2024

About this page

This is a temporary way for me to share ideas.
I already have an idea for a different medium, which would be less linear, and not just one-directional. But for now this will do.


Cooperation leads to better results than competition.

I'm convinced that the result achieved in cooperation should in most cases surpass the result achieved in competition.

I've come across some aphoristic expressions of the form "competition breeds innovation". My best explanation for this rhetoric would be an underlying assumption that competition were a source of motivation for its participants.
However, the very dynamics of a competition mean that the focus is not on achieving the best result, but on achieving a better result than others. This incentivizes all tactics sabotaging the results of others, f.e. by misinformation or direct intervention with their progress.
It also directly disincentivizes actions that would help others, such as sharing solutions (even in part, or just general experience gained during the competition).
While the competition's rules may still pick
the "best" solution provided by any one participant (- and even this alignment needs to be independently ensured, f.e. consider socio-economic factors influencing consumers' decisions, which may be orthogonal to other measures of quality -)
, any such solution will quite obviously fall short of the solution that could have been achieved in a positive, cooperative environment: best_coop = best_comp + all improvements the other competitors could have provided to it.

For completeness, I'll list the potential benefits (that come to my mind right now) a competitive environment may incidentally provide in a given scenario:
  1. By reduced sharing of information, participants are required to re-invest efforts across the same sub-problems. This gives the opportunity of arriving at different solutions, which may differ in quality.
    In direct contrast, note how this re-invested effort is drained here instead of being contributed to directly improving someone else's solution.
    If we assume a sub-problem's solution quality to be random, each participant is randomly sampling qualities for their sub-problem solutions. Meanwhile, in a cooperative environment, we would be free to pick the best solution
    for each sub-problem (to the extent that the partitioning cleanly combines)
    .
    Also note that this option is just as readily available in a cooperative setting, where you can additionally access the combined experience of everyone else. It really just comes down to the competitive scenario being more likely to force several participants retreading the same steps.

  2. A per-submission result-oriented reward structure is easier to implement for a competition than for a "cooperation" (cooperative project/event/venture).
    This greatly favors the participants with the best solution(s), which may be seen as a benefit for these participants.
    On the other hand, those rewards are allocated away from other participants, meaning it disincentivizes less-invested participants.
    To me this seems to be a tradeoff between having fewer, heavier-invested participants vs having more, more-lightly-invested participants. (Note that it is significantly easier for the latter to make valuable contributions in a cooperative setting than in a competitive one.)

    It's also interesting how this entire second point revolves around external rewards, which are orthogonal to the intrinsic reward of achieving the best end result.
    Additionally, this only works as motivation as long as the participants with the best solution(s) are being pressured by other participants - it doesn't incentivize any effort beyond achieving the reward structure's highest payout, both in depth (often no incentive for improving once you're in first place) and longevity (no incentive for maintenance if you only get a one-time reward for the state at the time).

2026

Personal Intermezzo: Imperfection shouldn't make you feel bad (and I feel a bit stupid only figuring that out now). [2026-04-25] (This got kind of long, sorry. I can add a 50% or 20% version if someone wants it, just let me know!)

Heeey! Hi there! Yo.

So I've been mulling over my mindset and mental health for a while (over a year) now, even moreso recently.
And while I didn't expect to ever make that a topic here, just this week I really figured out something pretty basic, that feels like it already affects me quite fundamentally (and I'd assume will continue to).

Unnecessary disclaimers:
It's also the sort of advice that maybe only affects you 10% as much receiving it from someone else, compared to realizing it on your own. (I really hope I'm not taking anything away from anyone by sharing this.)
That said, if I can give someone just 10% of what I got out of it, that might mean a pretty big deal, so I want to try it.

In short, it is this:
  "Be okay with not being good at something."

I know for me the immediate knee-jerk response kicks in:
"How would I (or things) ever improve, I know there's always room to improve, anyone who actually tries is better than me, --"
Stop. Let's try again.

  "(Find a way to) accept not being good at something."

I still don't think I've gotten my point across.
"I mean sure, but why accept it, why stop there, and not keep going, trying harder?"
No, that's not what I mean.

  "It is acceptable not being (feeling) as good at something as you'd like to be at it.
   There is no shame in that. Don't feel bad about that. You are no lesser for that moment alone."

Okay, crud, now I've got tears coming up again (sorry), so I think I hit the spot.


If that makes no sense to you, I'll at least try to explain why I think it matters to me:
For I-don't-know-how-long, it's been an obvious truth to me that virtually all my abilities come through experience, and maybe a bit of personally invested effort.
If I'm skilled at something, it's just because I have experience. I fully
believe (and encourage to try! if that seems fun)
anyone else could
do the same things I did to reach the same level. (But ask me for any advice on anything anytime if you want. Maybe I can help you get better than me even easier/quicker!)

If somebody else is skilled at something, they've probably spent a long time on practicing it.
Others (maybe even me? sometimes my self-doubt is low enough to think that)
could probably do it too, but they would also need to invest time and effort into it.

(
So in essence,
I believe there is no secret unattainable "genius"/"talent"/"affinity" component, besides maybe creativity/luck/ random chance /identity, which might be inherently different, but also not rankable as better-or-worse, besides in personal taste/opinion
.
While this feels encouraging and fair, it is also the setup for some unhealthy coupling of your self-worth to your abilities and worth to others. Which feels bad, but well, you win some and you lose some.
)

Now, the confusion probably arises from somehow inversing this expectation:
  "If I'm bad at something, (if I fail at something,) I am not invested enough in it."
Does that ring a bell maybe? Or one step further:
  "I think I would be bad at that... so there's no point in trying.
   (If I'm not good enough at it, then I wasn't invested enough / it isn't the thing for me anyway.)"

And that's the harmful thought I want to unroot.


Frustratingly, there are
contexts in which "being good at something matters" (sort of). Like at work, or exams... probably mostly at work and exams... work and exams both suck... We should have less work, and less graded/pressured education, and instead spend more time cooperating and sharing and having fun.

Not sure if we can do something about those.
But try not to let those frustrations infect your mindset in the more important things,
how you live your life and spend your free time!

I think it's always cool trying something new.
Maybe some things turn out worse and less fun than you imagined them. That's something we'll often have to bear with.
But don't feel bad for having tried things.
Look for the
fun (joy? both.)
in the things you do and the person you are.
I'm sure you'll be doing a great job. ❤️