The Game Loop: Part 1 Mental pipelines

[Federica]

I agree, Federica - the dangers are many. To be sure, with this game idea I imply nothing more than something like the elastic circles interactive demo. If we add some scoring criteria and other things that make the demo more game-like, the focus will inevitably shift. The goal is only to provide the conditions for an experience of a kind of IO flow that has some dynamic similarity with the more intimate IO flow that we aim to point attention to. Clearly, in both the demo and the potential game, that goal would be missed if one simply remains with the enjoyment of the controller and visual flow.

For me, the challenge is to find such controller-sense dynamics for which I can say "this has something in common with the deeper experience of the flow-steering. By following the sensations and steering the game flow, I find some feeling-similarity with the deeper flow dynamics." I completely acknowledge the inherent danger that this endeavor easily turns into a search for the perfect MoE (Metaphor of Everything). This is exactly like the search for the ToE, except that we do not constrain ourselves to mathematical painting only.

At this point, I'm inclined to say that it is better if our metaphors are obviously limited. It should be easily seen how they are inadequate as soon as they are spread beyond the particular dynamic that they convey. I think that this would serve as a natural reminder that what we're after is something else. Otherwise, if we try to refine the metaphor such that we can fit all aspects of existence in its art form, our thinking inevitably is seduced, and we act as if we can traverse reality by looking only at a GPS map without lifting our gaze (a metaphor I use in the next part).

Sorry, Cleric, I misunderstood your previous posts. I thought the idea was to develop a game, like Markus Persson did with Minecraft. Goes without saying, I find all your interactive demos the most brilliant and helpful. Following what you say here, thank you.

[AshvinP]

All of this remains a very vague idea at the moment. And to be honest, I avoid spending much time on it, because it very easily lapses into an attempt to find the perfect model of reality . But in any case, I think that the game should have this gradient between local and non-local interactions. Otherwise, the sense would remain "Yes, we live in a purely material world ruled by local interactions, so the most we can do is to agree on a protocol of moral rules that ensure peace and brotherly relations."

Maybe one day something more concrete will come of these ideas, but we'll see

Sorry to be the game party pooper here, but all this seems potentially dangerous to me, for the reason you are giving, and even more so because the idea that “the game” should have this or that characteristic, already implicitly gives the game a value that goes beyond its educational value, its value of example. If the whole endeavor very easily lapses into an attempt to find the perfect model of reality it is because in a sense, that’s what a game is - inevitably and by nature. As I see it, developing a more advanced game with non-local features (or any other more advanced features) with the intention to kindle spiritual insights, would mean to proxy nested educational needs that do not actually exist, as if in an inward game spiral - just like the world proxied in the game also does not exist.

I think it's important to also see how these same dangers, which you have articulated well here, exist for the 'virtual space' (Maya) that we normally consider "real life" activities. In other words, the Minecraft simulation works so well as a metaphor for the wider I/O flows because our experience of navigating those flows has become quite similar to the constraints of a virtual game space.

We can consider how the ordinary flow of life can be almost fully re-created within Minecraft. For example, many people can now conduct their work fully through the computer with Zoom, phone, email, collaborative workspaces, and so on. Or when we go on vacation somewhere, is it really so different from traversing a virtual landscape? It seems to me that the more we become inwardly sensitive to the inner flow and its possibilities, the more we notice how the physical navigation of the flow is often quite mechanical and flattened, especially in modern times when materialistic culture has become the common denominator across most of the World. When we move from one place to another, we encounter different configurations of familiar sensory perceptions and very similar impulses, feelings, and thoughts in our fellow humans. We are constantly tempted to feel like this physical flow is a foundational aspect of reality, and the goal states we seek within that flow are the most important and serious vectors of our attention and imagination. It is quite like becoming fully immersed in a virtual game space and forgetting about an entirely different sort of existence, of which the game state is only a picture-in-picture representation.

It's also interesting that, through the evolutionary course of development, modern technology can now provide us more opportunities for honing in on what we are doing with our inner process than anything we encounter in the normal flow of work and relationships. For example, in Minecraft, we can somewhat live through the experience of working with others to creatively design and engineer a Minecraft Gotheanum, or to experience acting as a political leader who needs to legislate and provide for its citizens. We can form many social relationships through these virtual activities. Again, the experience of this would not be too much different from what it would be within the non-virtual physical flow. And these are simply circumstances that most people would never encounter when navigating the physical flow. Through such experiences, we can kindle intuitions about the wider I/O flows and their collective dynamics that would otherwise be more difficult to encounter. As we see with these essays, such technologies can be leveraged to clearly distill the inner principles that are characteristic of the contextual I/O flows, whereas we can imagine how it would be much more difficult to construct a pedagogical essay around the theme of 'going to work'.

I'm not suggesting that this is a preferable path of spiritual development, and that we are better off immersing ourselves in a virtual space than navigating the ordinary physical flow. I am simply trying to point out that, from my perspective, there is no need to neatly carve up human activities into those which are intrinsically meaningful for spiritual development and those which aren't. Everything depends on our cognitive perspective within the flow and the soul habits we bring to bear on our navigation of that flow, whether it is physical, virtual, imaginative, or otherwise. After all, the modern meaning crisis of humanity is precisely that which stems from souls failing to recognize the educational value of the ordinary physical flow, when conducting their intellectual inquiries, social and political projects, artistic projects, religious activities, and so on. That is exactly why the spiritual scientific Impulse became necessary in our time, to reveal how this ordinary physical flow is always symbolizing a higher-order navigation of existence to which we must attune. Without that attunement, the experience of the physical flow becomes nearly identical to that which can be simulated through computer technology. I think we can simply keep our thinking fluid and recognize the potential upsides and downsides of our intrinsically metaphorical activities in life on a case-by-case basis.

[Federica]

I agree with the essence of your claim, but I think there are certain relations and proportions to highlight.

I'm not suggesting that this is a preferable path of spiritual development, and that we are better off immersing ourselves in a virtual space than navigating the ordinary physical flow. I am simply trying to point out that, from my perspective, there is no need to neatly carve up human activities into those which are intrinsically meaningful for spiritual development and those which aren't. Everything depends on our cognitive perspective within the flow and the soul habits we bring to bear on our navigation of that flow, whether it is physical, virtual, imaginative, or otherwise.

The distinction I made in the other thread is between the game loop metaphor on the one hand, as a clear educational tool (traceable to how a scientific model is a tool for the educational value it may have, no matter how limited), and relationships, work, art, etcetera - what you have called the wider IO flows - on the other hand.

My point is, the wider IO flows can’t be considered tools in the same way, safe that one can and should continually learn from navigating them, of course. Put another way, the distinction is that, when we live through the various inner and outer life events (game playing included if you will, since it can be seen as an activity among other activities, or as a world simulation to fall into) we learn by doing. However, when we read the Game Loop essays, we are not learning by doing in the same way (although I see how it could be logically argued that there is no neat distinction). Instead, we are learning by the power of metaphor. That’s the same distinction Cleric just made between the interactive demos we are familiar with (metaphors, tools, artistic pointers) and their potential inflation, transformation into a fully fledged game like Minecraft, that is, a Metaphor of Everything.

I stand by this distinction, for the reasons delineated above: when the artistic metaphor is inflated to the point that one can spend significant shares of daily life inside it - to the point that it becomes a de facto MoE - it means that its educational value, its tool value, has been long exhausted, whereas, more or less consciously, completely different motives have taken over. This, in my opinion, also applies to simply spending regular time in game playing, with the conviction that we are still extracting new educational value. This remains true, in my opinion, even after we observe, as you notice, that our life at large itself easily becomes a sort of inescapable mega game, if we are not vigilant. I agree with this heads-up, but the point is, just because in our modern life we are continually at risk of becoming constrained in our daily flow - similar to how we are constrained inside a randomly generated game-world - doesn’t mean that we are justified to spend countless hours in that game-world, under the pretext that there is further educational, metaphorical value to extract, and that everything is tool anyway. One would be better off acknowledging other motives, I think.

That you may be a little on the fence on this, and thus prefer to consider things on a case-by-case basis, seems reflected here:

It seems to me that the more we become inwardly sensitive to the inner flow and its possibilities, the more we notice how the physical navigation of the flow is often quite mechanical and flattened, especially in modern times

and then:

Without that [spiritual scientific] attunement, the experience of the physical flow becomes nearly identical to that which can be simulated through computer technology.

This is also on the fence, as I see it:

modern technology can now provide us more opportunities for honing in on what we are doing with our inner process than anything we encounter in the normal flow of work and relationships.

That “through such [technological] experiences we can kindle intuitions about the wider I/O flows and their collective dynamics that would otherwise be more difficult to encounter” is true only up to a point. And I believe you are generally overestimating that point. The line is thin. Again, it is the line that goes between limited metaphors that heighten consciousness, and “experiences” in which we feel that we are getting more introspective opportunities. As Cleric wrote: “it is better if our metaphors are obviously limited. It should be easily seen how they are inadequate as soon as they are spread beyond the particular dynamic that they convey.”

I agree that, if we let us free fall, the physical movie easily becomes mechanical, squared, constrained, just like our urban environments and dynamics are. And we easily end up emulating those physical environments in our flow. We say we like structure, workflow, clear routines, but instead of creating harmony and rhythm from the inside out, sourcing it in the divine, we cling to outer structures and processes as crutches, to make up for our defaulting freedom and creativity (not to pretend that I don’t constantly fall in this trap too).

Yes, the same dangers we encounter in virtual space are present in life at large, because ultimately these dangers reside in us, rather than in the particular experiential space we navigate. The constant temptation is in us, and yes, we can forget the real end goals when navigating the larger IO flows, just as we can forget the world at large when we are immersed in a game, a movie, or even a novel. But the reason why I stand by the distinction is the loss of proportions and perspective that happens when we say, "everything is a tool for higher existence anyway", as I have tried to describe. Then we feel justified to flatten the perspective that connects the nested reverberations of the ideal flow.




Andrea Mantegna, Lamentation over the Dead Christ, c. 1483. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons


At the dawn of the 5th PA epoch, perspective appeared in visual art, the sacred began to slowly disappear, and the modern scientific mindset was born. It soon became the fountain of more and more comprehensive modeling intents and modeling outputs. In the 20th century, these models ended up getting a foothold on the physical flow, through computation. Now in our present century, the foothold has steadily expanded, to the point that today the distinction between our incarnated flow and its representations is so blurred, as you describe, that it’s completely possible (and common) to fall below consciousness not only in our moment-to-moment conceptual-perceptual apprehension of the flow, but also in our daily rhythm, within which we can easily live all day entirely inside a model, or a game, losing perspective/consciousness on our daily rhythm too. That is, the adversarial forces have gained terrain, ramping one notch higher in their colonization intents of the human mind. Probably, the next century will be the one when their efforts to colonize the entire incarnational rhythm - the life rhythm - will be powerfully unleashed.

I think we should keep this perspective solidly in mind today, and constantly resist, or negotiate, the modeling expansion, through, not outside, perspective, now that we have gained it, for better and for worse. Just as we don’t want to (ideally) let ourselves indulge in perceptual free falling, claiming that we know what we are doing, we also don’t want to indulge in 'model free falling', under the same claim. We may know what we are doing, but do we know why we are doing it? When modeling is used as a precise metaphor, as in the Game Loop essays, we are hijacking the adversarial expansion, bringing perspective and consciousness back into the world process, but it’s a fine line that we cross once we begin to find comfort and set up camp within that metaphor, letting the reality of our daily rhythm unguarded.

An alternative way to say it is through the idea of Beauty. This comes to mind in relation to Max Leyf’s recent treatment of the idea of Beauty. I will not attempt here to synthetize his last essay series on Beauty, but I think it’s intuitively clear how the more we let the metaphoric expansion roll on our daily rhythm and flatten our flow perspective - even if we have developed sensitivity to the flow - the less we remain open to experiencing the gratuity of Beauty in all things.