✌️ Win and help win: a non-zero sum world

Asmat tribe of Papua. Leveraged learning on the internet.

This is essay 4 of 4 essays for 1729 Writers Cohort #2.

In a lot of aspects of our life, we are living in a zero-sum world. The word zero sum comes from game theory, which means that one person’s gain is another person’s loss. If there is a winner, then there is a loser. 

We are exposed to a zero sum world in various forms. School, sports, video games, work, politics, and more. It seems that our human brains evolved to aim for the win and avoid the loss.

But what if there is a different way to live. Where one can win and help others to win too. A non-zero sum world.

I learned the concept of win and help win from Balaji Srinivasan and the 1729 community. Everyone in this community is helping each other to win in all parts of life, from creating wealth, achieving health, and finding the truth.

In this article, I would like to explore the possibilities of a non-zero sum world. Looking at the past with a story from the Asmat tribe of Papua. And looking to the future with leveraged learning on the internet. 

⚽ Asmat tribe of Papua: a neutral game of football 

In the book Origin of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation by Matt Ridley, one of Naval Ravikant’s favorite books, I learned an example of a non-zero sum world from history.

The Asmat tribe is an indigenous ethnic people of South West Papua. They live in traditional hunters’ and gatherers’ lifestyles deep in the dense tropical jungle. Only during the half of the 20th century, did the tribe has regular contact with the modern world. For an original documentary about the Asmat tribe, check out “Sky above and the mud below” which won the academy award in the 1960s.

When a Dutch catholic missionary visited the tribe, he brought a ball and taught the local men the game of football. Haven’t experienced something like this in their life, the locals quickly fell in love with football.

However, the missionary realized that something is wrong, there is no winning team in any game. Both the teams on each side do not want to be a winner. If one team scores, then they will let the other team score back. This reciprocity happened back and forth, like a positive tit-for-tat game. The missionary was confused.

When asked, the local men said that they want to live peacefully within the tribe. There is no need for them to create artificial conflict by winning or losing in a football game. 

Although the Asmat tribe are fierce warriors, with rumors of headhunting rituals and tribe wars. They understand that there are ways to keep peace and avoid unnecessary fights.

Compared this to the present-day hooligans who are engaged in virtue signaling violence, it seems that the Asmat tribe has a more evolved brain.

Matt Ridley explaining non-zero sum in The Knowledge Project podcast

💻 Leveraged learning on the internet

Education used to be somewhat of a zero-sum game. Students want to study hard to get the best scores in class, to go to the best university, and to get the best jobs. We are competing for limited seats available in each of these institutions.

The use of the internet as a knowledge-sharing medium changed all this. Any knowledge can be shared (either formally or permissionless) in a matter of seconds. Beyond the limits of geography, status, or wealth. We are experiencing the age of leveraged learning. 

If we ask someone in the 1900s if they would like to learn from some strangers on a screen, the answer is probably no. These days, regardless of the academic title or cultural background, if a person can engagingly transfer knowledge, people are willing to learn from them. As we have seen in the amazing phenomena of Indian tutors on youtube.

Even books are starting to become available for free. In the last couple of years, some of the books that have taught me a lot can be accessed online for free. Such as Naval’s Ravikant Almanack, Balaji Srinivasan's The Network State, and Marcus Aurelius’s Meditation.

In a podcast episode from Eric Jorgenson (Author of Naval Almanack and investor) with Nick Huber (Successful entrepreneur and Twiitter geek), I learned that sharing knowledge on the internet is a positive sum game. 

Nick for example shared all his learnings and even financial data from his startups on Twitter to let others avoid his mistake and make use of what went well. He said that some people are skeptical that sharing these kinds of information openly will create a disadvantage for him and his business. 

Truth be told, he has experienced it differently. Gaining a huge amount of followers and capital opportunities from his honest and open tweets. It seems that sharing knowledge is one of the best way to open new doors of opportunities.

Conclusion

For the sake of humanity, we need to win and help others win too.

“Only after the division of labor and interconnected economic system in the last thousands of years, have we learned that someone else’s gain can also be our gain” - Matt Ridley

This article is inspired by a fellow 1729 writer that used the pseudonym winandhelpwin and wrote great articles such as “Make Your Own Damn Sandwiches”.

Thanks for reading this article and enjoy the weather ☀️.