GAMES people play

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I'm very slowly 'reading' that book, I started with better intentions... The content introduces many things I had never considered before and introduces nuances of communication that I can see in myself and in others. The realisations accompanying the new information makes my brain grind to a halt.
Do many people have an implicit understanding of these games Vs possessing a subconscious response to achieve an outcome?
The videos at the start are great Olympiadis, thanks for posting them.

There was a song called "Games People Play" which was a big hit around 1975.

Those videos are interesting, and seem very well at helping with long term, but not necessarily casual relationships. I've always looked at relationships with people in terms of a mathematical equation, almost like accounting. And people that play games with me, always end up creating an in-equality, resulting in me distancing myself. I definitely have seen this happen on various forums as previously mentioned, though I haven't spent enough time on this forum to call out examples here.

Using the example of someone asking for help (as in the video), I will give the benefit of the doubt in the beginning, but once you see a pattern of a behavior you no longer participate, even when they may be sincere (aka: crying wolf).

I'm going to say probably very few people.
The percentage might un-coincidentally be about the same as the percentage of true psychopaths, or perhaps a little higher.

Yes and yes.
Very generally speaking, the purpose of the games is to create, enlarge, and/or highlight inequality between individuals. Some people call this "separation" or a type of social stratification. It is a binary logic.
In computer programming it is much like a "bubble sort".
In common language it is the climbing of rungs on the social hierarchal ladder.
In order to sort, an inequality has to be established.


You are certainly not the first or only one to view human interactions in terms of a mathematical equation.
I believe the first complete account of this was done by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, and published in "Elective Affinities". The idea has been revisited many times, and also "re-emerged" by several people since. Most notably, several of these people exploring this idea have exceptionally high IQs, with some being over 200.

http://www.eoht.info/page/Human+chemica ... ion+theory

If the link doesn't work, just look up "Human Chemical Reaction Theory".

Hmm, ok, thanks for answering.
Without derailing the focus of this topic, is it possible to have similar knowledge as a psychopath, but use it in a altruistic manner, is that what is inferred with the un-coincidental percentage?

Ah, I believe you're referring to the Alan Parsons Project The song was released in 1981

"Where do we go from here now that all of the children have grown up. And how do we spend our time knowin' nobody gives us a damn."

I made an observation a little over a year ago that sort of runs along the same lines.

As a prelude to the observation I want to point out how people describe the situation of two people interacting well, becoming close/connected, friends, or in a love relationship.
They may say "we just clicked".

In chemistry, this is represented by two chemical reactants, one negative and one positive polarity, combining to form a product, or social "structure" we call a relationship.

My observation is based more on energy domains than on mathematics, but it's close enough.

First off, it's easy to see that we autistics or aspies very rarely "click" with other people, if ever.
In terms of polarities, what I see is that since we do not intend gaming, and we see things as ideally being equal,
we will answer or respond to positive energy with positive energy, or we respond to negative energy with negative energy.
This throws a wrench into the gaming machine.
I think it most often leads to an escalation from simple gaming to hostility.

I drew out some diagrams and story-boards of this process using stick figures and every day scenarios,
but I do not have them scanned into digital.

I do know that in nature (energy domains), that the initial flow of negative energy ( a call to action ) must have the response of a flow of positive energy in the opposite direction (resolution). -Reciprocation.
I believe that the particulars of these reciprocal energy transfers are governed by quantum probabilities.
I also believe that the human subconscious also operates using quantum probabilities, and tries to emulate what it sees around it in nature.
I see the particulars of the interactions as the results of binary algorithms that fall into a gaussian curve.

Back to real life. We autistics, generally speaking, do not run the same algorithms in our subconscious as the NTs.
I call the group of algorithms run by NTs the "hive mind".
Our algorithms act a bit like a virus, and disrupt the "normal" hive mind operation.
OR you could think of the NT algorithms as the virus instead, - whatever you like.
The point is that they are different enough to produce significantly different results.

If you reciprocate then you respond to a - with a + (call to action combined with action = resolution)
If you mimic, then you respond to a - with a - ( call to action combined with call to action = escalation)

In transactional analysis, if someone approaches us as a child, then we most often respond in the same child mode.
We mess up their game of manipulation. Obviously NTs do not like this.

There are also many instances with us that we are intending to be the adult "equal" role, but come across to the NT as either the child or the parent. This is a translational error that takes place within the NT subconscious.
I think that more than not, the NTs automatically assume that we are participating in the gaming, and subconsciously read into an intent that is not really there.

At any rate, the responses become "crossed" and unstable, as described in the videos.

I think that this often puts the NT on the defensive. Unfortunately I think that we aspies often mimic the defensive mode at this point, - thus escalation.

Gaming IS aggression.
I know that I do not like most types of aggression at all. I would rarely intend aggression, but I know that I mimic it often when in an environment of such. Though we may try, we cannot always avoid environments of aggression.
I realize that I do not interact properly (as expected) with most NTs.

In interactions I know I do not intend to game or manipulate.
I know that I intend to communicate (share) information as accurately as possible so that the best or most efficient solutions can be reached.
I believe that combining the most accurate information is the way to produce the most useful emergent solution to a problem. I know from experience that most NTs either do not share this belief, or it is not a very high priority to them.
This intent of sharing/combining of information is much like a learning algorithm in computer language.
Once enough input data has been gathered into close proximity and run through a series of conditionals, a new emergent set of logic can be produced.


There is something very fundamentally different between the nature of gaming and the nature of information sharing/combining. I have been studying the differences for some time, but have yet to have a complete description of them in terms of binary logic.
I do know that one logic is for sorting into hierarchies and the other logic is for producing emergent intelligence.
They obviously do not like to play well together.

Certainly not every true psychopath will take an interest in becoming a conscious master of gaming, so there would be exceptions. Also, many on the psychopathic spectrum will have that interest, as well as those off the spectrum that run across the information AND have the desire to manipulate.
There will be some non-psychopath scientists, doctors, and therapists who also have a good working knowledge of gaming.

Of course not everyone will use the information maliciously.
Psychopaths represent a particularly serious threat in that they CAN use the information maliciously and not be hindered by any feelings of guilt. That is, they will be able to excel at their interest and possibly become role models for many ordinary people.
I personally see this as a bad situation.
I think that our society already rewards psychopathy, and that humans have used and damaged each other too much already.

Very well said olympiadis.

Yep. Remember this thread? http://dev.wrongplanet.net/forums/viewt ... =3&t=87241

I notice a lot of the time, I tend to just mirror or mimic what other people do. Especially if I am caught off guard and haven't thought ahead of time about saying anything to that person. Like if someone speaks to me in a sharp or abrupt tone of voice, I automatically respond back with the same tone of voice. It does tend to escalate things. I just do it without thinking. I have to actually think about it to NOT do that.

When I can think things through ahead of time, and approach other people with a sense of purpose about what I'm doing, things usually go more smoothly. Because then it's really coming from ME instead of me just mirroring the other person.

With some people, I feel almost like I get caught in their hypnotic gaze. Like when a person approaches me suddenly and starts talking about something random. I don't have any particular reason or purpose for interacting with them at that moment, so it's like I have no resources inside myself to draw upon to converse with them. That's when I can really get stuck in mirroring the other person, and things go haywire.



YES. For sure.

I know this from experience too. And I have observed that people frequently don't even want to acknowledge or confront valuable information if it conflicts with their own motives. They will somehow deny it or dismiss it, or change the subject to avoid talking about it. Like in my job, when we have specific projects going on, management just wants to make things look good to the people above them, at least until we move on to the next project. But they don't really want to hear practical information about how it's actually coming along.

This is a very astute observation.

Gaming by definition involves the a partitioning into winners and losers, and hierarchies are the result of repeated games, from which a hierarchy of winners and losers emerges. Gaming induces a never ending cycle of hierarchy building and collapse. Hierarchies have the stability of a house of cards. With sufficient skill of the gamers, the house can grow to a certain size, but eventually it collapses, and the same game starts again at ground level. Information hiding is a key element of gaming. Over long periods of time, over a cycle of many collapses, nothing much changes, and the game remains a game of cards.

Sharing and validation of knowledge is a process that can only take place in an environment of trust and equality. It is the anti-thesis of gaming. It leads to genuinely new insights and innovation. The pooled experience of multiple people allows the discovery and validation of new patterns, i.e. new knowledge that is available to everyone who participates in the process. Information hiding or distortion disrupts the process of knowledge validation, and prevents the creation of new knowledge.

Those who position the autism spectrum as the next stage in evolution have a point.

Open sharing and validation of knowledge is a process that seems naive on the surface, but only in the presence of gamers:

Biology has undergone similar evolutionary transformations before, for example in terms of the emergence of multicellular organisms. The cells in a multicellular organism share a common knowledge base, and this knowledge base is used to coordinate behaviour and to identify potentially harmful intruders. In a multicellular organism there is no simplistic hierarchy of cells, cells communicate via a myriad of non-linear feedback loops, and each cell fulfills a specific function.

It remains to be seen how long it takes for non-hierarchical forms of social organisations to emerge and grow to a point where they can successfully fend of intrusions by gamers and hierarchy builders. Modern communication technologies have for the first time enabled quasi unlimited peer-to-peer communication. They may evolve into the nervous systems and immune systems of non-hierarchical social organisms.

Gamers use the same communication infrastructure, but for gaming, and not for knowledge sharing. Compared to the organisation of cells in a multicellular organism, social hierarchies are much more unstable, and provide very few incentives for knowledge sharing. I predict that over the long run social hierarchies will scale less well than non-hierarchical peer-to-peer networks. Peer-to-peer networks are more resilient than hierarchies, and they can make much better use of the new technological infrastructure of society, i.e. digital nervous systems and immune systems.

Social hierarchies had the upper hand as long as peer-to-peer communication of knowledge was impossible, and most communication was mediated via a hierarchical social structure.

Of course social hierarchies will continue to exist as long as they are gamers, but increasingly the games may be limited to games between gamers, and the digital nervous systems and immune systems of peer-to-peer networks will become increasingly efficient at fighting off gamers.

Yay! I finally made a decent/useful thread AND have cheerleaders

When you say "information hiding" do you mean deception? or any number of similar strategies like "added uncertainty", or "false labeling"? which I guess are just different flavors of deception.

I try to envision what you describe in the collapse phase of the hierarchies, but I can't really see it like collapsing cards.
To my odd perspective it looks like a type of lingering disconnect where the original hierarchy doesn't necessarily disappear into a total collapse. However, all the losers, or particulate waste/ash from the original process can begin to reform into either other sub-hierarchies, or completely separate hierarchies. The result would be an accumulation with the larger pyramids forming and growing on top of lots of old smaller pyramids, - a process very much like certain types of crystal formation. Some smaller ones stay put and others are absorbed back into another growing structure.
Imagine the inside of a geode.

In short, - partial collapses.

I still haven't taken the time to draw out charts of the logic gates involved in the different processes. I may need a giant whiteboard for that.
But from what I think I know at this point, I see three basic players:

A. Natural Selection
B. Hierarchy
C. Emergence

Then it gets complicated. There is no linear order to them.
Intuition tells me that they each consist of fractals and are part of a larger fractal structure.
B & C are contained within A, and perhaps each is a part of each other.
BUT, B & C have also been evolving to different levels.

In the physical world we see A-natural selection result in a great amount of stratified stability (species), but also a small percentage of C-emergence which is the establishment of new species.
Of these species, there is a relatively small percentage of predators and a very large percentage of prey species.

We have already seen B-hierarchy evolve (by use of A-natural selection) from the physical world and enter the world of memetics where the complexity is ever increasing (entropy).

The existence of memetics is due to C-emergence.

Though C-emergence does also appear within memetics, it has a very small footprint there, just as it has in the physical world. We have yet to see C make the same kind of run within memetics, and it's possible that it will not.

And, obviously A-natural selection is always present in both B & C, though the limiting physics is left behind once the transition is made into memetics.

Perhaps I'm afraid to draw out the logic gates of these because I'm afraid of what I might see.



I agree.
But, you can't rid of the gaming without ridding of the psychopaths,
and that can't be an option for moral reasons.
Also, some people feel that the psychopaths provide an essential function in society, and that removing them would be like removing a predator from an ecosystem.

It seems like B and C want to exist independently of each other, but what if the reality is that at the core, they are logically intertwined in a way that one would not exist without the other?
Or what if, in a similar fashion to predator/prey ratio, C-emergence can only exist as a relatively small percentage of B-hierarchy ?

JBW, I know it can be done on paper, but in reality is it possible to remove parts of the recursion from C and have it still exist? and would this be one of the functions of a designed "immune system"?

I really really hate to say it, but my ideas about the requisites/conditionals for emergence would suggest the need for a large number of polarized bits in close proximity, and that suggests a hierarchal sorting logic to produce the polarized bits (you called it partitioning). Maybe not. I hope not.

For those not in on this logical emergence thing, think of it like the formation of a bubble.
Molecules have to be polarized, and in close proximity in order to become partitioned for the larger bubble structure to emerge from a liquid.
This process happens at every level I know of including memetics, - the world of ideas.
Get a large number of ideas together in close proximity, then filter them in a binary manner to polarize them, - dichotomies good vs bad, etc... and at some critical density a new idea will emerge.

In the corporate world they call it "brainstorming meetings", but that method usually doesn't work.


I know the subject seems to be sidetracked, but this is relevant to gaming, and particularly to the role it may play in the big picture, along with our role as the game disruptors.

I was going to go on about how I see brainwashing and implantation of memes that support gaming, coming from our environment, - mostly media.
We are exposed to the memes both directly and subliminally, and we become "conditioned".
The logical mechanisms of these memes condense out of the superficial sensory input and find a home in our subconscious if they get past our filtering.

Out of the multitudes of examples that I could pull from the media that have been highly influential to the collective subconscious of the masses, I present to you this section of lyrics with clear reference to "gaming".

So looking at this "innocent" bit of memes, or "word vomit", whatever you like,
someone please (perhaps JBW) tell me what you think the connection is between memes like this and observable behaviors like gaming, narcissism, sociopathy, and psychopathy.

I used to be in a support group that I thought was very helpful ... at first.

After a few meetings, I began to realize that everyone seemed more interested in defining which "game" everybody else was playing at any given moment, than in providing any emotional support.

Even after I stopped going, one of them left a message on my answering machine (remember those?) that basically said that I would be welcome back to the group as soon as I stopped playing "I'm Leaving! (Convince me to stay!)". It seemed that they had run out of 'official' games to identify, so they started making up their own.

I never replied to the message, and I never went back to the group.

What is the significance of one person from your group making an incorrect assumption?