When You Study Life Like it’s a Game – Social Modelling
You may not know it, but a lot of games you play like they’re an evening of relaxation and fun are in fact really complex mathematical, biological, social theories.
- Most people would grasp chance/probability principles (ie poker is an amazing example of this. In fact, if your kid is having issues with math, this is a great game to teach them.)
- And understand that it’s important when playing with a partner to communicate and work together.
- And grasp when you need to fly solo or stick to the plan you and they had, to work for mutual interests. ie Euchre. Sometimes when your hand is just too good and you know you can win, whatever your partner wants is moot. You go for it and ask forgiveness later.
- If you play bridge or whist, you know that there is something unseen (or a dummy hand) working against even your best plans. It’s not the players you can see or authority (much as you might like to always blame them.) You could call it luck or fate, but is it? Such concepts presume all things are equal. Yes you all are dealt a hand and in theory you have an equal shot at getting the winning hand. But as any intersectional feminist can tell you, that’s just not so when it comes to humanity. Is it?
- Most game players are well aware there is no such thing as true random. So how was that sort achieved? Did you mix the cards or tiles enough? Was it a new deck? About the only way to beat this is to count them, and very few people are capable of this degree of memory. I hear it’s also illegal in Las Vegas?
- And people don’t always act in the best interests of them or their team, do they? Is it self defeating, a lack of self esteem, guilt, is it an unknown bond or deal with the opposition, or is it simply not paying attention or not knowing the rules/etiquette of the game?
- People learn when playing games. But the question always remains, do they learn to succeed? Or do they learn bad habits? Habits they just cannot seem to shake, no matter what they do? That their partners want to slap them for. Players like that do exist. Sadly, I’ve met some. And some of the worst ones are gamblers. Who presume a roll lasts forever and there are superstitions that influence the game itself. There really aren’t. No fuzzy dice rubbing will win you the game.
- And in social scenarios, ultimately you have to consider such things as ideations of suicide, persecution and homicide. Does everyone have these and they’re only triggered at times of great stress? Or is there an agent that they experience that most people don’t?
In a game, scientific or social model, you cannot presume that you know all the possible variables. Esp not when dealing with people and their emotions. Head scratching moments come to even the most experienced players, and in science they call that the uncertainty principle. It’s the WTF moment. Unplanned, unforeseen events and even if you see everything right, sometimes the game just stumps you. You can however build that into the model and win anyways. Which the best do,
And here you thought you were just having fun, right? lol
mspeachierocks 