What a silly game can tell you about our mind

Have you ever played Age of Empires?

I thought so…

It doesn’t really matter. I just got thinking of it and realized there’s something there.

Bear with me.

To begin with, here’s a 30-word version what the game is about:

You have a village, gather resources (wood, food, iron, and so on) to grow your village and build an army. Then you fight against other villages to conquer the world.

And the world in this case, is a map.

But…

In the beginning of the game a majority of the map is dark.

And you have no clue what’s going on in the dark. It could be an entire enemy empire, it could be free land, it could be gold.

It can totally change the game.

As your people move around and explore the map, the dark disappears.

You gradually build your understanding of the world.

And this is where I got thinking.

There’s something called “WYSIATI”.

Sounds like mumbo jumbo, but it stands for: What You See Is All There Is.

I’m a bit sloppy with fact checking, but I think Daniel Kahneman coined it in his research and popularized it in his book Thinking Fast and Slow (a good one btw).

Anyway…

What the expression means is 3 things:

You base your world view on what you know.

Then, our brain jumps to conclusions based on what it knows.

And, it’s damn hard to know what you don’t know, and take that into consideration when you make decisions or try to navigate life.

Now…

There are a lot of people out there, but for the sake of the point I’m making here, let’s throw them into two buckets.

The first group jumps to conclusion. They’ve read a few books, been to a few places and now they know it all.

It’s fine, but playing on that team, you’ll likely stumble on a few surprises along the way.

The second group realizes there are black spots on the map.

They don’t know what’s going on behind it, but they understand it’ll have an impact.

And they either go there to find out, or they’re fine with not knowing.

(Only God knows all, as they say.)

And please God, put me in the second group.

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