play the game or gaslight the metagame

meta: I’ll probably rewrite this at some point in a way that gets across what i’m trying to say more concisely, which seems to be “cheating is when the rules are broken, often meaning that the rules of the metagame are being used, but with enough will & a good metagame, you can gaslight the game into becoming the metagame”

this article is an exploration of what constitutes cheating - and what constitutes “just playing the game”, covers gaslighting, reframing the game [or pulling it into a metagame], and what constitutes fair.

there’s also a part about the venture / startup game w/ the quiet part said out loud

this piece is spiritually a sequel to on integrity & omission

loose structure:

• what makes us think something is cheating / violating the rules?

• examples of games, cheating, and analyzing what constitutes cheating vs reframing the game

  • hornets and cuckoo birds

  • grizzly bears

  • lions and rabbits

  • dodgeball

• if you gaslight hard w/ a strong idea - you can reframe the game… unclear if that constitutes cheating

  • applying it to startups

cheating

we get angry when we consider people cheating. “fairness” is deeply ingrained into our DNA & intuition. we consider things that “break the rules” as cheating. “the rules” are defined by “the game” we’re playing.

if you call someone out for cheating, they usually say something like “hate the game not the player”. this might feel strange - why would we hate the game if they are breaking its rules?

it’s because they’re not playing the same game - they’re playing a metagame.

this gets pretty meta, so defining some terms:

• the game - the thing being played in the current frame

  • the rules - the rules of the game in the current frame

• metagame - the frame outside the current frame

  • the meta rules - rules of the metagame

  • often the metagame is the reason you’re playing the game in the first place

• cheating - usually involves breaking the rules of the game, in service of the metagame

hornets and cuckoo birds

baby cuckoo birds are born into the nests of other birds, and push the native newborn birds out of the nest to get the mother bird to think they are the mother’s only child and get fed more food.

hornets lay parasitic larvae into caterpillars and have them eat the host from the inside out while gestating

if you go to any tiktok video of cukoo birds pushing out other baby birds form the nest or hornets laying parasitic larvae and you’ll find people in the comments talking about “awful” it is. more so than a video of a bobcat hunting a rabbit. why is that?

it’s because it feels like cheating

as humans, a species that cares for our young & see them as defenseless, we feel like two of the rules of the game include “provide for your own young” and “fight fair & don’t attack the defenseless”

obviously the metagame that the hornet & cukoo bird is establishing is that the only rule that actually matters in evolution is “propagate your offspring”. no extra rule required.

one more rule: grizzly bears & salmon

when grizzly bears get into a feeding frenzy while hunting salmon - they sometimes gorge themselves on more food they can even eat. they just kill the salmon, piling mounds of carcasses and throwing up the food they can’t finish - and they have no intention of finishing that food

this makes my skin crawl

lends to some intuition i have that “life is sacred, so only kill what you need”

violating it feels like cheating.

there’s no actual reinforcement mechanism to this in nature - hence why this behavior in grizzly’s hasn’t been stamped out

evolution of a game, told through lions and rabbits.

now imagine how metagames can evolve

game: hunting by chasing

rules: the lion chases, the rabbit runs

result: lions and rabbits both get faster as the faster survive due to creative destruction. i feel like there’s something beautiful in this “gentleman’s agreement”. you could almost see their mandate as “get faster”, and collaboratively both the platonic idea of “rabbit” and “lion” get really fast

…

now let’s say one day a rabbit develops the ability to blend into the background like a chameleon, and then those rabbits start surviving but getting slower

this strikes me as “weird”. it almost feels like the rabbit is cheating by violating it’s mandate to get faster.

if the rabbits had a school, it would be a school where they teach how to run. and suddenly this upstart rabbit who’s bad at running is able to hide better - fundamentally altering the game, and now despite failing school they get rewarded by it

depending on your life circumstances and how well you fit into the boxes society rewards when you were younger - you may or may not relate to the chameleon-rabbit more.

and just like that - the behavior has changed the game, and coerced the new rules to fit the metagame:

metagame (new game): don’t get caught

hidden rule: get faster

new rules: the lions FINDS & chases, the rabbit HIDES & runs

…

now let’s say one day a rabbit finds a glock-17, stops running, and blows out the brains of the pursuing lion.

and it teaches the next generation of rabbits to use glock-17s.

that feels weird now [or super based depending on who you are]

something much more sacred than the duty to get faster feels like it’s been violated

i would wager - a much larger portion of the population would feel like that’s cheating

metagame (new game): don’t die

hidden rule: live according to your nature

new rules: find advantages of any kind - just don’t die

…

so what’s my point? I think we can observe that as a society…

we find competing fair & square, naively, and achieving excellence admirable. i.e. the fastest rabbit

we also have some admiration for the non-conformist who can use a better understanding of the metagame to find their place in the world. i.e. the hidden rabbit

but there’s some greater intuition in the back of our minds that if you push the metagame too far - you’re basically cheating. i.e. the glock17 rabbit

…

another point: from the POV of the hidden rabbit, if the fastest rabbit complains - then they’re being childish and naive. they’re just not appreciating the nature of the game.

from the POV of the glock17 rabbit, if the hidden rabbit complains - they’re being childish.

depending on the framing - what one person views as “cheating” is typically viewed on the other end as “naivety“

sportsmanship, having fun, and dodgeball

let’s say you’re playing dodgeball w/ people. what is the game?

is it winning?

in which case getting angry about getting hit is totally fair

is it following the honor code?

in which case, getting angry at someone else not admitting they got hit just because the ref didn’t sees is fair

is it having fun?

in which case, getting angry in general is bad - unless it’s at someone else for ruining the fun

the true answer is probably some combination of these as games and metagames - depending on the person. you might care about winning but only if it is according to the honor coded rules, and only contest those rules if it doesn’t detract from your fun

…

now imagine someone else is shining a flashlight into the ref’s eyes every time they get hit, or doing some other weird shit to start gaming the rule set.

i’d get upset

now imagine this person is really charismatic, and convinces everyone that contesting calls by the ref and finding ways to trick them is “part of the game“… and it’s even more fun this way

now they’ve coerced the game everyone’s playing to follow their rules, through sheer force of will. some would call it gaslighting

and now the new game just includes tricking the refs

and the refs start wearing sunglasses

and a whole new set of meta is introduced

and maybe that’s still fun

and maybe that’s ok

arguably the rabbit w/ the glock gaslit every lion and rabbit that thought the game was about “getting faster x hide/seeking better” into this new frame of the world

the game of venture and startups

a vc and a founder meet. the founder pitches, the founder says they’re raising, the vc says they’ll think about it and get back to them

and then they never do, and they never tell them why

and then a year later, the founder is raising again, and the vc reaches back out, happy talk all the way through, bc they caught a whiff of a hot deal

and then they talk again

and then they never tell them why

now for the vc, they’re just allocating time strategically. something else came up. whatever, this founder isn’t going to make it or something. there’s no cost to ghosting, there’s a cost to giving feedback, and chances are the person will fail at the next company they start anyways

so why bother responding?

it’s just part of the game.

…

should the founder take it personally? if one of the rules of the game is truly “spend as little time with people you don’t think are going to make it, while maximizing optionality” the founder can’t really blame the vc - they’re just following the rules of the game

in fact, if we view that as “just part of the game” - a founder getting upset at a vc not giving any feedback is actually childish - like the fast rabbit bitter about the hiding rabbit.

because the founder is blaming the game not the player - and think that the game is about transparent communication… or something

but what if the founder getting upset is also part of the game? what if the founder wants to maximize the probability that all future vcs spend time with them even if they aren’t going to make it, and demands some costly signaling from all vcs that interact with them

and that founder publicly tells that vc to go fuck themselves, names their fund, and says the founder never work with that investor, their fund, and any fund they ever work at for the rest of the founder’s career…

they’ve sacrificed one option to get to some closer to global optimal path of coercing the metagame to fit their frame

is that not also part of the game?

or is that founder being childish?

from the VC’s frame - the founder is being naive and childish… or maybe the founder is cheating. depending on how deliberate the founder is in this effort, that tantrum could come from a place of naivety or a place of calculated game theory

the metagame to the VC’s game is “founders are trying to signal they’re worth spending time with, and maximize high quality vc attention, founders who fight the norms indicate they don’t go with the flow and will result in more vc attention”…

and not childish at all

and any vc that has an issue with that… isn’t appreciating that it’s “just business”

so who’s frame is right?

…

going back to dodgeball, one stipulation that your friend’s metaframe succeeding was that they were very charismatic, and the metagame they introduced was more fun - so they were able to gaslight everyone into thinking that behavior is ok

in this case, correctness becomes an observed outcome, empirically verified

if the founder goes on to build a successful company, returning billions, they will be seen as a legend. if they crash and burn, they’ll be described as “childish”.

although something unintuitive is that many of the best founders seem to heavily lean into this form of gaslighting.

rockefeller & vanderbilt

vanderbilt would refuse to sign contracts, saying that his word is his bond and he will definitely keep to it, and if you are the kind of person who needs a signature… it’s probably a sign that you don’t keep your word w/o it, and he would just refuse to do business with you

• in otherwords: want a signature? fuck you. fuck you. go fuck yourself. fuck you. and fuck off

rockefeller told everyone who held standard oil stock to hold it, bc he knew he was running such a tight ship and only people he cared about or loved were allowed to hold it, and he identified with it as if it were a part of himself

• and when someone wanted to sell - they would find that the counterparty to their sale price was almost always rockefeller himself

• at which point rockefeller would buy it at a huge premium, ostracize them from his inner circle and smugly grow the company well past the price of the premium

• in other words: sell my stock? stop backing me? fuck you. fuck you. go fuck yourself. and fuck off

parker conrad, peter thiel, mark zuckerberg, it seems like overwhelmingly at the top - the best players cut to the chase about what matters and refuse the frames provided by others. places like founders fund active deride VCs who care about financial projections at the series A - at the highest levels real seems to recognize real.

the first time i described this phenomenon - someone said “they’re only allowed to do this because they have the privilege of success”

i think that’s reversed - their success was built off the fact that they were able to shape metagames around them their whole life, and force others into the box they want them in.

recap for future reference:

we feel rage towards “cheating”, which is when someone breaks what we see as the rules of the game

the pattern of “hate the game not the player” is usually exercised when someone is reframing “cheating” to “playing fair” but in a different game

with a strong enough will - you can pull people into the metagame you thrive in. when people don’t like this, it’s called “gaslighting”

and if you’re strong enough to do that - the only reason to not do it…