Welcome to the Zero Sum Era. Now How Do We Get Out?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
> The winning deterministic strategy was tit for tat, developed and entered into the tournament by Anatol Rapoport. It was the simplest of any program entered, containing only four lines of BASIC,[10] and won the contest. The strategy is simply to cooperate on the first iteration of the game; after that, the player does what his or her opponent did on the previous move.[11] Depending on the situation, a slightly better strategy can be "tit for tat with forgiveness": when the opponent defects, on the next move, the player sometimes cooperates anyway, with a small probability (around 1–5%, depending on the lineup of opponents). This allows for occasional recovery from getting trapped in a cycle of defections.
Extremely straightforward, and in real-world settings (business, politics, relationships), moderate forgiveness usually wins in the long run.
Let alone 100 rounds, or to continue as a live player.
Because in reality there’s almost always escalation to higher and higher stakes.
> Because in reality there’s almost always escalation to higher and higher stakes.
Well clearly no, because the world is not constantly at war (the highest escalation).
> Well clearly no, because the world is not constantly at war (the highest escalation).
The world is not constantly at war because it’s almost always settled way before the count hits 20.
> What we are now experiencing, especially in the United States, is effectively a rejection of the belief in abundance and cooperation. It is an uprising against the premise that many groups can gain at once — a cynical, contagious us-or-them attitude, spreading across countries, communities and families.
> With kids’ games, maybe zero-summing feels like tough love. But on a national and global scale, it’s increasingly hard not to ask: What are we losing with a win-or-lose approach?
A great deal of what Trump is doing can be understood this way. Things that are being done for the "greater good" are perceived as setting the US to be the sucker, paying for benefits accruing mostly to others.
It's one of the most absurd takes.
Like, why do you think the US had privileged access to deals, and had a welcoming seat at the table? Countries were forced to do it? Or you think that the US, of all countries, was being gullible and extorted all while amassing wealth?
It's funny that the demise of the US came finally at the hand of Russian propaganda, and ignorance will make sure that it will come through.
Do you realize that for example China trying to have access to Ports and Military bases is massive endeavor. For example, Russia losing Syria and its ports and airbases is one of the biggest blunders in modern History.
Yet you have the idea that US power projection and getting free access to bases and ports is being a "chump being taken advantage of"!
It's not the other side of the table, it's ignorance. You can make the case that it isn't valuable, but Russia and China sure as hell are trying hard to get these perks, and they will fill the void.
Defensive alliances where the cost is on the US and the benefit is on the other side.
Scientific research, where the benefit is spread across the world but the cost is here.
CO2 emission control, where the benefit is global and the cost is local.
You'd rather have nuclear proliferation and US trying to defend itself from any country that can have the capacity to wipe out the US?
Or the US, a country that had terrorist attacks like 9/11, being deprived of intelligence, and support from allies that allowed the US to extend their reach and logistics?
As for the scientific research, are you talking about the mRNA vaccines developed in Germany, to which the US had a privileged access too?
Like how much ignorance will you continue to display in this thread, and to what objective? Please get some help from a LLM or something like that, I won't even ask you to do a Google search.
It's like all your opinions on the matter are acquired from podcasts like Joe Rogan who were pushing Trump and Russian propaganda - it's called podcast knowledge.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/japan-south-korea-and-poland-n...
> As for the scientific research, are you talking about the mRNA vaccines developed in Germany, to which the US had a privileged access too?
The point of this position is that the US has access to these scientific results regardless of what the US spends on science. Scientific results are positive externalities. The position is one of free riding on the efforts of others, rather than the opposite.
> Like how much ignorance will you continue to display in this thread
What ignorance is that, specifically? Also, my describing a position is not advocating that position. Have I stated I agree with it?
My guess as to what the problem might be is that the US has essentially become a two-class society. One class has been thriving, while the other has been struggling since the first China shock. The US was open to trade and more neutral, while other countries pursued export-led growth industrial policies. This benefited one class, but the other is increasingly relying on basic income financed by debt.
The thing is, Trump and Musk are clearly benefiting from an overvalued dollar and a trade deficit. Why would they change a system that is working so well for them? They might end up changing it accidentally by eroding trust in US reliability (also w.r.t. US creditworthiness), but that could be catastrophic and ultimately benefit no one.
Its incredibly dark times that dark side energy has so taken over the noosphere, has got its claws in & clawed more attention that any other way of viewing the world. This framing, of zero versus non-zero sum thinking, is incredibly useful for grappling with & seeing what's happening in our time. Very glad to see this idea surface, and I hope it can be a resounding message, that can help steer our challenged species's long term orientation.