Wisdom & Games or Skill = Wisdom | A counterintuitive approach using games

Jan '22 in Other

I've got to do quite much with (Skillbased-) games and the science behind games...

Both are really good ways to learn and apply this example of Andrew Kirby.

For example in (Skillbased-) games it is often the case that people with a high level of skill can freely transfer between different games of the same type and even if they haven't played for a year or so they are still able to easily (compared to new people) get back to the top.

This is also something I know from personal experience and there is a perfectly fitting quote for that:

“You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know” - Rene Daumal

This quote can be viewed from many perspectives but the way I have seen it is that the person who already got to the top (is highly skilled, has already achieved something great, ...) already went through all the struggles of climbing the mountain and thus has already failed a certain number of times and applied this knowledge through failure to the rest of the way.

To get back to the initial example:

The person gained Wisdom through the experiences the person earned on the way up the first times (eg. the failures, struggles, traps, etc.) which lead to the creation of the map that

@Pablo Micheletti

mentioned in his post.

It basically is the skill (we can also call it wisdom) to make the correct decisions based on previously accumulated Information (to simplify: left way is thorny, straight way has multiple traps, right path is dark but leads to the goal, or something like that, just imagine the paths of your own lives here^^)

and received information for the current situation.

That is why skilled gamers, CEO's, Entrepreneurs etc. can usually get back to their level rather quickly and even improve on the way back up:

Because they already got a cheatsheet.

And as such we can learn/teach this pattern of the cheatsheet.

Let's call this pattern wisdom and there we are.

So in the end wisdom is knowing what works and what doesn't (cause and effect if you want) based on failures, struggles or other things that we have experienced.

That is also why people who aspire to become really good in a game (to get back to games) usually watch their replay a few times to look for the mistakes, miscalculation or other causes that led to certain effects (for example a lost game).

In finances or Start-Ups or even in businesses it's usually the same, closely analyse what happened and what led to the events.

In games there is another important factor at play which is "Instant-feedback".

The faster the feedback-chain is the closer you can observe which decision or action caused which effect and in games it is really important that you see it as soon as possible because the longer your feedback loop takes the harder it is to actually identify what caused a certain event.

So as takeaway for that:

Have/Create fast feedback loops so that you can quickly identify the cause and effect!

And lastly in Bio-psychology there is a concept that is very interesting for this topic

and it states the following:

"If your brain has a memory of something it can replicate the decisions that led your there."

Fancy, isn't it?

You can exploit this function of the brain by intentionally injecting a memory (basically artificially creating one through repetition) because our memories are not fixed but simply fragments of information that can be manipulated as we wish.

Therefore if you create a memory of one of your goals for example, including all your senses, your emotions and your thoughts you can forcefully create a memory that never existed but that still counts as a memory and your brain can thus realize the decisions and the way (wisdom) that made this moment possible.

You basically have to vividly imagine what you want as a goal and imprint this imagination with all things into the brain.