We need to accelerate Game B, while Game A decelerates in crisis
We live through the current coronavirus pandemic and see its effects on people and the economy, as globalization is decelerating. Jim Rutt said he is done with both the current Right and Left, as they both focus on abstract things like markets and the state, but neglect local communities and local solutions.
Accelerate cooperation in the complex domain, and decelerate competition in the complicated domain
Game B, as an idea of rebooting civilization from a deep code of humanity, is distinct in my opinion because of two attributes.
First, because it provides a brand-new theory of change focused on complexity and adjacent potentials. As Dave Snowden says, the new theory of change should be focused on micro-narratives and their clusters in local communities — “How can we get more (positive) stories like these, and less (negative) stories like that?”.
Second, Game B focuses heavily on experimenting and transcending multiple but partial viewpoints and paradigms. But now, the infinite players of Game B, need to make this move on themselves and see a broader picture.
Game B is currently mostly about small safe-to-fail parallel experiments in the complex domain. We need to accelerate those, but also move into creating actual products for the complicated and obvious domains, if we use the language from the Cynefin Framework by Dave Snowden.
Put simply, we need to accelerate the cooperation in the complex domain. Plus, we need to focus on bold and concreate visions of the future and launch actual products that bring us closer to these utopias.
And then we need to decelerate the competition in the complicated domain (the traditional Game A finite games and races to the bottom). So accelerating cooperation in Game B and decelerating competition in Game A is the short motto.
But what about products and services in the Game B space?
But there is a vast territory in between, full of actual products and visions that need to materialize. Using the language of Wardley Mapping — Game B is in the Genesis stage of experimentation, but we need to accelerate through Custom-built and Product/Service stages. Before finally arriving at the Commodity/Utility stage and repeating the cycle, while increasing our stack of (psycho)technologies.
The unhealthy and un-ecological competition that we need to decelerate happens in Game A mostly in the third and fourth stages of the Wardley Map — in Product/Service and in Commodity/Utility. (Companies using marketing and “the war on sensemaking” to sell us more phones or chocolates).
I currently see only a few products in the Game B area. Neurohacker Collective tries to build the best nootropic stack, while boosting empathy without making people addicted, and without trade-offs between e.g. focus and empathy. Tom Chi invested in the startup called BioCarbon Engineering that tries to repurpose drones with AI to plant trees 60x faster than was done before. This will allow humanity to plant billions of trees more, than it cuts annually. So, the company goes explicitly beyond the idea of sustainability (zero-sum) and promotes regeneration and overcompensation (positive-sum).
Another product in this space is Sensemaker by Cognitive Edge, led by Dave Snowden. As mentioned above, this product allows us to explore novel theories of change, and also prevent various crises through weak signal detection.
Then we have some companies promoted by the Effective Altruism movement, e.g. in the area of cell agriculture (also called clean meat, cultured meat).
And of course, we have a network of online groups, podcasts and new media such as Rebel Wisdom circling around this Game B meme.
But we need maybe two orders of magnitude more of such companies and startups to make a dent in the Game A.
Don’t shy away from bold concrete visions and the U-word
As Alexander Bard says, we need to work on concrete bold visions and utopias. The Game B will not emerge spontaneously through some psychotechnologies, meditation and dialogos on podcasts.
Moreover, we need to research and then develop concrete products and services that will help us to reach those visions.
I wrote that we need to see utopias as hyperobjects and not perfections. Similarly, our current crises, such as climate crisis, are hyperobjects. Their opposites, would be also hyperobjects. This way we don’t need to shy away from utopias. We don’t seek perfection. Actually, perfection is our enemy. Alexander Bard proposes three utopias — Ecotopia, Cosmopolis, and finally, a kind of anti-utopia that actively discourages the search for perfection and instead focuses on ever-changing renewal — Syntheos or the Barred Absolute.
Elsewhere I mapped these three utopias on three generator functions of existential risk, as Daniel Schmachtenberger explains them. I also tried to map them on three modalities (ways of looking) explained by Forrest Landry.
Interestingly these also map on three cultures as explained by Simon Wardley — Pioneers, Settlers, City Planners. Or what Jamie Wheal calls moving people from NPCs into infinite players, and infinite players into architects of Game B. But here again it is important to acknowledge that three distinct cultures are needed and necessary. We need to become multicultural. Not everyone needs to be a pioneer or a tinkerer in the Genesis stage and in the complex domain, most people will be Settlers and some people will be City Planners/Architects.
It is also interesting to note, that many people in the Game B space pride themselves of not being NPCs, but according to the model above — you still kind of are an NPC, even if you go metamodern and encompass multiple paradigms and opposing worldviews at the same time. For you to go into infinite player, you would need to oscillate not between viewpoints, but between these four stages of the Wardley Map — Genesis, Custom-built, Product/Service and Commodity/Utility. Basically, you need to build products and companies with others.
Inclusive dialogues and sharing tips on psychotechnologies are not enough.
Of course, these companies need to be Game B-like, meaning they should not create habits and addictions (when we talk about B2C companies). But the opposite — a distinct event that would set people on a journey of reciprocal opening of themselves and their worlds (as opposed to reciprocal narrowing and addiction), to use the language of John Vervaeke. Or help with a continuous process of self-improvement and collective learning, in case of B2B companies.
The status quo of the Game A companies is that they create habits (addictions) in case of B2C or they optimize processes in case of B2B.
The Game B alternative would be, as Jordan Hall puts it, to circle in the opposite direction as the traditional S-curves of addiction. Not spinning the wheel of reciprocal narrowing, but the opposite — a wheel of reciprocal opening. Thus, aiming for increased antifragility and sovereignty instead of addiction.
Three new verbs to help us see a world full of processes to nurture and not things to exploit
Bonnitta Roy writes about Complex Potential States as different way of looking at the world and an alternative concept to complex adaptive systems (CAS). If we are to see the world and everything as ever-changing processes and not as things and objects, we need to use more verbs, as Tom Chi says, and create new verbs.
So the new verb for Ecotopia is exapting as opposed to adapting. This is how evolution moves non-linearly forward through serendipity (lucky chance). We need to exapt existing technologies for novel purposes. So e.g. drones and AI are repurposed (exapted) to plant tries and not shooting people. This need to exapt maps onto reducing the risk of exponential power, as generator function of existential risk.
And a new verb for the utopia of Cosmopolis is to imploit as opposed to exploit. This verb comes from Alexander Bard and he explains it as a Buddhist tantric practice of withholding, saving up, repairing and recycling. So this is the domain of regenerative economy and regenerative agriculture. This maps onto solving Daniel Schmachtenberger’s second generator function of existential risk, namely excessive extraction/pollution.
And finally a third verb for a third utopia of Syntheos, or The Barred Absolute, is something like syngesting or prosuming. Recently I saw a word prosumer, a combination of producer and consumer. I came up with syngesting, connecting Alexander Bard’s idea of Syntheism with the need to digest pain. But not through consuming and getting addicted, but through digesting the pain and synthesizing something beautiful out of it. This maps on the hardest of the three generator functions of existential risk — rivalry.
All these three verbs and utopias map onto three modalities of Forrest Landry:
Syngesting is a first-person and bottom-up digesting of pain, and then synthesizing it and bootstrapping towards something beautiful and meaningful.
Imploiting is a second-person view, a transcendental operator of bootstrapping the desired future together through withholding, saving up, cultivating relationships and nurturing others as ever-changing processes.
Exapting is a third-person view, a need to exapt the system towards new potentials, out of linear adaptation in the same direction. It is a need to apply all tricks and tools in the toolbox and use holistic “cluster thinking” and opposed to “sequence thinking”.
Using optionality and serendipity. Being open to new opportunities and purposes. But also thinking differently, and in different directions at the same time. See my short article on Bonnita Roy’s Six ways to go meta, or my article on four modes of thinking about cause prioritization.
You can support my writing and videos on these topics and my small podcasting project Between Ideas & Subcultures through Patreon or PayPal.
