195 - Wrong Way Right

There can be value in doing things the wrong way when it is your explicit intention to do so, specifically for social fun and educational value, or seeking a challenge and finding how things break and why.

When a good friend discussed an educational and motivational method and framework they're developing with me then he noted the potential starting point of an aimless (apathetic) individual starting from scratch, slowly building the structure and motivation to become functional. This reminded me of the dynamics of a survival game, such as the popular Valheim, where players start out with nothing and begin creating stone tools and shelter for themselves in order to survive.

The process of building up a person from a factory-farmed lump of meat to a motivated, mentally healthy, and functional member of society operates on many of the same principles as such a game. There is an open world with little or no direction provided, and people are left to survive and explore it, gradually building something to call their own.

The real world is of course much more glitchy and unbalanced, with far more trolls wandering around, but the same core dynamics of building up motivation and mental health through iteratively improving and increasing structure are present. This symmetry exists because the human system of motivation, based on emotions, applies to both, the real world by evolution, and games by design.

Intentionally doing things the wrong way has a very long history among humans, for social fun and subsequent communal bonding, various cultural rituals such as coming of age, challenges to win prestige and ranks in hierarchies, and among strategists and architects seeking to break and build better systems. Across scientific history this approach has also served to test the counter-argument for many theories, sometimes accidentally debunking a reining theory in the process.

In the world of computer games, this may take the form of friends launching their boats from the top of a mountain and attempting to sled down it, or seeing if one person can solo content intended for an entire team. While these can be fun, challenging, and entertaining to watch in a game, they can also serve important purposes for the real world and society.

So long as cognitive bias exists, and there is no reason to expect it to go away any time soon, there will be opportunities for activities of this nature to poke holes in the gaps that cognitive bias temporarily fills. In research, this translates to new discoveries, in cybersecurity to recognize new vulnerabilities, and in communities it can strengthen social bonds. Perhaps more importantly, any system that intentionally avoids these activities will eventually fail, and likely implode, as it induces fragility in a system that could otherwise be antifragile through such normal activities as those described above.

Intentionally doing things "the wrong way" means putting things to the test, and in complex systems that evolve over time having these atypical tests is a hard requirement for survival.