Zero Sum Game
topic on 2 shows · 6 statements across 2 episodes
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 
the Knowledge Project
6 statements about Zero Sum Game, every show
Caldwell: Feeling smarter than others leads to morally rationalizing exploitation
“I think if you feel that you are smarter than other people, and this is something we encounter sometimes in our jobs, I think if you feel that you are more intelligent than others, perhaps you can end up on the slippery slope of moral arguments, that it's okay…”
Seibel: Zero-sum players just harvest the excess capital of positive-sum builders
“It's so obvious the society we lived in, we live in today, was built by people who were playing positive some games. So what it really is, is, like, those people created, like, a little bit of excess capital That the zero sum game people are like harvesting. T…”
Seibel: Downturns reveal the tiny group of smart players extracting capital
“When everything's going up, it's easy to think you're the smart person. When things start going down, you start realizing who the real smart people are. And it tends to be a way, way smaller group than you might think. And it turns out that they're taking mone…”
Seibel: Failing at positive-sum games still builds valuable skills
“Cause like our friends who tried and failed to do positive sum games, they almost always learned something or advanced in some way. Like they almost always took something from that game with them that made them better off, even if they didn't win. Whereas like…”
Seibel: In zero-sum games, today's exploiter becomes tomorrow's dummy
“Be careful with the zero sum games because today you're taking money from a dummy and tomorrow you might be the dummy.”
Ridley: Zero-sum thinking stems from millions of years of ancestral biology
“We've spent millions of years thinking that your gain is my loss. It's only in the last a 100,000, in some ways, that's how well trade seems to be, On a massive scale with the division of labor and the collaborative system I described earlier, it's more like t…”