I keep going on about how life is a game. If life's a game, let's look at how some of the stats of life work.
In video games, you earn experience points and gain levels. When you gain a level, you become better at everything you do, even though you might have gained the level from the experience you got by doing one specific task. For example, your character in the game gains a level by fighting goblins, and mysteriously gets better at casting healing magic. This is actually not far from the situation in real life.
In real life, I find that when I upgrade my life significantly in one area, I become better in other, seemingly unrelated areas. For example, when I started studying psychology and social dynamics, I became a better mathematician. When I started studying Japanese, I became a better weight lifter. And so on. It's just like gaining levels in a video game by completing quests, and mysteriously that makes you better at writing spellbooks in the game. Totally unrelated areas complement eachother, sometimes in ways that I can't even understand.
In the game I worked on, players who kept fighting the same monsters, or casting the same spells, or generally repeating the same things, got diminishing returns. For example, if a player walked around fighting orcs all day long, soon the orcs would give no experience at all. This, too, is like real life, where if we do the same thing over and over, we learn less and less from it. Thus it's important to always be pushing the envelope and learning new things.
Usually, to gain levels in a video game, you need to find the right balance of ease and difficulty. Fight monsters too easy or do quests too easy, and the experience will be almost useless because it's so small and at that level the characters need so much experience points to improve. On the other hand, go fight monsters they're not ready for, and the characters get nuked. Similarly, in real life we learn best when we "fight" right at the limits of our comfort. When you lift weights, for example, you want to lift close to your limit.
The major difference between experience in real life and video games, is that in real life, when you learn start something truly new, it always gives big experience, regardless how experienced you already are. For example, if there are two guys, and one of them is fairly inexperienced, and the other is well-travelled and highly experienced, and neither of them have ever studied martial arts or anything similar... then they'd both benefit a lot by taking up martial arts.
Sometimes in video games, there's a "boss" enemy who just seems way too hard to beat. Even if the characters try with all their might, they can't win (well, unless it's a speedrun maybe...) Rather than get slaughtered by the boss, the characters need to go level up a bit and then give it another try. It can be the same way in life. I'm always pushing my comfort zone and going toward danger, but sometimes I run into challenges that are just too much for me until I grow myself in other areas first. This is particularly the case in my mathematical studies. For a long time, I was baffled by transfinite induction. I didn't really understand ordinal numbers all that well in the first place. Then I got involved in doing other stuff, totally neglecting math for a good half year. When I finally started studying seriously again, I just somehow understood ordinals and transfinite induction. Now it seems so easy, like it's obvious. I gained levels and the "boss" became easy.
Here are some other articles I wrote. I gained 6,437 experience points writing these... and you'll gain twice that much just by reading them.
Intelligent Design and Intelligent Video Games
Pictures from Japan
A Modern Version of the Lord's Prayer
In video games, you earn experience points and gain levels. When you gain a level, you become better at everything you do, even though you might have gained the level from the experience you got by doing one specific task. For example, your character in the game gains a level by fighting goblins, and mysteriously gets better at casting healing magic. This is actually not far from the situation in real life.
In real life, I find that when I upgrade my life significantly in one area, I become better in other, seemingly unrelated areas. For example, when I started studying psychology and social dynamics, I became a better mathematician. When I started studying Japanese, I became a better weight lifter. And so on. It's just like gaining levels in a video game by completing quests, and mysteriously that makes you better at writing spellbooks in the game. Totally unrelated areas complement eachother, sometimes in ways that I can't even understand.
In the game I worked on, players who kept fighting the same monsters, or casting the same spells, or generally repeating the same things, got diminishing returns. For example, if a player walked around fighting orcs all day long, soon the orcs would give no experience at all. This, too, is like real life, where if we do the same thing over and over, we learn less and less from it. Thus it's important to always be pushing the envelope and learning new things.
Usually, to gain levels in a video game, you need to find the right balance of ease and difficulty. Fight monsters too easy or do quests too easy, and the experience will be almost useless because it's so small and at that level the characters need so much experience points to improve. On the other hand, go fight monsters they're not ready for, and the characters get nuked. Similarly, in real life we learn best when we "fight" right at the limits of our comfort. When you lift weights, for example, you want to lift close to your limit.
The major difference between experience in real life and video games, is that in real life, when you learn start something truly new, it always gives big experience, regardless how experienced you already are. For example, if there are two guys, and one of them is fairly inexperienced, and the other is well-travelled and highly experienced, and neither of them have ever studied martial arts or anything similar... then they'd both benefit a lot by taking up martial arts.
Sometimes in video games, there's a "boss" enemy who just seems way too hard to beat. Even if the characters try with all their might, they can't win (well, unless it's a speedrun maybe...) Rather than get slaughtered by the boss, the characters need to go level up a bit and then give it another try. It can be the same way in life. I'm always pushing my comfort zone and going toward danger, but sometimes I run into challenges that are just too much for me until I grow myself in other areas first. This is particularly the case in my mathematical studies. For a long time, I was baffled by transfinite induction. I didn't really understand ordinal numbers all that well in the first place. Then I got involved in doing other stuff, totally neglecting math for a good half year. When I finally started studying seriously again, I just somehow understood ordinals and transfinite induction. Now it seems so easy, like it's obvious. I gained levels and the "boss" became easy.
Here are some other articles I wrote. I gained 6,437 experience points writing these... and you'll gain twice that much just by reading them.
Intelligent Design and Intelligent Video Games
Pictures from Japan
A Modern Version of the Lord's Prayer
Posts
3 comments:
I love the idea that all of life is interconnected, and that a change in one area can have surprising and interesting effects elsewhere. This is one of the things that makes life such fun - the potential for creativity is enormous. But we do need to RELAX and play the game as if it's just that - a game. Taking things too seriously will not do!
Agreed. I like your blog, by the way.
I totally agree- life is all about levelling up. I made a list once of all the areas I care about, and what my possible max level in them all could be, what my start point was, and where I was now.
I lost the list, but it was a very useful and interesting exercise.
Yes, these things can be quantified, and they definitely have a wider impact on your life.
Level up!
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