Now this is happening. Now the upheaval has a name and a face.

The world is in upheaval. We are in upheaval.

There’s no denying it, because denial is followed by even more upheaval and death. Those natural consequences are unfortunately not necessarily only delivered for those who were denying it, but to the rest of us as well.

Suddenly, we know on a visceral level that our individual actions have an enormous impact to ourselves and the world. Our fears have a name, and an action plan, and we can track its impact via data published continuously throughout the day. In a weird way, for better and worse, what we do matters. Our everyday routines have meaning. Yes, the conditions are not ideal nor of our choosing. We’re under enormous threat of dire consequences not only for our own actions, but of the actions of everyone else around us. And then there are the downsides caused by the safety measures themselves, that we pay even in a best case scenario.

We have, collectively, entered a meaningful moment of history that is unpredictable in its unfolding (other than that it will definitely change us forever). We’ve all been recruited to play an important role in directly shifting that timeline. Where should we put our energy, attention, and weight? That’s a personal question we can each ask, with unique opportunities, costs, and constraints. The only thing we must do at some level is observe what’s happening, orient ourselves to what we see, and participate in it as it is happening.

Between stimulus and response there is space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

— Unknown

During this weird time I want to use this Substack to contribute as honestly and positively as I can. So I will be shifting focus from “what’s next” for me towards “what might be helpful” to you and me. My understanding of what’s helpful is imperfect, and “my power to choose my response” is limited by my own understanding, so I’ll start small with one meaningful thing at a time.

Here’s a poem I read the other day that has helped me connect with this weird moment in time, which I found linked in Austin Kleon’s excellent newsletter.

Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale

By Dan Albergotti

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

That’s one meaningful thing. If we can find one, then there may be others out there. If I find another I’ll share it in another week or so.

From my remote space to yours,

Buster

Setting context for this post is going to be tough. It’s gonna get weird but I try to tie it all together into a useful proposal by the end. Bear with me!

I tossed this idea out the other day:

I have a silly 2020 idea that involves creating my own personal mythology that: A) passes my own bullshit test B) connects me deeply to myself, my interests, and the world, and C) affords ways to see the world clearly, make sense of it, participate in it, and talk about it.

— @buster

This is an idea that’s been developing in the back of my head, in very nebulous regions of my notes and thoughts, after a number of long-running themes have converged for me. My book on productive disagreement is out, and the 3 years I spent researching and writing it have really crystallized for me both the urgent need for new ways to relate to one another, which require new ways of having conversations, which require new ways of thinking about the world. It seems daunting but there are many very viable paths forward.

If you want to skip ahead and see what I’m talking about instead of all this stuff I’m writing about the process, here’s a first stab at a few fables that I’m seeding my personal mythology with: Snake Fables, Book I.

Otherwise, read on to learn more about what the “meaning crisis” is, why I think it’s important to revive the mythical realm in a way that is symbiotic with the realms of facts, personal values, and practicality. And lastly, a little bit about how we can go about doing this.

What this post covers:
- Introduction: What is the Meaning Crisis 
- Step 1: Rebuild the Mythical Realm 
- Step 2: Plant Something Wicked 
- Step 3: Add Tension That Cultivates Wisdom 
- Step 4: Spark a Dialogue 
- Conclusion: Take This Away

Introduction: What is the Meaning Crisis?

In John Vervaeke’s amazing 50-episode YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis (which is very long but completely worth every minute if this topic is of interest to you), he articulates 3 Perennial Problems that cause us to feel like we’ve lost our grasp on the meaning of our lives. They can be succinctly described as:

1. We’ve lost our sense of connection to an unquestionable shared ideology. Whereas throughout most of history we could rely on very specific cultural traditions, stories, a wise leaders that told us what is true, what is important, and what we should do with ourselves, for the most part those traditions have been exposed as being mistaken and in many cases harmful. There aren’t any unquestionable ideologies we can just assume we all agree on anymore. We can’t take anything for granted, and this causes us to feel like life is absurd. At best, we can suspend ourselves a bit above nihilism with secular humanism, but it’s not very stable because there’s nothing unquestionable about it.

2. We’ve lost our sense of belonging and connection with others. Our identities have fragmented, intersected, complexified, and polarized. We’re swirling around an inescapable web of cultural systems that continue to rely on tribalism and oppression to maintain cohesiveness, and we can’t figure out how to connect with each other when every one of us has both benefited from and been complicit in perpetuating the problems at hand. The only tribes that create belonging these days seem to be those engaged in war with other tribes, and it’s tough to feel like we truly belong in any of them. Expressed as feelings of alienation and loneliness.

3. We’ve lost our sense of connection to ourselves. Without an ideology we don’t question, and a community we truly belong to, it’s tough to know who we even are. We don’t have mentors and rituals to help us find ourselves. Even as we present ourselves as personal brands, we know that there’s no true soul there. We’re stuck with questions about every belief system, feeling like an outsider to every community, and don’t even know what we want or who we truly are. This expresses itself as a pervasive anxiety, and we soothe ourselves by taking up a regimen of escapes from that anxiety.

These 3 perennial problems resonated with me to the core. I have been circling around them for years, calling them “universal conundrums” in the cognitive bias cheat sheet and eventually evolving them into the realms of the Head, Heart, and Hands in my book.

These 3 realms are defined by how conversations in them are resolved:

1. The Head Realm. The realm of information, evidence, etc that we can refer to socially as “true”. Conversations here can be resolved by looking up evidence that exists in the world somewhere. This maps to our connection with others, because we rely on communities and institutions to generate and vouch for this data that we can point to and dialogue about.

2. The Heart Realm. The realm of values, beliefs, preferences that we build within ourselves and know is true subjectively. Conversations here can be resolved with self-reflection and introspection (if the question is about our values) or by asking other people about their own beliefs, values, etc. This maps to the perennial problem of connection with ourselves, because these values in many ways are the way we connect with ourselves.

3. The Hands Realm. The realm of proposals, cultural norms, predictions, and markets. Conversations here can be resolved with making a bet, running an experiment, and then waiting for the results and comparing them to our predictions. This maps to the perennial problem of connection to the unquestionable ideology, because these are the culmination of the information and values we have, and that we use to do stuff out in the world that has an impact consistent with our values and knowledge.

All of this is very limited background that probably doesn’t do justice to the complexity and urgency of the meaning crisis if you aren’t already familiar with it so feel free to drop off here if it feels absurd. Or, watch this video with David Fuller and John Vervaeke because they do a good job of describing it too:

My goal with this article is to not only propose that we consider personal mythologies as a category of responses to these problems, but to start doing it and sharing how it is going. Near the end of Vervaeke’s series he articulates the need for a “wise cultivation of enlightenment”, which is sort of what I’m hinting at, while acknowledging that that might seem ridiculous to most people. Again, if it does, you probably won’t get much out of the rest of this article, and I won’t feel bad if you close this tab right here.

Assuming you’re still with me on this journey, it’s time to double down on the weirdness!

Step 1: Rebuild the Mythical Realm

If you’re like me, an atheist and about as anti-religion as they come, it might feel a bit dangerous to give the mythic realm another chance. The key is to be very strict about what we put in there, and to consult the realms of the head, heart, and hands as we go to make sure we’re not adding anything that isn’t compatible with our information, our values, and our practical lives.

It’s not meant to be rushed.

We’ve lost the language needed to talk about where, if not in the scientific head realm, they should be located in our belief systems. I think one of the reasons why this realm has become so problematic is because it began to blend with the realm of the head and heart in counterproductive ways. It needs its own space, with its own rules. Looking back to the realms of the head, heart, and hands, for example, it’s easy to see how democracy and capitalism live in the realm of the hands (they’re all about making things work together), and it’s easy to see how therapy and relationships live in the realm of the heart (they’re all about identifying deep patterns in ourselves), and it’s easy to see how the scientific method and math and physics live in the realms of the head (they’re all about replicable results and data). But where can religion live? Where can spirituality live? Where can angels, demons, heaven, hell, ghosts, muses, superstitions, horoscopes, etc live? If you put them in the realm of the hands (information) they quickly fall apart due to lack of tangible evidence. If you put them into the realm of the heart (personal values), there’s no way to say that these subjective values connect to universal truths, which most of them try to claim at some point. If you put them in the realm of the hands (useful proposals), we quickly learn that they have very little predictive power and usefulness compared to other belief systems. Before the meaning crisis ate it all up, there was another realm that we could all use by referring to “God’s Word” or “Divine Will” or fate or destiny or prophesy or what have you. That realm has been destroyed, bit by bit, over the last couple centuries, and it was eaten up by the other realms: the head realm invalidated its truth claims, the heart realm showed how its belief systems had the effect of reducing our agency against our values, and the hands realm pointed to other belief systems that were much more effective at building useful proposals about the world, and profiting from them.The

Lost 4th Realm

This 4th realm of myths has been dismantled, and now we don’t have a place to put divinities, spirits, and the sacred other than into the realm of the heart as entertainment. The symbols and archetypes of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, the Marvel Universe, Hunger Games, and Game of Thrones are now more a part of our collective culture and language than the stories of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. Except they’re limited to being entertaining fictions instead of sacred myths. They’re designed to help us escape the anxiety of our perennial problems, not to solve them by affording us the tools and space that enable us to connect ourselves to reality and create meaning. To tentatively access this scrubbed mythical realm, try to remember times when you were deeply immersed in the flow state, and everything felt meaningful and connected around a specific skill or task. Does it have lots of baggage and trauma in there? If so, it may require more scrubbing before moving forward.

Since none of us likely have a mythical realm that isn’t problematic in at least a few ways, I propose that we revisit it with special suits and gloves, as you would a nuclear test zone. We need to reformat it, wipe it completely clean, twice, three times, and make sure all the yucky old toxic ideologies are really scrubbed off. Then, we can begin to ask if there’s anything at all that we can put in there that doesn’t set off our alarm bells in the other realms and re-traumatize us.

This realm was embedded in our language and cultures for a long time. It’s the realm where we sometimes access that feeling of true purpose, calling, and meaning. Everything makes sense in the mythic realm, for better and worse. It’s where epic forces participate in larger-than-life battles. It has quieter forces as well — we experience these as luck, or coincidence, or synchronicity. This article, Mythic Mode, really made this tangible for me:

Mythic mode is a way of looking at the world through a story-like lens. When you enter mythic mode, you recognize that you’re a character in Omega’s story, as is everyone else. And because you’re very likely familiar with a wide range of story types, you can probably look around and see who has been given which kind of plot hook, and to what kind of tale.

It’s a mode that enables personal transformation and enlightenment. It’s a mode that is all about establishing a connection with the sacred, so that we can use that to break our current frame of thinking and transcend it. It does this through story that’s not true from a factual, or subjective, or even predictive sense, but is only true as a myth of becoming.

If you can identify a well-known story type that fits the transition you want and also starts from a place pretty close to where you are, and you have enough slack to lean into that role, then the web might conspire to help you play out that script.

The thing is, you can’t just sit outside your role and figure out what to do. That isn’t what it feels like to live the epic story you’re examining; that’s playing the role of someone who is (among other things) analyzing the story they think they’re in.

Instead, if you want to use this approach, you have to learn how to experience story from the inside. That’s essentially what mythic mode is.

There was a passage in Kim Krans’s The Wild Unknown Archetypes Guidebook that said something similar, with different words (in case these resonate with you more):

Let’s imagine that as you open this deck, you are in fact discovering a pair of mystical spectacles and through their lenses you begin to view the world in a new and more vibrant way. These glasses have a knack for seeing The Unseen, unveiling the hidden, spotting the elusive, and bringing to life what has long been inanimate. For example, look at the mug that sits before you on your desk (or the one you drank from this morning). YES, INDEED, IT IS JUST A MUG. THAT’S ALL. A MUG IS A MUG! Yet, through the archetypal lens of your mystical spectacles the mug mimics one of the oldest forms of all… The Vessel! It tethers you to the innate desire of humans to hold something in, to contain a valued substance so it doesn’t leak, spill, dissipate, diminish, or disappear. We suddenly recognize that vessels and containers are everywhere… the physical body, a house, a relationship, a classroom, a state, a nation — they are all containers. Their purpose is to hold, protect, support, and distinguish one thing from the other.

Through this type of contemplation we understand why the morning routine with our warm drink is so timeless and satisfying. Sure, the mug is just a mug, yet while wearing our mystical spectacles, we know it’s more than that. We are now looking through the archetypal lens, where anything can happen. We hold The Vessel in our hands and bring it to our lips, and suddenly we are tied to an innately humbling human experience more universal than we could imagine.

The realm of myths, the archetypal lens, and mythic mode are different ways of seeing this way of connecting our reality to the universal story directly. And hopefully, by seeing it as a bridge that complements the other realms, and not as a world that replaces the other realms, we can reconnect with our meaningful role in the universe in a way that we’ve lost, and miss, without compromising our connection to truth, our values, and the practical.

Step 2: Plant Something Wicked

One strategy for figuring out what to put into the mythical realm is to look for real problems that we haven’t had much success addressing within the other realms. The realms of Head, Heart, and Hands are designed to resolve conversations in their own unique ways, so what kinds of problems or conversations could a mythical realm address that the others can’t?

And here we can basically look to the meaning crisis, because it’s a list of problems that began to pile up as soon as the old 4th realm was shut down: the Perennial Problems of being connected to ourselves, to others, and to a shared mythology. The real bottom line here is that we have a deeply embedded need to feel connected to the meaningless universe. The realms of Head, Heart, and Hands have nothing that can help us with this.

I think of this category of problems as “wicked problems” and have written some thoughts about it with a few others. I’ve tried to articulate the qualities of a wicked problem as:

1. Personal, unavoidable, and existential

2. Difficult, requiring lots of investment up front, and ongoing

3. Complex and impossible to really pin down for sure

4. Lacking in any viable solutions

Because the other realms don’t stake any claims on this kind of problem, and yet are problems that we have identified as important to address, I propose that we seed our realm of myths with all of our wicked problems that have no other home. Since this is the realm of myths, we can wrap them with mythical narrative and say that these problems are the seeds that grow into a Dark Forest. The universe, mythically-speaking, is a dark forest that defies understanding and intimidates is with its darkness and it’s sheer size and scale.

Dark Forest is filled with disquieting truths that we can’t escape and even in our tiny corner of it there are existential problems expanding like a cancer across the land. The Dark Forest is teeming with giant monsters like political polarization, environmental disasters, systemic discrimination and inequality, human rights, morality, and the problem of mortality itself. There are also smaller monsters like personal fulfillment, creative energy, mental and physical health, difficult relationships, power dynamics, personal responsibility, financial independence, and job satisfaction. Each monster requires more investment than we can afford to give, and so we fight ineffectively against them individually and as a whole. Sometimes it feels like whatever we do only causes them to come back stronger.

This isn’t a realm that responds readily to facts, values, and proposals like we’re used to. It’s a realm that requires impossible trade-offs between existential needs, personal transformation, and enlightenment to transcend our understanding and become able to see the problems from a higher perspective. All we have is a problematic forest so far — we don’t have any gods to pray to for help, or prophesies of heroes that will rescue us. In fact, the reliance on heroes and saviors and gods was part of what made the realm fall apart last time, so we need something that not only integrates with the other realms but that also makes them stronger as well.

How can we use the artifacts we’ve brought in from the other realms (what we know about how wicked problems work, the beliefs and values that are threatened by them, and the strategies that seem to work best in the real world) to better face the wicked problems of the Dark Forest with integrity and respect?

It’s not all about heroes and saviors, though they play a part.

Step 3: Add Tension That Cultivates Wisdom

Vervaeke talks about how the “wise cultivation of enlightenment” requires us to develop an “ecosystem of psycho-technologies” that help us address the perennial problems. They need to be more than just a list of instructions, but a suite of practices we can directly experience that actively change us as we have them.

This ecology of practices needs to be wrapped in a welcoming and inviting worldview that is responsive to new circumstances, new members, and new developments from the Dark Forest without giving in to the downward spiral of self-deception and fear. It has to stay open and vulnerable to the truths that come out of the Dark Forest as well as the realms of the Head, Heart, and Hands. And it also needs so stay cohesive enough to hold people together, even as it changes over time.

An Updated Shared Language

In order to satisfy the other realms, we should first try to address some gripes they’ve had with past mythologies. I’ll mention some here briefly in the hopes of diving into them more later on:

• Plausibility and Relevance replace Objectivity: Instead of referring to truth as objectively true or false, use a multi-step evolution of truth from being implausible to plausible, and then from being plausible to relevant/useful within a given context. For example, for now we can say that the existence of an objective reality is plausible, but not currently relevant to our mythology. We shouldn’t make claims about objective reality from this realm unless we change our stance on that point. Leave what is true to the realm of the head.

• Inexhaustibility replaces the Infinite and Eternal: Instead of relying on the infinite and eternal, use the idea of the inexhaustible (not infinite but much more abundant than we’ll ever need). For example, the Sun provides us with a reliable and practically inexhaustible source of energy, but the Sun is not an infinite source, nor is it eternal.

• Indispensability replaces Universality: Instead of relying on universal dogma that is forever fixed, use the idea of indispensability within a context. For example, the English language is indispensable to my thinking, and to my ability to communicate with others, but it’s not a universal requirement for thinking or communication.

• Real patterns replace Essences: Instead of relying on true essences of things, in the Platonic sense, use the idea of real patterns. For example, a chair has no true essence, but is a real pattern. The difference is that a pattern is fuzzy and has no definitive threshold where it becomes or unbecomes that thing. The same thing can even be a chair to one person and a rock to another, because the pattern exists as part of the subjective landscape (heart realm) of the interpreter.

The problem with objectivity, infinity, eternity, universality, and essences is that they can all be better validated (or falsified) by the realms of the Head (information) and Hands (experiments). To the extent that those things are plausible and relevant to our myths, we can delegate the tasks of validation to those other realms instead, and avoid a whole lotta future contradictions and battles.

In simpler terms, the realm of myths will not attempt to “prove” that anything is objectively true, infinite, eternal, universal, or possessing of a true essence. The realm of myth is about how things change, and how to feel connected to a universe where everything is in flux.

Where Do Sages Come From?

In the realm of this myth, everything comes from the Dark Forest, and eventually returns to it. But we can be more specific. Sages come from the seeds of specific wicked problems, the same ones that the Dark Forest grows out of, and represent our impulses to tame the Dark Forest’s chaos in some way.

The most salient and relevant wicked problem that we generally confront is chaos and death. We don’t want to return to the Dark Forest. We want to stay separate, whatever that means. So, this can be the egg that becomes our first primordial sage.

The first sage egg is born from our unresolvable tension between being something (good) and being nothing (bad), and our unflaggable preference for the former. If we had no preference here, we wouldn’t need a sage. There’s no more universal preference in living things than the preference to be something instead of nothing, so it’s a good place to start. This tension develops into the art and science of definition, security, containment, protection, and separation from all of the opposites of those things.

It’s the subconscious impulse for security and order that pushes against chaos and disorder with all its being, and by doing so, becomes conscious.

Let’s capture this first impulse and call it the Snake Egg. I’ve written 4 short fables that explore this potential sage here:

Snake Fables, Book I

Step 4: Spark a Dialogue

This is where it makes sense to leave our safe perch in the realm of the head, heart, and hands, and step into the realm of myth. There, we can start to tell the story from the inside.

As I’ve already discovered during my random brainstorming for this weird project of creating a personal mythology to help me confront the meaning crisis, working with the realm of myth isn’t something that you can do solo. If it were, then the realm of the heart would suffice.

Myth is much more about participation, ritual, transformations, and serious play than it is about words and ideas. Also, it makes sense to be extra cautious with the realm of myth, and keep things as minimal as possible so that we don’t accidentally brainwash ourselves. So let’s review our building blocks and see what we have to play with before going any further.

Outside the realm of myths, we talked about:

• The 3 perennial problems related to how we have lost contact with the real universe, and it’s causing a crisis of sorts.

• The realms of the head, heart, and hands are really useful places for a certain kind of conversation, but they aren’t up to the task of addressing the perennial problems.

• We once had a thriving realm of mythology, but it was dismantled for parts after the previous wave of mythologies couldn’t keep up with other realms. But, we can still access it, once we delete everything in it first.

Within the realm of myths, we have a few building blocks set up:

• The Dark Forest, which grew from the seeds of all of our wicked problems that we can’t solve in the other realms.

• The Snake Egg, which was born from our own tension with the prospect of death, meaninglessness, etc.

• The Dialogue, between Snake and Forest, can now begin.

The next step is have that dialogue and use the realm to make this tension between something and nothing, chaos and order, become real within the realm of my own personal myth. This post is just a scratch pad for the real artifacts that can be created in the realm of myths. The real work is to internalize the mythologies (sages, forest, and all) and to use that mode to better participate in the world’s problems and opportunities.

None of this is an easy ask, obviously.

I’m curious what others think of this so far. What are your thoughts Jon Bell, Kevin McGillivray, Vicki Tan, Geoff Lewis 🎨 ✍🏻, Aaron Z. Lewis, ArielMeadowStallings, BJ Campbell, Jordan Hall, Jonny Miller, Andrew Taggart, Dr Jason Fox, and others? Too weird? Not weird enough? Needs some salt?

Conclusion: Take This Away

The tldr is that we need new ways to address the perennial problems, and one of them that I see being most viable is to revive the mythic realm in a way that doesn’t challenge the strengths of the other realms. This will allow us to identify new salient possibilities (and motivations to act) via an epic story lens that are absent when we only try to address them with a scientific or economic lens, because solving these problems will never be cost-effective or practical in the moment.

This isn’t meant to be conclusive or authoritative on the meaning crisis or our response to it. Consider it a conversation piece that can be torn apart, forked and improved, played with, or ignored. The main point is to encourage participation in this conversation, because we can’t get anywhere without taking a few first stumbling steps.Why We Should Create Personal Mythologies (and How) was originally published in Foolish Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

1.

A tiny snake woke up in a chaotic and dark forest. It asked, “What am I?”

A spider, hovering over it with hungry eyes, said, “You’re a part of the forest. Go back to sleep.”

The snake fell back asleep.

It’s difficult to wake up.

2.

A tiny snake woke up in a chaotic and dark forest. It asked, “What am I?”

A spider said, “You‘re a part of the dark forest. Here let me help you go back to sleep.”

The snake smelled the warm ripe breath of the giant spider, and was repulsed. “If I’m part of the forest, then why do I not want to be eaten?”

“Both acceptance and resistance flow through the forest’s chromatic heart. It adds flavor. Yummy yum!” The spider bit deeply into the snake.

The snake shook wildly and twisted with rage, causing them both to fall out of the web to the forest floor. The snake, trembling and confused, coiled around the dazed spider, and strangled it. The spider never fought back, and seemed to have a smile on its face, even in death.

“I’m not part of the forest because the forest is filled with spiders, and I hate spiders.”

We’re born out of what we reject.

3.

One day, as a snake was enjoying a warm bath in a refreshing pond, he kept getting interrupted by the plopping sound of small spiders falling from the branches above. Sploosh. Splop. The snake loved peaceful baths, and hated spiders. The snake witnessed each drowning spider’s futile attempt to swim to shore, and each one’s slow draining of life until they were no different from a dry leaf or broken twig floating with the current. The snake found this entire scene to be morbid and depressing, the exact opposite of its expectations for bath time goals today. Splish. When the spider rain had gone on long enough, the snake yelled upwards to anyone that could hear, “Stop falling into my bath! I shouldn’t have to say this, since drowning must be even more inconvenient for you than me, but leave me alone!”

Sploop! A plump spider splashed into the water and said, “I’m part of the forest, so there’s nothing to be inconvenienced by. Whether I hop on the highest branches near the sun or sink to the lowest depths of the sea makes no difference to me, it’s all part of the ride.” Did the spider wink at the snake with one of its eight glassy eyes, right before it sank to its death? The snake definitely thought it did.

Bath ruined, the snake crawled out of the pond, shook off some water and the icky hopeless feeling the spiders had woven around it, and promised never to tolerate such absurdity again.

Build character by rejecting more things. Like nihilism and absurdity.

4.

A tiny snake woke up in a chaotic and dark forest. The forest was filled with shadows, so the snake started to prefer light. The forest was very chilly, so the snake started to prefer warmth. The forest was unpredictable and mysterious, and never answered questions satisfactorily, so the snake started singing songs with stories and melodies that conjured meaning and purpose out of nothing.

One day, the snake was slithering along, singing a particularly sad song it had written about all the things it hated about spiders, when it bumped right into an ant hill.

“Stop!” the ants yelled, forming into an army of tiny soldiers. “Stop immediately, or you will regret it!” The snake stopped, both surprised and impressed by the confidence and persuasiveness of these tiny creatures.

“Who are you?” asked the snake.

The ants spoke as one: “We are the 12th Order of the Golden Earth, a tier 1 ant supercolony that worships Queen Ochre the 3rd, Sworn Enemy of the Albatross and Platypus.”

“I’m so happy to meet other living souls that aren’t just mumbling sleepily about being part of the forest! I am…” the snake faltered, realizing it had only ever asked the question but never answered it. “I am — ”

“We know who you are. You are Sad Snake, 1st Order of the Spider Hater, a tier 4 non-ant lost soul with no home, no colony, worshipper of none. And, now, you are potentially Ant Trespasser and Enemy as well! If so, prepare to die! We will give you one chance to explain yourself. Why are you here?”

“No, please, this is a terrible mistake! I didn’t know you were here! I didn’t mean to trespass! I promise to respect your borders, now that I know you are here. In fact, you say you are Sworn Enemy of the Albatross and Platypus? I don’t know who they are but I am much larger than you and can offer myself as a guardian of the 12th Order of the Golden Earth as a way of making up my accidental intrusion, if you’ll accept me.”

“We accept your offer. Welcome to our colony.”

The snake started patrolling the ant borders, day and night, making big circles around the perimeter, and found great satisfaction in keeping all the bad things out, and keeping all the good things safe inside.

Albatross, Platypus, spiders, nihilism, absurdity, unanswerable questions, chaos, darkness, noise: out.

Ants, identity, light, music, warmth, certainty, order, and purpose in life: in.

The 12th Order of the Golden Earth took good care of Snake, bringing food and water so that it could continue guarding the ants without interruption. Snake grew and grew, and finally one day it grew large enough to encircle the entire ant colony without moving. When Snake saw its own tail within reach, it sang a new song. It had no trace of the sad and angry songs about the spiders. This was a beautiful, confident, and inspiring song about the world they had created within a dark and chaotic forest. Snake sang about something new. It was not only separate from the forest, but greater than it. Finally, the Snake understood who it was: a creator of worlds, order, and of a new kind of space and time and energy that existed exclusively within the giant circle of protection it had created. As the song ended, Snake completed the circle by biting its own tail and instantly shed the skin of its old, finite, forest-bound body, and became the Ouroboros.

Somehow out of nothing, we can become something.

Snake Fables, Book I was originally published in Foolish Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s been almost two months since my last update here. As you probably know, my book Why Are We Yelling? is now out. Thank you to everyone who has bought a copy or three, and extra bonus thank yous to those who left a review on Amazon (91% of the reviews are 5 stars!). There’s a special kind of insecurity and self-doubt that I recently discovered that rears its head when I’m expected to ask people to feed the algorithm when, in many ways, the algorithm is eating me at the same time!

Some fun facts from the last few months:

• Obligatory self-promotion! Why Are We Yelling? was named one of the Best Business Books of 2019 by Fortune! I really loved No Hard Feelings, How To Do Nothing, and Super Pumped on that list as well. Check them out!

• Anecdotal publishing trend #1! Now that I can see weekly sales numbers, I was surprised to learn that about 45% of my sales are coming from Audiobook! It’s only $7.49 at the moment, and even cheaper if you have some Audible credits piling up.

• Anecdotal publishing trend #2! On the other hand, I was also surprised to see that only 18% of my sales are from Kindle. Asking around with other authors, these aren’t very unusual numbers, but in my head I had probably assumed that ebooks would be closer to 45% and audiobook was closer to 20%.

• Anecdotal data point! One of the reasons I wanted to write a book was to get an inside look at the world of publishing, and to figure out how it all worked. It’s not that easy to get straight answers on whether sales numbers are on track, or lagging, or whatnot. The very informal goal I got from my publisher was to try to hit 10,000 books in the first 3 months, and so far that seems like it could happen. I share it here so that others will have at least one data point to refer to. If you have other data points to add, reply or leave a note in the comments to this post!

• Podcast tour! My favorite part of the launch of this book has been the fact that I get to be a guest on a bunch of podcasts. I’ve only grown fonder of this quirky and charming new space for in-depth conversations. I’ve probably been on 30-40 podcasts, and continue to do 2-3 a week. I tag the ones that make it to my favorite podcast app, Breaker, in my podcast tour playlist. A few recent ones that I’ve really enjoyed included Brave New Work, Embrace The Void, and Rationally Speaking.

So… now that we’re 16 days into a new year and a new decade, not to mention about 9 hours and 32 minutes into this new day, what’s next?

My own creative process is very cyclical. I can almost always guess what’s next by looking at what was previous (on a number of time scales) and saying “something other than that”. By this logic, I know that I’m not going to immediately do either of the following:

1. Get a new tech job.

2. Write another book.

3. Become a professional podcast guest.

For those doing some mental math in their heads, you may be scratching your head and wondering, “what else is there to life?” A valid question. I once had trouble coming up with other options as well.

It turns out, however, that there are many other options. I started playing piano the last few months, for example. Am I naturally talented at this craft? No. Is it soothing and healing in a way that I can’t quite understand but am fully willing to explore? Yes. Same goes for my continued interest in drawing. And same for my new and quite obsessive interest in tarot cards. This last one is interesting to me because I can sense that it’s a slightly controversial interest amongst many in my normal social network.

But let me clarify this a bit. The reason I feel drawn to tarot right now is 100% tied to my continued interest in disagreement, cognitive biases, and systems thinking. No, I don’t think tarot cards can predict the future. I don’t think it’s okay to pretend that they do and to prey on people who are desperate for answers in their own life. That said, the new tarot community that seems to be springing up (which you can really see happening in real time in popular culture) is not about that slimy tarot tradition at all. It’s a lot closer, if you think about it as a “job to be done” to social drinking. When we want to have a fun, unbounded conversation with a friend, it’s common to suggest that you get a drink. The point isn’t the drinking (most of the time), the point is spending time together and creating a more liberated context to explore ideas, feelings, concerns, and our real lives.

Reading tarot together can fill this same job! Instead of using alcohol or caffeine to do the loosening up, it uses suggestive symbols, weird connections between them, and "mythic mode” to achieve the same results.

Many of us feel like there’s an upheaval happening in the world today. The symbols and archetypes and myths of tarot are one way of tapping into that feeling and finding ways to talk about it. The Tower card is often considered to be the most dRaMaTiC in the deck. It’s a signpost pointing to the direct experience of upheaval in and around us.

And yet, upheaval is just a part of the narrative. It’s not entirely negative, and can be interpreted as a necessary upheaval just as easily as a traumatic one. We provide the interpretation. Regardless, it creates space for what comes next, the Star:

Tarot will let you get into the weeds of symbolism, if that’s your thing (it’s my thing). There are layers and webs of meaning related to the two vessels, to the water, to the earth, to the stars. It’s perfectly ambiguous, while also being very specific about its ambiguousness. I feel like this right now. I know what I don’t want, and I have hope that by quieting down a bit and listening and tending to little seeds of inexhaustible creativity and inspiration that the next season will have a chance to arrive.

What’s next will be a little quiet for a while.

Instead of yelling at the void, I’m planning to listen to it. This online course by Dr. Jason Fox called Choose One Word is a wonderful way to begin listening to quieter things.

Instead of prioritizing productivity, I’d like to prioritize creativity.

Instead of looking for meaning in it all, and resolution, I’ll be exploring what feels paradoxical and weird. I recommend booking a reading with Jessica Dore’s if you’re in the mood for one (or just following her card of the day for a while).

Thank you for joining this bumpy rickshaw ride. You can of course hop off anytime you like. Or, stay on and we can listen to what happens together.

Into the dark forest we go…

I think you’re on to something here and I wanna see if I can connect the dots. There are a lot of things that are commonly understood to be a bit tricky to acquire directly. Like happiness, or a high-functioning city plan, or a funny joke. We’re so entrenched in hero-mindset (we’ll see if that sticks) that we have become blind to the idea of processes that require opponent mindsets to thrive. Let’s call it fools-mindset, because it feels like our only option remaining is to wander aimlessly about hoping to bump into happiness. And there’s some truth to it!

But what you said here about focusing on relationships between diverse interests is more specific than aimlessly wandering about. What I think you’re tapping into is that when a problem or question space is too chaotic or ambiguous to handle with a single perspective, it’s possible to try to triangulate it with multiple perspectives. This doesn’t guarantee that any one perspective will ever see the whole problem, similar to how one camera can’t see the entire Earth, but the relationship and communication and overall dance between perspective can have a “free-floating” understanding or mindset that exists outside of individual people. Culture is a free-floating mindset that we all partially contribute to but never fully contain. Happiness and funny jokes are free-floating mindset that exists between individuals and their environment and social connections.

Daniel Dennet introduced the idea of a “free-floating rationale” that can exist in nature (this episode recently reminded me of it) where animals can act in rational ways with being rational (like the deer that jump super high to demonstrate fitness to prowling lions). I think it applies to much more than just rationality.

The other dot I want to connect is about how free-floating mindsets are created. These free-floating rationales and mindsets can have emergent qualities that don’t exist in any of the people/animals contributing to them. The people/animals/contributors are usually arranged in an oppositional manner, challenging the weaknesses and being challenged by the strengths of the other contributors. They may dislike each other, or even hate each other. They may wish that their mutual struggle would be resolved once and for all, removing the influence of the other contributors so they can have their way. But if this opponent process happens to sharpen or strengthen a free-floating rationale or mindset, then it will produce the side effect of a higher-functioning city, a funnier joke, a happier life, etc. And, perhaps, maybe that’s why going after those goals directly is counter-productive… it means that the goal is captured by a non-opponent process, and therefore can’t emerge as easily. Or something.

Is there evidence that indicates that individuals can adopt a goal that enables the sharpening of a free-floating mindset, without accidentally acting against it? It is tough because it requires some serious wisdom to strive for something by seeking out its opponents and acting in self-interest against them. At the same time, we think of scrimmages and training and practice as this exact thing. Can fools-mindset be one that adopts scrimmages as not only practice but the real deal? John Vervaeke calls this “serious play” and points to ritual as another venue where these practices can occur. There must be more here worthy of exploring.

Thoughts?

Buster

Goals vs opponent processes was originally published in Foolish Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I had initially conjured the metaphor to relate it to the hero’s journey, but am now convinced that it will end up doing us more harm than good because our language matters, and the words we use to describe the problem play a part in how we think about it, and how we think about it will determine what we think are viable paths forward.

So let’s drop the dragon metaphor. 🐲⚔️💀

Your post, and Kevin McGillivray’s earlier here have helped me understand that wicked problems are a subset of infinite games. Which means that we can perhaps understand them better if we look at the superset that they exist within.

“There are at least two kinds of games: finite and infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play. Finite games are those instrumental activities — from sports to politics to wars — in which the participants obey rules, recognize boundaries and announce winners and losers. The infinite game — there is only one — includes any authentic interaction, from touching to culture, that changes rules, plays with boundaries and exists solely for the purpose of continuing the game. A finite player seeks power; the infinite one displays self-sufficient strength. Finite games are theatrical, necessitating an audience; infinite ones are dramatic, involving participants…” — James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

Heroes play finite games, seeking to win. There is no winning strategy to an infinite game, and so people seeking to “win” them collapse them into sub-games that can be won. The wicked problem arises when the process of collapsing and “winning” subgames creates worse conditions for the infinite game over time. And it may also be the case that the mindset needed to play the subgames makes you less equipped to play the infinite game. Also, “solutions” to the infinite game must present as subgames that attract heroes, and have trouble staying focused on the infinite game because in order to get people organized and motivated, there has to be some short-term “win” state narrative in place. I don’t know. Just riffing here.

Is this a distinction that people here buy? If so, I may drag in some past thoughts about my favorite mini-infinite game: Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. I love it because it brings the wicked problem of cooperation to the forefront, and reveals all its quirkiness with very few rules. There’s no optimal strategy in Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, just like there’s no optimal solution for a wicked problem. And yet, at any given moment in time, it’s possible to play more or less well given the information that you have.

Can this connection to infinite games and Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma help us answer Kevin’s question about where wicked problems come from? I feel like we’re going in the right direction but the direction is leading us into a Dark Forest with many more questions and problems yet to explore.

I do love a good metaphor. Now that the dragon is dead, would a Dark Forest be a good substitute for the ambiguous, unpredictable, never-ending, nature of a wicked problem?

“Midway upon the journey of our life

I found myself within a forest dark,

For the straightforward pathway had been lost.”

— Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno Canto 1

Even Dante thought that getting through the Dark Forest just required sending in more heroes and saviors, though.

Image from theforestdark.com

On dragons and dark forests was originally published in Foolish Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I like what you did with the different kinds of dragons. It’s helpful to think about how dragons can’t exist in a vacuum. Wicked problems aren’t intrinsically problematic. They are only wicked problems from a specific perspective. And I can now better understand why the “there is no single perspective that fully understands the problem” could be part of what makes them wicked. It’s entirely possible that the different perspectives see different solutions that are mutually unacceptable and/or unviable to other perspectives.

At a higher level, I don’t think I can assume that wicked problems can be decomposed into simpler problems or systems. For the reasons mentioned above, I think it’s likely that what makes them wicked is the complexity itself. Wickedness is an emergent quality of the system that doesn’t exist in any of its parts.

What do you think?

Buster

Kevin, was originally published in Foolish Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’m 100% on board with thinking about wicked problems starting from the personal and moving out to the more intimidating problems facing the world. I am thinking that it’ll help us to have our own easy-to-reference (and expand, if necessary) guide to wicked problems, so I’m gonna take a stab at it right now. I took all of the various lists of qualities from the Wikipedia page and tried to combine them and group them into somewhat coherent categories.

PERSONAL: We can’t avoid the problem

1. Personal. The problem affects us directly, but can’t be solved on our own.

2. Not urgent. Most of the impact is in the future, making it easy to delay treating it urgently right now. And yet, time is running out to implement potential solutions.

3. Getting worse. The problem gets harder to solve as time goes on. The effects of the problem and the resources needed to solve it increase over time.

4. Existential. The problem is ultimately fatal if left unaddressed.

DIFFICULT: The solutions require incredible investment up front

1. Expensive. Every solution to a wicked problem, if they can even be imagined, is exorbitantly expensive.

2. Unconvincing. Proposed solutions that some think are good also spark great resistance from others. The ideal problem solvers are out of contact with the problems and potential solutions.

3. Uncompromising. Multiple solutions can work against each other, making it hard to execute on several at once.

COMPLEX: The problem is hard to pin down

1. Unique. Every wicked problem has unique qualities that differentiate it from all previous problems it might be compared to.

2. Multifaceted. The scope and consequences of the problem can’t be fully understood from a single perspective. There’s no single holistic view of the entire problem.

3. Ambiguous. Different interpretations of the problem will generate contradictory solutions.

4. Systemic. There are numerous possible intervention points. No single intervention will solve the problem once and for all.

5. Interconnected. Most problems are symptoms of solutions to past problems, and most solutions will create new wicked problems while exacerbating existing ones.

6. No accountability. There’s no central authority responsible for the problem or for solving it. Affected parties have radically different world views, different frames for understanding the problem, and will be hurt by it to varying degrees.

CONFLICTED: There’s vast disagreement about viable solutions

1. Complicit. Those seeking to solve the problem are also directly or indirectly benefiting from it in some way.

2. Unviable. Ideological constraints, cultural constraints, political constraints, and economic constraints make proposed solutions unviable.

3. Unpredictable. Some solutions include worst case scenarios that are worse than the problem, and oftentimes more immediate. Most predictive models of the problem generate unreliable predictions.

4. Unmeasurable. Data about the problem is often uncertain, ambiguous, or missing. Unintended consequences of proposed solutions are difficult to estimate or prevent before fully implementing them.

As you know, I’ve been thinking of these wicked problems in context of the hero’s journey and in my head the wicked problem is a 🐲 DRAGON 🐲 that the 🦹‍♀️ HERO 🦹‍♂️ has been sent to slay. Of course, they will fail. We will fail. But we can think of at least a few kinds of dragons that we will fail to slay.

1. LEVEL 1 DRAGON BOSS: A personal wicked problem: if we fail to solve the problem, we suffer mostly alone. Mostly, these wicked problems will have most of the qualities listed under PERSONAL and DIFFICULT, but only a few of the ones under COMPLEX and CONFLICTED. For example, how can I live a life that I don’t regret?

2. LEVEL 2 DRAGON BOSS: A cultural wicked problem: if we fail to solve the problem, our culture / community / tribe will suffer together. These will have most of the qualities of a wicked problem, but might not have all of them. For example, how can we preserve our cultural traditions and history in the face of decreasing resources and adversarial forces?

3. LEVEL 3 DRAGON BOSS: A global wicked problem: if we fail to solve the problem, everyone will suffer together. These problems will have all of the qualities of a wicked problem. For example, how can we minimize the chances of global societal collapse caused by climate change / asteroid impact / nuclear proliferation?

And a bonus META DRAGON BOSS. You hinted at an interesting theory about how our inability to properly address LEVEL 1 DRAGON BOSSES could exacerbate LEVEL 2 and LEVEL 3 DRAGON BOSSES by simply decreasing our effectiveness at contributing productively to them. At the same time, you may also have identified a strategy to help us address all of them, similar in structure to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (though I know there are more accurate models of this out there now, and it’s better to think of them as spirals or networks than pyramids). What I’m trying to say though is that the way to beat LEVEL 3 DRAGON BOSSES is to first get a handle on the LEVEL 1 and LEVEL 2 DRAGON BOSSES.

And this in turn reminds me of the link Vicki Tan shared in the Rickshaw Discord today about Bentoism.

http://bentoism.org/about

I’m trying to stick to my “finish the post in one sitting” rule that I’ve arbitrarily set for myself, so I’ll leave you here and ask for your thoughts on this overall framing of the wicked problem. Are we making progress? What’s still missing? What comes out of this exploration next?

Buster

What are the qualities of a wicked problem? was originally published in Foolish Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

You’re referencing what I think is a common false choice that we find ourselves trapped in when we think about the relationship between hope and heroes. The Walking Dead is a good example of how this choice feels. We don’t like feeling hopeless and will of course choose to stop watching entertainment that reminds us of hopeless situations that exist in the real world.

The question I have is whether or not there are stories that, like our real world problems on the news, do not have heroes and do feel hopeless. I am asking if there’s a narrative format that can help us practice facing seemingly hopeless situations, without relying on devices that are purely imaginary.

Does that bring any new ideas or possibilities to mind?

Buster

Dear David, was originally published in Foolish Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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