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I appreciate what you and the article posting are getting at, but this is competitive, would it be better to teach your kids cooperation (teamwork) strategies f

by Litost 4y ago

I appreciate what you and the article posting are getting at, but this is competitive, would it be better to teach your kids cooperation (teamwork) strategies first and competitive ones like chess/poker next. Not just because it's pro-social and non-rivalrous, there's arguments for this in game theory itself, in the iterated prisoner's dilemma it's often the strategies that start by cooperating and then fall back on competition that come out ahead when competiting in even good/bad actor competitions. It's interesting that the original article even says this "Playing games and sports throughout life teach us all sorts of lessons about teamwork, strategy, pressure, practice, emotional control… I could go on." I don't see any teamwork in chess, I guess there might be in poker (temporarily) but I assume there's only one winner at the end? Our current culture seems to place most of the emphasis on competition, e.g. Education is all about getting better grades than everyone else and then we put people in workplaces and wonder why it ends up toxic? Obviously you could argue that people being cooperative first would just lead to them getting exploited more but given we already have vast differentials in wealth, I'd certainly be interested in trying it out or what research on this shows?

routerl 4y ago
There's the notion that "playing a beautiful game" is a better outcome than "winning". This can be part of chess too. A child can start winning pretty fast by memorizing opening traps, but that gives small satisfaction. And when playing a beautiful game, you're actually cooperating with your opponent, even while competing; these aren't mutually exclusive. Think of race car drivers who, of course, all want to win. But winning by forcing your opponent off the track is less satisfying and less admirable than racing "cleanly" (i.e. cooperating with your opponent to prevent crashes). Competition, within a well defined set of boundaries, is cooperative. Edit: I'm not sure whether the competitive impulse is a general feature of humans, or just a byproduct of our age, but it nevertheless is a factor currently, so it has to be accounted for in any vision of how we get from here to a more cooperative future. I'm specifically thinking of Cory Doctorow's Walkway, in which people (implicitly, and with some measure of shame) feel a competitive drive to do more for the greater good than others.

by Litost 4y ago

routerl 4y ago

There's the notion that "playing a beautiful game" is a better outcome than "winning". This can be part of chess too. A child can start winning pretty fast by memorizing opening traps, but that gives small satisfaction. And when playing a beautiful game, you're actually cooperating with your opponent, even while competing; these aren't mutually exclusive. Think of race car drivers who, of course, all want to win. But winning by forcing your opponent off the track is less satisfying and less admirable than racing "cleanly" (i.e. cooperating with your opponent to prevent crashes). Competition, within a well defined set of boundaries, is cooperative. Edit: I'm not sure whether the competitive impulse is a general feature of humans, or just a byproduct of our age, but it nevertheless is a factor currently, so it has to be accounted for in any vision of how we get from here to a more cooperative future. I'm specifically thinking of Cory Doctorow's Walkway, in which people (implicitly, and with some measure of shame) feel a competitive drive to do more for the greater good than others.