I’m thinking about the Traitors. The show is very entertaining. Mainly due to the spectacle of watching group psychology in action. People playing are trying to win. They come up with various strategies to manipulate each other and drive narratives. It appeals to us watching as we can feel smarter. Knowing more than the hapless group as they gang up on innocent non-traitors with increasing conviction. It’s the hidden information that makes the game so compelling.
Watching has led me to think about how hidden information is present in other contexts. Especially in narrative building. One example from my own life is that I got drawn into the easy position of criticising the current (admittedly shambolic) government for their use of the Online Safety Act. Basically, it does a few things but what was brought to my attention by TikTok indie news reporters was a new law: now you need to provide age verification to view adult websites, participate in serious discussions on Reddit, or even play games such as Grand Theft Auto.
The wrong kind of control?
This was crazy government overreach I thought. Absolutely too much. Nanny state kind of stuff. But the other night when discussing with a friend whose daughter is approaching her teen years, something dawned on me. Many schools are filled with teenagers with phones with internet access. Making it harder for them to access extreme content in inappropriate settings is obviously desirable. Adolescent boys and unfiltered access to the internet is a recipe for disaster.
There shouldn’t be porn in classrooms. Violent or harmful content is clearly not desirable on the school bus, or in corridors, or in playgrounds. When I had seen the reports on TikTok I had completely forgotten about secondary education settings. That was the hidden information, and it completely changed how I felt about the new law. Side note: I still think the UK Labour government are inept and need to improve fast.
What about in love?
A different context where there’s hidden information is in family life and relationships. That’s another area where narratives can take hold. Then further guide behaviour. I don’t know the inner world of my wife or two young children’s minds. When they separate from my company for work or school there’s a huge number of influences on them. Forces that compel them to act in certain way when they are back around me.
Perhaps though what I am missing in the world of my significant other is benign, even positive. There’s hidden information about their life worlds for sure. But there’s also hidden information about how they effect my life and personhood on a meta level. I can experientially say my mood is tied to my other half’s. When she is down over a period of time, that drags me down a few pegs of the happiness measure. When her better mood returns, I feel it. This is interdependence for sure.
Could it be a positive?
More than this though. There are meta effects that my wife’s going about her life has on me without my realising. Her path and the decisions she makes impact me in ways that involve hidden information. This is more than just who looks after the kids while the other does their hobbies. We are co-creating the feedback loops that will in time come to shape us.
It’s all to easy to conform to the social norms we set for ourselves. I appreciate her influence as saying no to borderline unacceptable behaviours (she stopped me smoking as a younger man for example). She doesn’t entertain left-field conversation, and that means we don’t have far out discussions on the meaning of it all. Perhaps this has helped ground my psyche. I am a more rooted person as a result. Less impulsive. Less chaotic.
The agency question
In human nature there is often this idea that we are the masters of our own fate, but rarely the architects of our downfall. We like to ascribe our successes to our selves and our failures to our environments. That’s how we build the narratives that shape us. Doing the reverse leads to mental ills. This brings me to the point of faith. There is just too much hidden information in the system to comprehend.
Any attempt to make sense of knowing how much one doesn’t know will fail. Therefore, I choose to believe that the hidden information that operates in my life is a powerful force for good. A believer in organised religion may call this otherness God. It may seem similar to claiming God created all that is, and God is good. Therefore, existence has a quality of goodness to it. I guess choosing to disrupt this would be taking part in sinful activities. But that’s a digression.
Attempting to explain
I prefer to return to the Zen phrase: Every Day is a Good Day. We can’t know the forces that are acting on us. We can’t know how many years we have left. Good health? Peace? The general freedoms we may have? Nothing is guaranteed. All of this is a reminder to be grateful for the here and now. I exist, my mind and body work fine enough to reason, and the reasoning leads me to a place of faith. Faith in what I can’t quite articulate, but I understand it as a force for good and that’s enough for me.
In the game of The Traitors the non-Traitors are called the Faithful. Personally I think in that scenario of the game, that’s all I could be. This might make me terrible at playing. Who knows how well we would each do dropped into that context. In wider life though, we should appreciate the hidden information. If you put out enough good will into the world, it will surely come back to you. That’s karma for you. Overall, it will help us to trust in an underlying goodness. It may even be a winning strategy.