New Direction

So, I made it known among the internet that I was interested in making money. I finally decided that it was time to do some work and acquire wealth =)

The reason I am doing it is because I want to enact positive change in the world. I don't really agree with the systems and governments we have in place today, but of course I live in them and there's nowhere else to go, so I have to deal with them. Money is a form of power and therefore I need to acquire it in order to enact positive changes in the world.

Unfortunately, because of the nature of work, I now have much less free time to pursue my interests. For instance, I am interested in learning much more about computer science, user interface design, operating systems, mathematics, martial arts, etc. Unfortunately now I have to ditch several of these things.

On the other side, having a serious job somehow gives you more inspiration to take those things seriously and pursue them with more effort than you did before. I noticed this when working for Panera in Kansas City. I had to work most of the day but when I came home the quality of effort I put into my chess studies and practice was much higher, so it almost evens out.

I had been considering moving to a place where I could study wing tsun, but now I am starting to realize that it may be a mistake. I may not have enough time to study Wing Tsun Kung Fu and still achieve the goals I want to achieve in my lifetime. With my current job, and a little ingenuity, I could still research computer science, keep up with modern technologies, learn alot about programming skill, perhaps design a website or new concept or new video game genre. It'd be tough, yes, but it may be possible. However, if I move to california, and train Wing Tsun, that's going to take away somewhere around 6 hours a week, and when your hours are already precious, it becomes hard to do.

The job is going well and perhaps any readers of this blog will find out about what it is, if it goes as well as planned. It's honestly a dream job and the people I work with are very nice and "professional". I put that word in quotes because I don't have much experience in the corporate realm. =)

In the future I definitely plan on working on improving my communication and writing skills. Eventually I will try to create some of my own projects. I have a lot of ideas I haven't heard discussed before relating to the internet and video games. Perhaps the ideas have already been talked about by people, but of course an idea is only worth so much and having the drive to create something is the important thing.

When I was a kid, in 2nd grade, the most profound experience I ever had occured to me. It was really the genesis of my ideas of ideal societies and communities that honestly and openly worked together to achieve shared goals.

I was in second grade, and we had to design a drawing of a white house to enter us into some kind of contest. I came up with the idea of creating a 3d whitehouse. That's a 3 dimensional white house made out of paper.

Of course the idea was ridiculous, you weren't allowed to submit a 3 dimensional project. Yet I recruited some talented individuals who shared my vision (Judy, a talented artist, and some other kids who I don't remember their names). And we began working on the project. Everyone came together honestly saying what they could do. I was giving out tasks, and we created a 3 dimensional white house. It took several iterations of design because we couldn't get the paper to line up correctly, etc. We experimented, drew and scratched various designs, and finally created the finished project. It was the most exciting moment in my entire life.

Now, I have worked a bit in businesses before. My current job doesn't count, but every business I have worked in before has had the normal power struggle type scenario. Either nobody was really leading the group, the group was not leading itself, or everyone was vying for power and position. You would not be able to go up to someone and calmly ask them what their skills were in regards to the task you would have liked them to perform. It would have been lots of trouble, their ego would have been hurt, etc. This was the situation that I experienced while working on petition drives in Nebraska.

This imo is the problem with the adult world. Kids for the most part haven't learned to protect their egos and lie, cheat, and steal their way to the top of the power chain. So what I experienced in 2nd grade was a collaborative effort of the highest kind, where everyone honestly wanted to help and was not concerned about anything but the project.

In some of my earlier posts you may see some of my ideas of an ideal community. I have stated that I didn't care what the communities goal was, but that I would like to join a community in which everyone honestly and openly helped and critiqued each other and contributed to the project's completion in a very efficient and organic fashion. An example can be just the way you communicate. Do you have to apologize, joke, say goodbye, etc, every time you need to ask a coworker a question? Or could you efficiently ask the question and continue working on your task? For many people, the second option is too blunt, too impersonal. I also imagine that if the ordinary business person was put in a "chess monastery" of my ideal where all the student of the monastery came up to them and told them all the mistakes they were making, they would freak out and feel constantly insulted. Yet I know that if the right people were to form such a community, they would feel free to help each other without hurting each other, and the bluntness would lead to greater efficiency. Just *imagine* if people honestly cared 100% about accomplishing a project most efficiently instead of protecting their own interests. Imagine, the CEO could be replaced by the lowest person on the chain, the telephone receptionist might give direction to the programmers. Without people's egos and personal interests getting in the way, the whole thing would run so smoothly and amazingly it would be incredible.

So, eventually I will find the right people to work on such a project. Ideally, it would be about something important. For instance, improving economic situations or lives of impoverished citizens or creating empowering collaboration tools, etc. In my opinion it's not the skills of the individuals that are important. Skills can be taught to anyone. I have taught programming to people almost ignorant of computers. It's the attitude and honesty of individual that is important. If you have the right attitude you can get past any obstacle in a matter of time. If you have the wrong attitude, your organization is corrupt the entire time.

So, I will do my best to become involved in the world. At some point I will also give it up and pursue my other interests. The world is fascinatingly complex, and I am complex, every person is complex, and every day is amazing. You can learn anything, go in any direction, engage in any relationship, do anything. If you can't do it, program it in a virtual world. Your imagination can come alive with only a little effort. The future is going to be a blast. Maybe scary, maybe crazy, certainly a powerful change. And I'm going to be moving with it.

The icy death of dogma and habit

Life is vibrant. It is dynamic, it is fluid, it is in motion. It comes and goes and it dissapears. Every seven years or so, every atom in our body is completely recycled.
People change, personalities go under complete overhaul. Change seems to be the only constant.

If you look at life this way, it can seem strange that people seem to be caught up in old, stagnant ideas, and don't 'go with it' 'go with the flow' 'get with it' 'get with the times' 'get hip to it' etc. =) You can see this strikingly in the attitude to computers and the internet among various age groups. We have a very peculiar situation today where young children can actually be more knowledgable about any given topic than their parents within a matter of days - thanks to internet research.

Here's a scenario of this happening: Johnny's dad has an interest in small launchable rockets. Let's say he was trained to build them in college, 10 years ago. He spent a year taking a class about it and now considers himself a rocket expert. He's been building rockets for 10 years and now wants to teach his child this art.

He tells Johnny about it and then Johnny logs onto the internet and does a search about 'small launchable rockets'. He reads the wikipedia article, he finds some specialist websites, he finds out about a new rocket-launching invention that came out 5 years ago. He doesn't understand how ignition takes place so he goes to a rocket specialist web-forum and asks for help in understanding it.

Then Johnny and his dad have a discussion. Johnny's dad tells Johnny about the tried and true "blue moon launch technique" - in use since 1950. Johnny tells his dad that 5 years ago a more efficient method was found that launches rockets twice as high with twice as less fuel. Johnny's dad moves on to explaining the science behind the rocket launch. He explains that it is caused by a catalyst that ignites blah blah blah..Johny replies that actually that is an out-moded point of view that was refuted in 2003 by James Douglas after it was determined that the electrolytes of blah interact with the blah blah.

Even though Johnny's dad went to college, Johnny not only knows more about rockets, but understands them better than his dad. And he's only a kid! This situation goes on on a daily basis. Kids, because they are flexible and willingly jump into new technology, embrace it and use it. Suddenly its not just a kid learning something from school anymore - he's got an entire network of enthusiasts behind him willing to answer his questions at any time and he's got a ton of up to date modern learning material to draw from.

So we have a situation where older people who are unwilling to adapt to new technologies are left completely in the dust. They can't compete on an even footing. It's not really that they can't - but that they refuse to even *try*. Whereas a kid jumps up to a computer and immediately explores it like it was a new game, an adult feels a sense of dread and when not immediately understanding the system they feel alienated from it.

There is an interesting study and experiment called the "hole in the wall " project, it was produced by an indian fellow who came up with the amazing idea of putting a computer with internet access into the side of a building in an indian community. When it was realized that it was OK to use it, kids started pouring in and playing with it. They didn't speak english but they learned how to make it work through pure experimentation and enthusiasm alone. They learned it very quickly. Adults didn't fare so well. Adults tend to want to be 'taught' in a formal setting where the kids just go up and play with the thing.

So that is one example of dogma or slow thinking leaving you behind the times, and I'm sure you can find many more examples of this. But I'd like to talk about dogma in intellectual pursuits as well.

The games I have experience in dealing with this is are chess, martial arts, go, and some other sports. All of these sports or games are fascinatingly complex and no one really can say that they understand them completely. Yet certain people either get taught or decide to learn that there are certain things that you 'cant do' or that are 'bad' and should never be done. They don't have a nuanced understanding of the real complexities behind it, they just have this idea that the thing is 'wrong' somehow (in all situations).

So in chess, certain dogmatic patterns are very common, an attitude to getting isolated pawns (its bad they say ) , being behind in development, etc. These people have already closed their minds off to accepting these possibilities and dealing with them. For example, if there are certain types of positions where accepting an isolated pawn is good for you, these players will never enter those positions no matter how one-sided the position is because they have long ago decided that 'isolated pawns are bad'.

You can also make this argument about beliefs and belief-systems. I have heard that belief is the fervent wish that something is true. For instance, you often here that faith is the idea that you should believe in something 'on faith' or that you trust that it is true. However, Alan Watts countered by saying that the true position of faith is that you accept whatever the universe turns out to be without trying to impose a belief on it. After all, if one were truly open-minded, one would be open to any idea or refutation of a previously held idea. In fact you could even imagine an open minded person had no beliefs that he held to be true and just considered everything as being equal. One day he considers that there is a god, one day he considers that there is no god, one day he considers that he is one with the universe, one day he considers that he is seperate from the universe, one day he considers that abortion is morally wrong, one day he considers that it is morally right.

Like the fellow in chess who learned as much as he could about isolated pawn positions without making any final judgements about them, he is drenched in nuances and subtetlies about whatever thing he is considering.

Really, how can you expect to understand something without seriously considering its opposite?

I have said in my various blogs here and elsewhere that I longed for an open and honest community where discussions took place without emotional argument and people debated an issue from all sides. This is how I think people can get a real picture of what is going on. If you are so caught up in your beliefs that you *refuse* to argue the opposite side, you are really caught up in emotion or fervent wishing that the belief is true and are not being objective about it. Being objective doesn't mean that you consider an objection and then immediately deride it or laugh at it. It doesn't mean that you insult the person who disagreed with you. It certainly doesn't mean that you use logical fallacies to prove your point. In fact being open minded means that if you *did* have a belief, you had that belief because you investigated the matter at hand so throughly that you were convinced from every angle that it was true. So in other words, for you to really believe something, you have to RISK losing your belief in it entirely by opening yourself up to the possibility it is completely wrong.

Over the years my beliefs changed many times. At any point in time I would be willing to tell you why I believed what I did. Sometimes my beliefs changed because evidence changed, sometimes my beliefs changed because I had emotionally believed the thing in the first place, sometimes my beliefs changed because of radical changes in the way I thought entirely. For instance, you could have a belief that 'time is accelerating' but if you then later took the physics view that 'time does not exist' it would be hard to keep your old belief because of the total revolution in thought that the second idea entailed.

So in my story that is down a few entries, the characters in the story would play games and everyone would openly engage each other in debate and you were expected to defend your position. If I knew of a community like that in real life, where people were honestly engaging each other in debate without pointless ego games, getting angry/raising voices at each other, but just cool rational debate, I'd drop what I was doing and try to join it. I'll bet it's out there, maybe there's alot of them, I just haven't found them yet. Maybe I need to travel to the mountains of Tibet, maybe there's a group next door to me that has this level of 'cool', I don't know. In my history of living, very few people have ever had this attitude, and there was never a group of us involved in anything. The thing I got from most people I've dealt with is if you disagree with what they say , they get angry, they raise their voice, etc. At some point it even becomes a game of them desperately defending their ego even to the point of ridiculousness. Admitting you are wrong becomes 'losing' in this game. You can also spot these people by if they prove you wrong in something, the conversation does not advance, but they need to spend at least 2 to 3 minutes gloating about 'how you were wrong' and how they 'beat you' in a debate. When I'm wrong, I'm wrong. That's it. You're right, I was wrong, you proved it, maybe you're right, etc. When you've logically brought my opinion to destruction and refuted it, the argument is over, but not before. When you've done that, I admit it and move on. That's really the end of it, yet in my experience so many people make a game out of it and are ridiculously competitive about the whole process.

And so, in a vibrant, living world of change and dynamic spontaneity, how can anyone keep up? If you're in water, and you try to hold on to the water, you drown. In the same way, in the realm of ideas, and the realm of learning, the only way to swim is to let go.

Quantity over quality

Many people are concerned about the quality of the works they produce. Ideas like 'short is sweet' and similar themes are prevalent in today's society.

I would like to make the case for producing vast amount of quantity of intellectual work. This could mean ideas, huge quantities of text, videos of rambling people talking, discussions that aren't heavily edited, etc.


I feel that in this society we have this unfortunate desire to 'perform' and only show a false side of ourselves that isnt very close to reality. For instance, a person will spend weeks, if not months on a very small amount of material in order to make it look very refined and high-quality in order for it to sell or impress others.

I am not arguing against that, what I am arguing is for more of a balance.

For instance, let's say I want to learn chess. (this is a subject I am familiar with). There are various books which sum up some general principles in very short, memorable phrases and show you clear, profound examples.

Yet I always felt that the things I really needed to know, the things you don't see mentioned in chess books, I had to learn entirely on my own.

So many moves in a chess book are glanced over, no comment. Much is taken for granted in the reader's understanding.

Now that we have the internet, computers, and producing high quantities of text is not a problem, I think we should learn to get used to lower-quality but higher-quantity amounts of information, and get past the bias that quality is necessary.

For instance, let's say I am writing about a chess position, and instead of summing up the position in a few words, I talk about the position for 5 hours. Sure, alot of that time you will hear stuff that is not well-phrased, you already knew, etc. But the enormous amount of material I cover should help you over-all (if you have the time to listen, of course).

I have also noted in my conversations with people that many people, if not everyone I've ever met, gets turned off when someone is highly exuberant, and talks too much, regardless of how relevant what they are saying is to the conversation or how interesting it is. In these situations, where I become interested in something and perhaps get excited by being able to communicate with another person, I am literally pouring out words and ideas non-stop to the other person. I am not taking the time to carefully consider what I am saying - it is more like a stream of consciousness which is highly flexible and adaptable than a carefully constructed speech in which I make absolutely sure that every word is relevant and aesthetically pleasing. For instance, this blog entry, and all my blog entries, feature almost no editing whatsoever. I am just thinking these words, I type them out, and that's it. It's an organic process, I am growing a website, and instead of using the 'delete' key, if I need to change a position, I simply mention it further down the line in the entry/website/ article/ journal entry/etc.

I could imagine you're not entirely convinced at this point. I know many people I encounter online would not have read this entire entry at all - they would have gotten lost quite a few paragraphs back. If they did manage to read it, it would be for the purpose of giving me a suitable insult.

Yet I think interactions between 2 interested parties, who are overflowing with exuberance, can be much more exciting than 2 people who do not communicate and merely spend time together in a sort of quiet socially acceptable way. Sure, you can run out of energy, but then you've spent yourself completely and you are satisfied.

So, the difficult thing here is meeting the kind of person who is as interested in a topic as you, and has roughly the same level of enthusiasm/exuberance/energy as you do. If one person has too much more than the other person, it might not work out, although some people do enjoy listening to others more than expressing their own ideas.

This topic reminds me of conversations I had with Joshua Goldstein, years ago with an ICQ client that no longer supports the feature: We both had a chat window, one above the other, to type our text in. You could see the other person's text in real time as he was typing. What would inevitably happen is one person would type one thing, the other person would type something totally unrelated, then there would actually be 2 streams of conversation going on at the same time. You would bounce back and forth responding to the other person's reply to the first conversation and then moving on to the second conversation. Quite an interesting way to communicate, and it's a shame we couldn't get it to work again after all these years using old ICQ clients. It's interesting how such an incredible feature could be removed. 'Advances' in software, technology, are often actually downgrades.

Zenchess story #2: The old man

After all that she knew I was ready to move on. I had already learned much, and I was at the top of game. I no longer
cared that I was a prisoner, I realized I had lived more in the last years than I had my entire previous life. She seemed
to have no sexual interest in me, and strangely enough, I seemed to have none in her, either. There was never the slightest
hint of anything happening in that realm - and maybe that made the relationship more intense than if there had been.

She realized this, and finally all the games came to an end. I was no longer a prisoner. She opened all the doors,
restored all the key cards. I could walk out, never come back. I didn't.






I slowly slid down the line...the line of potential in this 3d space. She taught me before about ancient submarine
strategy, lines of potential, complex relationships and virtual 'physics' of the games that beginners would never know about.
Even professionals wouldn't know - her strategy was so highly refined that someone who had not been trained extensively
by her, or by wherever she came from would not understand why I was moving this way.

My opponent was stronger, faster, faster even than her. I didn't know this person. Was he human? Was this artificial
intelligence, or modified intelligence? He floated up in a strange way, in a strange pattern. I looked for a weakness
there but I couldn't discern anything. I flew towards him, because I felt as if I didn't attack immediately, his strange
approach would destroy me before I began.

Whirling, whirling, I span around in circles. I rode the waves, the virtual waves that took me deeper, deeper into his
area. He erected a primitive defense, I knew it was a sham. I avoided it, flew around it, jumped around it, flew inside
of it, twisting through the holes and spinning it out of my way. I didn't understand why he would attack in that way.

Suddenly he began twisting space, bending it, pulling me in. It was a thing you could do in this game - redefine the
physics of the simulation and make things more defined. Things began to flow faster and I continued moving towards him,
he moved away, he moved towards, he invited me, we came close.

As I approached him soon space was becoming close to infinite, we were dueling in this incredible creation of the mind,
a game that few people had ever played - yet played so great that we could all be called masters. He was something different
though, something bigger...was he their teacher? Did he invent this? As I came within range, our battle began. It came
faster, and faster, and faster, as we spun towards infinity, deeper and deeper and deeper, I felt as if he was infatigable,
as if he was vast...as the tempo increased, I began to lose vision of the game...I couldn't hold it all in my head and
instead of finishing me off, he withdrew. I was beat, but he didn't have to struggle to do it. I knew I had to find this
person, and become his student.

"Weaker than our worst. Do you want in?" he said. I did not hesitate, I accepted and that was when I took on a real
teacher for the first time.

They flew me to his training grounds, a big place. The environment was beautiful, in a weird sort of way. The technology
was seamlessly integrated into the grounds, nothing seemed out of place. I felt as if I had finally arrived, as if it was
the defining moment of my life.


"My name is Bassho. This is my community. We are seekers of the truth and holders of the flame. Please join us."

I didn't say anything. All my words had been spent years before.

We trained, we trained vigorously. Amazingly everyone seemed on top of their game and were willing to help you along as
well. It was nothing like the old days, the old games I had played, the old communities of vulture pyramids.

There was no set routine. Bassho wasn't leading us anywhere, at least not directly. When a weakness was found, everyone
pounced on it - there was no hiding from your faults. It was hard to keep a weakness. If I became predictable, the entire
group would start talking about it. If I believed I hadn't made a mistake, I had to defend myself. Scenarios were tested.
Anything could be set up with the machines, no matter how context-sensitive. Lessons were given by everyone - even when
they were not experts on what they were talking about. You had to defend your ideas in front of everyone, from every
different angle. There wasn't a single member of our group who was left out, who didn't offer ideas, who didn't defend
himself and his ideas in front of the rest of us. There was literally no room for protecting your ego here. Selfish ideas
and dogmatic thinking were ruthlessly pounded away and if you couldn't accept it, you'd have to leave - there was just no
escaping. Fears couldn't hide in your mind in this way, everything was out in the open.

We had all the time in the world. Nobody felt rushed, there was never a premature end of a discussion when one side
wanted to continue. Nevertheless, different styles began to emerge, and debates lasted for long periods of time, sometimes
never to be resolved. Was that defense based on tricks, or was there real truth and strategy behind it? Could it be
refuted, slowly, quickly, or was it to stay forever? Is your idea going to lead to something, or are you just playing
a game which ends up in losing? The debates raged on, and we became the most advanced strategy group I've ever heard of,
far surpassing any military think tank.

It wasn't just games, every aspect of life was explored. We all loved each other, knew much about one another. We
laughed and cried. We floated in space together, delighted in each other's presence and having a blast. We were different
than anyone we had ever met, and we all knew it. Our club wasn't exclusive, but there were few who would want to enter it.
We kept outside contact, looked at potential members, but by and large, few if any were admitted.

Something began happening. Slowly, but with increasing frequency. Bassho wasn't making any sense.

He would talk about some advanced, abstract concept, and we would listen with interest, and investigate the ideas. But
then he would talk about something so abstract, so divorced from reality that we had to laugh. As an example, he would
talk about the meeting of two sentient creatures. One of them would begin thinking about something that had no basis in
reality, no practical application whatsoever. He did this as a defensive mechanism, in case the other creature began
thinking about the same thing. Bassho would often talk about situations like this - mental creations of the mind that
had no basis in reality yet somehow their results should dictate your action, he said. He said that your opponent could
be thinking the same thing as you, therefore you had to investigate in any direction, and that an encounter could be
decided without any action by either party whatsoever.

Of course it was madness. How would you know what the other person is thinking? What are the odds you are thinking
the same thing?

Strangely enough, though, his madness began to control us in our battles. We would be playing a simple game in which we
had to struggle to find patterns, and he'd start discussing some highly abstract and unrealistic mental game which had never
been simulated before.

We were all very sharp at this point and we could follow his debate. At first, nobody seemed to care. We'd openly call
him old and mad. But he began basing his play on these patterns of these mental games, he became increasingly predictable.
We started picking up on this, in essence, being forced to play the games he had designed in our minds. He was waiting for
this and started exploiting our weaknesses. Somehow, he was an expert even in these games no one had ever played before,
so when he told us he was going to make his move based on the result of an attack along a certain direction in warped space,
we all calculated the result of that attack and noted his action. Yet we never considered that he might make an effective
counterattack on a meaningful angle, that in effect our understanding of the game was superficial. He seemed to know what
each of us understood of his games, and used it against us.

You could say that we should just ignore him, that his mental tricks were to his advantage. But they were fascinating
to all of us, because we realized what the crazy meaning of such tricks could be. It meant you could manipulate your
opponents successfully, by taking them into mental realms of your creation. Maybe you had spent your whole life in those
realms, maybe you were just better at swimming in a sea of visualizations. Either way, it meant you could transfer the
real game to a game of the mind.

Only Bassho took it too far. When we had began entering one game, he would start a new game, inside the first game. It
became too maddeningly complex, nobody could follow it, and Bassho would only smile like a lunatic and tell us we weren't
ready to play the real games yet. We all knew he was crazy - but none of us knew how much of his craziness was practical
or not. For us to play his games, we would have to enter his worlds, worlds in which there was no footing, where anything
could happen, and where principles didn't apply. We had to be willing to go as deep into his worlds as he wanted us to,
we had to care about things that had no basis in reality whatsoever, except inside our minds.

We stopped playing his games, because we realized that to really play them, we'd all have to go insane and become lost
in his rabbit-hole worlds of insanity. He seemed to withdraw then. He began investigating simple things, things we were
all experts in. Two beats one, he said. We all knew that, knew it before we met him. Yet he would say it again, and then
say it wasn't true. He'd say that one really beats two. And at this point we knew he was a lunatic, that he had finally
lost it.

It was sad, because he was our mentor for so long. We all looked to him for advice and his lessons or explorations were
crisp, clear, and led us to where we needed to go. Yet now he had entered a path none of us could follow. Where was he
going? No one knew. He became crazier and crazier. He would hold up a pebble and laugh. He'd begin dancing on the sand,
spinning beautifully and chanting incomprehnsible chants. We looked at him from afar, and we began to prepare for the future
of our organization.

He still played the games, only now it was a sick show, it was like playing a child. His attacks made no sense, caused
no damage, dealt no pressure. Nobody could begin to understand what he was doing. You could destroy him at will. If you
tried to play the same game as him, look for what he was trying to do, it was as if he was completely random.

We stopped playing him, and we began taking care of him. He stopped speaking language, he became an embarassment. Our
community was tolerant to a level not seen in the regular world, and had he been there he would be hidden from society
completely. We loved him still, and at times we'd sit down in front of him and listen to his surreal lectures, not a word
of legible language anywhere, but plenty of energy. Some of us began talking as if he had transcended to a superior realm,
although we knew he was just mad.

Something was different about me, however. I looked at bassho's madness, his unintelligible language, his rantings and
weird undulating motions in the sand. I didn't understand it - but I didn't see a mad man. I saw something different.
Before we stopped playing him in the games, we thought he was making no sense whatsoever, and had lost his mind. But his
movement looked deeper. It looked unintelligible, but not random. When we didn't destroy him right away, no one could
really seem to understand what he was doing.

I began talking to him. He didn't reply with a single word. He talked with great energy and subtetly about nothing at
all, just a bunch of nonsensical utterings. I copied him, and it only seemed to get him more excited. He began dancing
in the sand, and I emulated him, and he began to laugh.

Then I realized, he wasn't crazy at all. He looked directly at me copying him, and he knew I was doing so - he was
completely cognizant of what was going on. He was cognitive. I couldn't believe it.

The others didn't understand what I was doing , they looked worried. I realized that no amount of explaining would get
them to my realization, that whatever had happened to him, even endless rational discussion would not explain it to the
others. I knew if I followed him on this path, we would both end up deserted eventually, and locked up for good.

I escaped, with him as a passenger...where we were going I had no idea, but he was somewhere...somewhere beyond the limits
of our rational minds...and I was going to follow.

Further thoughts about a game of complexity and delight

I want to make a game. A game in which you have to let go in order to play. A game in which you can dance around like a bee, zipping in and out of complex situations.
My complete vision for this game will probably never come about in reality. The society I was raised in - in the usa, is very competetive. Everyone is trying to control
everything. Games in which you can't impose your will on the situation tend to frustrate these people and they declare them 'boring'.

The funny thing is in almost any game, there is an art to it. People who attack blindly and over-aggressively tend to be beat by someone who can take advantage of their
over-aggression. Even in hand to hand combat, there are martial arts that make a science out of exploiting blind force.

Unfortunately I can't say that I live in a society I feel comfortable in. Perhaps I should move somewhere, to india or some far-away place. Only I've heard that pettiness exists
just about everywhere.

I've spoken before about what I view as my ideal world, even though it is just a 'starting point' for the ideal world just as my 2v2 guide is just a 'starting point' for my 2v2 system.
In other words, I see gross mistakes, so I explain how it would be better if those mistakes didn't exist. If they didn't exist - there would probably be other mistakes for a
really ideal world to exist. So I can't say that I'd be satisfied if everyone accepted constructive criticism and left their ego's at the door, yet I feel it would be a big step closer
to something great.

So what I am trying to accomplish here is to create something so complex, so impossibly vast that only someone who lets go completely of everything they know and hold
onto can survive in the world successfully. In other words, let's say you are used to being conservative. Well, in my game, it may be that you have to run around wildly
sometimes, squeeze into dangerous situations and jump around like a trapped cat while flying out of the trap into another trap. You may never be free.

You won't have anything to hold onto - and if you play by a system you will be immediately destroyed. So you won't have time to think about a plan- you will just have to
swim in a sea of incredible complexity and survive there, always unsure of your next step. It has to be admitted that many games and life in general are already like this,
yet there is an illusion of safety behind systems, ideals, principles, etc. My goal is to make something where there is no illusion - at least no successful illusion.

In my mind, there are certain things that are very powerful when you incorporate them into your life. For instance, when you are kid, and you do a roll, you are flipping
completely over. If you don't go with it you will probably mess up somehow and maybe hurt yourself. But the experience of rolling, or flipping, or turning around in a circle,
is a very strange feeling, yet very incredible as well. I have the idea that trampoline artists, gymnasts, and martial artists that experience alot of motion are really living
incredible experiences.

So in my game, it will be essential to exist in this plane where you always need to flip, to roll, to walk backwards, to spin, to be completely unsure. My game is basically
something so amazing, that you wouldn't have trouble imagining the gods playing it to amuse themselves. Would you imagine the gods arm-wrestling to amuse themselves?
Maybe there is some deep strategy behind arm-wrestling that I'm not aware of, but for the most part it seems pretty 1-dimensional. You don't imagine the gods playing
tic-tac-toe to amuse themselves, and you might not even imagine them playing chess or go. Maybe the gods can calculate too fast. But if you have something so amazingly
complex, that to calculate the possibilities would take you infinity, then you can imagine an infinite creature having fun with such a game. A game where the complexity
always increases, that to look at a possibility and claim it is the best choice is ridiculous, because no amount of calculation, even given infinite resources, would ever solve
the problem, because the problem becomes more complex at a rate faster than you can solve it.

Ok, that was a little lofty, and I can't guarantee my game will approach that level. It's just a goal to shoot for.

I've found that some of the best games come about with simple rules, and emergent complexity. For instance, subspace, a game with spaceships, in which you can
rotate a ship like in asteroids and apply forwards or backwards thrust, is simple to understand but difficult to learn and understand the real implications of combat in that
universe. If you simply add backthrust to the asteroids game, then you've suddenly got a much more subtle game than before.

So I am going to strive to make my game very complex, yet it will not be me who makes the complexity, instead the complexity will be a result of simple rules. In other
words, I will 'discover' the game, not create it. The universe itself is the one who creates the complexity of the game. So you could say that to find a game I could simply
study mathematics, watch water flow, all of these could be the game. Their complexity is such that no one can comprehend them.

I will definitely be playing around with mathematics, and trying many different concepts in a game engine to see what looks interesting. I am particularly sensitive to the
fact that some things which look boring and simple can in actuality be much more complex than when you first learn them. Take a simple game like chess, I am barely
beginning to scratch the surface of what I can do in that game. If I were to play it for a year and say that I understood the implications of the game, I would just be fooling
myself. So this task of creating a game is one that will require a lot of vision, a lot of theorizing about the implications of the game, and no amount of playtesting will
really decide which game is suitable and which is not. In fact, I could discover many different types of games in this process. Many different games that deserve their
time. It is kind of a sadness that many games have probably been lost to time or obscurity. Many people judge things hastily, and miss out on things they would love
if they tried them. I'm sure I'll feel pretty bad that I may be missing something great, but I will try to document my explorations in case I decide to explore areas further or
other people want to take up something.

Then there's the thing about popularity. Successful games today need marketing, publication, etc., all of which I'm not going to do myself. Take a game like counterstrike,
for instance, which I consider pretty one-dimensional in nature. No matter how much strategy you have at the game, if you put an AI bot in there with perfect aim, he'll kill
your entire team easily before you even begin to move your gun towards him. When it comes down to it, the best strategy is 'point towards him and press the button'.
I think games with inertial movement and attacks are much nicer strategically wise. For instance, there is a zone in subspace which has very fast bullets and one hit kills.
It becomes a first person shooter of sorts, and all the subtle maneuvering dissapears completely.

My idea is that if my game is revolutionary enough, it will attract players even if it has initial difficulty. Anyone can make an incremental increase to a first person shooter,
or add a new idea to a real time strategy game. That might draw in some new players, but they will leave that game too. However, if you make an entirely new kind of game, something incredibly revolutionary, you will attract players not only because it is different, but because they deem it a worthwhile game and invest energy into it. A person will probably not go crazy recommending an incremental increase to a first person shooter or rts, but if they are playing a game that totally revolutionizes the game industry, they will be more likely to tell alot of people about it.

Also, I am not completely concerned about the game being copied, or players moving on to new games. Primarily because if they copy the game, that just means that the fundamentals of the game exist somewhere, and if that's where the society is, I can just enter that society. Also, if someone improves on the game, that is just progress and I will probably enjoy that game even more. The key here is that I am not making this game because I want to make money off of it. I am making this game because there isn't a game that I know of that meets my requirements. If I spark a revolution in gaming, I am very satisfied. Like any new game, I will probably be the best player of the game at first, because I spend so much time in it - like kung fu chess I was the first and only serious player when it started. Eventually players catch up. So I do not even expect to be the best player of the game I create. However this is exactly how I like it, becuase when you are top, it becomes very lonely. You might be growing a huge ego, but I think people really want superior competition so they can grow. It is very hard to push yourself when you are beating everyone, trying to perfect your skill when you don't even have to.

One thing that I have going for me is I think my game will be very visually impressive. If my idea of a master player is right - it would be very easy to see the game getting televised or having its own channel. Because the player would be doing amazing feats, surviving impossible tasks, etc., watching a great player would be a very entertaining drama. And of course, he can falter at any time, which makes the successes all the more amazing.

Even though I like to compete, sometimes I like to just 'play'. So I would encourage game modes in which no one is a victor. Unfortunately this seems to be so contrary to many people's tastes. For instance, I told some players about a 3 way 'zengo' game in which each player alternates moves. No player can claim to win because he plays different sides. In other words, you just have the beauty of the game. Yet somehow, this feels horrible to people that are used to holding on to their wins and losses. If they can't say 'I won' its not wortwhile to them. Petting their ego is the only game they are capable of.

In my view, its really the beauty and complexity of games that inspires me. So a 'winner' could simply be someone that does something incredible. The game becomes social, a play, a dance. Players like this exist in games like chess - for instance Mikhail tal would often not take easy and clear wins in order to bring about something fascinatingly complex on the chessboard. He loved the game, not the result of the game.

Now I'm going to continue working on the ideas for my game, start experimenting with ideas in a game engine. I'll update you on the progress.

The reason I exist

Lately I've been competing. Always I'm competing. Ever since I was a kid, and played my first atari game against another person, I've been trying to compete.

Video games were always important to me, gave me a sense of freedom. In the game - you live or die based on your skill. There is nothing vague about it. There's no way to cheat, nobody can disagree with you when you win.

I always loved video games that gave me a sense of freedom and expression. It started with Mountain King, an atari game in which you could sort of jump around mountain tops. You could get insane height and felt really free when jumping around. There was a game in there too - but really the best part of the game was just playing around, jumping from mountain top to mountain top.


Then later I played bionic commando. You get to swing around on your grappling hook. This game resonated with me deeply. I felt free swinging on this hook, making impossible saves, and using inspiration to survive.

Then came subspace. It was the ultimate game I had ever seen. You flew around in a spaceship. You drifted. You could escape from almost inevitable death and construct amazing kills. You fly around and express yourself. I expressed myself by being extremely aggressive, by moving in, rocketing in, warping around.

When I played street fighter, I liked it as a kid. But then I started playing street fighter alpha 2 and I expressed myself by flying around with air hurricane kicks and attacking from all sides. I am a mobile player, in all games. Although that is not quite true - I have another side as well, which is the slow, positional side.

While these games fulfill my desire to glide about, to express energy, I feel like the ultimate game for this has not been invented yet, or at least I don't know of it.
I have an idea for a game in my head. It would be like no other game. I've talked about it before, but in case you haven't heard: the game would allow one player to take on thousands and win. It would give you incredible freedom. It would require spontaneous action to an unprecedented extent. It would incorporate ideas from games such as Tai Chi, Aikido, Wing Chun Chi Sao, subspace, etc.

One thing I want to express in the game is the idea of 'letting go' and 'going with it'. An example comes from the game subspace. There is a move in subspace called a repel. When you get hit by a repel, you go flying in the opposite direction of the player who repelled you.

At first, your inclination may be to resist, and push back towards the player. This will eventually get you there, although very slowly.

Instead, if you give up your desire to fight it, and go with the momentum that has been created for you, you can gain extra speed by moving in the direction you have been repelled, then bounce off a wall and come back. I wish to incorporate this idea in my game. Actually this idea is there in many games, such as chess: often you have to take the force your opponent gives you, and flow with it. Move in the direction the game is going. Yet this is not part of many chess player's consciousness. Many people resist everything they can - they don't go with the flow of anything. I talk about subspace being like water, you can't fight every movement you make and you have to 'flow' around the area to really get moving.

There is something about competing at a level beyond your current skill that gives you a sense of incredible excitement. I reach for that - that feeling of searching for excellence. Sometimes I forget about it, and play my games as if I was just going about my business, but then other times, my heart pumps and instead of following rote, I go towards excellence. Like Sai in hikaru no go, I seek the 'hand of god'.

Zenchess story #1 CHAPTER ONE

Entry #1: Dear Diary:

  I know that I'm not writing to you on paper, my dear diary. Not even a computer. Well to be honest if I ever survive this or figure out a complicated method of storing lots of words in notches hidden under my bed (a bed totally unsuitable for using as a weapon, I might add), I might store these words somewhere and read them in 10 years time, laughing maniacally as I relive the experience.  
  So, dearest diary, what is new today?  Well, I've been taken prisoner by the biggest mega-bitch that ever lived, the queen of all deranged super-evil that ever existed.  She hasn't tortured me, at least not physically, but I wish she had - at least I would have gone crazy early.  As it is she has stretched out the crazy, stretched it out so long and far that I've become one with it...I am it and it has no power over me, which is why it's so god damn painful because it's always there.  I honestly don't know if I should hate this bitch or love her, she's the most deranged person I've ever met yet she's incredibly motivated to continue this nightmare, she's put in so much effort that I know she must love me.  
  If you're wondering how I could remember all these words, I'll tell you a story that goes back to the beginning, those days when I thought I could escape, when I thought I made plans and had hope and was full of life.  Charlotte, as she called herself back then, had recently kidnapped me, and began the torture process.  I've never been willing to submit to someone else's rule:  that's why she chose me, I think, she knew I was an outsider.  She'd strap me to that chair, comfortable yet evil, and she'd 'teach' me things.  I put teach in quotes because really she was brainwashing me, forcing techniques down my throat that I never wanted to learn, teaching me tricks so I would be susceptible to ever greater forms of torture.  First she worked on my memory, walked me through palaces, taught me to resurrect images, and sounds, from the depths of my mind, forced me to grasp ahold of those vague memories and crystalize them, until they became so clear it hurt - before I knew it she was dragging my entire past out of me, every significant event in my life she could draw from me.  She even took me to my earliest memories, memories so strange and frightening that I won't think of them now.  
  She forced so many things down my throat, so many things.  Before I knew it I could remember
long series of numbers at will, recall any series of events exactly, and this is exactly what she wanted out of me, she wanted me to be powerful enough so that she could torture me further.  I'm not just a temporary pleasure for her, I'm everything to her - she spends all day long watching me, planning and plotting to reach her inevitable goal, whatever it is.  
  Lest you think she was just trying to help me let me tell you this:  she did torture me.  Without any kind of physical pain whatsoever.  She knew exactly how to withhold vitality from me, imagine a psychotic mother who could wield the most perfect and painful time out in the world, yet she wielded it whenever she wanted to.  She'd deny me senses, place me in dark rooms where I was weightless, I could scream as loud as I wanted and not even hear a whisper.  She'd let me advance in one game and then suddenly cut me off when I got excited, force me to adopt some new more twisted complicated game, hell half the time the games didn't even make sense and I don't think even she knew what the point of them were...
  She knew what I wanted, what I liked, she knew when I was adopting to her games or tricks or, it hurts to say, "lessons".  She'd cut me off of whatever I needed most.  She'd engage me in philosophical debates, point me in the direction I was already going and lead me to what seemed like new revelations, only to pull the rug out from underneath of me philosophically, destroying whatever sense of direction I had, until I felt as if I was just blind and deaf and floating in every direction or no direction, that I had no floor beneath me and no ceiling above, that I was either adrift or chained or both at the same time, until I couldn't take it any more, and then she'd take that away and put me on solid ground.  Nothing I could say would explain to you how crafty she is, how methodical.  Nothing but pure evil could explain her actions.  Even evil doesn't explain it - it's as if she was possessed by the devil yet was harnessing all the wisdom of god.  Not that I believe in those words, not anymore - I don't have anything to believe in these days, there's nothing that can survive her icy touch.

  If anything her most powerful form of torture, her most deranged was her insistence that I become an expert in various crafts, games, and techniques.  She'd introduce me to a game and let me play it for a while, of course I wouldn't really try but she'd use her influence to make me want to try, there's nothing you can do about it and she rewards improvement, so you try slow down the pace of improvement so you can survive longer, but she knows - above all she knows, somehow, and so you're forced to give it your all.  If anything has kept me sane it's been these games, the fact that I have improved, even when she's distracting me from 500 angles and pumping the air full of foreign sounds, I was improving, and so she kept me playing.  
  Yes, she's evil, but she knew me before I ever knew her, she knows that I love challenges, I love taking on impossible tasks so always, every day, there was some new game or challenge, sometimes connected and 
sometimes so different that it felt like starting over again and again.  
  I don't know how but she was already a master of these games, damn near perfect at all of them and she made me play more games than I care to mention.  Always she was prodding me, challenging me, facing me directly, not destroying me but always, always out of my reach.  I never ONCE gained on her in any game, never once came within reach of stealing the kill or the win.  
  
  And then she did the unthinkable, she came close to me, invited me to attack her, with no games, no machines, no restraints, no tricks that I could see.  She was in plain sight directly in front of me and she told me, come, come and use all the powers I've given you, come and show me your worth.  

  At first I felt elated, I felt hope again after so many years of accepting my fate absolutely.  Here she was, and all I had to do was grab her throat and squeeze, and before you knew it I'd find a way to escape, use her thumprint on the door or *something*, starve to death, whatever but it would be over.  I resisted my initial urge to charge, I knew something wasn't quite right and she had trained me in all the games of the mind and fingers, given me complete mastery over machines, and yes, yes I had thought of ways of attacking her had I ever gotten the chance, used every last bit of imagination and knowledge I'd gathered over the years since the beginning...

But I didn't attack.  Something was wrong.  There was no fear in her eyes.  Only that sparkle in her eyes that told me she was amused, a small wrinkle of a smile that fed off of my hopes.  I'd seen it a million times before, every time I was to ever go directly against her, and eventually I learned that all she wanted was for me to lose it, lose it with anger or lose it with caution, advance on her at a level beyond my own skill and try to win, try to somehow create a miracle that would finally defeat her, in something, anything.  I could try a distraction, a trick, but tricks never worked against her, never phased her in the slightest.  Her style was incalculable and indefinable, cold and hard as steel yet hot as fire, she moved from all directions and attacked in all ways.  You could try to outpace her but her eyes would just turn red, she'd go into some kind of weird trance that just meant that she is just going to defeat you even more effortlessly.  If you tried to shout at her it would just deepen the red, she'd absorb it all in a kind of lust.  

Of course, I've never been so afraid of life that I failed to try, so I walked forwards and emptied my mind.  I was bigger, I thought I was faster, and I knew I was stronger.  Her eyes and lips already told me that I was lost before I began but I attacked in that crazy abandonment that I learned only a year or so after she stole me, stole me away from my life and from everything.  From my memory of watching fights and participating in them in the old days before, I knew I would have taken down even a skilled fighter, yet she barely moved, barely lifted a finger and I was flying, turning, twisting, and screaming for mercy every time she locked me down.  Whenever our arms touched, hers dissapeared, went somewhere else, if I followed it it was again somewhere else, it was always somewhere else and I knew she could dance around me all she wanted until I was exhausted.  Of course it was just another game, another thing to teach me, and somehow in her past she was already a master, already stronger, faster, and more in control of my every movement than even the most skilled assassin I had ever seen, the quickest boxer or the most skilled wrestler.  
  If I pulled her arm, she came, and you were worse off than when you started, if you slapped her hand it was already attacking from the new position - if you kicked you were already stopped, she felt everything, knew everything, every thing I tried.  So I let go and drifted like I had so many times before, just listened to her advice and experimented and danced, like a child, she had broken me completely, I no longer cared about beating her, no longer cared about resisting, I just learned technique a, responded to punch B, sidestepped kick C, until I dissapeared, finally, dissapeared into a world I knew nothing of before, a world where you can't learn anything even the fact that you can't learn it - a world where up was down, up was in and out, up was clear and the nose were the ears and dodging and attacking were the same thing, where you weren't so much looking at her but she was looking at you, and things just became softer, and softer...
  Ok, so maybe I loved it.  Maybe it wasn't torture after a while, after I gave in.  I can't say that I held some crazy vow to murder her in her sleep or resist till the day I died.  Sometimes I knew that I longed for something like this, a frozen moment in time in which I could express myself without hesitation, where I could engage myself to my limits.  
  I don't think she believed me at first.  If anything, she was cautious, slow, methodical, patient.  She probably saw the signs well in advance, but when I started dissapearing she didn't seem to notice.  She didn't change the way she taught, true, there was less denial of experience, yet I knew that was because she wanted all of me and now she was getting it.  
  What was to happen, I didn't know.  I didn't care.  I was a mirror, reflecting life...