The Game Matters
Everywhere you look, you can find people making choices that look absolutely bonkers from the outside. Many people dismiss these choices under the false narrative that “most people are stupid”. But it takes a deep examination of a person’s history, mindset and holistic situation to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing.
And in many cases, things start to make sense when you ask the question: “Are their choices irrational if they’re losing the game they’re playing?”
The human mind is fundamentally a problem-solving machine that tries to make sense of its place in the world. When faced with making decisions, people tend to be rational when they can clearly map out their objectives and see a viable path to success. It’s easy for someone to make rational choices when they understand the rules of the game they’re playing AND they believe that they have a chance of winning the game.
Take a professional athlete. Their entire life becomes a carefully calculated game with clear rules. They know exactly what metrics matter: Speed, strength, technique, etc. They can see how each decision they make matters. What to eat, how to train and how to recover are decisions that directly impact their probability of winning. The game is transparent, the rules are clear, and most importantly, they believe they can win. That’s when human behavior becomes laser-focused and supremely rational.
In contrast, look at systems where the rules feel opaque or rigged. The modern career path often feels like a game with hidden rules. Young professionals might get advice from older generations that doing well in school, getting a job at a well-known company, buying a house and starting a family is the path to a happy life. But many people are experiencing a different reality. Crippling debt, stagnant wages, an impossible housing market, and constantly shifting job requirements define their lives.
So it isn’t a surprise that many young people are making non-traditional life choices. If the game feels unwinnable, people look for alternative strategies.
One of the best examples of “changing the game” comes from Star Trek’s lore. The Kobayashi Maru is a legendary no-win training scenario at Starfleet Academy designed to test a cadet’s character when facing certain defeat. The simulation presents a starship, the Kobayashi Maru, which appears to be disabled and stranded in the Klingon Neutral Zone. Cadets must decide whether to attempt a rescue, knowing that any intervention will likely result in their own ship’s destruction. The scenario is intentionally unwinnable – approaching the Kobayashi Maru triggers an overwhelming Klingon attack that will inevitably destroy the rescue ship. Most cadets either freeze or accept defeat, methodically playing out their inevitable destruction.
But when an upstart cadet (Captain Kirk!) realized that the game’s rules led to defeat, he cheated by reprogramming the simulation’s computer to make victory possible. When confronted about his cheating, Kirk argued that the test wasn’t measuring a Captain’s ability to accept defeat, but rather their creativity in confronting seemingly impossible challenges. This moment became legendary in Starfleet mythology and a symbol of Kirk’s core philosophy: There are always alternatives if you’re willing to challenge existing constraints and think beyond the established rules.
The Kobayashi Maru example is perfect because it illustrates a fundamental human response. When faced with a no-win scenario, the truly rational actor doesn’t just accept defeat. They look for ways to redefine the game itself. Kirk didn’t just accept the simulation’s impossibility – he changed the underlying assumptions.
This could explain why people are choosing high risk financial instruments like leveraged options, crypto and memecoins over stocks, bonds and savings. If it’s increasingly difficult to save money and the buying power of money is being inflated away, then is it irrational to seek out high risk/high return opportunities? If one click could wipe out a few hundred dollars or make you comfortable for the rest of your life, is it irrational to click the button? Maybe not if you’ve already determined that P(win) = 0 if you play the game that’s on the field.
The truth is that most people aren’t inherently risk-takers or gamblers. It’s that they’re fundamentally rational actors trying to optimize their chances in a system that often feels incomprehensible. The more opaque the rules, the more desperate the strategies become.
They’re playing to win by playing a different game than what’s been put in front of them. Looking for cheat codes, for side quests and for entirely new game boards is a reflection of how they plan on tweaking a P(win) = 0 game to P(win) > 0 game!
