Mark Manson's "Life is a Video Game" analogy - and the "cheats"

[excreationist]

For me, these is the most influential set of ideas I've come across in my life. I also like how these fit into a single web page. Mark Manson is the author of "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" which I found pretty interesting. I like how he includes some humour.

Life Is a Video Game—Here Are the Cheat Codes

Welcome, Player One, to a strategy guide for the game known as Life.

markmanson.net

Some of the highlights:

You will face unexpected challenges and long periods of frustration. You will often struggle with self-doubt, feel overwhelmed by helplessness and loss

So when those things happen I now think to myself that it is normal.

If at any point, Life runs out of problems to give us, then as players, we will unconsciously invent problems for ourselves

I can especially identify with that because multiple times I've stopped worrying and have become manic and unconsciously created problems for myself causing my unbalanced happiness/contentment to end.

There are five levels in life:

Level 1 – Find food; find a bed to sleep in at night
Level 2 – Know you’re not going to die
Level 3 – Find your people
Level 4 – Do something that’s important and valuable to both yourself and others
Level 5 – Create a legacy

Recently my goal has been to create a legacy (with a video game). I became disappointed with my attempt but then I realised that I hadn't really achieved level 4 first - at the moment I've been a casual cleaner (either 3.5 hours a week or no shifts for weeks). Then recently I got some high paying computer work and then felt I'm ready to start to attempt level 5.
I find the following surprising about his description of level 3 - "most people suck".

Solutions are actions and pursuits that resolve a problem preventing it from continuing or happening again in the future. Distractions are actions or pursuits designed to either make the Player unaware of the problem’s existence or to dull the pain the problem may be causing.

So lately I can sense whether some things aren't really achieving much but it can be hard to stop them when I've started to watch the YouTube video, etc.

The more each Solution or Distraction is used, the easier and more automatic it will be in the future

It goes on to 5 "cheats":

CHEAT #1: I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS

CHEAT #2: WRITE THIS SHIT DOWN

CHEAT #3: STOP FUCKING COMPLAINING

CHEAT #4: STOP FANTASIZING

CHEAT #5: SHARE YOUR SHAME

The 5 "cheats" are more difficult to agree with but maybe I'll eventually agree with all of them.

I literally think that life is a kind of video game and I'm not sure how literally Mark Manson believes it. Mark Manson definitely does not believe the following part:

Entering these cheat codes is easy: just press Tab at the View Screen to access your Mind’s Eye. The Mind’s Eye is where you actively observe yourself and choose what to think about. From there, just type in the cheats below at the “Brain” prompt and hit ENTER.

So the web page said:

Life Is a Video Game—Here Are the Cheat Codes
Welcome, Player One, to a strategy guide for the game known as Life.

The wording is similar to the title of my work "Cheating in the Game of Life"


About this:

In 2008 I was in a creative writing class for people with mental illnesses. I wrote poems, made a comic, and wrote a true story that is mainly about an event earlier in my life where I later was hospitalised. Then it also covers my suicide attempt.
I initially was trying to hypnotise people who were reading my posts but I ended up hypnotising myself and eventually became catatonic.

At the time I believed that I was in a computer game a bit like the Matrix.

The early part of the web page is similar to the beginning of the M. Scott Peck book, The Road Less Traveled:

Excerpts From The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

A while back a colleague's comments encouraged me to revisit the book, The Road Less Traveled, by M. Scott Peck.

capacity-building.com

“Life is difficult…This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see the truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

About the purpose of problems:

Problems are what keep us occupied and give our lives meaning

......This steady barrage of unexpected problems gives the player a sense that she lacks control over her own Life, when in fact, the purpose of Life is not to control what happens to you, but rather control and choose higher level reactions to what happens to you.

So anyway the focus is on how well his ideas apply to life rather than whether it is literally a video game.

 

[Jarhyn]

The issue here is that if "life is a video game" by metaphorical consideration "fuck literally everyone who has 'exclusive main character syndrome'."

The reason the entire game usually is hell bent on killing the player, from a certain perspective, would be that "main characters are destructive assholes who kill, maim, destroy, and otherwise do whatever the hell they want without consequences! Too often the MC is the murder-hobo villain."

I propose that the book is "be a murder-hobo villain" written with far too many words.

 

[excreationist]

The issue here is that if "life is a video game" by metaphorical consideration "fuck literally everyone who has 'exclusive main character syndrome'."

Video games can have lots of players. BTW r/outside says:

A subreddit for *Outside*, a free-to-play MMORPG with 8 billion+ active players
There are no NPCs. Aside from animals, everybody is a "player".

Analogies don't need to completely fit.

The reason the entire game usually is hell bent on killing the player, from a certain perspective, would be that "main characters are destructive assholes who kill, maim, destroy, and otherwise do whatever the hell they want without consequences!

There's nothing about a desire to kill the player - just worrying them a lot.

Too often the MC is the murder-hobo villain."

I propose that the book is "be a murder-hobo villain" written with far too many words.

I can't see any implication of murder, hobos or villians.

 

[Jarhyn]

The issue here is that if "life is a video game" by metaphorical consideration "fuck literally everyone who has 'exclusive main character syndrome'."

The reason the entire game usually is hell bent on killing the player, from a certain perspective, would be that "main characters are destructive assholes who kill, maim, destroy, and otherwise do whatever the hell they want without consequences! Too often the MC is the murder-hobo villain."

I propose that the book is "be a murder-hobo villain" written with far too many words.

Video games can have lots of players. BTW r/outside says:

A subreddit for *Outside*, a free-to-play MMORPG with 8 billion+ active players
There are no NPCs. Aside from animals, everybody is a "player".

Analogies don't need to completely fit.

The problem here is that we are discussing the book the author wrote, the book of "of giving a fuck", which is "I'm the MC, yes the real MC, and all the NPCs are just Not Players, so will the real MC please stand up (sprays the crowd with bullets and picks up the glowing brocks of cash)."

And considering animals to not be players either is kinda dickish.

Enter The Paradox of Tolerance.

 

[excreationist]

The problem here is that we are discussing the book the author wrote, the book of "of giving a fuck",

No the web page I'm mentioning barely has anything at all in common with the book. He has written on lots of topics - not just what was in his book. We are only discussing one of his web pages.

which is "I'm the MC, yes the real MC, and all the NPCs are just Not Players, so will the real MC please stand up (sprays the crowd with bullets and picks up the glowing brocks of cash)."

Well r/outside is saying all humans are players. And the web page doesn't say whether others are players or not.

And considering animals to not be players either is kinda dickish.

That quote about players and animals is from a subreddit - not Mark Markson. The subreddit is saying that we are in a video game with players. Why would a person want to have an animal as a character? They'd have to pretend to not have human-level intelligence...

 

[Jarhyn]

The problem here is that we are discussing the book the author wrote, the book of "of giving a fuck",

No the web page I'm mentioning barely has anything at all in common with the book. He has written on lots of topics - not just what was in his book. We are only discussing one of his web pages.

which is "I'm the MC, yes the real MC, and all the NPCs are just Not Players, so will the real MC please stand up (sprays the crowd with bullets and picks up the glowing brocks of cash)."

Well r/outside is saying all humans are players. And the web page doesn't say whether others are players or not.

And considering animals to not be players either is kinda dickish.

That quote about players and animals is from a subreddit - not Mark Markson. The subreddit is saying that we are in a video game with players. Why would a person want to have an animal as a character? They'd have to pretend to not have human-level intelligence...

There's that gross "anthropocentrism" popping it's head up again...

Not all humans have "human level intelligence"; there's some overlap in intelligences between some humans and some animals.

To me, whether something deserves respect as a player is not based on what "level" their intelligence is at but based instead on whether they view others as NPCs or for that matter "a skank to gank".

Ideally, I would like to move away from ganking things at all. Whether anything else decides to join us at that point is on them.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Tell that to children being bombed in wars right now.

 

[excreationist]

Tell that to children being bombed in wars right now.

Actually it talks about that:

Level 2 gets a bit more complicated, because a lot of people do have a nice bed to sleep in every night, but they can’t sleep because of gunshots outside or bombs exploding over their city, or maybe Dad’s a drunk and keeps trying to set the house on fire.

None of these things are cool. Level 2 requires that you find a secure and stable home to base yourself out of. Getting past Level 2 requires finding a way to successfully remove yourself from these dangerous situations.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Tell that to children being bombed in wars right now.

Actually it talks about that:

Level 2 gets a bit more complicated, because a lot of people do have a nice bed to sleep in every night, but they can’t sleep because of gunshots outside or bombs exploding over their city, or maybe Dad’s a drunk and keeps trying to set the house on fire.

None of these things are cool. Level 2 requires that you find a secure and stable home to base yourself out of. Getting past Level 2 requires finding a way to successfully remove yourself from these dangerous situations.

Yeah but treating such a catastrophe like it's a video game seems kind of, I dunno, myopic and overly simplistic.

 

[excreationist]

Yeah but treating such a catastrophe like it's a video game seems kind of, I dunno, myopic and overly simplistic.

It’s just a single web page and I think it has many insights about life. I mostly just like the insights and just find the video game analogy interesting. Btw some video games do have extremely shocking content e.g. Manhunt which is banned in many countries where have to brutally murder people. Since it has so many topics on a single web page it needs to be somewhat simplified. Note I only quoted some of it and it seems you didn't actually read the whole web page before commenting - since you missed the bit about bombing.

 

[excreationist]

Yeah but treating such a catastrophe like it's a video game seems kind of, I dunno, myopic and overly simplistic.

Note that video games don't normally portray children being hurt or killed in wars due to problems with classifications and marketing... though I'm working on a game where you have to chop up children and babies as part of a war:

Controversial upcoming game: Brutal Bible Bloodbaths

In 2020 I made a top-down view prototype in Scratch for the university subject "Playcentric Game Design". Now I'm working on a game in Unity that has graphics a bit like Minecraft. Note that in the Koorong Christian bookstore there are 6 books about portraying the Bible in Minecraft: It is...

iidb.org

 

[excreationist]

Yeah but treating such a catastrophe like it's a video game seems kind of, I dunno, myopic and overly simplistic.

It's just saying that level 2 involves having a dangerous life and the idea is to escape that - as if it was a game. It fits children facing bombing well. It's just an analogy not absolute truth. Maybe it's like electricity flow being like water going through pipes and there being water pressure, etc.
Also about the levels:

Just because you Level Up doesn’t mean problems stop at previous levels. A bro’s still gotta eat (Level 1). We all need to be safe to accomplish anything (Level 2). Relationships take work (Level 3), yadda, yadda.

So think of Leveling Up as not necessarily going from juggling baseballs to juggling knives. Rather, Leveling Up is like going from juggling three knives to four, then five, and so on.

 

[Jarhyn]

So, and I say this as someone who bases their entire structure of ethics in agentic game theory, this whole thing strikes me, as it has others, as hopelessly myopic.

If life is a game, the only point to it is "how to make the game as enjoyable as possible for as many of the players as possible and everything and everyone is ostensibly a 'player'."

Generally this means, from my experience in 'games people enjoy together', this involves some PVP stuff, but with limited access and more skill-based advancement rather than legacy/nepo and pay-to-win, alongside an entire segment whose limit of merit is purely based on who manages to do the most interesting stuff with some individual but fairly universal allotment of resources, such that those who do well with little get access to the opportunity to have more with which to do more.

Accomplishing any of that IRL is going to be very hard though seeing as the "banker" of this "friendly" game seems to be a filthy goddamn cheater, and he's got a gun sitting on the table in front of him seemingly saying "just TRY and stop me, bitches!"

 

[excreationist]

So, and I say this as someone who bases their entire structure of ethics in agentic game theory, this whole thing strikes me, as it has others, as hopelessly myopic.

If life is a game, the only point to it is "how to make the game as enjoyable as possible for as many of the players as possible and everything and everyone is ostensibly a 'player'."

A relevant quote is:

At the end of the game, the person at the highest level gets to have the best funeral.

(that's what level 5, create a legacy, is all about)

I don't see what "make the game as enjoyable as possible for as many of the players as possible" has to do with it. It is about dealing with problems even including the Holocaust - not just about maximizing enjoyment. If you really wanted to maximize enjoyment would you be wanting to have lots of parties, fun and games, going to the beach, singing songs, etc? Some of that seems like distractions and the web page is about minimizing that.
It also says:

Problems are what keep us occupied and give our lives meaning
This steady barrage of unexpected problems gives the player a sense that she lacks control over her own Life, when in fact, the purpose of Life is not to control what happens to you, but rather control and choose higher level reactions to what happens to you.

i.e. the web page focuses on dealing with problems related to the 5 levels - not just about "maximizing enjoyment".

Generally this means, from my experience in 'games people enjoy together', this involves some PVP stuff, but with limited access and more skill-based advancement rather than legacy/nepo and pay-to-win, alongside an entire segment whose limit of merit is purely based on who manages to do the most interesting stuff with some individual but fairly universal allotment of resources, such that those who do well with little get access to the opportunity to have more with which to do more.

Accomplishing any of that IRL is going to be very hard though seeing as the "banker" of this "friendly" game seems to be a filthy goddamn cheater, and he's got a gun sitting on the table in front of him seemingly saying "just TRY and stop me, bitches!"

What's that got to do with the 5 levels and his constant focus on problems?

If life is a game, the only point to it is "how to make the game as enjoyable as possible for as many of the players as possible and everything and everyone is ostensibly a 'player'."

"The only point"???
Consider the Roy game:

Do you think "the only point" has to do with making large numbers of people experience the largest amount of enjoyment?