Being a forthright examination and expli­cation of the attri­butes and substances of the major forms of human intell­ectual activity, as perceived by the author in his more lucid moments, formu­lated over the course of extended periods of time in long-distance discussions and argu­ments over the which­ness of what and the howness of why; which the author hopes is somewhat comprehensible. Yup.

ABSTRACT: Certain human belief systems (political, religious, economic, athletic, artistic, etc) are GAMES that are designed for or evolved as ENTERTAINMENT, to structure and occupy otherwise unproductive time. Such GAMES have arbitrary rules, and tend to schism and diverge, and to encourage enthusiastic and/or violent behaviours in their players.

DISCLAIMERS:

Statements included herein may be subject to any and/or all of these PHILOSOPHICAL WARNINGS. (click for details)

Statements included herein, rather than being simply true or false, may more properly be evaluated as some combination of: maybe (true and/or false and/or unknowable and/or trivial and/or irrelevant).

Opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the author or of anyone known to him.

Some restrictions may apply to statements included herein.

Caveat lector, caveat emptor.

Human Intellectual Activity

Human intellectual activity can be generally characterized as taking place within 1) belief systems, 2) knowledge systems, or 3) non-systemic frivolity. I won't deal with the latter here, no matter that it's a lot of fun. The first two will keep me busy enough.

The basic difference between knowledge and belief is that knowledge systems include mechanisms for testing their assertions against observable reality; for verifying, validating their contents; and belief systems don't. As the cornerstones of belief systems, beliefs either can't or shouldn't be questioned and tested; or the results of any tests should be pre-ordained, or ignored, or distorted / interpreted to accord with the beliefs. Beliefs MAY be tested against their own internal logics, but such tests can only evaluate their consistency, not their reality.

The basic consequences of these differences are

1. Knowledge systems constantly change and provide a springboard for further successful exploration of observable reality, whilst belief systems tend to endlessly reprise the same old untested paradigms; and
2. Knowledge systems tend to coalesce into unified models of (some portion of) observable reality, but belief systems tend to fragment into incompatible, hostile factions.

Knowledge Systems (Sciences)

The basis of a knowledge system is the scientific method:

1. Define an item of study.
2. Study the hell out of it, including a review of existing knowledge.
3. Devise a falsifiable hypothesis that explains the item.
4. Test the hypothesis.
5. Review the results.
6. Revise the hypothesis to accord with the results.
7. Go back to step (4).
8. Repeat forever.

There are certain requirements implicit in this method. When doing science, one is building models of observable reality, devising workable explanations that cover the data. The explanations must be testable, and thus must be falsifiable - it's the falsification that's tested. And the explanations must be usable - they must lead to new areas of exploration.

For instance, after studying photos of Luna, I may conclude that Luna is composed of green cheeze. So I'll state my hypothesis: THE MOON IS MADE OF GREEN CHEEZE; and I'll state its falsification: THE MOON IS NOT MADE OF GREEN CHEEZE; and I'll determine that the theory and its falsification ARE testable, by the expedient of traveling to Luna and examining the material thereof. It may happen that, upon looking at Lunar specimens, no green cheeze is found, and that hypothesis must be discarded. But at least it WAS testable. And it was usable, because it pointed out the need for further exploration, for traveling to Luna to examine its composition.

If I'd hypothesized that: A NEW MOON IS SHAT BY INVISIBLE SPACE DRAGONS EVERY MONTH, INSTANTANEOUSLY REPLACING AN IDENTICAL OLD MOON, that hypothesis and its falsification would be rather hard to test, since the space dragons and the differences between old and new moons would be undetectable. Such a hypothesis, and most explanations invoking magickal | divine forces and entities, are of no use, no value - there's no way to validate such an idea. There are no ways to examine the magickal, the divine, so such explanations aren't usable, they don't point the way to further research. They are dead-ends.

Belief Systems (Religious, Political, Economic, Artistic, Athletic)

Belief systems follow different rules. Following the lead of Robert Anton Wilson, whose article BEYOND TRUE & FALSE: A Sneaky Quiz With A Subversive Commentary, in the book THE FRINGES OF REASON: A Whole Earth Catalog, ed. by Ted Schultz [Harmony/Crown, 1989] introduced me to this paradigm, I'll refer to belief systems as HUMAN GAMES. (Note:   My extrapolations on Games are entirely my own responsibility and should not be blamed on Mr. Wilson, Mr. Schultz, Mother Teresa, or any other hominid.)

Games have certain characteristics:

1. Games are organized and controlled by Game Masters, for their own benefit.
2. Games are run according to Game Rules handed down by Game Masters.
3. Games are participated in by Game Players, for the purpose of Entertainment: to organize and occupy their non-productive time.
4. The participation of Game Players may be active or passive, as Doers or Viewers.
5. All Real Humans are fellow-Players of your games; all others are sub-human.
6. Participation in a Game requires acceptance of the preponderance of the Game Rules.
7. Rejection of Game Rules excludes a Player from the Game; they are then ripe to join another Game in order to retain their status as Real Humans.
8. Games are modular and interchangeable; the components of any Game are easily adapted to any other Game.

   From these principles, certain results ensue:

9. Enthusiastic Gamers will not hesitate to exploit, maim, rape, ravage or kill their opponents or non-Gamers, since those opponents are necessarily in violation of the Game Rules and are thus subhuman.
10. Dissident Gamers may be purged, abused and/or defamed, to maintain homogeneity of Play.
11. Games tend to schism, to fragment into incompatible factions, each led by competing Game Masters, following ever-differing sets of Game Rules.
12. The more engrossing the Game, the more the Players will devote their entire beings to its play, neglecting their outer-world responsibilities, personal physical and mental health, and all aspects of life not related to their Play.
13. Due to their modularity and interchangeability it is very easy to construct new Games, by selecting components from other Games and/or devising new components that parallel or resemble existing functions. This hastens the spread of new Games.

NOTE: Games may also be visualized as giant amoeba, that fission into near-clones and mutant spawn, who then compete for all available resources, attempting to devour each other and everything around them. But I digress...

"The essential features of all games: symmetry, arbitrary rules, tedium."    Jorge Luis Borges

Human Games and Their Rules

The primary realms of Games are in 1) religious, 2) political, 3) economic, 4) artistic, and 5) athletic systems. Each is dominated by its given Game Rules, such as the following (thanks to Robert Anton Wilson for some of these):

JESUS DIED FOR YOUR SINS - a Game Rule of Xianity

THE POPE IS INFALLIBLE IN MATTERS OF FAITH - a Game Rule of Catholicism

WHEN BLESSED BY AN ORDAINED CATHOLIC PRIEST, A PIECE OF BREAD BECOMES THE BODY OF A JEW WHO DIED ABOUT 2000 YEARS AGO - another Game Rule of Roman Catholicism

THERE IS NO GOD BUT ALLAH, AND MUHAMMAD IS HIS PROPHET - a Game Rule of Islam

ALL PROPOSITIONS ARE EITHER TRUE OR FALSE - a Game Rule of Aristotelian Logic

ALL PROPOSITIONS ARE TRUE IN SOME SENSE, FALSE IN SOME SENSE, TRUE AND FALSE IN SOME SENSE, AND NEITHER TRUE NOR FALSE IN SOME SENSE - a Game Rule of Mahayana Buddhism & Quantum Mechanics

ALL PROPOSITIONS ARE ARBITRARY - a Game Rule of Deconstruction

ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL - a Game Rule of Jeffersonian Democracy

ALL HUMANS ARE CREATED EQUAL - a Game Rule of post-Jeffersonian Democracy

ALL ENTITIES ARE CREATED EQUAL - a Game Rule of Buddhism & Moral Ecology

MARKET FORCES SHOULD DETERMINE ECONOMIC POLICY - a Game Rule of Capitalism

THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE SHOULD DETERMINE POLICY - a Game Rule of Communism

EVERYBODY SHOULD SET THEIR OWN DAMN POLICIES - a Game Rule of Anarchism

OPERA IS THE GREATEST ART FORM - a Game Rule of Opera

LOUDER AND FASTER ARE BETTER - a Game Rule of Rock'n'Roll

THE UMPIRE'S DECISION IS BINDING - a Game Rule of Baseball

SOCCER IS FOR PUSSIES - a Game Rule of NFL or Australian Football

A .44 MAGNUM BEATS A ROYAL FLUSH - a Game Rule of Killer Poker

UFOs EXIST - a Game Rule of UFOlogy

Et cetera

None of these Game Rules are really testable; but if you want to Play the Game, you must accept the Game Rules. If you don't like the Rules, then find another Game to Play, or start your own. And since a Game Rule need have no connexion with observable reality, fixation upon a Game in exclusion of reality can and does lead to madness. This is the realm of Strange Loops which I'll write about later.

POSTSCRIPT: Following are some links to items that either link to and comment on the above, or on/to relevant items. (Is that syntax garbled enough?)   As with all metagame links, follow them at your own risk.

• Reality is a Rorschach ink-blot
• Infinite Games
• Is Belief Knowledge?

WHY GAMES?

I'm not going to deal extensively with the motivations for Game-playing. The psyhchology here ranges from trivial to incomprehensible, and I just don't have time... But it seems to me that the basic motivations are those that underlay most human endeavours:

GREED - FEAR - HOPE - BOREDDOM - LUST - etc

Note that I don't include STUPIDITY or INSANITY or IRRATIONALITY as motivations. As Pascal Boyer shows in Why Is Religion Natural?, "Psychology suggests that there may be more to belief than the suspension of reason." And as Guy Swanson shows in THE BIRTH OF THE GODS, religious beliefs worldwide are quite varied but have some social correlations. So the basic motivation for religion (or any other Game) is just this: It Seems Like A Good Idea At The Time.

Contents

Disclaimers

Human Intellectual Activity

Knowledge Systems

Belief Systems

Human Games and Their Rules

GO! Index

Resources