Level 1 has a massive advantage in any sort of conflict where control over objective reality matters, such as shooting wars or ability to produce verifiable miracles. It also has a large enough survival advantage inside sufficiently harsh environments, since they produce “objective” feedback (e.g. marginal agricultural communities in cold areas, but also businesses under severe competitive pressure with tight margins, and armies fighting wars—incompetent people get weeded out fast when top level people see an overwhelming interest in achieving some difficult objective task).
The Elijah story is followed by the Elisha story where one dude outmaneuvers multiple heads of state, replacing them with puppets with varying levels of allegiance to him, by paying close attention to what’s going on. But you can only do this if you know about and can detect the other levels
Hmm, maybe I don’t understand the levels. I’d assumed that higher levels include lower ones, rather than denying their existence. It’s absolutely possible, in my world, to recognize that there is a reality, and to still weigh the social appearance against it.
It’s not that higher simulacrum level players can’t do level 1 internally, it’s that if people play higher levels inside an organization, that organization’s information processing is corrupted, and it gets worse at the sorts of things level 1 is good at. There are huge advantages to groups being able to coordinate on level 1, and there are advantages to individuals knowing about all four levels.
To some extent levels 3 and 4, if practiced commonly enough, erode the ability to talk in level 1 language.
Level 1 has a massive advantage in any sort of conflict where control over objective reality matters, such as shooting wars or ability to produce verifiable miracles. It also has a large enough survival advantage inside sufficiently harsh environments, since they produce “objective” feedback (e.g. marginal agricultural communities in cold areas, but also businesses under severe competitive pressure with tight margins, and armies fighting wars—incompetent people get weeded out fast when top level people see an overwhelming interest in achieving some difficult objective task).
The Elijah story is followed by the Elisha story where one dude outmaneuvers multiple heads of state, replacing them with puppets with varying levels of allegiance to him, by paying close attention to what’s going on. But you can only do this if you know about and can detect the other levels
Hmm, maybe I don’t understand the levels. I’d assumed that higher levels include lower ones, rather than denying their existence. It’s absolutely possible, in my world, to recognize that there is a reality, and to still weigh the social appearance against it.
It’s not that higher simulacrum level players can’t do level 1 internally, it’s that if people play higher levels inside an organization, that organization’s information processing is corrupted, and it gets worse at the sorts of things level 1 is good at. There are huge advantages to groups being able to coordinate on level 1, and there are advantages to individuals knowing about all four levels.
To some extent levels 3 and 4, if practiced commonly enough, erode the ability to talk in level 1 language.