This is a no parking sign
and it is broadcasting a rule
you might think that that rule is pretty straightforward
You can't park here?
But as any game designer can tell you
that's not the rule this signs actually signaling
the actual rule being broadcast is
if you park here
there is a chance your car will be towed.
You want to know what a real no parking rule looks like
this
I mean you can try parking your car on that,
but good luck !
Over the next few episodes of this show
we are going to talk about rules
the building blocks of both gaming and political systems
So, what are rules ?
Well, first of all rules define terms and conditions
the rules of chess
Say that chess is played on an 8x8 board
and that you win by putting the enemy king in checkmate
rules Also tell a player what they must do
and what they can do
a chess player
must move a piece on their turn
and the player gets to choose the piece and decide where it moves to
and perhaps most importantly when considering this in parallel with modern politics
is that rules exist under the assumption
of otherwise normal behavior
this idea of
otherwise normal behavior as being an implied part of a games rules is critical
For example,
there is no explicit rule in chess saying that you are not allowed to punch your opponent
But there is an implied rule
Now, if a game requires you to do something against normal behavior
Then that will get an explicit rule
when playing hide and seek
There is an explicit rule that says that the player counting while everybody hides
has to keep their eyes closed
and there is not an explicit rule in chess
that says you are allowed to
have your eyes open
because having your eyes open is otherwise normal behavior.
When a player breaks some
explicitly written rule in a game
that's pretty easy to adjudicate.
But when a player breaks the implied normal behavior part of the rules
that can be a little bit trickier to resolve.
After all,
who gets the final word on
what is normal?
Typically a games implied
normal behavior rules are regulated and penalized
by society
through social penalties.
You can't punch people in chess Fred. What's the matter with you?
But, this is a much more complicated issue in politics
What happens when a meaningful portion of society
decides that it's in their best interest
to overlook social norm violations
when that happens
functionally it means that this portion of society is attempting to rewrite the rules
and if they succeed
before, you know it,
punching is allowed in chess.
When the norms change,
rules change.
Now society's perception of normal behavior is bound
to change over time
that just naturally happens
but when that perception of normal behavior gets upended mid-game
that is bound to cause chaos.
If during play one team is rewriting a rulebook
that the other side never sees until it's too late
It eliminates their ability to create an effective counter strategy.
This very thing has been happening in our politics for some time.
It happened little by little at first, but that process has accelerated quickly.
Let's look at the Clinton impeachment,
prior to this event
the societal norm was that impeachment
was reserved for presidential behavior which
threatened our democracy.
Everyone just understood.
That was the rule.
You could not impeach a president for any other reason.
It just was not done.
Until, it was.
and half the country was ok with changing this norm because
I mean in the moment it did help their political team.
That impeachment event,
to many observers,
marks a point of accelerated change in the social norms rules of our political system
fast forward to today and it's now
normal to threaten a default on our nation's debts
or to deny
hearings for Supreme Court appointees
or to openly take steps to limit voter participation,
a behavior that used to only happen behind closed doors.
Now naturally when ideas of normalized behavior are eroded,
it feels really unfair to the side not doing the eroding
It starts to breed resentment
and resentment breeds intractability.
The side that feels abused
can no longer trust the side that's moving the goal posts on societal norms.
And the side that's moving the norms
will insist that
It's just keeping up with the times.
So both sides dig in.
And the whole idea of societal norms as unwritten rules
just breaks down.
Which sets the stage for a takeover by whomever is willing to violate
Societal and political norms for their advantage
which is where the real problems start.
That is unless
society acts as a referee and penalizes the side attempting to change those norms.
There's value to consistent social norms in a chess match.
They allow players to improve over time with
practice and study
without having to relearn
basic assumptions on the fly
and the same is true in politics
maintaining a consistent set of expectations and social norms leads to stability
maintains the ability to compromise
serves as a safeguard against extremism,
and most importantly,
preserves the designers intent:
a political system where the best ideas win out.
But if we allow the pursuit of short-term advantages to outweigh longer-term perspectives,
we can easily get ourselves
stuck in a vicious cycle of system sabotage
and the only way out from there is to admit that we ran roughshod
over many of those norms
for our own political gain,
and that's really hard to do.
So, how do we recover from this ?
One possible path is to take our implicit rules
and make them explicit
to create hard and fast rules that specifically state
if you are running for president
you must hand over your tax returns
and the president of the United States
must put all of their assets in a blind trust when they take office.
Of course the biggest obstacle in the way of that
happening is that the people with the power to make
these rules explicit often personally benefit from not doing so,
plus there are a lot of social norm rules.
It would take a very long time to codify them all
there are other options though:
for example, we can penalize those who break these norms
even if it means a short-term loss for our team
if our preferred candidate say
bodyslams a reporter or limits access to voting in regions which favor their opponent
or if our preferred political
party's apparatus
seems to be secretly putting their finger on the scales for one candidate
We cannot just look the other way
even if it hurts our political team
We have to draw a line and act like the referees we are
before we go
I got a quick story
back in 2003 a quarterback named Nate
Haasis set the central state 8 conference record for career yards
passed in the final play of the last game of the season.
But after the game
he discovered that both teams head coaches had coordinated
to ensure that Nate would set the record that night
Those coaches had tried to change the societal norms for the game of football.
So Nate took the matter into his own hands and wrote to the conference
demanding that those yards be removed from his stats
and so they were
Didn't want to let those coaches change the future social norms for football
and he sacrificed something
personally important to do it.
Our political system is supposed to be a contest of ideas
freely expressed
and if breaking social norms has become a more effective strategy for the players
than having winning ideas
It's up to us to follow Nate's lead to save the system.
We'll see you next time.