Hedonism (2)

I forgot to include in my post about hedonism my analogy with something that has formed quite a large part of my life (for better and for worse), which is game playing, on the computer particularly.

When one first plays a game, it's a voyage of discovery: the new rules, interactions and the consequent strategies are there to be discovered, and the first few games are interesting simply because of that. Perhaps, with board games, they're the most thrilling that the game ever is, because it's a challenge to find better strategies quickly, without anyone benefitting from experience or prior knowledge. I haven't played computer games against others, and certainly not on initial release, so I can't say the same for my computer game experiences.

Nonetheless, the challenges of learning the rules and developing 'broken' strategies are thrilling, and everyone will gradually settle down in a flatter part of the learning curve (not necessarily the same level of skill for everyone, but nonetheless flatter). New strategic discoveries are rare, and re-playing the game takes on a different meaning for people. The games that have replay value typically involve scoring systems of some sort. The game does not involve merely a win and a loss, but points. The essential feature is that a player can continue to beat himself, even when he is very likely to 'beat the game', such as by beating AI opponents.
The other major source of replayability is a certain randomness that throws up plenty of strategic decisions: randomness not in the outcomes of players' decisions, but in the set-up of the game that gives a huge range of different possible situations. Patience (by which I refer to any one of the range of solo card games) doesn't often involve scoring, but does give a random set-up that makes each game a different puzzle.

When people play a game that they can save, and have played many times before, the temptation increases greatly to save the game just before important decisions. People save regularly as well, in case things happen that the player didn't predict. Of course this makes sense; why lose a whole game because of one chance disaster, when all you'd do is start again and put a lot of work in to another game to get to the same point?
Or, alternatively, why accept that although you'll win, you'll win with a low score that won't be anywhere near your best?
The game (series) that I've played most is Civilization, which has long games of many hours. An event early on can heavily influence the rest of the game; it's quite possible to win from behind, but less likely that the win will be a big score. So I did get into the habit of saving games regularly, then frequently, and at one time, almost every battle (and there are plenty in a game).
The pursuit of the 'perfect game' distorted not just how much I saved, but also the whole strategy that goes with it. If I were running a real civilization amongst a number of hostile ones, I'd probably run a much larger standing army to avoid the risk of losing entirely. But when I can reload and the AI won't necessarily even make the same decision to make a 'surprise' attack, and I can certainly have a mobile defence force in place anyway, I can keep fewer units. Similarly, when a city can be taken by one unit (70% chance, let's say), and right at the beginning of the game I can choose to found my second city or build a third military unit, of course I'll found that city and take the chance that I lose: because I won't really lose!

When it comes to cheating at games like that, even so far as distorting strategy to account for the cheating, it's a personal decision about what's most fun (as long as they're one-person games). I can take big risks and reload when they don't pay off if I really want to push for the perfect game.
But in real life, as I hinted, I wouldn't take such risks; it's not sensible when you can't reload your life! And yet life is very similar, in that big risks have enormous rewards. And there are so many people out there that there's always someone desperate enough (or stupid enough, or testosterone-fuelled enough) to take a risk. The population is so large, in fact, that not only do people take risks, but that these risks pay off for a large number of people.

If I want success, how am I to achieve it? Am I to play safe, ensuring a decent, dull life, just as playing safe would lead to a moderate, decent game result? What is success?
Well, if success is merely surviving, then given my country I am almost guaranteed to succeed until about 80, and almost guaranteed to fail some time round about then.

But success is not about merely surviving, in my mind or in popular usage. Success is about being rich: it's about rising to the top and proving one's worth with objective achievements. How am I to rise to the top (assuming at least some ability)?

If I am to do as well, or better, than risk-takers, I must either be born with a vast amount of wealth, so that I don't need to take a risk, or I must take risks on as well. If we assume that I have some modicum of insight and ability, I can assure myself that I need only take risks that are slightly less risky than other people's risks, because my superior management will make my risks pay off at least as well.
Nonetheless, since risks give the most reward, I must take risks.

The problem is that I cannot reload my life. I have only the one life. When a risk goes wrong I can't try again in my pursuit of the perfect life. I can either acquiesce to a future of dullness and safety, or chase a dream of success which is highly unlikely to be realised simply because of the chances involved, even without considering human error. Neither option inspires me greatly.

I would describe risks in real life as anything from taking an uncertain position in a stock market to the course one chooses to study, or the field of work in which one specializes. Specialization itself is a risk, because you are ruling out a number of options in order to maximize the reward from a small subset of the options.

Obviously there are wide-ranging implications, other than the possibility of me being depressed.

Capitalism is half-predicated on the specialization of labour. Markets, for example, recognize that each person can't do everything for himself, and that it's better for a farrier to make horseshoes for everyone than for everyone to make horseshoes for himself. The problem is that as we chase more and more productivity, by which countries are measured, people must specialize more and more, because specialization does lead to greater efficiency. As nature shows us (and I've mentioned before the similarity between the theory of natural selection of species and market economics, which is basically natural selection of corporations), specialization leads to instability and collapse. A species well-adapted for a niche environment is poorly adapted for other environments and therefore sensitive to change.

When we consider an economy as a whole that's not a problem: a few people lose work here as demand shifts, and a few people get a lot of money elsewhere as they find themselves in demand, and things balance out as people train, or re-train, for the jobs that pay well. But have the people who lost work really been well-served by specialization? When one has put 10 years into learning a job, does one really want to spend 2-3 years re-training because of the unpredictable whims of the markets?

I'm not suggesting that we plan our economies instead. Planned economies would simply delay the inevitable, whilst wasting lots of money from other people on wasted labour. But I do wonder whether we should be chasing productivity, with the inevitable pressure for specialization. A Renaissance man, who can do many tasks, might not be as productive as a man who has learned a little bit more about one of them, but he is a happier, safer and less risk-exposed man.

At the moment the western world is talking about reducing banking risk exposure; about reducing leveraging, re-writing risk models and not underwriting risky corporate behaviour. But just as Hari Seldon, of the Foundation Series (by Isaac Asimov), invented psychohistory, which was eventually applied to individuals (with low certainty), having grown out of psychology, we should think about risk exposure on a personal as well as corporate level.
We have complex models for risk exposure for big banks, and yet none at all modelling risk exposure for humans, or considering the personal costs of that exposure that happen every day.
We have only one economy, and we get a crash every ten years or so. Just as we want to deleverage our banks to prevent a crash every ten (or thirty) years, we need to deleverage ourselves, to avoid the likelihood of a 'crash' for each person. We need personal liquidity: the ability to leave a risky position. And personal liquidity is not just accomplished by good labour rules about employment and maybe emigration, but also about specialization.
If we force a bank to specialize in a certain type of stock, of course it'll be susceptible to crashes in that stock. This is, as far as I know, the main justification of corporate takeovers of dissimilar businesses (barring, of course, the giant bonuses for the directors who initiate them). And yet no-one cares about individual susceptibility to market changes.

It takes time to re-train; time that a person doesn't have spare. The more specialized labour is, the more time he's wasted in his initial training, the more time he'll need for re-training, and the more sensitive his job is to market changes. Humans are successful because our minds make us adaptable in many ecosystems. Why are we so forcefully undoing this? Is there a point in a market when the human costs of specialization outweigh the productivity gains (and presumed human benefits)? Have we reached that point yet? Are the costs and benefits to the same people, and therefore is it right to weigh them against each other?

I don't know, but I wish someone would look into it.