Sleeping through the Meta

My wife called out in Finnish to Smallsteps:

Do you want to come and help me put your clean laundry away?

No.

Smallsteps then came back to our game and I asked - didn't mummy ask you to put the laundry away?

No. She asked, do I WANT to put my laundry away.

That's fair.

Last night was the first night that I got to use the CPAP machine to sleep and while I think it will prove beneficial, the main thing I got from it this morning was, a sore neck. Having the mask on forces me to sleep in a different position and my body doesn't like it yet. But, my right hand is getting more accustomed to wearing a watch.

After thinking about it a bit though, I reckon this might end up being an additional benefit of wearing the mask as I sleep, because I tend to normally sleep on my front with my head resting on the pillow with my arm up under it, which puts a lot of pressure on my shoulder, causing other problems. Sleeping on my back should improve this, but I haven't trained myself to do so, because that is also the position I snore the most.

These are those "knock-on effects" I have mentioned when we change a habit, where a chain reaction of change starts as one puts the pressure to move the next and with each shift, a snowball effect happens, amplifying the total change. It is a pretty basic concept of course, but so much of our activity is automatic and habitual, that it feels natural and right, even if we aren't getting the results we are after. Then, we get disappointed, because we aren't getting the results we want, even though we are doing everything right.

For a gaming example, when Splinterlands introduces a new set of cards and new attributes, it opens up options that weren't available before, or reduces or increases the benefits of one path over another. This means that strategies to maximize wins in the game change, which you will often hear referred to as a change in the meta. Those who do not change their game play or add cards to account for the new conditions, will inevitably struggle.

It is interesting to observe and I have seen it many times on Hive and related, where people are acting in a way that they believe is correct, but they don't actually understand the meta. While this is a do what you want, platform, there are consequences to every action, with some being positive and some being negative, and regardless of whether the outcomes were what was intended, they are what they are, based on millions of inter-related points.

Not understanding how something works, doesn't mean it isn't going to work. It is like an engine, where most people have very little knowledge about how they work in a practical sense, but they can still drive a car. However, if someone doesn't know how to drive well, they are likely to have an accident, even if that wasn't their intention. There are a lot of people over the years on Hive who have crashed their car and it nearly always comes down to them doing what they want with no understanding or care for the meta conditions. And then, when they are sitting in a smoking pile of mangled account, they blame their results on everyone else.

For example, there have been some quite outspoken people over the last year or so who were essentially caught acting poorly on Hive as judged by the meta conditions and went to Blurt. Those same people have then acted poorly there in various ways and are now finding out that, the Meta of Blurt, despite the lack of downvotes, still isn't going to accept their activity. As a result, they are near unanimously powering down and out of Blurt too, in the same way they did on Hive.

Will they ever learn?

Unlikely. Because they don't want to learn, they don't want to be a part of a healthy society - all they want is to do what they want. And because of the way a society works, that isn't going to be accepted, when what they want is to extract as much value from the community as they can.

Like my daughter, they don't understand the social meta. "Do you want...?" isn't a question, it is a recommendation, but to a 5 year old that doesn't understand the social intricacies of language in this way, she will take it literally, or test boundaries as she is doing now (evidenced by the cheeky look on her face). But as she ages, through these experiences she will build a social understanding of usual behavior and understand when it is appropriate for her to act in various ways and learn the consequences of acting outside of the meta. Through trial and error, she will build a skillset and those errors as a child aren't costly, and at some point will know what my wife actually means.

However, is it appropriate for adults not to have a basic understanding of social environments, or cause and effects of their behavior? Is it normal that people are so self-centered that they believe they can do as they please, without consequence from those who are negatively affected by their behavior?

"Do what you want" isn't a recommendation, it is an option.

And I think that what we see on places like Hive is, no, it isn't appropriate. There are consequences to every activity and there are stronger reactions to what the average user sees as a negative activity. On top of this, there are other factors involved, where reactions are expressed through stake, where some people have more stake than others and are happy to wield it. People agree or disagree about these things, but that is the meta environment in which we operate within and, we all opt-in to joining, staying or leaving. This environment is dynamic and does change over time, shifting the culture and many sub-cultures involved, like when social shifts were made over the space of two years to enact a technical shift that made bidbots unprofitable.

A lot of people believe that IQ is the best indicator of intelligence, but a high IQ minus the ability to operate in the social environment is quite useless, as very little can actually be accomplished without others. The inability to appropriately read and act within the current meta, means being ineffectual of changing it, even if there is a better way known. And, having a high IQ yet having no concern for others, is going to likely lead to negative consequences, regardless of intention.

It is all about game theory and behavioral economics, but if you do not understand or pay no heed to the meta environment, no sense can be applied and actions will continually butt heads with society. However, because there is still that sense of "I am doing what is right" involved, there is the feeling that everyone else is to blame.

It is a funny issue really. Because a lot of these people ignore the meta and "do what they want" due to their own self-interest, even though their results are poor. If they were smart, they'd likely recognize that getting what you want and doing what you want, are two different things. But snice they don't, they do what they want and they get the results the meta supports.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing what you want, but understanding that there are consequences to actions, means that if what you want isn't appropriate for the meta, the results are going to be negative. For some though, doing what they want is appropriate and gets them what they want too. It is rare though, that what we want to do, is an accurate fit for the environment so, we best learn how to adjust ourselves to better suit the moment and perhaps, learn how to change the meta to better suit what we want over time. As a large group though, there is no such thing as "perfect", meaning it is going to keep changing and there will never be a point where it will suit anyone completely.

This is the same in all of life.

No one opts-in to life.

What we do with our lives and how we behave with what we have though, is up to us.

Understand the Meta. Act appropriately.

The Most Effective Tactics Available.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]