#Live playr how to#

Not too long ago, we saw Apple fighting against compliance with government requests for backdoor access to its data. What are signs that a player is alive? One strong sign is a player doing things outside of their expected domain - in a new, unexpected domain - which indicates that they can figure out new things for themselves. An individual live player may fulfill multiple roles in themselves, including being one’s own theorist. For the tradition of knowledge to be living, it must have at least one theorist, among other things. Thus, a live player must have a living tradition of knowledge. The generation of new tactics, strategies, coordination mechanisms, and so on entails the production of new, useful knowledge. Imagine, for example, an engineering team that keeps working together successfully after the company they work for formally blows up, perhaps transitioning together to a new company or just coordinating as hobbyists on the side. This allows them to make moves outside of the formal structure of the group, go off script, modify themselves, continue acting even if the outer form dies, and so forth. If not merely one individual, a live player that is a group of people must be tightly coordinated in order to be flexible and responsive enough to do things they have not done before. There are two attributes that are necessary for a player to be considered live: tight coordination and a living tradition of knowledge. It’s worth restating the definition of a live player: a live player is a person or tightly coordinated group of people that is able to do things they have not done before. It is possible then to describe the characteristics of live versus dead players in greater detail, which will help in distinguishing between them. A bureaucratized action, even if it is an impressive action, is not a sign that the player is alive. This same action taken by France in Mali would not indicate that France is a live player, for example, because France has routinely intervened in West Africa. However, one country having this kind of influence over another country is nothing new - it’s merely new for post-Soviet Russia, which is why we would deem Russia a live player. This is a very strong indicator that Russia can figure out new things, and quickly too. Russia didn’t have much time to develop plans for Syria - perhaps three years - which means it had to pull things together quickly. It also completed a successful military operation in Syria, notable in part because Syria is beyond Russia’s geopolitical stronghold of peripheral former Soviet states in its “near abroad,” and Putin managed to achieve his foreign policy objective of stabilizing Assad at considerably less cost than comparable American interventions in the Middle East. Russia annexed Crimea, for example, and such a thing hasn’t been done in Europe for decades. The Russian state is doing things it hasn’t done in a long time, things that were unthinkable a few years ago. The player would have to make a move that is new for them in order to be a live player.įor example, Vladimir Putin is a live player, and by virtue of his piloting the institutional machinery of the Russian state, Russia is also a live player. If a player has already done X, doing X again does not make them a live player, even if other players can’t do X yet or X is an impressive move. Thus, a live player is not necessarily exceptional in skill, although this is usually the case. Whether a player is alive or dead is always relative to themselves.

Societies with few live players will stagnate societies with many live players will develop and adapt. You can predict what will happen in a society if you understand its landscape of live players. The distinction between live and dead players also matters if you are trying to predict the future of society. Defensively, paying attention to live players allows you to anticipate and prevent the grabbing of power, for instance. On the other hand, if you fail to figure out that a player has died, you might not realize that you can get away with replacing them. If you find out that a player is dead, then you know that you can confront them in ways that are not known to them, and they will not be able to fight back. Offensively, if you figure out whether a player is alive or dead, you can predict how they will respond to things and what that means you can do.

#Live playr how to#

This distinction matters both for pragmatic and strategic reasons: it tells you how to act both offensively and defensively. A dead player is a person or group of people that is working off a script, incapable of doing new things. A live player is a person or well-coordinated group of people that is able to do things they have not done before. Whether you are examining past societies or living and acting within one today, it’s important to distinguish between live and dead players. This is an excerpt from the draft of my upcoming book on great founder theory.