Raw_Power comments on The 48 Rules of Power; Viable? - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Raw_Power 27 May 2011 01:36AM

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Comment author: Raw_Power 27 May 2011 07:40:29PM 1 point [-]

The Game of Thrones, right? (Actually in that particular case, given that it's a Crapsack World, it's in fact a negative sum game).

I like your post very much, you're right in that these rules really seem to encourage incompetence and mediocrity. Some of the alternative you suggest feel a bit ShinkiAndWH40k, shounen-manga kind of larger-than-life... but I love that as well.

Comment author: gjm 27 May 2011 11:33:28PM 0 points [-]

The "strange game" quotation is from the movie "War Games". (The game in question is Global Thermonuclear War.)

Comment author: Raw_Power 28 May 2011 06:45:43AM 0 points [-]

Yes, I know, but I like the Game of Thrones better: ""Kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars, lords and honest men...all will play the 'Game of Thrones'....]When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground. " Hence, negative sum. Though [DEFCON(i.e. Global Thermonuclear War, the Game) is on an entirely different scale, I guess.

Comment author: gjm 28 May 2011 11:49:05AM 1 point [-]

Butbutbut in "the game of thrones" winning is an option, whereas the whole point of the "strange game" quotation is that there is no winning move at all (other than not playing in the first place). It's not just negative-sum; it's unwinnable.

(Whether that's true of actual global thermonuclear war is of course a separate question.)