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[RoseHeart]

There is a way of thinking I was recently exposed to that was different to my own.

This style of thinking was that individual battles don't matter, only overall consistency.

To contrast this, my thinking is each battle is important, so I optimize to make sure my minimum chance of success is as high as possible.

The maximum success rate style does have obvious advantages, the gains from those more consistent victories gives greater resources, thus ensuring higher minimum chance of success, potentially, over myself who focused solely on that from the beginning.

So is my style obsolete? In a dog eat dog world, yes.

However, in a cooperative society my specializing can be an advantage.

Say the nation was at war, in the longterm a maximum success strategy should win. However, if one battle has particular importance, that to lose would be to lose everything, then if there was a general representing either style, the high minimum success rate general would have to be considered. A high maximum success rate general is not interested in covering all of their weaknesses, such as less commonly fielded ones. They could either switch to my style of thinking for this one battle, or gift me their resources and use my trained thinking to harness them.

If victory is black and white, they may still be the better option. But if there are gradients of success, then my style will stave off the worst possible outcomes.

Thoughts?

[RoseHeart]

I play a vehicle combat game with a friend, a game called Crossout where you build your combat vehicle. He is very aggressive, and a skilled player. Meanwhile I take on a support role. For example, I use a niche item, the harpoon. It has some offensive use, but offensively the resources could go to a dedicated weapon instead.

However, if my friend is crippled, I can use the harpoon to drag them on to a capture point, or to a place their weapon will have line of sight. This is not a common situation but not entirely rare either. These "reclaimed matches" feel significant, but I can't really be sure we would not have just won those same matches if I had used his playsyle, the answer is probably most of them, and won some matches we did lose.

My friend directly told me, he does do better alone, he was unclear why he then chooses to play with me, it wasn't sentimental.


What then about support units in real militaries? Are they just a misguided addition, should they have been soldiers instead? There is more that I am not getting...

[RoseHeart]

I play a mobile card game called Plants vs Zombies: Heroes. In that you build your deck with plants or zombies based on which character you play as. There are attack units and support units. A player can and do still use support units in a "maximum success rate" style. So that isn't it.

Why am I so fond of my "high minimum success rate" style? It feels unethical to not give my all to ensure everyone comes home, but the other way will save more people on average, even if there is an occasional massacre. It feels cold. Red pill. Sharks vs sheep.

Perhaps these labels are just a distraction. Perhaps I am motivated by fear of failure, and they are motivated by an eagerness to succeed.

[RoseHeart]

If the world was in my hands. Humanity's continued existence, I could ensure more would be saved(minimum), but the other general would probably have the better outcome. Humanity would need to decide if (potentially) going extinct was better than settling for a better chance to save fewer people.

[RoseHeart]

I know what the right answer is for me, neither.


It's a third path, one off the beaten road. And it means surrendering control, a scary thing to do. When I was 17 I was attracted to a book, "The Power of you Subconscious Mind". I showed it to my dad, and he introduced me to Youtube videos of "Bashar", an entity purported to be channeled by Darryl Anka. He gave the same advice many spiritual sources do "Follow your highest excitement". That excitement is from a higher part of yourself that knows what outcome is most relevant for your soul.

I have been homeless, I have been robbed, I have been heartbroken. All after hearing these teaching, I have experienced incredible lows. And yet I haven't discarded these ethereal lessons as irrelevant. I have also experience miraculous synchronicity, overcoming internal blocks, and learning to love myself in ways I didn't know I deserved.

It's been a wild ride. Thank you for listening.

RH

[Loud Whispers]

I agree. It is a bit of banter when ppl look at your Cersei Lannisters and say they're so smart for pathologically stabbing their allies in the back for immediate gratification when the ability to cooperate, trust and work towards the future is a basic element of being a functioning adult human. Like if you compare a chimpanzee to a human infant, in terms of IQ they are similar in what kind of puzzles they may solve on their own. Yet when it comes to solving puzzles that can only be solved through cooperation, human infants who have never met one another nor speak a language, are able to work together to solve the puzzle.

Machiavelli cautions that the basis of power is stable relationships, trust and consistency. Let everyone know where you stand, and that you will be predictable, strong and fair. Then you will create an environment where people are much less likely to try and murder you, whilst your allies will know you are someone who had their back when they needed you, and they'll have your back should the day come you need them. Likewise, to not trust in those of mercenary character, because they are people who are unable to put the interests of a greater group ahead of immediate, impulsive self-profiting.

There's a neat little research project someone did ages ago where they modelled a bunch of evolutionary strategies. On a big grid, each cell represented a living unit, and when that unit encountered another it could choose to cooperate and they would both get food, or it could choose to steal and get all the food. If a unit went too long without food, it would starve and die. If it got enough food, it would reproduce and make another unit.

The strategies:
The Traitor - The Traitor was a strategy whereby they would only cooperate with units it didn't recognise, and would refuse to cooperate with units it did recognise.
The Selfish - The Selfish unit would refuse to cooperate with anyone at all.
The Pathological Altruist - The Pathological Altrust would cooperate with absolutely everyone.
The Tribalist - The Tribalist would only cooperate with those it recognised.

The Selfish and Traitor units proved resilient, though they never attained dominance, because they are both self-sabotaging in the long-run and dependent on the success of the altruist or the tribalist. Meanwhile, once introduced into the environment, the tribalist would supplant the altruist as the dominant unit. This is a crude oversimplification of a basic principle; trust in others, help others, be wary of psychopaths and greedy gluttons, and you will have a superior outcome to if you walked alone