DailyJim: Single-shot vs repeated games and moving from emotional self-defense to emotional combat

Hello everyone welcome to another daily gym today is the episode for wednesday september 18th 2024 a few hours after midnight late night today today i want to talk about single shot versus repeated games and moving from emotional self-defense to emotional combat oh i'm tired so um The concept of this is, so if you have heard of game theory before, or if you haven't, game theory studies different interactions and kind of the psychology and economic decisions people make in relation to each other. One of the most famous ones is Prisoner's Dilemma and this idea, there's different payoffs you get if you either confess or cheat the other person or if you cooperate.

And so basically, are you cheating or cooperating? If you both cheat, then there's a certain payoff for both of you. If you both cooperate, there's a certain payoff. And if one cooperates and one cheats, then there's a different payoff.

And so in game theory, they often talk about a single shot or one shot or maybe stage game. There's multiple names for it, like a one-off game or whatnot versus repeated games. So this idea of. And strategies can differ tremendously when we are going with a one-off situation or if we are going with a repeated situation. And I may have talked about this before when it comes to political relationships and relationships in general. A lot of times when people go into politics, it's repeated interactions. And so the repeated interaction of politics changes the way that people tend to communicate. I would say that people in politics tend to hide things instead of lie about them. Because when we lie about things, if we interact over and over and over again with somebody, they eventually figure out that we're lying, if it's like a bold-faced lie, and then it can lead to a lot of betrayal and frustration. So that's a whole different conversation we can have. But the idea for today was just talking about how I had seen the world from a lens of emotional self-defense for a while, and I'm starting to see it more from a perspective of emotional combat. Bat and just how it's changed the way that I interact with people and interact with myself. So the idea with emotional self-defense is that we can experience these emotional attacks. I was taking Krav Maga and I realized, okay, we might get physically attacked if we're unlucky once defense every year every five years maybe if we're very unlucky depending on our risk profile and not.

And then i thought but we get emotionally attacked all the time, but when i started to use the metaphor of self-defense it was okay in a lot of self-defense class as we were taught one of the best ways for self-defense is if you can escape immediately get out of there don't stay in the situation, Or punch back brutally, like kick him in the nuts, hit him in the back of the head, and then run.

And I've seen, you know, I took the similar approach with emotional self-defense. The idea was how do I resolve the conflict immediately?

Somebody punches me, I feel punched immediately emotionally. Emotionally, how do I try to resolve it immediately and get back to the point where I feel.

Loving towards that person? But what I've started to realize is that, one, that can be a really intense experience to respond with the truth about how I'm feeling, the truth about how they're feeling, and saying one thing to connect with love. It can be really intense. But more than anything, even if I do it that way, it doesn't mean the interaction ends. So maybe they ignore one of my calls and then I respond to them like I'm very open and honest. Hey, I felt really sad that you didn't respond to my call, but I'm imagining maybe you were really busy with work. I don't know what's going on. Hey, what's going on? Just wanted to reach out to you and touch base. And then maybe they respond or they don't respond. Maybe they don't respond. So I respond with love and then they ignore me again. I'm like, ah, and then maybe I respond with love again. Then they ignore me again. Or maybe I respond, uh, with love and then they say, Hey, just leave me alone. Why won't you just leave me alone? Didn't you get the message? And I'm like, ah, no, no, no. It's another like kind of pushing and hitting back with kind of an accusation or, um, raising their voice or whatnot. And so, um. And that's just the interaction that might happen in that moment within, it could be within the day, it could be within the hour, it could be within minutes. But then what happens when there's another interaction? There's going to be another interaction most likely with that person and with other people. So today I had a conversation with an old friend I hadn't seen in person in like 10 years, I had barely talked to in a while, went to university together, saw an old roommate mate of mine I haven't talked to in a couple of years or haven't seen in person. Had a conversation with a friend in East Africa on the phone. Had a conversation on Facebook with kind of this ongoing conversation about me asking for help with financial aspects to it. It's like, punch, punch, punch, punch. And not all these punches are like punches with the intention to harm. I don't think really any of them are with the intention to harm, but some of them hurt. And so just this idea of emotional self-defense being, okay, maybe we're going to get attacked once, to emotional combat where it's going to happen. It's going to happen over and over and over and over again. And it's going to be somewhat constant, especially while we're awake. But even when we sleep, it happens in our dreams. And when I've seen it from this perspective, I think I'm I'm starting to take slightly different strategy or slightly different tactics in just recognizing that, okay, this fight right now, these punches right now might really hurt, but let's have the endurance to see where this goes.

And that idea of like not trying to.

Close or end the situation or end the game as uh i think it was james kars or whatever talked about in a book uh finite and infinite games this idea that a finite game is a game that ends in an An infinite game is a game that continues infinitely, just goes on and on. And sometimes when we try to end the game in a game that's meant to be more infinite, it can cause a lot of problems. And so human relations, human interactions, I think are often meant to be much more infinite or at least on a much longer time scale, not just on the momentary one minute, five minute, ten minute, one day, one week.

And I would say it's given me a little more patience, but I think it's just helped me focus more on this idea of endurance and okay, I get punched here, maybe I punched them, maybe I accidentally hit them over the head with something, you know, metaphorically.

Okay, it's a long game. There's many interactions.

Okay, I didn't win this one. I didn't win this round or I got really hurt in this round or, you know, I didn't do so well at this aspect. You know, there's American baseball is, you know, American baseball is going on. They play 162 games a year. Okay, I didn't do so well in this game. Maybe we didn't even do so well in the first 15 or 20 games. Games there's a lot of games left and so looking at emotional attacks looking at conflict looking at our interactions with people in relationships and seeing it much more from the perspective of it's not like i'm going to get one big attack maybe um every year it's that there's going to be all these little attacks that's going to happen, but there's so many opportunities to reconcile. There's so many opportunities to see where it goes. And that even if, you know, I'm in conflict with somebody's perspective or they're in conflict with me, you know, there's also so many other conflicts happening. So the conflicts that I'm experiencing today with regards to my body and with regards to my finances and with regards to my work and with regards to my family, with regards to my romance, with regards to this, this, this, this, this. They're not going to be the same tomorrow. Some will. I mean, the conflict natures will change. The context will change. The emotions will change. And so just having more endurance to recognize that we are trying to fight so many different battles at the same time, trying to resolve so many conflicts at the same time with so many people in so many aspects of our lives that even if this one conflict gets resolved right now, there may be so many other ones that are happening. So to have more endurance to recognize, okay, how do I stay in this fight? How do I deal with the combat that is going to be there always? I think it might always be there. So this is a very, speaking of conflict, this is over 10 minutes and I know I went 12 minutes the other day, so I'm going to stop now. Maybe talk more about this tomorrow. But yeah, I hope that helped you in some way. I'm going to reflect more on it afterwards. Anyways, talk to you soon. Bye.