game the system

There must be a better phrase for this, "gaming the system" sounds really lame. Actually, just the word game makes me feel a bit icky--and that's multiplied by ten when used as a verb. But lately I've been seeing just how much we game the system, any system, all systems, all the time.

To game the system, as I understand it, is to ignore the interface that the system has given you, to ignore the "best" choice (where best is defined by core values and pure motives--before you game it), and to instead try to fight against an outcome that you foresee happening before it has actually happened. You are second-guessing an undesirable outcome (perhaps one where you think you would lose if you were to play completely along the implicit rules of the system) and trying to outsmart it, even as your opponent (maybe this is how it's game-like) tries to second-guess and outsmart you.

Who are you endorsing for the primaries? How much game is involved? How do you reconcile the difference between who you feel the "best" candidate is versus the one who you think has the "best" chance of winning? It is a double game because in this game called the election the "best" chance is the one that everyone votes for after they've decided who the best chance is. It's a self-fulfilling game where you have to take into account how everyone else is going to game the system and try to game it even more. The only problem that really bothers me is that we're always trying to second guess Middle America--you know, where the dumb people live. Certainly they won't choose the best candidate in your mind, and so you have to choose someone else because you're pretty sure there are more dumb people than smart, and it's better to vote slightly dumber if it means you win than to vote smart if it means you'll lose. By trying to outsmart the dumb people you'll end up downgrading the intelligence of your own decision by even more than necessary because we always overestimate just how dumb other people are. They're second-guessing you too... and have more power because they don't feel like they have to compromise their vote to game you. They just play dumb. And that's just what the smart people want you to do. They want you to act dumb. Because then you are. That's the game.
I'm starting to like the word game.

Work is a system that we game. How many people would go to work if they didn't get paid? These people are gaming the system--acting in ways that they do not consider to be the best ways in order to get a result that the system is willing to give them if they pretend (very loosely) that they really would go to work even if they didn't get paid. The best game players are those that can convince even themselves. I've pretty much convinced myself that I enjoy my job, and yet I still wish I would've had the day off. Who's gaming who?

Non-zero sum systems are games. I pay you more than something is worth in order to get something that is cheaper than I would've had to get it elsewhere. Both parties win, the sum is greater than its previous values. Out of 3 dollars and 37 cents comes the enjoyment of making $3 profit off of the cost of a mocha and the enjoyment of a sugar and caffeine high at a highly stylized coffee house. It's gaming the system because both parties feel that they're getting the better deal, and giving something to the other person that they don't value as highly as the other. I'm pretty sure this is crossing the line between gaming the system and is now entirely in the territory of something completely different. I suppose it's not gaming unless you're being a little sneaky about it. But most of the time people know when other people are gaming you... they just decide to let it slide so they can be sneaky back. A mutual contract to be sneaky in order to make everyone happy. Come to think of it, this is an essential component to doing things that you wouldn't normally do (because you'd feel guilty). If both people are being sneaky, and you know that for this reason the other person won't expose your sneaky behavior, it's like it doesn't exist. Except to G-O-D. Shh!

Calling in sick when you aren't really sick because you have a pre-allotted number of paid sick days. Jaywalking. Speeding. Wearing the same shirt two days in a row because you'll be seeing different people and don't feel like doing the wash.

The thing about gaming the system is that it is so effective. It is powerful simply because of its effectiveness--it's more effective than appropriate behavior would have been. You think, at least. That is why we decide to game in the first place.

We ask people what they think it means when they rate an item on Amazon. There is what they think it should mean, and then there's what they think Amazon does with the rating. In the end, they'll end up rating things that they don't know anything about even though they know they shouldn't if they were taking the action on a completely semantic level. But because it's a part of a system, and that system takes their input in a way that has some side effects, they can second-guess those side effects and actually produce them intentionally when desired.

Your grandma asks you how you liked that sweater. You say one thing. Your friends ask the same, a little later. You say another thing. Is this still gaming the system? Being nice when you aren't feeling nice. Sharing when you don't want to share. Lying to save feelings. Entertaining when you don't feel like entertaining. Complying with all the pressures of society so that you don't stand out too much (some slips by).

This is a theme lately. Might as well stomp it to death.

Comments

[Josh Petersen]

Concrete progress
on the Game of Life. Glad to see it.

[l.m.orchard]

Very interesting thoughts... It's been a theme in my head and my paper journal lately, though I haven't been able to really put very many coherent things together to say about it. Email, weblog comments, politics, altruism and goodwill. Is there any system that is immune to gaming, or is there any way to remove the incentive to metagaming?

On the other hand, reading Gödel, Escher, Bach again makes me consider that one of the basic principles of human thought is gaming any and all systems we encounter.

I need to think more about things to say...

[Bill Seitz]

what is a system? who are stakeholders?
Another framing...

* there's a group of people interacting

* there are unstated rules, "generally" agreed upon by members of the group, about appropriate behavior

* there are some stated formal rules which encompass a subset of that behavior

* "gaming the system" is behaving in a self-interested way within the boundaries of the explicit rules while ignoring the tacit rules and implicit values.

It's only effective if the other "players" don't notice, or you don't place much value on the future of the interactions with them.

[Erik Benson]

I think gaming the system can actually be used as a bonding tool if you're gaming it with other people who are in the know.

Thinking about it in the context of object oriented programming, the explicit rules of the system are like the interface, and then there are the side-effects which you want to try to hide behind those explicit rules. You don't necessarily want people to connect the side-effect of "getting there faster" with the speed limit that they need to obey for their own safety. It's an implementation detail, an undesired side effect of speed since, in the context of speed laws, speed's primary effect is a loss of safety.

[Bill Seitz]

implicitly zero-sum?
I wonder whether any behavior we'd call "gaming" must be within a zero-sum game, because what's pissing us off is that the other person's gaming results in his gains, at our implicit loss?

Some counter-strategies:

* make actions Transparent (feedback, shared Reputation)

* make opportunities/benefits of longer-term relationship visible

* ???

[Erik Benson]

An interesting observation in that book, Nonzero, is that most nonzero sum games become zero some at some point. For example, selling a product is a nonzero sum game for both the buyer and the seller since they're both getting more out of the transaction than they're giving. However, the exact cost of the transaction can become zero sum because if you're bartering over whether you pay $10 or $11 for the product, that $1 difference will be lost or gained in a zero sum way depending on the outcome.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that if gaming only makes sense in zero sum systems, I think we'll still find that it happens in almost all systems since almost all systems will have a zero sum component to them.

I'd like to follow up on counter strategies. It seems like one strategy is to make all actions explicitly allowed. Make drugs legal, have no speed limit, etc. Another is to make things less transparent--hide the side effects and only allow effects that support the system's explicit rules. That's probably not possible in many systems though, since you can't really prevent things from being effective--unless you do so by adding punishments to laws, and then the gaming component just becomes a matter of not being caught.

I think the benefit of long-term relationships and transparent histories is going to have a tough time beating the short term gains and pact-making of similar system gamers who will help keep their activities private.

[Bill Seitz]

zero or non-zero
I confess I haven't read Wright's book. It fell into the category of "interesting but sounds like so many other books and articles that I've read that I can't get myself to spend more time/money in that direction".

That price-negotiating example sounds weak:

* if it was costing $8 to make the good, and it had value to the buyer of $15, then both $10 and $11 count as "wins" for both players. Of course, if the cost and value are both $10.50 then things get different... but either way each party has the option of walking away (barring monopoly/monopsony)

* in individual negotiations, in particular, I find there's huge amounts of uncertainty and therefore imprecision in evaluations of cost and value. So "digging in" to a particular price is often a sign of a mentality that will *eventually* lead to problems either way (esp in an environment of ongoing relationships/transactions).

(This is a pretty fuzzy area - more narrow examples make for better discussions)

Also, re "make all actions explicitly allowed" does not seem realistic for human relationships. Can I bitch-slap you? (Again, trying to cover every type of interaction under the same labels seems counterproductive..)

[R.B. Boyer]

I wrote something along these lines
Back when I was in high school, I wrote an essay about this topic and how it relates to the public education system.