(a) a set of rules (explicit or implicit) that are made up by humans,

(b) a scoring system (explicit or implicit) for determining how players are doing or for deciding who wins,

(c) participants who are trying to increase their “score,” and

(d) a game context (outside of which the game rules stop applying).

So, by this definition, games include chess, poker, football, and tennis, but also things like:

• money games (e.g., competing with friends and acquaintances to have a more expensive-looking car/watch/suit)

• altruism games (e.g., billionaires outbidding each other in charity auctions)

• coolness games (e.g., choosing clothing to demonstrate that your taste is trend-setting rather than trend-following)

• intelligence games (e.g., Oscar Wilde verbally jousting with his friends)

• sexual games (e.g., a man trying to seduce a woman while maintaining plausible deniability and her playing hard to get despite her intense attraction to him)

• strength games (e.g., boys wrestling after school)

• legal games (e.g., lawyers using every tool they know to beat each other in a case)

• academic games (e.g., young academics trying to outcompete each other in terms of who can get the most papers published in the top 10 journals)

• knowledge games (e.g., two people debating a factual topic in front of others at a party, each trying to show that the other person is wrong)

• political games (e.g., trying to form a strong coalition and to make the opposing coalition look corrupt or incompetent)

• career games (e.g., optimizing your behavior for getting promoted, rather than, say, for accomplishing the purpose of your work role)

Our brains have a tendency to temporarily treat games as reality (a suspension of disbelief).

This is not a bad thing – it’s part of what makes games fun and motivating, and it gets us to try hard at them. Those that can’t or won’t do this suspension of disbelief tend to be bad at games. There’s little joy or motivation in games if we’re just thinking, “I’m moving this wooden peg, so this number goes up.” We must (at least temporarily) believe that the number MATTERS.

Games can be fun, rewarding, and motivating. For some people, game playing is one of life’s great joys. And games make learning more fun (in fact, games are fundamental to how we humans learn). Children invent and play many kinds of games that help them figure out adult behaviors. And gamification can make difficult activities feel easier (e.g., you can turn a difficult task into a game to make it more pleasant).

But, on the flip side, games also can become a big problem when we forget for too long that we’re playing a game. Or if we permanently swap them for reality. Or if we come to think that winning the game is what fundamentally matters.

Consider the way that game playing distorts different activities:

• Science gets really screwed up when it is treated as a game where we compete to publish, rather than being treated as a way to figure out the truth about reality. This is part of why science has so many false positives.

• Altruism gets really screwed up when it is treated like a game to prove you’re a good person rather than as a way to help others. This is part of why so much altruism is not effective at improving the world.

• Governments get really screwed up when politics becomes a game (where most of what matters is beating the other side) rather than treating politics as a way to get helpful policies implemented.

• Medical schools get really screwed up if they become a game of who can memorize the most and function the best without sleep, rather than being a means to train effective doctors.

• The startup world gets really screwed up when it becomes a game of who can raise the most capital or do the coolest sounding thing, rather than having a focus on making products that solve actual problems.

• News gets really screwed up when it becomes a game about who can get the most clicks rather than as a means to spread true information.

• Law gets really screwed up when it becomes a game about what companies and people can technically get away with, rather than as a means of enforcing agreements and protecting people.

Games can be small or large, great or terrible. The key thing is to not get stuck inside a game without realizing it. Sadly, many people spend their whole life stuck in a game, confusing it for something more.

Sometimes we have no choice but to play a game that we don’t value. But recognizing games for what they are can help us leave them when they are poorly aligned with what we actually care about.

It’s great to play games sometimes and to suspend your disbelief to make them more fun and motivating. But don’t forget for too long that you are suspending it.

Games are not reality, though they might have real-world consequences. The in-game scoring system (whatever it is) does not reflect what you truly, intrinsically value. The rules of the game are made up by humans and are not the fundamental constraints on what behaviors you can and can’t take (though there might be consequences for breaking the game rules).

Play games cognizantly.

This essay was first written on November 23, 2020, and first appeared on this site on June 23, 2022.

The high level components necessary for accomplishment in tennis are the same as they are in nearly every field. Accomplishment relies on the following factors:

1. Ambition. While it is possible to accomplish things that you don’t set out to achieve, when that occurs it is usually just due to luck. Setting something as your goal is the first step towards accomplishing it. If we have low ambitions, we are unlikely to achieve great things.
2. Talent. Most accomplishments require a certain starting level of skills relevant to the accomplishment. To be become a great singer, it helps to have good pitch. To be a great investor, it helps to have a personality that allows you to act calmly when others are afraid. While abilities can be honed with training, your current level of talent represents your starting point in the accomplishment race. If you start too far behind, even really good training may not get you to where you need to be.
3. Reasoning. The path towards almost every major accomplishment involves making difficult decisions. Which job should you take? Which helpful books should you read? Who should you make an effort to get to know? Which skills should you work to hone? Which training methods should you apply? The superpower of being able to reliably answer these kinds of questions will make your accomplishment much more likely. One very bad decision early on may lead you to failure.
4. Time. Most big accomplishments require a very large investment of time. You are not going to be able to invent a better type of microchip without first learning a lot about computers, electrical engineering, and materials science. This will take years.
5. Resources. These can be both physical (e.g. money) or social (e.g. knowing the right people to help you achieve your goal). If you have an incredible business idea, but don’t have the money to fund it, and can’t get in contact with someone who will fund it for you, you’re out of luck. A strong social network can make achievement much easier. It often takes the well-coordinated effort of many people to achieve great things. There may even be a person out there whose advice or help is exactly what you need for success. And sometimes involving others in our projects can make up for our own lack of talent, lack of money, or lack of time.

Any of these five factors can prevent you from accomplishing great things. If your goals are unambitious, your achievement will probably be low. If you are lacking in relevant talent, you’re unlikely to ever achieve great heights of ability. If your reasoning is poor, you’ll be likely to make bad decisions related to how to achieve your goals. If you don’t put enough time into achievement, you’ll probably not accomplish very much. And many goals require some money, or the help of others, and without either of these, your ambitions may not get off the ground.

Flipping this analysis around, we see that we need to make sure that we have these five factors in place if we are going to have the best chance of accomplishing what we hope to. Sure, we might get lucky, and not need them all. Maybe we’ll win the lotto and so won’t need to worry about physical resources anymore, or maybe our bad reasoning will happen to not harm our project. But if we want to maximize our chance of success, we should have sufficient ambition, talent, reasoning skills, time investment, and physical/social resources. Whichever of these is our weakest point is likely what we should focus on improving. We can consider how we can try to affect each of these factors:

1. Ambition may be hard to change. You simply may not care about accomplishing much. But reflecting on what you would like to complete before your die may make you realize that you do in fact care about achieving certain goals.
2. Your current level of talent is fixed, but you can make up for a lack of it by involving other people whose talents complement your own, and by reasoning about how to improve your skills and then investing sufficient time into doing so.
3. Reasoning can be honed with practice.
4. Time simply needs to be invested. But reasoning can help you make your time more productive and efficient, and involving others in your goals lets you pool your time with theirs. If at your current rate of time investment, your goals may take decades to achieve, you may need to start taking time away from something else.
5. If you don’t have the money or social network required to complete your goals, that may be solvable with further time investment. You may need to take a job to make the required money, and devote time to building new social contacts that are relevant to what you’d like to achieve. For instance, you can start introducing yourself to more people at places where those who are likely to be helpful are likely to be.

If you want to maximize your chance of accomplishing your goals, figure out which of these five factors is your weakest point, and fix it. Then, if necessary, repeat.