A GameB Update

and a woman playing a man's game.

The Sports Network (TSN) began broadcasting major poker tournaments in Canada in 2004. It soon became a small part of my entertainment. Poker is a male dominate game so the few women playing are very noticeable. Along the way, I became aware of Liv Boeree. She has now come back into my awareness in a very interesting way.

I taught myself Texas Hold 'em and once played a few low stakes tournaments in Vegas. And I played a thrilling hand that I will never forget. That is another story for another time.

In 2012 I retired, moved to Mexico and lost interest in poker.

Soon after discovering metamodernism in 2019 I found Jim Rutt and Game B. His lengthy article, A Journey To GameB, published on January 13, 2020, became a building block in my foundation. Six years later, it seems clear to me that humanity is not on a journey to Game B.

Proto-GameB (ProtoB) — when a coherent group of people is attempting to live a GameB life that can be thought of as “whole” if not yet “complete”.

Some extremely crude time estimates of the above phases: Pre-B: now, ProtoB first ones in 2021 or 2022…

I see some attempts at forming ProtoB like groups but overall not much that impresses me.

Playing a new game, Liv Boeree joined the SPACE with her YouTube channel, Win-Win with Liv Boeree.

Welcome to Win-Win with Liv Boeree!
In-depth films and conversations on Game Theory, Philosophy and Civilizational Design.
Don't hate the players, change the game...

And now these storylines merge. I am a fan of The Jim Rutt Show which has many excellent podcasts. And recently one caught my eye which I listened to.

EP 340 Worldviews: Liv Boeree on Poker, Moloch, and the Art of Finding Win-Wins

Jim talks with Liv Boeree—science communicator, former professional poker player, and host of the Win-Win Podcast—about consciousness, egregores, multipolar traps, and the ethics of factory farming.

I learned that earlier Liv Boeree had interviewed Jim Rutt on her podcast and I listened to all 2:30:36.

#48 - Jim Rutt - How Capitalism Became A Dark Game of Mind Control

Capitalism has historically been our biggest blessing. But what if it’s now turning into our biggest curse?

My guest this week Jim Rutt believes so. Jim is an early internet pioneer, a complexity scientist, the former chairman of the Santa Fe Institute, and co-founder of the Game B movement... and he has a lot to say about how our economic and technological systems have trapped us in addictive, self-reinforcing feedback loops.

From smartphones engineered like slot machines to markets that manufacture desire rather than meet real needs, he argues that our current “Game A” world runs on a single signal — money-on-money return — and that this growth-at-all-costs monoculture is rapidly eroding our agency, our sanity, and our planetary stability.

This is where “Game B” comes in: a post-capitalist operating system built on multidimensional value, regenerative economies, and what he calls “membranes” — local, self-governing communities that cooperate through trust, technology, and shared sensemaking rather than rivalry and coercion.

So if, like me, you increasingly feel that modern life is engineered to keep us divided and distracted, and want to understand how to fix it, I highly recommend this episode.

My experience with self-governing communities is not very good. For several years I was on the Board of Condominio San Juan de las Colinas which governed the private street we lived on for ten years. Basically, neighbors were able to agree on very little and it was one of the worst experiences of my retirement years. There was little trust and few shared values. It was Game A.

In contrast, I am now a member of WE, Wisdom Exchange, a small online community. WE are an island of coherence and we cooperate through trust and shared sensemaking based on our agreements. Of course, there is a lot more to this story.

As a civilization we face many seemingly impossible challenges. We need better institutions to build better people. We need better people to build better institutions. We need GameB communities to develop the people who can build GameB communities. As Nora Bateson and others have pointed out, we need to solve everything at once.

Currently I am shifting some of my attention from Metamodern Wannabes to our new Final Wa𝒊ve Feminism Substack, a growing branch on the WE tree. Perhaps I will shift some of my attention from The Jim Rutt Show to Win-Win with Liv Boeree. I am finding and liking the rising voices of women.

Jim Rutt has a rough personality that puts off some people. I learned to work with that type in my thirty year management career. All things considered I see Jim as full of healthy masculine energy.

But I generally prefer healthy feminine energy and there is a softness to Liv Boeree that lands very well.

From her Substack,

What is Win-Win?

Win-Win is an exploration of the incentives that drive our world.

As technology increases in power, so do the stakes of the games we play. Our civilization stands on a dangerous precipice, and there’s no guarantee we will find the narrow paths across it. But if we do, we could unlock a future of unimaginable awesomeness. A future that is simultaneously sustainable and in harmony with nature, AND also radically free. A win for all creatures, at all levels of existence.

Win-Win is a series of conversations and essays exploring those narrow paths. It questions everything we think we know about reality itself. It gets real intimate with the principles of competition, competition and all the other ways we relate to one another. After all, what does it mean to “win” in a world where the concept of “losing” ceases to exist?

So don’t hate the players, change the game.

And, important to me, both Jim Rutt and Liv Boeree offer their content for free.