Want To Solve Any Problem? - Learn To Learn!

Learning has to happen if problems are to be solved. This means, that in any social situation where problems are present, people will educate each other in different ways. In fact, if there is a problem, it shows that someone needs to learn something, and in most cases, this means everyone involved.

In this blogpost, I will discuss learning in a face-to-face setting. I will first talk from the point of view of the “Structure of Observed Learning Outcome” (SOLO). This will serve as a simple path to understand how learning starts, develops and ends up in successful mastery of the topic.

Then I will go onwards to discussing learning from the point of view of the famous Bloom’s Taxonomy (BT). The taxonomy can be mapped on SOLO, but it gives us a more detailed understanding of the ways people use different cognitive functions to learn, from beginner to advanced.

I believe it can be extremely useful to understand learning from the point of view of these concepts. By developing the ability to think about learning, it is possible to learn and teach more effectively.

Also, the ability to empathise with a person in the position of a teacher or a student can help in saving time and energy, as often learning and problem-solving can be hampered by false underlying assumptions about the person’s skills - be it learning or teaching.

Before going into the main topic, I want to draw attention to a quote by Carl Jung:

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”

Although the context of the quote is more psycho-therapeutic that educational, the parallels to learning and teaching are there. Whether we act as teachers or students, we can only get our point across by transforming ourselves. This is because every learning situation is unique, with its specific context and specific people.

To hear and be heard means that we encountered something genuine in the other person, and were able to negotiate successfully with them, so the problem at hand could be solved.

My most comfortable area of expertise is health and fitness, so I will use a simple example situation of a coach and a client doing a nutrition consultation. This way I can give you practical examples and ideas about how the SOLO and Bloom’s Taxonomy work in practice. I’ll also do my best not to simplify the more sophisticated and abstract points of the concepts.

Hopefully, a fuller and richer image of learning can emerge from these thoughts.

The hero Zelda receives a sword from the wise old man. The sword is a classic metaphor in Western culture for the ability to speak the truth. Learning and teaching happen often through the use of words, and if they are not truthful it will lead to a corrupt learning experience for both individuals.

Going SOLO

The SOLO has five levels. To illustrate the levels, let’s look at the nutrition consultation between the coach and the client. Let’s say the coach is called Sam and the client is called Stephen.

Stephen has been struggling with his eating habits for a long while. He eats unhealthy food most of the time. He eats irregularly. He is overweight, he has some mild body image issues and he doesn’t understand what healthy food is. He doesn’t know how to interpret his body’s signals, or how his social and psychological environment affects his behaviour.

Stephen is in the “pre-structural” level. He has an overly simplified view of food. He doesn’t know how to read nutritional labels, he doesn’t understand how calories or macronutrients work. Also, he is frustrated at his situation, so he often has emotional reactions to his friends' and colleagues' discussions about his eating habits, which has prevented him from addressing his issues.

Luckily, he has sought out a coach. With Sam, Stephen might be able to form an encouraging relationship, start learning about how to improve his eating habits and take action.

Sam is a proficient coach, and can effectively guide Stephen to a useful and fruitful understanding of his eating habits. From the point of view of the SOLO, Sam’s first goal is to get Stephen to the “uni-structural” level of understanding.

On the uni-structural level, Stephen starts to learn about different areas of nutrition. Sam will explain to him the basics of calories, how daily activity and macronutrients work. All the steps are combined with practical steps Stephen can integrate into his daily life.

For example, by tackling the two very powerful habits of eating slowly and eating 80% full on each meal, Stephen will start to see how the concepts he learns with Sam are put into practice.

Through the information given by Sam and the application, Stephen starts to see how his eating habits have many different sides to them. Seeing these sides brings him to the “multi-structural” level. Stephen’s simplified understanding is now turning into a complex whole. This can feel overwhelming, and this is where many people would quit, as it’s perfectly natural to be discouraged by the feeling that there is too much to learn.

So, at this point, Sam’s job is to keep Stephen focused on the things that matter. By dosing the complexity, Sam is able to guide Stephen through the practical and emotional hurdles that are part of a demanding learning process.

In time, the complex mess starts to morph into a unified whole. The interactions between the different moving parts start making sense. The early simple habits have build a strong, actionable foundation, and Sam can introduce more specific ideas about macronutrients, meal timing and solutions for special occasions, like parties, stress-based eating and more.

This is called the “relational level”. The overly simplified view first become a complex mess, but now it is turning into an elegant system, that Stephen can successfully implement in his everyday life. The problems he had with his eating habits have shrunk into manageable, often automatic tasks. His energy can be now directed into other endeavours and his life has improved a lot.

At this point, it might be that Stephen doesn’t need further learning, as he might feel that he has a handle on the topic that can serve him well for years and decades to come.

But, there is still one more level in the SOLO, for both Sam and Stephen to explore together. Since Sam is a proficient coach, he can operate well in the fifth, “extended abstract” level. Here Sam is able to deepen Stephen’s understanding about his eating habits.

Stephen learns how to conceptualise, generalise and apply his own, hard-earned expertise in novel situations. He can also communicate effectively with his friends, colleagues and even fitness professionals about his eating habits. He can’t be taken down by fads or other bullshit. He knows what matters, why it matters and where to put his energy.

By progressing through the SOLO stages, Sam and Stephen were able to build a powerful set of habits and ideas, that guide Stephen and make him self-sufficient for the rest of his life.

By forming a relationship based on trust and a shared vision, Sam’s and Stephen’s efforts transformed both of them. Sam learned about the specific issues Stephen was facing, and his expertise was further built up. Stephen transformed his life, as our eating habits are one of the most fundamental areas of life, that affect us, our families and our surroundings in deep ways.

So, if you want to learn effectively, you might want to go SOLO - but not alone!

But, how about Bloom’s Taxonomy?

Let your learning Bloom

Okay, sorry for the awful puns. But I can’t help myself, they just come. Anyways, let’s check out Bloom’s Taxonomy (BT).

Sam’s and Stephen’s shared journey had several stages, as they progressed towards a sophisticated and practical understanding of Stephen’s eating habits.

In the beginning Sam focused on building up Stephen’s “remembering" and "understanding” in regards to nutrition. These are the two first stages in BT. Stephen developed his basic awareness about the key issues, like calories, negotiating with family members about food, and his own psychological relationships to things like pizza, ice cream and alcohol.

After this initial phase of getting Stephen to open up, he was able to memorise, repeat and describe accurately his eating habits. He also learned to classify, discuss and explain himself to Sam, so they could together pinpoint the best next steps together.

A foundation for the third BT stage, “application”, was built. At this point, Stephen is able to solve some everyday problems he faces, by using the strategies developed with Sam. Stephen is also able to discuss his eating habits now more coherently with Sam, as his practical experiences develop his tacit knowledge.

As Stephen is learning more and more, he is able to “analyse” his situation better, which is the fourth stage in BT. Together with Sam they compare, contrast, criticise, examine and experiment different courses of action, finding those that work for Stephen and discarding others.

Through the countless little decisions and actions Stephen undertakes in his everyday life, he enters the fifth stage in BT, “evaluation”. Thus far Stephen has followed Sam’s advice pretty well, but now he is gaining more confidence. Sam and Stephen start engaging in more intense problem solving, including arguments, defending positions, judging, supporting and evaluating the things they encounter.

Just like in the “relational” level in the SOLO, the fifth stage in the BT is enough to make Stephen pretty self-sufficient in his eating habits. But, there is still a sixth stage in BT, which is “creating”.

On the creating-stage, Stephen is able to construct, create, design and communicate effectively about his eating habits. For example, he might jot down his own vision for his eating habits on paper. Then, him taking the lead Sam would be able to take the back seat and prod Stephen to make some relevant corrections while trusting that Stephen’s previously learned skills would guide him towards the right decisions most of the time.

This is a good visual representation of BT. I hope you may find success on all of these levels, without having the need to get to the highest stages in everything you do - I bet you'll have more to give in some areas than others, and I believe it's smart to capitalize in those areas.

Summary

The Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes and Bloom’s Taxonomy are powerful frameworks that can guide the understanding, planning, and execution of any interactions where learning is required.

By using an example of a nutrition coach Sam and his client Stephen, I showed how both of these frameworks are in play, as Sam and Stephen progress towards a better and healthier version of Stephen.

I hope this blogpost made you more aware of the different levels and stages that a person goes through as they are learning a subject. Also, I hope that if you found this useful, you will be able to use this awareness in your own learning, whether you are in the role of a teacher or a student.

Thanks for reading!

Disclaimer: This blogpost walked you through a simplified version of how the SOLO and BT work. In reality, and especially with fully developed adults the different levels interact constantly. For example, a cognitively developed adult might feel they are able to skip certain stages of learning if they have developed a considerable amount of expertise in another area in their lives. However, understanding that the SOLO and BT are pretty universal frameworks that show how learning works can serve as a good “humbling” device, so important steps in the learning process are not skipped.

So You Think You Can Read?

“Unless you transform through reading, you don’t know how to read.” This is a paraphrased idea that I’ve heard from several sources, and it has stuck with me for a long time.

Starting from kinder garden people are told that learning to read is one of the most important skills you can have. I do agree. Reading - and writing - are advanced forms of thinking, with which you can make sense of your world, organise yourself and solve very complex problems.

But, I have a long-standing pain. I haven’t really seen proper explanations about what it means to really know how to read. In this blogpost, I will look a bit deeper into the idea of literacy. I’ll mostly focus on reading, and those interested in writing should be able to draw valuable lessons for their craft too.

Reading Is Very Complicated

To understand what it means to be able to read, to read god-damn-hard, we’ll be using the Model of Hierarchical Complexity (MHC) to guide our thinking.

I’ve covered the MHC before here, but the gist of it is this: the MHC is a 16-stage framework that can be used to evaluate the complexity of things.

In the case of humans, the simplest actions are physical, chemical and physiological actions, that mostly happen without our conscious interference. But, as we mature, we gain the ability to use language, tell stories, construct systems, combine systems and even develop paradigms.

In fact, the 16th stage in MHC is the “meta-cross-paradigmatic” stage, which means that some people are able to think about the relationships between different paradigms. This is the most complex stage, an example of which might be the difficult topics of different cultures clashing, or big systems of thought like science and religion interacting.

The Early Stages Of Reading

The question “can I read” won’t get an easy answer. The truth is, that there are different levels of reading ability. By using the MHC, you can better understand how deeply you can read.

With this knowledge you’ll be able to take a proper position in the world of written communications, helping those who aren’t as skilled as you, enjoying and sharing your abilities with your peers and looking for guidance from those more advanced.

On the 5th stage of the MHC children learn to name objects. This turns out to be usually between the years 1-2.

The 6th stage is called “sentential”, and children learn to form sentences and simple stories. But it still takes some time for the actual skill of reading to properly develop.

Then, between the years 4-7 kids are able to learn to read. Recognising words, attributing real-life phenomena to the words and understanding the relationships between individual things and the abstract categories they form starts to solidify here. In the MHC these correspond to stages 7, 8 and 9, called the pre-operational, primary and concrete stages respectively.

Between the stages 5 and 9 kids can consume various kinds of written products. In the case of books, it all starts with picture-books, that slowly advance to books with single words, then sentences, building up to storylines spanning even several paragraphs.

On the 10th stage of the MHC, the abstract stage, children can already follow very complex stories. Examples from my adolescence are Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, for example.

Think back to your childhood, around ages 8-12. At this point you likely started noticing that some people were drawn to reading books, while others were not. Here, the tastes and drives of people start to differentiate. These differences can last well into adulthood, as some people might read less than a book a year, mostly consuming short news-stories and audio-visual media, while others start getting engaged with more and more complex and demanding books.

In the 11th stage, the formal stage, reading abilities come more and more into play. The ability to collect evidence and construct arguments is developed here. This is often done by reading, as it is very difficult to hold several points of view in your mind at the same time. This stage starts around 12 years of age and continues on into adulthood.

If you are able to read well on the formal 11th stage, you may be able to participate in doing science on some level. Similarly, you can understand legal contracts on an okay level, and your ability to verbalise topics related to human relationships should be decent. In the case of books, it isn’t that surprising that many of the most popular types of books, such as romance novels found in airports and kiosks hit this stage pretty well.

Knowing how to read well based on the demands of the formal stage is a good accomplishment, and it is one of the backbones of modern societies, that rely heavily on written communications.

The Deeper Stages Of Reading

However, there are still five more stages to go, and here the idea of literacy starts becoming way more complicated and nuanced. There are a lot of people who never develop skills beyond this point, at least not consciously. Many professions that are regarded highly in society emerge, as we go higher in the stages.

On the 12th stage, the systematic stage, people learn to properly understand legal, societal, corporate, economic and national systems. The ability to understand issues from several points of view is developed here, as is the ability to construct multivariate systems, that are often required in complex problem solving.

Think of all the complicated legal, scientific and business transactions going on every day. It has required a long history of institutionalised education to develop societies, where people are able to carefully write and read the documents required for these kinds of co-operation. Not only are the people on this level able to read and follow instructions, but they can also make well-informed decisions that might be contrary to the system they are operating in.

Then, on the 13th stage, people know how to combine and compare systems, which are meta-systematic skills. Here a well-informed lawyer might be reading documents from several different field of law, a neurobiologist might be discussing research questions with a chemist, or a priest might be solving a conflict between to different religious sects.

This kind of understanding is unlikely to develop without a thorough background in reading. Reading about your own field, its subfields, its history, its recent developments, its sister- and competing fields and so on. On top of this, a wider background of general knowledge helps here, absorbed through novels, non-fiction books and more. It requires a considerable amount of brainpower to operate on this level, and generally societies reward people operating on this level relatively highly - with money, resources, safety and stability.

On the 14th stage we enter paradigmatic thinking. The amount of books written on this level is relatively small on this stage, and they can mostly be found in university libraries and dedicated professionals’ bookshelves. Understanding your field thoroughly and having the ability to assess the different systems within it is cognitively very demanding.

Deep-seated arguments about the “right way of doing” science, law, spiritual practices and more become very sophisticated here. Different schools of thought develop, with the innovative and knowledgeable pioneers becoming the founding fathers and mothers.

As these pioneers in their fields become established, they may expand into new territories, beyond their core-expertise. Or similarly, their disciples may sneak in influences from the outside, bringing us to the 15th, cross-paradigmatic stage of the MHC.

Great examples of cross-paradigmatic writing are Karl Popper's and Thomas Kuhn’s books about the philosophy of science. In their books the philosophers articulate and question the development of the whole scientific enterprise. Sharing these kinds of thoughts with a wider audience would be impossible without the ability to read widely and deeply, having the ability to contextualise different paradigms, extract out common patterns and find points of contention on a very abstract level.

Most people will be absolutely bored to death when approaching these topics, as they are very far removed from everyday life. However, an even smaller crowd operates on the 16th, meta-cross-paradigmatic stage. The greatest thinkers, spiritual leaders and generally super-smart and well-read people can operate here.

People like Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Edward Said and Karl Friston are examples of those few people who have gotten their say in their own ways on this stage. These people are the giants, on whose shoulders everyone else stands, as they articulate and formulate the directions whole societies take.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that a person needs to be able to read and write on the highest level to have a large impact. Most of our actions are guided by unconscious processes. Just like a six-year-old kid can play marbles but doesn’t explicitly know the rules, many great people who have changed our societies are not men or women of the book, so to speak.

But in any case, the ability to read deeply is a powerful one.

In fact, reading is so powerful, that if you want absolute control over people's minds, burn their books. This way it's easier to keep "the peasants" from messing up your paradigms and systems...

Good Reading Makes You Act

So what about you? If you read this far, you can definitely read children’s books.

Are you able to understand the moral lessons behind children’s stories?

Are you able to take action on the valuable lessons about humanity contained in the classic novels of mankind?

Are you able to read a news story, understand its political, economical, legal, philosophical and even spiritual implications?

When you read an advertisement, can you see how it might draw from Christian morality, the concept of original sin, while simultaneously feeding the idea that your subjective experiences are more important than the objective truth, ultimately prompting you to feel like crap because your armpit doesn't smell like daffodils?

Can you see when Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson debate about the nature of truth, they are participating in a meta-cross-paradigmatic discussion about the foundations of our society - leaving themselves and the audience in a state of confusion, as talking about ideas on that level is so god damn difficult, that there are very few people capable of even attempting that?

How deeply can you read? How deeply do you think you need to know how to read? Is reading simply about recognising words and putting them in order?

Reading and writing have layers and layers of meaning. Single sentences may contain wisdom gathered through thousands of years. Whole libraries may be full of empty words.

So, if you thought you can read, I now hope that you know better, how well you can read.

With this, I hope you can go forward in your life, focusing your reading time on those texts that serve you the best, and then taking action on the valuable lessons you learn from your reading efforts.

Thanks for reading (shallow or deep, it's your choice)!

The Cheesecake Model Of Life - Understanding Your Problems Easily

Imagine a cheesecake, a really, really tall cheesecake. Then imagine, that the cheesecake has seven different flavor-full sections. But, the sections are actually put vertically in the cheesecake, and not in layers. So, if you would look from straight above, you’d see these seven different slices, like in a pie (or a pie-chart).

In this blogpost, I’m going to explain why it might be extremely useful for you to think about your life like a seven-flavoured cheesecake. This visual model can help you identify areas which are lacking in your life, and also understand the magnitude of the problems you are facing.

By looking at your life from this point of view, you’ll gain perspective, you’ll make better decisions, and you’ll be more understanding and compassionate towards yourself.

Yeees. Let me become a juicy and thicc cheesecake!

The Seven Flavours Of Life

Here are the seven key areas of life. I borrowed heavily from Dr. Jordan Peterson here, but I think he usually sticks with six areas when mapping out someone’s life.

1. Health: first and foremost this is your basic physical health. Daily habits such as eating appropriate amounts, sleeping enough and exercising go here.
2. Friends: these are the people you have chosen - more or less - voluntarily in your life. Hopefully, your relationships with them are reciprocal and productive somehow.
3. Love and family: this area is about your familial bonds and your romantic partner. Often times these relationships are characterised by more duties and responsibilities that friendships.
4. Education: everybody feels better, when they have been educated enough to the extent that matches their potential. It also gives them the tools to enhance other areas of life.
5. Work and career: some people want simple jobs, some people want fulfilling careers, some people just want passive income and get bored. In any case, you need to “make dem monies” somehow.
6. Hobbies: most people have free time. This time can be used in various ways, and several of them are fun, helpful, engaging and meaningful. These are your hobbies.
7. Drugs, alcohol and addiction: there is no shortage of powerful, addictive and mind-altering substances. They are intimidating, exciting, fun and dangerous. If you don’t have a plan for them, you might get ruined completely.

Alright, so those are the flavour of the cake. But why is the cake so tall?

The way I look at is, that it’s useful think about your whole life history, when looking at these areas. So, the tallness of the cake represents the time you’ve been alive. This helps us a lot, when we are trying to identify problems, and understand if they are big or small problems.

Little Problem, Big Problem

Let me give a couple of examples.

Suppose you are walking down the street to work, drinking a takeaway coffee. You bump into someone, the coffee falls and spills on your 70 € white Converse shoes. This is a problem because brown stains on white shoes don’t look professional. This is a mini-level social and financial problem, and you need to solve it somehow. In the cheesecake of your life - provided other things are kinda stable - this is something that screws up only a tiny layer in the cake, and you can quickly fix it by buying new shoes.

But, suppose you are a guy walking down the street with your girlfriend whom you’ve been dating for six years. Then, you bump into another guy. Your girlfriend's facial expression changes to panic, shame and anger, and the other guy stops in his tracks. This meeting starts a cascade of events, where you find out that during the past six years your girlfriend has had three other relationships with three other guys, two of whom you have regarded as good acquaintances.

This ain’t good for your cheesecake, I’m telling you. (Prepare for some simple math.)

Let’s say your life always in the present moment is 100% of the cheesecake. Then, one of the seven areas is 1/7th of that, which is about 14.3%. As the information about your misguided beliefs about your partner's fidelity flood your consciousness, your cake gets screwed up.

First of all, the six years you’ve been together are immediately transformed into a very bad tasting cheesecake. Suppose you are 30 years old. Six years is 20% of that. This means that 20% of the “Love and family” gets blown off and chocolate turns into dingleberries. This represents then about 3% of your total life getting completely fucked right on the spot.

But, what exactly led you in this situation? While later on it’s useful to narrow down and direct your attention to practical issues, we are not there yet. You need to ask yourself, how did I live my life in such a way that 3% got walloped in a single moment like that, without warning.

So now the whole pillar of “Love and family” comes under question. 1/7th of your life is in disarray. It requires massive efforts to organise this big of a chunk of your life - mentally, practically and socially.

But, it doesn’t end there. Remember how two of the “other guys” were your acquaintances? What kind of a person are you to know people like that? So, there goes another 1/7th of your understanding of your life.

Do you start to see how the cheesecake model can help you put a number on the severity of the problem?

By identifying the seven areas, and by thinking about them in terms of time and percentages, you can ballpark the magnitude of the issues you are working with.

Then, if you for example are recovering from a long addiction, money problems, a long-lasting familial trauma, or anything else major, you can run through this little thought game in your head.

Summary

It can take a lot of time to reorganize your worldview - which is the basis for every action and thought you take - after you’ve experienced a massive problem. It is a miserable experience, when your world gets blown apart by ignorance, chance or malevolence.

Your brain can simply work only so fast, in trying to make sense of what is going on. After all, its job is to keep on predicting what’s going to happen, and big problems mean that the brain’s idea of how the world is, was severely wrong.

It’s a huge task for your mental structures to reorganise themselves during and after a crisis. And after that there’s still the actual world to contend with, where you need to take action, instead of just thinking about what just happened.

All in all, I hope the cheesecake-model can help you understand better, that the problems you face can actually be very big. They spread in the system of your life quickly, infecting areas you wouldn’t even think about (...eating and sleeping like crap during a family or work crisis, anyone?)

At the same time, I believe that this way of thinking about your life can help you in remaining calmer and more reasonable in the face of serious issues. I’d say that’s a better outcome, than just eating a whole cheesecake in a single sitting because life is tough, don’t you think?

Thanks for reading!

Everyone Owns A Pyramid - How Is Yours Doing?

In the previous three blog posts we’ve looked into how we can map the world successfully, going from the simplest thing to the most complex using the Model of Hierarchical Complexity.

We’ve also looked into the most basic fundamentals of how we as conscious living interact using predictions. To understand this we introduced ideas like Bayesian inference, the Markov Blanket and the Free Energy Principle.

I also promised that next up would be more practical things. But then I realised, the groundwork hasn’t been laid out well enough yet, so a couple of more philosophical posts will follow.

This time I’ll be going through an extremely powerful framework to understand the development of animal and human cultures. I discovered this framework in Jordan Peterson’s book “Maps of Meaning”, but I’ve added my own twist to it. 

As far as I know, the framework doesn’t have a name, so I’m gonna dub it simply “Peterson’s pyramid”. Oh, by the way, Peterson doesn’t use a pyramid, just a simple flowchart. …but I’ll tell you soon why a pyramid is such a powerful way of looking at this thing, just read on!

Also, here are the links to the previous posts, if you need 'em!

1. A Smelly Fart, The Death Of God And The Model Of Hierarchical Complexity
https://isonaminustatuleeviisas.blogspot.com/2020/07/a-smelly-fart-death-of-god-and-model-of.html

2. How To Trade And Fight Fruitfully - Using The Model Of Hierarchical Complexity In Conflict Resolution https://isonaminustatuleeviisas.blogspot.com/2020/07/how-to-trade-and-fight-fruitfully-using.html

3. Everything Is Alive - Even Ideas And Mental Disorders https://isonaminustatuleeviisas.blogspot.com/2020/07/everything-is-alive-even-ideas-and.html

The Secret Pyramid That We Live In

So, first imagine a pyramid. This pyramid is going to represent the psychological development of a culture. It has ten stages, and they go like this:

1. At the bottom of the pyramid there is “Creative exploration”. This is the most fundamental way creatures interact with their environment. Every action done by single-cell organisms up to human beings is always creative exploration. It can also be other things, but there is never an action or a thought that wouldn’t partly contain the question “what happens if I do this”.

2. The next level of the pyramid is “Generation of adaptive behaviour”. For example, at one point in time, most living creatures had an ancestor that didn’t really understand that they die if the go into a volcano. But, after several tries, we - the life on the planet - figured out collectively that “stay away from too hot” is a good rule to live by. So, creative exploration morphs into adaptive behaviour.

3. This adaptive behaviour is so valuable, that we also figured out how to transmit it without everyone having to go through the same painful learning experiences. So, on this third level of the pyramid we’re talking about is “Imitation of adaptive behaviour”. If you’ve ever wondered why the saying “lead by example” is so powerful it is because of this: imitation is the most basic form of transmitting behaviours in a culture. Everything else pales in comparison.

4. On the fourth level is, rather surprisingly, “Play”. Why play? In this case Peterson is talking especially about rough and tumble play, which is coordinated physical action between willing participants. The famous neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp identified a whole brain circuit governing play. Peterson likens this to discovering a continent, and the more I think about it, the more I agree.
   
   
   The power of play is heavily underestimated. It is at the same time a very primitive but also sophisticated form of building social cohesion, understanding boundaries and it serves as the foundation of our moral concepts. (If you or your friends don’t know how to play nice, you might want just want to build a WALL between you and others, for example…)
   
   
5. Play serves as the basis for the more complex acting out of subconscious ideas - this is the fifth level of “Ritual”. Humans, other primates, and many other mammals have rituals. For example wolves may act out symbolic fights and even symbolic executions to establish their social hierarchies. Humans used to act out sacrificial rituals in very corporeal fashion, but nowadays stock investments and rock gigs are great examples of rituals - the former are about bargaining with the future, the latter about acting out a shared experience.
   
   
6. But, rituals are still not that conscious. On the sixth level of the pyramid signs of a more sophisticated conscious action starts emerging as “Drama”. The non-verbal rituals start turning into planned, physically acted out narratives that people repeat and change.
   
   
7. From drama, we get to the seventh level of “Narrative”. Here the ancient oral traditions start building up in their local forms. Complex information is stored in stories, so we don’t need to constantly keep on learning through experience. Cognitive capabilities start developing more and more, as the narratives become more complex.
   
   
8. Then, on the eighth level we reach “Mythology”. Mythologies are higher-level narratives that combine the key messages of simpler narratives into memorable and applicable stories. However, these stories are still relatively close to the physically active forms of cultural transmission of ritual, play and imitation. They are not modern, rational and logical explanations of a narrow sub-set of phenomena. Instead, they are the first attempts at abstract thinking.
   
   
9. On the ninth level have “Religion”. Religion differs from mythologies, as professed creeds, legal structures and other complex systems appear. Shamans turn into priests and the language used becomes less imagistic, although it still relies heavily in mystic and artistic expression.
   
   
10. On the tenth level, where the pyramid is the narrowest, we have “Philosophy”. This is closest to a modern understanding of what knowledge is. Logically articulated arguments, rational thinking and higher-level cognitive functions get their say here. Typically when people get frustrated arguing on Facebook, somebody is braking the basic rules that govern this stage, and then there’s a high chance that the whole discussion devolves into the lower levels.

Alright, so that’s Peterson’s model. I personally would add “Literature” between the 9th and 10th stage. This is because literature is something I consider shorter-lived than religious structures, but less rational and logical than philosophy. Perhaps some other forms of art would fit here too.

Then, on top of the pyramid, I might put science. This is because philosophy is a very high-level subject, and science seems to formulate the most detailed and narrow knowledge of the world we have.

Why A Pyramid, Explain!

Now, if you are a person who really values science, the word “narrow” in the above sentence might annoy you - and even if it didn’t, this is a very carefully chosen word that reveals the “Why” of choosing a pyramid to represent this whole structure.

Think about a pyramid as a shape. Its base is wide, and it gets narrower and narrower as you go up. Each level occupies less and less space.

So here’s the kicker: The space that is covered by a single level of this “Peterson’s pyramid” represents the number of actions taken on that level.

So, let’s follow the original pyramid that has 10 levels. How do you get to a single philosophical idea?

Let’s say for the sake of argument that you might need 10 religious ideas and extract the core message from them. Yeah, I pulled the number 10 out of my hindquarters, but you’ll get the point soon.

For each religious idea, you go through 10 mythological ideas.

And down and down you go, until you reach the stage of creative exploration, each time multiplying the number of actions you take. So if there are 10 stages, you’ll add a total of 9 zeroes to reach the number of “creative exploration acts” that need to be collectively done to get that one philosophical idea.

Look, the math isn’t the point here. I just want to communicate the idea that a ridiculous amount of things need to happen for a culture to start developing - and learning from - philosophical or scientific ideas.

It’s Always About Nietzsche, Somehow

To illustrate the above point further, let’s look at a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche:

"It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of – namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious autobiography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown.”

What does this quote mean? Well, think about all the things that need to happen for someone like Plato to develop his philosophy of “forms” or write a book like “The Republic”. First, there is the massive phylogenetic line of living organisms that Plato is part of, and the genetic information stored within him that shapes who he is. Then there is the culture around him, his natural environment, his friends and enemies, his bed, his food, his walks and wrestling matches. -- And you too, you have your own philosophy of life, even if you haven't articulated it.

The point is that being alive happens mostly on the lower levels of the pyramid. This being alive is the thing that shapes the higher levels.

This is crucial, because nowadays many people seem to have forgotten this, or are not admitting this. Philosophy is cast away for narrow-minded scientism. Religion is cast away for “rational and logical” philosophizing. The rich and absolutely necessary forms of drama, ritual and play are shut off, as rough and tumble play is banned in schools, people participate less and less in real hobbies and a mindful ritualistic life is supplanted by mindless consumerism.

Wrapping It Up

My belief is that if you want to live successfully, you need to “build your pyramid” in a harmonious way. You need to go out there and just do things and pay attention to how the world reacts and adapts accordingly. You need to let imitation be your guide in shaping the social structures around you. You need to play - wrestle, joke, tickle, hug, you name it. 

You need to pay attention to the daily rituals you perform (and most of them are sub-conscious!). You need to express your emotions with the tools of drama and verbal expression to understand and be understood by others. 

You need to know the guiding mythological and religious stories of your culture, like “God”, “Saviour”, “Adversary”, “truth”, “love”, “hatred”, “Mother”, “Father”, “Evil”, “Good” and so forth.

And if you are lucky, you may also develop a deeper philosophical understanding of all this, and even divert your energies to the highly sophisticated - but narrow - acts of scientific discovery.

Unless a lower level is in order, whatever is build on top of won’t be as strong and lasting as it could be. And while this is not the place to talk about, it was Nietzsche who diagnosed with his “Death of God”, that our culture is in a deep, deep crisis, where our lower-level actions are severely cut off form our intellectual and scientific ways of being, as we’ve decided to abandon our religious and mythological traditions, instead of nourishing and pruning them like a responsible person.

A pyramid is a representation of a hierarchy. A crappy hierarchy falls apart, like the tower of Babel. But, without a hierarchy, you won't even know what is up or down, and you can't act. BTW, the previous sentence should be taken literally, not metaphorically.

Two final, fascinating points are these. 

First, If you compare this “Peterson’s pyramid” to the Model of Hierarchical Complexity I covered in the previous posts, you can’t but help see many parallels. Both of these models represent the idea of a complex and sophisticated structure emerging from more basic elements.

Second, when you start treating phenomena in the pyramid as living beings, as defined in the post before this one, you can gain a deep appreciation for how complex the world is. I believe the sense of awe and respect this can give you can serve you to make better decisions in your life, as you’ll be less arrogant and more honest with yourself.

Alright, so we’re getting closer and closer to a point where this stuff can finally be made practical. But, I’m not gonna rush the process of laying the foundation, because as expressed above, a shaky foundation prepares you for a mighty fall.

As always, thanks for reading!

P.S. I’m still paying attention to how long these things take to write. I wrote this in about 1 hour 20 minutes, but I had thought about these topics for many hours over several months.

P.P.S. And just as a note, I don't edit, these texts are basically a simple flow of pre-meditated thoughts. (Okay I use Grammarly to fix errors, but that's it.)

Everything Is Alive - Even Ideas And Mental Disorders

In the previous two blog posts, I talked about the Model of Hierarchical Complexity and how it can guide conflict resolution in tough situations.

The topics were relatively intellectual, but I hope the practical examples presented helped you in understanding the ideas.

This time we’re going to crank things up a couple of notches. Be warned, the stuff that’s coming in this post is very difficult - at least for me - as I venture into concepts and ideas developed by some of the smartest men ever to have walked the earth.

So what is this post about? Well, to put it simply it’s about how living things try to figure out how to survive in their environments.

But to really start figuring this stuff out, I’m going to introduce several concepts like Bayesian inference, the Free Energy Principle, the Markov Blanket and Boundary, anti-fragility and ruin.

On top of this conceptual hodge-podge, I’m going to try to stretch our everyday thinking to not only view humans, animals and plants as living things. Instead, the concept of “being alive” is expanded to cover many other phenomena, such as ideas, cultures and even mental disorders.

I promise I’ll write as clearly as possible, because I don’t want to make this stuff any more complex than it needs to be, and I don’t want to sound intellectual for the purpose of sounding intellectual - even though that is tempting.

You Might Read This - Bayesian Inference

Let’s start with Bayesian inference. Bayesian inference is an idea coming from the Bayesian interpretation of probability. For people trying to function in their everyday lives the main gist of Bayesian inference is that we don’t really know what’s going to happen. Instead, we make predictions.

These predictions are based on a model that our mental structures generate. (I’m saying mental structures because traditionally scientists talk about the “brain”, but interesting stuff about the gut, the heart and the nervous system is emerging now in relation to the development and functioning of the psyche, so I’ll keep on using that term).

The predictions are made based on a couple of things. There are the things you as a complete being are experiencing right now, both consciously and subconsciously. Then there’s the stuff you have experienced previously - this covers both the genetic information and your life-experiences you carry with you.

Your mental structures then compare if what is happening is similar to what should be happening based on previous experience.

Fair enough? Now, remember how we talked about the Model of Hierarchical Complexity before. You could look at the situation like this:

You have a mental representation of the environment that the MHC can organize pretty nicely. This mental representation is your MHC of the world, based on your current and previous experiences. Obviously, this representation is not the actual world, but it’s a map that is - hopefully - good enough for you to go about your life successfully.

To keep on going about your life successfully you need to constantly update your map. The reason for this is that the environment is changing constantly, sometimes even in unpredictable and catastrophic ways. If your map is out of date, you’ll more likely encounter a catastrophe, a so-called Black Swan that takes you out. This means that you are ruined - “ruin” being a term that’s used in statistics when talking about a system getting f*ucked up.

However, living things are pretty cool, as they avoid ruin by using Bayesian inference to both function in their environments and to update their previous model of the world. This makes living things anti-fragile. Simply put, living things are not in a constant, random process of change, they are not completely rigid and unchanging and they have boundaries they try to maintain. Living things can adapt to their environments, precisely because of the Bayesian inference going on constantly.

Here’s a practical example. Psychologists have found that there’s an optimal range of negative-to-positive experiences that keep romantic couples together. I believe it was between 5-11 positive interactions for every 1 negative interaction.

Why would that be? Well, if we look at the idea of Bayesian inference, the answer could be this: First, if your environment is not pushing back against you - too much positive - then you risk making a huge prediction error in the long run. But, if your environment - in this case, your partner - is constantly pushing back, it means that your map is already out of date and you will wear yourself out.

So little errors frequently enough in a relationship - i.e. arguments - keep you both feeling more stable because your overall model of the world gets updated frequently enough. In fact, airplane pilots can keep on making tiny errors constantly to get readings from their monitoring devices. This way they are constantly sure that the system is working. If they never made a mistake, they could miss a malfunction in the system, that might crash the whole plane.

In the same way you are better positioned when you are constantly finding an amount of opposition that keeps you moving forward and solving problems, without wearing you down.

Are You Dead Yet? - What Is "Being Alive"

Alright, let’s get now to the next idea. We’ll define a bit more in-depth what “being alive” means. I borrowed this example from Karl Friston, who is the dude who came up with the Free Energy Principle and knows a lot about living things and the brain.

Imagine you have a glass of water. You drop a droplet of ink in to the water. The ink starts dispersing in the water. But then! To your surprise the ink starts gathering and returning into its droplet form. Then it starts repeating this cycle of dispersion and gathering in a rhythmical pattern. That would be peculiar, wouldn’t it? Could we say the droplet is alive?

Well, Friston thinks so, so let’s go with that. The ink is now, by definition, alive. What makes it alive? It’s separate from its environment. It has an internal structure. Instead of breaking down due to the basic laws of entropy, it actually resists this breakdown, because it is following a pattern that maintains its boundaries with its environment.

A key concept here is the Markov Blanket and the Markov Boundary. Markov Blanket is an idea that there’s a system that is made up of parts, and how the system is going to be in the future can be predicted if you understand how a single part is in relation to its surrounding parts.

All the parts that are connected to a central part form together the Markov Blanket. Then, the edges of this Blanket are the Markov Boundary. Anything outside of the boundary is irrelevant, when predicting the internal state of the system.

For example, your skin could be understood as a Markov Boundary, and the skin and the stuff inside could be understood as the Markov Blanket. Then, your mental structures are constantly monitoring what is going inside of you. Internal temperature, blood pressure, hormonal levels and other bodily phenomena are kept track of.

Then, surprise! You are hit on your shoulder by an angry halberd-wielding time-traveler. The Markov Boundary that is your skin is broken, the system is thrown into disarray and your mental structures are going crazy trying to figure out how the hell did this happen and can ruin - meaning death - be prevented.

If Friston was looking at what was happening, he might say that the amount of Free Energy in your system was suddenly and sharply increased. What does he mean by this?

The Free Energy Principle says the living things try to maintain their structure - their Markov Blanket - in relation to their environment by minimising the difference between their model of the reality with reality itself. So, this is pretty much like the Bayesian inference we already talked about.

Don't take too much what this guy has to offer...

When receiving signals from their environments that are not vibing with their model of reality, living things generally do one of three things. First, they can die, if something catastrophic happens. Second, they may adapt to their environment. Third, they may actively change their environment to suit their model.

But the point is, that the difference between the model of your reality and reality itself is Free Energy, and your mental structures don’t like it, because it shows that something is off.

In other words, you are constantly both trying to find support for your view of the world, because that shows that you are vibing well with the reality, and you are constantly trying to minimise big, unpleasant surprises which show you don’t know what is going on - and which can ruin you. (Or have you ever known a person who hates happy surprises? Well, that can be distressing to people, whose map of reality isn’t well organised.)

The World Is Way More Alive Than You Think

So now we’ve laid down quite a bit of theoretical framework. Let’s see what interesting things pop up, as we combine what we’ve gone through this far, and include one more ingredient.

Carl Jung has said, “people don’t have ideas, ideas have people.” This is a powerful statement that can help one understand how people can get drawn into ideologies, group-think and intensely rigid and biased worldviews.

The way I look at it that people -me included - can often not realise that they are being hypocritical about their words and actions. So, a person might be advocating an idea verbally, while their actions are not commensurate with the idea. Or, the person might be acting as the idea or ideology tells them to do, without actually feeling truly like they are doing what they should do. I’m sure if you reflect for a moment, you can identify people around you who do this - and if you think a little bit more, you’ll remember situations where you have done this.

So, ideas can have people. In fact, to me it looks like some of the most awful things that have happened in the world have happened because ideas had people in their grips - you know, Hitler, Stalin and other lads.

Also, to me it looks like we are living in times where people are very prone to be gripped by ideas, as ideas spread faster than ever - faster than even physical viruses.

What if we started treating ideas, ideologies, groups of people, cultures and even physical and mental diseases as living things? What if we started approaching these topics as if we were contending with things that have their trademark patterns, their internal structures, and their boundaries they are trying to preserve - just like you and me?

I’m aware that this is not an argument. Instead, it is a question and an invitation to expand our thinking. My gut feeling tells me that this could be a fruitful way of looking at these things so we would approach them with the appropriate seriousness and maturity.

For example, I’ve been lately reading quite a bit about personality disorders, as I’ve been interested in personality psychology for quite a long time. What is interesting about personality disorders that they seem to function cross-culturally, with a recognizable pattern. So, just like a bacterial or viral infection, mental disorders have their own structures, and if I may speculate, their own Markov Boundaries and Blankets.

In fact, I believe that people have conceptualised this long before we’ve had anything resembling science. Think about the stories about demons possessing people, the vast and carefully produced pieces of human expression like paintings, books, plays, mythologies and more that wrestle with these topics.

I’m asking you, which do you believe more in your heart: that a mental disorder that repeats cross-culturally, grips people, ruins their lives systematically and keeps on propagating those environmental conditions that are beneficial for its survival is simply a mechanical, non-living thing, or that a mental disorder is more like a living creature, that tries to survive in the world, just like a virus tries to multiply itself to survive and expand in the world?

And the same can be asked of political ideologies, religious creeds, scientific dogma, local sub-cultures. To me it looks like these entities try to survive, just like human individuals or animal species.

But What Am I Supposed To Do?

Then the tough question is, how the hell should one choose what problems to try to solve. The world is full of people who try to solve problems that are way too difficult for them to solve (can an 18-year-old activist reorganise the global economic system successfully - I don’t think so). The world is also full of people who focus only on problems that are too easy for them, wasting their potential.

This brings us back to the Model of Hierarchical Complexity. The MHC is so powerful because with it you can conceptualise almost any phenomena in the human world. With it you can start mapping out, how complex a problem is.

By appreciating the phenomena around you as living, and applying the MHC as guiding principle for your map of the reality, you can start figuring out, what problems and where are those that you should be solving.

Alright, that’s it for now, this is a crap ton to digest. But if you got this far, you might be interested to know, that with this and the two previous posts we have a pretty good working framework to address real-life problems.

Soon I will get to more practical issues regarding social relationships, work and career, health, addiction and hobbies.

As always, I’d be happy to converse these topics, so don’t be afraid to contact me through social media.

Thanks for reading!

P.S. I just didn’t know where to fit this, so I’ll say it here. I talked above about how a mental disorder might be conceptualised as living entity, and how these conceptualisations may already be part of our tacit cultural understanding in the form of stories and images. It might interesting to think about these abstract representations as attempts to depict higher stage phenomena in the MHC as something more tangible. For example, the archetypal idea of a force that threatens the whole meta-cross-paradigmatic 16 stage structure shown in the MHC could be understood as the Adversary, the Devil or even as the Joker from the Dark Knight. This way art can be a window into how we perceive the higher stages of the MHC, before we can communicate these forms of thought rationally and logically.

P.P.S. This one was tough to write, it took me 1 hour of taking notes and 2.5 hours to write. And obviously a lot of thinking and pondering. And a night of sleep between taking notes and the writing.

P.P.S. If you want to know more about the concepts presented here, I suggest going on a Google-hunt for Karl Friston, Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Carl Jung, for starters.

How To Trade And Fight Fruitfully - Using The Model Of Hierarchical Complexity In Conflict Resolution

If you don’t understand the rules people expect you to live by, you and those close to you will have a worse life than they could, or should.

On the other hand, if you truly understand the “name of the game” you will be able to negotiate successfully with a large selection of different people, benefitting from their resources, ideas and time.

In a successful negotiating both of you will be giving something of value. This can be money, services, things, attention, basically anything that has value. In this exchange, both parties will change somehow.

But always things don’t go as planned. One or both parties might be reluctant to change, fruitful deals may wither and everyone is left worse off.

In this text, I’m going to explore the underlying issue of non-successful interactions with people. Instead of focusing on psychology, I’m going to take a more formal approach.

By looking at human interaction from the point of view of the “Model of Hierarchical Complexity” (MHC) I will explain, how the underlying contradictions between two people’s worldviews and behavioural patterns can create unsuccessful attempts at trade, leading to broken relationships or conflict.

To understand the MHC, check out this blogpost first since now I’m going to presume you have a working understanding of it (but, you don't really need to read the post behind this link, it just helps): https://isonaminustatuleeviisas.blogspot.com/2020/07/a-smelly-fart-death-of-god-and-model-of.html

Our Shared Complexities

Since we are talking about humans, we will need to look at some developmental psychology.

The MHC has many parallels to Jean Piaget’s theory of human psychological development. Piaget was concerned with the average human being developing into a functional adult. Piaget’s theory runs parallel to the MHC until the 12th stage of systematic thinking.

Stages 13-16 are only present in the MHC, representing higher levels of psychological development, beyond the norm. So after reaching the ability to think systematically and understand multivariate problems, we can say an adult human being has reached their normative mold.

The way I think about this is by imagining a normal distribution of people. Stage 12 in the MHC represents the middle of the distribution, which would also be the arbitrarily chosen IQ level of 100.

Some people may achieve higher levels of cognitive development thanks to their genes and environmental factors, like nutrition, sleep, exercise, education and play. Others may lack the genetic potential, or the environment might prevent them from reaching their potential due to poor nutrition, disease, injury, under-education or abuse.

In either case, the MHC can be understood as the underlying organising structure, that models the process of psychological development.

As children develop into adults, they learn to function in their specific environments, so as to attain resources helpful to them (the terms “environment” and “helpful” should be understood very broadly here - it is not a question of individual or group wellbeing, rather a more neutral term describing evolutionary success of individuals, groups, ideas and more.)

This developmental history is filled with particular details that are unique to the person, their group, the culture at large, and phenomena outside of those realms. To successfully forge and dismantle relationships the individual has to understand these details and how they relate to other people.
For example, a young child participating in rough-and-tumble play with their friends is learning what the existing social structures are, especially on the sensory and motor levels (MHC stages 2-4).

As they reach adolescence and early adulthood, they further their tacit and explicit - that is subconscious and conscious - understanding of higher MHC stages. This includes stages 5-12, where verbal communication, abstraction, and higher cognitive skills are located. An example of this could be a teenager getting into the local heavy metal culture. As they play an instrument, form bands, create music, and organise events they participate in these sophisticated MHC stages.

The fact that the teenager is able to accomplish these things shows that they know - either tacitly or explicitly - how to function in the social environment. At the same time, they are encountering problems that show their understanding of the particular MHC structure is lacking.

And this is where we get to the heart of the matter. If you don’t understand the MHC structure, you will fail in your endeavours with other humans.

So when the people around You aren’t behaving like you would want them to behave, you are in conflict with them. This conflict stems from tension on a certain (or several) levels in the MHC structure.

The trick here is to be able to identify, at what stage(s) the tension is, so you can successfully evaluate the risk-to-reward ratio of pursuing a certain behaviour.

If you share a common background with someone, you share similar MHC-structures up to a certain stage. The more in common you have, the more similarities you share. So, it is likely that you get along with people you have known for a long while because you have participated in the same MHC structure for a long while.

Also, as you develop through the stages, you will be able to take larger and larger chunks of the system into account. This way you can successfully form fruitful relationships with people, who only share similarities with you on the higher stages.

The Two Arguing Scientists

An example of this is two scientists, one living in Peking, one in New York. Their shared MHC structures might be limited to only elementary topics of “I need to eat and sleep, I can talk” that are only a tiny sliver of the actual breadth of the lower stages. But, their common “language” is the language of stages 11, 12, and further, they have acquired from the global scientific culture at large.

It is very likely that the scientists wouldn’t really want to share their everyday life with each other, as they lack the common ground for this, but they can successfully interact thanks to the commonalities on higher stages.

If the two scientists start having an argument about breakfasts, they can most likely stop the argument in its tracks and focus on their joint study. Here they both agree that a lower stage argument is irrelevant for them. This same argument, on the other hand, could be a long-lasting issue in a family setting, that creates tension for years and years, undermining the wellbeing of the whole family.

But, should the scientists get into arguments about higher-level issues, like the methodology of the study, they might truly end up dismantling the relationships. If the scientists are lucky and skilled enough, they can identify, what’s the lowest stage where they can solve the issue. In the case of methodology, it could be for example the formal 11th stage or the systematic 12th stage.

If they are not skilled in negotiating, they might be unable to identify the lower stage issue. This can send them into arguments on the higher stages, bringing into question their shared meta-systematic or even paradigmatic understanding.

If an argument devolves here, practical action is usually very different to orchestrate together. Instead the two scientists will start sending angry emails about the philosophy of science, thus wasting their time and research money. …although, of course, this might be a beginning of a fruitful development on the higher stages for science.

Eight Useful Assumptions

Alright, so all this has been pretty abstract thus far. Here I will develop some assumptions about how to avoid the possible pitfalls that emerge when both parties are unable to agree on the right stage on which to attack a problem.

1. If you end up in a conflict with a person, assume that there is a problem at least on one of the MHC stages.
2. Assume that the easiest way to solve a conflict is by identifying the lowest stage (this helps to keep the rest of the system stable).
3. Assume that it might be hard and require psychologically painful communication to identify the correct stage.
4. Assume that the less you share a common background, the more you will need to be explicit about your stance, i.e. articulate your stance well.
5. Assume that the higher the stage of the conflict, the more time the conflict will take to solve.
6. Assume that the higher the stage of the conflict, the more a person is willing to exert themselves, so they don’t have to reorganise their whole cognitive structure.
7. Assume that for any additional stage the conflict spreads to, the resolution will take more time and resources.
8. Assume that there are both solvable and unsolvable conflicts, given the real-world constraints of time and resources.

To help illustrates these assumptions, I’ll guide you through a couple of examples related to one of my areas of interest, strength training, and nutrition.

Suppose I’m working as a coach and I need to get the client eating more protein so they can make better progress in their gym goals.

If my client is an avid strength training enthusiast, who shares a lot of the common worldview of the subculture, me saying “you should get 140 grams of protein a day” might do the trick.

If my client is a busy 42-year-old CEO and a father of four, a single conversation won’t do it. I need several nutrition consultations to build trust and awareness, educate and develop practical skillsets. In other words, we together would be reorganising our MHC structures, so we can trade my expertise for his money.

If my client would be an anorexic, religiously motivated vegan immigrant from a part of the world that shares very little cultural background with me, I would be faced with a multi-stage MHC problem them. I would most likely need to spend an immense amount of time trying to understand their cultural, psychological, and physiological “landscape” before I could even suggest a behavioural change that would become an internally motivated pattern for the person.

Imagine the god damn miracle of the Mughal leaders and European merchants forging trade relationships! This must have been at least an MHC stage 15, possibly 16 negotiation! What a miracle!

Summary

So, by being conscious of the commonalities and differences between your and other people’s MHC structures you can gauge how much effort it would take to engage in a fruitful exchange of time and resources.

Then, in practice, you can also save your energy for worthwhile relationships, as you can identify situations where your abilities to solve a conflict won’t be sufficient.

I hope these admittedly unfinished thoughts have helped you to understand how to lead yourself through your life more efficiently and build fruitful relationships that benefit both parties.

Thanks for reading!

P.S. I wrote this in about two hours, start to finish. I'm learning to gauge how long things take, so there's that.

A Smelly Fart, The Death Of God And The Model Of Hierarchical Complexity

The world is god damn complex, and it is useful to have a framework to appreciate this complexity.

So, in this text, you'll learn about the very powerful "Model of Hierarchical Complexity" because with it you can understand better what you can understand and where you can be useful. I believe if you know those things, you'll have a pretty darn good chance of finding a place in the world where you are engaged in meaningful activities and making the world a better place.

You'll also learn why a fictional fart is part of the existential crisis of the Western world and why Friedrich Nietzsche is going to be relevant for at least another 150 years.

The Model of Hierarchical Complexity (MHC)

The MHC is a framework by Michael Commons that can be used to assess the complexity of a behaviour. The sixteen-stage hierarchy is completely formal, meaning that the content of the behaviour doesn’t matter. Therefore any human behaviour can be analysed by using the MHC.

The MHC has three core ideas. First, a higher stage in the hierarchy is defined in the terms of the next lowest stage. Second, the higher stage organises the lower stage. Third, the organisation is non-arbitrary, which means that similar behaviours can be understood to belong to the same stage not only because of their possible causal connections, but also because of their qualitative sameness.

To put it in more simple terms, this means that behaviours categorised under a certain stage share something more in common, than just being followed by each other. For example, constructing a sentence is a process that I have to repeat several times to construct a paragraph. Even though this and the previous sentences together form a unified paragraph, the sentence forming rules that guide my behaviour function independently of the specific whole that is created here. Furthermore, the sentence creation is defined by certain rules regarding words (lower stage complexity), and the paragraphs are organised based on higher stage rules regarding groups of paragraphs, passages, sections, chapters and complete texts.

Horizontal and vertical complexity

Before going into the sixteen stages, horizontal and vertical complexity need to be understood. When looking at a task on a certain stage, it can be broken down into simpler tasks that belong to a stage below it. These tasks are either completed, or not completed. This creates a simple yes-no binary, which can be understood as “bits”. The amount of bits (individual tasks that either get the value of “done” or “not done”) determines the horizontal complexity of the tasks. So, gluing a stamp on a letter is less complex horizontally than gluing a stamp on ten letters.

Vertical complexity on the other hand is more qualitative in nature. So, if my goal is to organise a party with ten attendees - and I’ve decided there won’t be a party unless ten people come - just sending one letter will not get the job done. Therefore me sending ten letters is the prerequisite for the complex phenomenon of a party to happen. As the ten letters are sent, a higher-order task of “invite ten people” is accomplished, bringing me further to the goal of organising the actual party. And, for a more complex social gathering getting the ten people together might need to be done nine more times to get a hundred people together, in groups of ten, for a bigger party down the line.

The 16 stages of MHC

Let’s now look at the sixteen stages of the MHC.

First there is stage 0, which is calculatory. This is the simplest form of binary yes-no, 0-1 tasks. Us humans do not really perform these kinds of tasks consciously, as our sub-structures down to the sub-atomic level operate in this way.

On stage 1 the tasks are automatic. This again is very simple. For example a weird seaweed can either close or open based on water currents.

Stage 2 is sensory- or motor-based. Here a series of stage 1 tasks are combined into movement of limbs, eyes or similar structures. Also the act of sensing the environment - seeing red for example - happens here too.

On stage 3 tasks become circular sensory-motor -based. Reaching, grabbing and circular babbling are examples of this level.

Stage 4 combines into sensory-motor tasks. For example, a previously disorganised act of grasping now becomes a functional category of grasping when that is appropriate. As a human baby develops, this is the part where they start sub-consciously realising that grasping is a suitable action for certain situation, but not others.

On stage 5 relational tasks start building up. Simple words can be attached to certain relatively constant parts of the environment, such as “mama” when it comes to an infant and the mother. The concept of “mother” starts developing here.

The 6th stage is sentential. Here the singular concepts start forming wholes, such as “my mum”. Here the differentiation between the object and subject start developing, imitation becomes possible as the previous stages become more solidified in the capabilities of the actor.

Stage 7 is preoperational. The distinction between events and objects starts to emerge. The ability to understand sequences of events as stories develops. “My mum gave me potatoes and I ate them” is an example of a simple storyline that represents this stage.

On stage 8 - the primary stage - a host of complex tasks can be accomplished. Time and place become more operational concepts, storylines become more complex and the ability to abstract in the form of simple arithmetic becomes possible.

Stage 9 is the concrete stage. Several everyday adult interactions happen on this stage. Forming groups, following complex social rules and ignoring simple ones happen here. For example the ability to make deals, to trade, starts happening here. The act of making a deal requires “if-then” style of thinking and the ability to think further ahead, which is only possible after the previous stages have formed the basis for this.

Stage 10 - the abstract stage - starts to resemble relatively functional human being. The ability to understand stereotypes, logical quantification between concepts such as “none”, “some” and “all” emerges here. The ability to form statements such as “we all get paid if we do these tasks” becomes apparent here, as the concepts of time, place, actors, states and types become available.

Stage 11 is formal. Arguments using empirical, algebraic or logical evidence and the ability to solve problems using unknown variables develops here. Correct scientific solutions can be attained here.

On the systematic 12th stage multivariate systems and matrices can be constructed. For example, on the previous stages a phenomenon such as the “wage gap” maybe understood more readily from the point of view of a single variable. Here the ability to understand a topic and solve problems regrading it becomes more sophisticated and several complex phenomena can be synthesized into a whole. Legal, societal, corporate, economic and national systems are examples of things happening on this stage.

Stage 13 is metasystematic. Different systems are combined into larger wholes. They can be compared, analysed, separated and unified to form complex contracts and promises spanning across long periods of time and large physical spaces. These are tasks that require a high level of coordination and a high level of trust, but also checks and balances in the whole organised structure.

The 14th stage is paradigmatic. The grand statement of something being a “paradigm shift” works well here. As several metasystems merge into a larger whole, the commonalities they share form a paradigm, a large, unified way of thinking, perceiving and acting in the world.

In the 15th stage, the cross-paradigmatic stage, different paradigms start interacting. As a paradigm shifts (for example the so-called “Linguistic turn” in the arts, humanities and social sciences) several different meta-systems underwent a large-scale change that affected a whole family of scientific and academic fields. Thus new paradigms can be created on this stage.

On the final, 16th stage meta-cross-paradigmatic changes can occur. The vastness of this stage is hard to comprehend. An example of this could be Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous exclamation about the “Death of God”. In his thinking the Western World was, is and would be going through a massive, cross-paradigmatic process of change, as the commonly shared concepts of good, evil, true, false and several others were questioned. These kinds of deep changes in the complex psycho-socio-biological environments take time to happen and are extremely hard to conceptualise or pin down.

In a way the 16th stage is the highest level of abstraction, spanning the largest timeframes and the largest geographical and virtual spaces. The most entrenched axioms of communal thinking are made conscious on this stage, and very, very few people can act on this level (keep in mind action is simpler and more intuitive than verbal communication).

The Death of God and a Flatulence

Let’s look at an example that hopefully can make this 16-stage system a bit more easily digestible. I’ll start from the 16th level and progress down as best as I can. I will use my own background as a way to ground the examples, because it is impossible at this time to explain this in any other way. The example is completely fictional.

16: Let’s start with the “Death of God”. It’s a powerful conceptualisation of the changes in the philosophical and sub-conscious changes in the way Western culture(s) understand and operate in the world.

15: Underlying this massive change is the cross-paradigmatic conflict between religion and science. Western science can be argued to be born out of the judeo-christian way of thinking that elevates truth as the highest value to be pursued. As the non-scientific, religious basis gave birth to the sciences (through the wacky scientist-alchemists like Newton and Leibniz) the cross-paradigmatic conflict started to build up.

14: The paradigm called “science” has been in constant flux for centuries. In the 20th century philosophical schools like logical positivists, relativists, realists and others have put thrown their hat in the ring to get their say what are the axioms and underpinnings of science itself.

13: In the metasystemic part of science called the “arts, humanities and social sciences” countless students perform their daily rituals that shape and are shaped by these decade-long arguments going on in the higher levels.

12: In the systematic category under arts, humanities and social sciences is the subject known as “study of religion”. It is a multivariate system of doing research into the religious behaviour of humans, drawing from many fields such as psychology, anthropology, social sciences, theology and more.

11: If I still were a member of the academia, I might be conducting a study, where I collect empirical evidence to make my case for the religious nature of certain modern political movements and their group behaviours. I’d try to arrive to sound scientific solutions that would answer my research questions.

10: Conducting the study I would perform many abstract actions, such as thinking about “is the library going to be empty enough for me to focus on writing and is the cute librarian there so I can avoid looking her in the eye”.

9: These abstract tasks are broken down into concrete tasks. I could for example have agreed with my professor that the summary of my study is ready for next Wednesday's meeting and here I am in the library writing it.

8: As I’m writing the last sentences of the summary (on the “primary” stage” of relatively simple actions), a fellow student walks in.

7: She asks with a simple pre-operational question “what are you doing?”

6: I answer with a simple sentential remark “my summary”, as I’m just opening a chocolate-peanut butter protein bar. She asks “where’d you get that” still painstakingly keeping us on the 6th and 7th stages.

5: Finally I am able to become simpler, and I answer “Lidl”, which is a local store. This nominal stage utterance satisfies my fellow student so much that, unbeknownst to me, she...

4: …let’s out what is known as a “silent killer” - a flatulence. However, my sensory-motor experience is currently directed at the sweet taste of the protein bar, I smile as the pre-programmed, psycho-behaviorally conditioned response kicks in.

3: As I’m holding the bar of protein with the confidence of hundreds of thousands of circular sensory-motor grasping events, the silent killer attacks my nostrils.

2: My sensory system senses a disturbance and various signals are generated in my body. My eyebrows raise involuntarily as a micro-expression that asks “seriously?”

1: At the same time the automatic response from my tear ducts has started forming a massive tear in my nasal cavity.

0: This involuntary, autonomically created response happens as a simple yes-no/0-1 digital process, as the silent killer is coercing my olfactory system with its fumes either to kill itself immediately or protect itself with liberal amounts of nasolacrimal fluids.

So, in a way a smelly fart is related to the Death of God.

In any case, I hope this little story helps you appreciate the inter-connectedness of the world and understand the Model of Hierarchical Complexity better. Go forth and be yourself!

Thanks for reading.

Read more about MHC here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_of_hierarchical_complexity

Read more about the Death of God here: http://nietzsche.holtof.com/reader/friedrich-nietzsche/the-gay-science/aphorism-125-quote_e4828eb63.html

Read more about flatulence and eyes here: https://www.healthline.com/health/can-you-get-pink-eye-from-a-fart

I found this!

Why Archero is so god damn addicting

In March of 2020 many people had to start living a more solitary life due to health concerns. This created a demand for coping mechanisms, among them tasty food, alcohol, pornography, and video games.

I've personally struggled with video games a lot, going from a pretty severe addiction to cold turkey avoidance more than once. Nowadays I play rarely, especially if I'm alone. However, maybe once or twice a year I get cravings, find a game and play it intensely for a couple of days.

This March was the first time I downloaded a proper mobile game, called Archero. It is a quick-paced game where you control an archer who gains powerful and fantastic abilities to combat various enemies.

I found it very satisfying and addicting. In fact, it got so addicting that I started picking up some of the psychological reinforcement patterns which made pissed off.

Archero's lush colours and intense
action make it very satisfying to play.

I got pissed off, because I became aware how I was being played by the game. The enjoyable immersion vanished and I lost joy in the game. But, this works better for me personally, as I don't like myself when I'm playing video games by myself.

However, this got me thinking about the addictive mechanisms behind games, as I had recently read some behavioral and affective neuroscience.

Below is a photograph taken from Jaak Panksepp's book "Affective Neuroscience". The graph in the photo shows how laboratory rats respond to different ratios and intervals of desirable reinforcement. In other words, rats can work very hard or be kinda lazy depending on how often and how much they get rewarded.

...and since rats are a way better model of human beings than rocks or plants, I'm going to assume that humans are going follow similar behavioral patterns as rats.

Panksepp's graph about behavioral reinforcement patterns.

The four different patterns are as follows:

1. Fixed Ratio is like working for the job done. This is basically piecework pay, where you are paid for the job done. Rats work very hard on this schedule, but they stop for a moment to enjoy their reward.

2. Variable Ratio is like gambling. Rewards are given for work, but their size can vary, just like in the casino. This creates an incentive to keep on going, as the next reward could be the big one or the one that soothes the disappointment caused by a previous loss. As we will see, Variable Ratio is used heavily in Archero, and I believe it is the key to the success of the game.

3. Fixed Interval is like a traditional wage work. The closer the reward is, the higher the effort. A great modern example of this is when a business pushes its sales team at the end of every month to close deals. You work hard, get your reward and then it takes a little bit of time to start pushing harder again.

4. Variable Interval is the least motivating of the lot. Because the interval varies, no feeling of a causal connection between your actions and the reward can be built. This leads to low levels of consistent effort. As the reward doesn't seem to be connected to action, the behavior won't be reinforced that much and the actors self-efficacy - the feeling that they can influence what happens - remains low.

Based on these four patterns I'm going to analyze Archero, so I can better understand why it is so addicting. I also believe this will deepen my understanding of the human mind.

THE START SCREEN

Here is a typical start screen view from the game. The top part shows you the progress and resources used in the game. The key resources are the Energy (lightning icon), Currency (yellow rectangle) and Diamonds (green hexagon). All of these resources can be earned by playing, but they can also be bought with actual money too if you feel like you need more.

Below these are interactive icons for time bonuses (the arrow clock), special gifts (the present box) as well as the technical support and messaging options. 

The middle of the screen shows the level you will enter if you push the big yellow Play button. Starting a game costs Energy, so you have to think about where to use your Energy.

On the left of the Play-button, you may choose the difficulty. The harder you go, the more prizes you get (more on those later). 

The bottom of the screen is reserved for the five icons. From left to right:

1. Treasure chest is the Shop where you can acquire more Currency and Diamonds and special items. 

2. Armor icon takes you to your character screen, where you can do various things with collected items and weapons, enhance your hero and get new heroes to play with.

3. Next is the world map, which is also the start screen.

4. The arrow icon here takes you to your character's special skills that you get by gaining experience through defeating harder and harder levels.

5. The bullseye is for special challenges that change daily.

The start screen is very colorful and engaging. Several of the icons flash, glimmer, and move in various ways to attract the player's attention. The most obvious of these is the red exclamation mark, that the player quickly learns to associate with time-restricted special offers and unexpected bonuses - just like in the Variable Ratio reinforcement described above.

THE SHOP

This is how the Shop looks like. Colorful and intrusive marketing messages promising irresistible rewards populate the screen. "4x the value", "NEW!" the screen screams at you, coupled with colder, more official-looking reminders about how the offers are for a limited time only. 

Unlike in the Start Screen, the player is alerted to the option that instead of playing the increasingly difficult game, they may use money to advance in the game. Instead of spending 9.99€ to get 300 diamonds and 10000 coins you can get it for 2.29€. Quite a bargain, right?

Different kinds of chests demarcate the difference between low-level and high-level rewards. The more resources you have, the more often you can claim the rewards unless you are putting in the time to beat the levels.

After a couple hours of playing, the resources, especially the diamonds become harder and harder to come by. But luckily there his help available.

By scrolling down in the Shop you'll find a slew of different offers for diamonds and coins, ranging from 1 € to over a 100 € per purchase. 

The urge to buy is increased by flashy and exciting looking "X10" chest offer, with which you can get various valuable items for your character. 

Here the reinforcement patterns diverge. On the one hand, you can make the game more predictable by investing money, which then gives you resources to acquire new items. This is more akin to a Fixed Ratio pattern.

But ultimately, the player is forced to abide by the Variable Ratio pattern, because the chests that yield the items can't be controlled. Sometimes you get something rare and useful, but most of the time not. This is precisely the same mechanism that gambling operates with, and keeps the player engaged.

It's also noteworthy, that the player's current resources are virtually always shown, so it is quick and easy to check how much you need for the next chest or other purchase.

THE EQUIPMENT

In the Equipment screen, you are called to enhance the items you've collected. Special weapons, rings, armors, and helper creatures demand your attention - and resources. By investing coins and specific Materials - earned or bought - you can essentially increase your durability and firepower in the game.

The background colors of the items show their rarity. The rarer and more powerful the item, the harder it is to acquire. The harder it is to acquire, the more tempting it is to use money to speed up the process. 

So essentially, this screen shows a powerful mechanism, whereupon the player gets to choose: do you want to work several hours, defeating many frustrating levels, or do you want to buy your way through the troubles. 

From the point of view of the reinforcement patterns, the player can choose to invest money to get to the satisfying Variable Ratio pattern, from the more boring Fixed and Variable Interval patterns. The Fixed and Variable Interval patterns are both present because earning coins is relatively predictable (Fixed Interval), but earning items and diamonds is more random, and thus representing the Variable interval.

By tapping the "Fuse" icon the player enters a screen where items can be combined to make for more powerful items. To combine items you need three of the same kind, yielding a single item of a higher rarity level. 

As there are several rarity levels in the game, this results in an exponential growth curve. To get 1 super rare item you need 3 rare items, 9 good items, and 27 basic ones.

This creates a powerful motivation for the player to skip the arduous process of playing endless levels in hopes that the randomized process of in-game item rewards gives the 27th basic item to complete the fusing. Why not just put some money in, buy a bunch of chests and save hours of time...?

On top of this, by tapping the Change Hero icon you get to a page where you can upgrade your hero's powers and get new heroes - with very high resource demands, which again pushes the player to weigh the question of time versus money.

The hero classes, like the items, follow well-established tropes in the gaming world, making it easy for players to quickly understand what they might want based on their previous experiences. This way the player doesn't need to decode too much information that is not related to the most important question: do I use my time or my money?

THE TALENTS

As the player progresses, he is rewarded with Talents, special character skills that help him in the game. There are 9 Talents that can be upgraded several times, but the trick is that when the player earns a Talent point, the upgrade is distributed randomly. 

This way the player can have a great deal of anticipatory anxiety and excitement, followed by relief or disappointment. I personally was anxious to unlock the last one of the skills, as my other skills kept on getting upgraded, while it took ages for one of them to open up at all.

When upgrading a skill, the icons on the screen flicker, with the aesthetic being borrowed from the world of roulette and one-armed-bandits.

The player also requires the in-game currency to upgrade the Talents, with ever-increasing payments, once again incentivizing spending real money, instead of time.

THE EVENTS

The final of the five bottom icons is the Events icon. Here the player is treated to time-restricted challenges with special rewards, as well as team-matches, where the player can play with their friends. 

The urgency created by a ticking clock and a deadline is used frequently in the game, but perhaps it is the strongest in this screen. The time-restricted daily challenges motivate the player to check every day, what is rewards are available. 

This way the player is engaged constantly in the game, developing all the relevant micro-habits for increased playing time, emotional investment in the game and a deepening sunken-cost-fallacy.

OTHER ICONS ON THE START SCREEN

By clicking on the previously mentioned present box icon the player is taken to different Packs. The Packs give the player resources and special keys, that can be used to open the Chests. 

Some of the packs are limited time offers, some you get by logging in every day and some are only available through purchasing. 

It's noteworthy to mention, that the player learns quickly that they get rewarded as soon as they make their first purchase. This way the barrier to entry is lowered and the likelihood of the player spending money increases.

Like in other screens, frequent visual cues direct the player's attention to offers that are constrained by urgency and scarcity.

Also, the offers are displayed in such a way, that the player always gets a chance to compare a very low investment option to medium and high investment options, thus planting the seeds of a possible bigger future investment.

An interesting mechanism used by the game is the Free-icon, which takes the player to an advertisement. 

If the player doesn't want to use money, they are taken to a video ad, which they can't skip. The ads last about 30 seconds before you can skip them. This is a powerful mechanism to make the player frustrated at the sluggish speed of the ads, prompting them to make a purchase while creating ad revenue.

This Free-icon mechanism can also be seen in-game, as the player is given a choice to earn modest amounts of extra resources in both randomized Variable Interval and Fixed Ratio patterns.

On top of the ads, the player can buy more Energy, the resource required to enter a level and play at all. Both Free-icons and in-game resources can be used for this, guiding the insatiable player again towards an actual purchase.

What is fascinating about the path to an actual purchase is, that it can often take several taps and actions before the game asks for money. This is a classic trick used in advertising and copywriting, where the prospect is encouraged to say "yes" to several questions or take several actions before asking for the investment.

This way the sunken-cost-fallacy is utilized to its full extent, while also pushing the player down the funnel of more and more anticipatory excitement and anxiety.

Finally, the game doesn't only incentivize the player to log in frequently, it also uses timed bonuses to keep the player within the game for as long as possible.

Time Rewards work generally on a shorter interval than the daily login bonuses. Typically they can be hours, sometimes minutes. The rewards are not that great, but since they are completely free, they create a small positive feeling in the player.

The daily login bonus draws the player to open the app at least once a day. The hourly bonuses encourage several daily logins. As minute based bonuses come about, the player is encouraged to stay logged in for as long as possible.

This way the player is always prompted to take the next step for deeper and deeper engagement.

BEFORE YOU START PLAYING

Before entering a level, you must tap on the floating entrance icon. This takes you to an intermediary screen, where you can choose the game Chapter by swiping left or right. 

Levels that are available to you are well lit, and as you progress you get access to more and more demanding levels.

If you swipe to the far end of the Chapters, you will find a dark icon with a "Coming Soon!" message. 

This promises the player that the fun the game is providing is going to continue for as long as they can imagine, with new and interesting Chapters being published regularly.

This way the player doesn't feel like they are approaching a point where the game itself would become obsolete, like when finishing a book.

Instead, endless fun can be expected, and thus the player is likely to keep on investing more and more into the game.

THE GAMEPLAY - FINALLY

So with all the start screen and other stuff out of the way, let's get into the actual gameplay.

Every level starts from a point when the hero has minimal special abilities. These skills can are earned as the player progresses through a Chapter. If the player completes a Chapter or loses, the skills are lost. 

This way various combinations of abilities can be tried out and the player can develop a taste for his favorite combinations. Acquiring the abilities is somewhat randomized, so again the Variable Ratio pattern is used here, now based on the player's personal preference.

As you can see from the picture on the right, the start of the game looks relatively serene, with not that many objects on the screen. But, this will change radically as the game progresses.

Defeating enemies gives the player experience. Experience is needed to level up the hero and earn new abilities. Abilities are presented in random groups of three and the player gets to choose one. 

The abilities borrow heavily from the gaming tradition, so here again, the game minimizes the mental work required to understand what the abilities are and the player can focus on weighing the options.

ANGELS AND DEVILS

Archero doesn't only rely on the common language of the gaming culture, but it also uses very simple and easy to understand characters to aid the player.

A light blue blob-like figure called "An Angel" appears occasionally offering help for the player.

A simple two-choice matrix is presented, usually either healing the hero from the damage caused by the enemies or giving a simple offensive bonus. 

Like the Free ad-driven bonuses the Angel is a reliable and positive figure in the game, but it isn't quite as exciting as the Devil.

The Devil is the opposite of the Angel, offering a deal that both harms and benefits the player. 

The player quickly learns to associate the Devil with dangerous bargains that imply bigger risks and bigger rewards.

A single ability is always offered by the Devil, who demands a hit points in exchange for the ability. This is a great way to leverage the player's greed. 

The simple "evil" tone of the Devil-character makes the exchange feel more forbidden and dangerous, which becomes part of the fun for the player, as they get more comfortable and skilled in assessing the utility of the offer.

One of the most powerful and gambling-like elements of the game is the roulette wheel. Playing through a Chapter you can encounter this wheel several times.

Sometimes you get it for free, sometimes you need to watch an ad to get it, and sometimes it calls for resources to be used.

In each of these cases, the Variable Ratio pattern is used to keep the player's hopes high. ...and should the result be underwhelming, you only need to play a couple of minutes more to encounter a new one, with bigger and better rewards.

THE FUN OF THE GAMEPLAY

The gameplay itself is very engaging. Your only job is to avoid getting hit by the enemies, by moving your hero using the touch screen. When standing still the hero automatically shoots with his weapon.

This makes it very easy to learn the game quickly. But, as the enemies get tougher, moving around on the ever more crowded screen becomes very difficult.

Arrows, bombs, tornadoes, lasers, archers, lizards, demons, golems and various other objects and entities crowd the screen to offer an extremely stimulating and fast-paced gaming experience.

Starting a Chapter with minimal skills and slow rounds builds the anticipation as the player starts fantasizing about the possible abilities and rewards that he might get this time.

As the Chapter progresses in the following 5-15 minutes, the player is endowed with increasing firepower. This makes for a succinct gaming experience, where a single round doesn't take too much time, and a possible failure is just the right amount of frustrating, that you'll start the next round.

The game also features classic boss fights, where the player faces a single powerful enemy, which is familiar to any gamer.

Defeating the bosses gives you access to the aforementioned Devil and roulette wheel rewards, so you learn to associate the bosses with overcoming difficult challenges and getting rewarded handsomely.

COMPLETING A CHAPTER

When you complete a Chapter, you get a debrief of your results. 

You are congratulated on your performance, which builds positive reinforcement. An inventory of the collected items is also presented, so the player can already start planning what upgrades and investments to focus on.

Finally, the player's result is compared in a simple percentage number to the results of other players. This way the competitive spirit is kindled in the player, increasing the motivation to work even harder to progress and do well in the game.

SUMMARY

Archero is a well thought out game and produced game. It uses familiar gameplay mechanics, cultural memes, a gentle learning curve and a system of quick rewards to suck the player into its world. 

Then, as the game progresses it cunningly transforms into a network of motivational feedback loops in which the player's emotional systems are leveraged to create the maximum amount of investment in time and money.

In every part of the game, there are several behavioral reinforcement patterns at play. As expected from a very addicting game, it seems that most emphasis is placed on the Variable Ratio pattern, which is familiar from the gambling-world.

That's what I have to say about this. Thanks for reading, I hope you found something useful in this!