Jim O'Shaughnessy on RAW and 'game rules'

 

[A posting on X from Jim O'Shaughnessy, in reponse to Rota, who wrote, "One thing I wish I’d learned earlier in life is that there are certain rules in the world that nobody will tell you, cuz they only work as effective rules when they are unstated. 

"They exist ~explicitly~ to see if you have the ability to identify them without anyone telling you." 

I've posted the illustration O'Shaughnessy used for his essay. 

The Management] 

Robert Anton Wilson was fascinated by "game rules." His core insight was: much of our social reality, maybe even our personal reality, operates according to unwritten rules – game rules – that we all intuitively follow, even if we've never consciously articulated them.

Think about it like this: we're all players in various overlapping games – the "family game," the "career game," the "political game," the "social status game." Each of these games has objectives, acceptable moves, penalties, and rewards. But crucially, the rulebook isn't handed out at the start. We absorb the rules through observation, through trial and error, through cultural osmosis. 

It's like learning the etiquette of a poker game just by playing – you figure out when it's okay to bluff, when to raise, when to fold, not because someone read you a manual, but because you pick up the signals, the patterns, the feel of the game.

In books like Prometheus Rising, Wilson argued that these rules are fundamental components of our "reality tunnels." Each person's perception of reality is shaped by their beliefs, language, experiences – their specific reality tunnel. And within that tunnel, certain actions feel "right" or "wrong," certain goals seem "obvious," certain outcomes appear "inevitable," largely because of these implicit game rules we've internalized.

For example:

The Driving Game: There are official traffic laws, but there are also unwritten rules about letting someone merge, the "thank you wave," how aggressively you tailgate, that vary subtly by region but are generally understood by competent players. Break these unwritten rules, and you might incite road rage, even if you haven't broken a formal law.

The Office Politics Game: Who do you CC on emails? When do you speak up in a meeting? How do you navigate alliances or disagreements? There's no HR manual for much of this, but successful players intuitively grasp the underlying rules of power, influence, and reputation within that specific corporate culture.

The "Being Reasonable" Game: In any given social group, there's an often unspoken consensus on what constitutes a "reasonable" opinion or behavior (Think: The Overton Window.) Stray too far outside that boundary, and you risk being labeled eccentric, difficult, or even crazy – you've broken the implicit rules of acceptable discourse for that particular game.

As Wilson says: "We are living in separate realities. That is why communication fails so often, and misunderstandings and resentments are so common. I say "meow" and you say "Bow-wow," and each of us is convinced the other is a bit dumb.” By really understanding the Game Rules, you might improve your ability to communicate and get along better with the other players. 

Finally, these Game Rules aren't deterministic laws of physics; they're more like heuristics or strong tendencies within a complex system. Recognizing them allows you to make better bets, to understand the likely reactions to certain moves, and to avoid being blindly pushed around by social forces you don't perceive.

Wilson believed understanding the games you're playing, and the rules governing them (both explicit and implicit), is a crucial step toward self-mastery and navigating reality more consciously. It's about seeing the matrix, so to speak – not necessarily to escape it, but to operate within it with more awareness and, therefore, more agency. It’s a powerful lens for looking at everything from personal relationships to market dynamics.

--- Jim O'Shaughnessy