Game Theory is a new and young science. It has a rudimentary mathematical structure that helps predict the best strategy to pursue in any situation where there are rules and turns; a strict regimen that may allow the gaining of an advantage by one player over another.
Newton on his beach, playing with his pebbles, put the language of numbers around what humans and instinctive life had been doing in their heads all along – all sorts of calculus and projectile maths. Without realising it, we carry out these calculations through judgement, meaning we can do exciting things like catch balls (...as done by humans, dogs, dolphins, seals...) fly (...birds, bats, insects, Keanu Reeves...) and dodge leaping sabre-toothed tigers (everyone).
I think the same is true with game theory. With abstract games we’ve created, where the rules are only what we say they are, things are more mathematical. Newton and his latter-day buddies, step forward, pebbles in hand.
Life, on the other hand, is a lot more intuitive.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and it’s not necessarily seeing Matrix Revolutions this weekend that’s brought out this post.
If life were a game, what could you do?
Could you achieve more with a degree of emotional or intellectual detachment, as in a game?
Could this detachment come through the rationalisation of everything around you, taking the mathematical or strategic route? Maybe emotional abandonment through having nothing left to lose, or emotional focus elsewhere, like love, reduce the amount of emotional investment in your ‘game’?
Would it be harder to play the game without detachment?
Why not give it a go?
Don’t try and be less emotional, or think everything through to the point where you don’t want to take risks anymore. Take something else out of game theory.
Enjoy playing.
i think that as dangerous as it is, passion gives us power; thus, my 'game' is defined by the emotional investment in those things that others might view as distractions to the whole endeavor.
anyway. what would i write my songs about if i had any capacity to focus and compartmentalise ;)?
If life were really a game, I'd become crime-fighting superhero.
I think that some of us apply as much game theory to life as we can anyway, perhaps subconciously. To do more than this, I suspect, would require such a level of detachment as to mean that you couldn't live your life in "real-time" any more. Unless, perhaps, you got a *really big* calculator.
I meant that if you viewed life and all it's challenges as a game then playing it with a full complement of emotions, attachments and vested interests would be more difficult than without.
...but that the main thing would be to enjoy it all with all of them, full throttle stylee...