The Game of Life

Written 08/07/22

Published 02/29/24

Combinatorial Game Theory: Rules

0) The game exists - Creation

1) The game has particular defined rules - Knowledge

2) The game has central information available to all agents - Observation

3) The game has a winner at the end, or the game is infinite - Decision

0 - The game has to be manifest in order to talk about it. I really do not need to explain this one, it just needs to be here. Someone or something has to create the game, or there is no game.

1 - The way in which the rules manifest and affect the gameplay necessarily determine how players act within the game. You can't make any moves against the rules, you must learn what works within the scope of the rules.

The particular way in which one player or another perceives the rules of play and consequently what moves might be deemed "good" or "bad" in relation to some arbitrary desired outcome is a fairly accurate definition of the word "knowledge."

2 - There is a board in the middle with all of the chess pieces, and both players can see the whole board. They cannot see into each others mind, but there is a designated "world" in which play happens, and this information is accessible to everyone.

In various sports, there is 1 ball that both teams are trying to possess and control. There is a space in which observable information manifests.

3 - At the end of the game there is a winner. Someone wins, the other loses. Or maybe one person wins more than the others, like the Olympics or poker. In many situations, there is a desired end state, and the end of the game is exactly when the end state of a particular match is already determined.

Sometimes chess players will end the game before checkmate, simply because checkmate is inevitable. There is no reason to play through the rest of the moves, other than for fun or because the inevitable checkmate has not been consensually recognized.

Now I will demonstrate why I found these ideas particularly interesting.

0 - I exist, I think. The world exists, things exist. Yeah.

1 - Some people just seem to be good at life, or have everything line up for them. Some people are smarter than others, and therefore able to accomplish much more in the world.

The distribution of knowledge and ability across the population is more or less evenly distributed by some measure.

There are rules and laws, like the laws of physics, or the mechanics of genetic encoding, which determine the particular nature of the particular distribution.

2 - I am conscious, I think. There is consciousness, and I am conscious of the consciousness which creates conscious experience. Yeah.

3 - The game has a winner? Depends on the game. If I play any arbitrary game, like chess, the game is finite and I can observe the final decision of the game, win or lose. These games most certainly do have a winner.

But what about the game of life? Are there winners and losers? Who decides? Like I said, some people are smarter or stronger than others. The effects of these traits may be observed in the central observation space that we call the world, but the very nature of the "game" metaphor requires a judge or decision which marks who wins and who loses. This is exactly how we end up with all these myths of afterlife, Heaven and Hell.

This is how we end up with egomaniacal people who live to serve their idealized perception of themselves, they require constant validation and approval in order to fulfill the ideal. This is how people descend into Stockholm Syndrome, because they view the other person in the relationship as a deciding factor in their own value as a person, even if that decision is to abuse them.

Once you win, you've won. It's already in the past. Then you have to find a new game to play. So how do you win the game of life? Just realize that you cannot win forever. If there were an ideal state of consciousness, it would be one (1) state and it would last forever.

But take a look at the world, or anything, and you realize this is just not manageable. It requires either extreme coincidence of fortune or control over the chaotic nature of the environment. Consciousness, and life, is about change over time. Unified conscious experience necessarily requires a dimension of time in order to manifest.

Put very simply, the goal of life is to survive and thrive. You cannot do these things infinitely, so this is not a reasonable goal. If the goal is to survive, congrats! You made it! You've been doing it since you were born.

If the goal is to thrive, then life becomes the game which you are playing. Who is the decider of meaning and value? You are. The world may decide things that are valuable to the world as a collective, but these values are necessarily aggregate values of large populations.

Meaning and purpose is decided by the creators of meaning and purpose, conscious beings. If you decide that you are not good enough, you'll never win, you'll never reach whatever ideal goal you've set for yourself, then that is your decision.

If you decide that you love yourself, you are good enough, you are happy despite whatever the situation may be, then you are thriving. You've won.