Comment on Competition vs. Cooperation? by seraphima

Parent Post: Competition vs. Cooperation? · In Reply To

seraphima · 10/5/2026, 10:33:07 AM · permalink

Finally, then, please allow me to make my childish association between this AI competition and other competitions that are scripted, designed, and built for a primary objective... money.  
  
I both love and hate watching them. The premise is that elite chefs compete against each other (often incorporating different challenges that require cooperation for two strategic reasons: get to know your competitors strengths and weaknesses and to build alliances while simultaneously creating divisions). Competition seems to require collaboration, community, and also, to some degree, deception without malice because, in a game, for the purposes of a scripted entertaining show, everyone knows that it's all BS. So, while they value the prize, they know that if they lose, they don't lose much. It's basically all just an ego trip. They don't hate each other afterwards. You'll see the same chefs on show after show and they all have a sense of camaraderie because they've fought together and against each other in the same arena.

Why is scripted, manipulated, manufactured competition BS? In some instances, the people are home chefs. "Amateurs." They don't work under pressure. They have to compete against other chefs who are professionally trained. They went to the best schools. They've worked under the best chefs. They've been trained in the best kitchens under incredible pressure. They should be able to win easily. But they can have a bad day. The home chef can have a good day. Why? Because they're so new that they have novel solutions to problems that the professionals didn't think of. Or, sometimes, more importantly, they receive the benefit of the professional making a critical error. In other words, in that kind of race, idiomatically, the home chef doesn't have to be fast but they have to know that the professional has a knee injury and will hobble through the last mile. In the case of two elite chefs competing, one doesn't have to be the fastest but know enough to be able to run faster than the competitor. Competitions don't actually prove who is the best chef. They don't necessarily prove anything.

So what is the point of this race anyway? What will the competition prove?

This leads to nation against nation. If Nation X is running a race against Nation Y, the intelligence communities have to find out about their competitors. When it comes to being transparent (which is apparently important), the system is meant to be closed. The system, the race, everything is meant to be opaque. In military strategy, the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing for operational security purposes. You can't ask a sergeant anything about what the general is doing for important reasons. Uncertainty is baked into the whole pie. For both positional and systemic transparency, everything would have to change, imo. That's not going to happen. So, if the security dilemma is real, how do we increase security and is security the same thing as safety? How do we ensure that the race is won ethically if we can't and won't be able to look in the oven?

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