Our Human Games: games are everywhere, and they matter more than most people think

November 23, 2020

Games reflect an important part of human psychology. One broad way to think about "games" is that they are any situation that has: (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 ch...

Hypothesis about America: people are coming to realize society is messed up

September 1, 2020

I've been coming to think that the following hypothesis may be true about America: Increasingly, people in the U.S. are concluding that society is really F'd up. But the reasons are subtle, hidden, and complex, so each group picks their favorite simple enemy to blame. Problems go unfixed. Points in favor of the claim that people are increasingly coming to this realization: 1. This helps explain Trump's election in 2016. Many rural Republicans and disaffected independents believed s...

My Top-10 Weakly-Held Policy Perspectives

February 2, 2019

Written: February 2, 2019 | Released: June 27, 2021 Change my mind! Below are my very tentative, weakly held perspectives on ten very complex policy topics. If you have strong evidence or solid arguments against (or for) any of these viewpoints, I'd be really interested to know. Please post in the comments, referencing which topic you are referring to (e.g. "#1 - Heath insurance", "#5 - Death penalty", etc.). --- A few notes: I'm assuming the constraint that proposed policies are not a...

Thoughts on Common Political Perspectives

December 20, 2017

Personal freedom (often part of liberal and libertarian perspectives): (1) People seem better at understanding what is good for them, as individuals, than regulators are at figuring out what those same people need, so I think personal freedom to do what you like should be the default position unless there is a good reason to deviate from it. (2) I think it makes our society better, on average, when any person who is critical of government or authority can publicly state their criticism wi...

The Stories Democrats and Republicans Don’t Agree On

January 20, 2017

In efforts to encourage understanding and openness on Inauguration Day, we wrote a pair of simple, short essays. One is designed to capture the views of the majority of Clinton supporters, the other, the views of the majority of Trump supporters. We had 80 supporters from each group read the corresponding essay and rate whether they agreed or disagreed with each sentence, and whether they agreed with the essay overall. After adjustments based on the feedback we received, we published the two...