My Level Zero System-Chapter 319: The Mind Trap
This game contains countless cognitive traps.
In his private room, Kain lay on the bed, his eyes closed, but his mind was more alert than ever.
He was thinking.
At this moment, Kain felt he could thoroughly understand the overall picture of the game.
First, the rule, "players are not allowed to trade currency with each other."
Excluding the correlative aspects, Kain cut straight to the essence: this rule prevents players from cooperating, but how does it prevent it?
"A high door attracts people to step through, a low door causes people to hesitate."
Living beings are existences heavily reliant on stimuli. From internal stimuli like hunger, thirst, fatigue, excretion systems... to external stimuli like heat, light, water vapor,...
Because of hunger, one must seek food.
Because of thirst, one must seek drink.
Because of brightness, one must squint to let in less light.
Because of heat, one must move away from the heat source to avoid being burned.
This is the instinct of a living being, the fundamental operation of thought. This is true for animals, and it is true for complex-thinking humans.
A reaction to a stimulus; the greater the stimulus, the stronger the reaction.
And this game rule is the same.
But unlike the other rules that were fully listed above, the rule strictly prohibiting players from exchanging currency with each other was placed at the very end, often the least important closing position. But here, this rule was even placed after the announcement that "this game will last for 50 turns," which implicitly means that the player's focus, which was consuming the other rules and then interrupted by the "game duration," would not place strong attention on it.
In other words, the other rules are like sledgehammers pounding down, forcing players to think thoroughly because they inherently contain the path to winning the game. But the rule prohibiting currency exchange is as light as a falling leaf.
The players' attention was pulled away. This caused them, when modeling the rules, to only have a vague impression of a rule against currency exchange without intentionally digging deeper. Their minds would only passively absorb it without thinking more deeply about it.
"Ah, there's this no-currency-exchange rule, so it will be difficult to cooperate, so let's just not cooperate."
If this rule had been placed first, it would have been different. Its position is the stimulus, stimulating the players' brains that it is an important part of the game and needs players to thoroughly exploit it.
This is the principle of balancing challenge and value. The mind always believes that the greater the challenge, the higher the value, and vice versa.
If the game rules explicitly prohibit cooperation in many aspects, the rules would both create endless internal conflict and stimulate the players' "challenge," because they subconsciously perceive that this rule contains high enough value to warrant the rule maker's attention.
This is the "high door attracting people to step through."
And the opposite is also true. Intentionally reducing the weight of the rule will also cause players to no longer be stimulated, their perception is limited to focus on the "challenges," the other important things. And the unimportant things, even if they are not impossible to perform, will be subconsciously eliminated from the player's mind, because they simply didn't consider them. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦
This is the "low door causing people to hesitate."
But this is only the first challenge.
Even if a player overcomes this first challenge and intentionally seeks cooperation, they will be caught in the second challenge: no currency exchange, meaning they cannot rely on real value to support the cooperation, leading to a sharply increased risk of betrayal and defection.
This is a bottomless pit where no one can be trusted.
That is why it must be set with a bottom.
In bidding turn 1, Cyrus created a bottom, or more precisely, two bottoms, for two groups of people.
There, Faith positioned himself at one bottom.
In bidding turn 2, due to Faith's push, the Zento Family representative seized the opportunity and allied all those at the other bottom.
That is the classification mindset. When there is no actual benefit tying people together, only equality in status is a good stepping stone to start an alliance.
The Zento Family representative chose those who had not lost too much. Faith chose those who were gradually falling to the deep bottom.
By now, the four-sided situation in this game has been officially established.
Cyrus - "the fool."
Kain - the wanderer.
Faith - the alliance of the distressed.
Zento - the alliance of the dominators.
The fool will be exploited, the wanderer will be guarded against, but the upcoming focus will be the battle between the two alliances.
However, Faith's actual purpose is not that.
What he aims for is actually to categorize the fool and the wanderer out of the fight, turning both into the third and fourth factions that can be "the fisherman who benefits" in the two-faction battle.
Faith wants to decide who can win, even if he has predetermined that he will lead the Sword Family to the abyss.
"Still so arrogant..."
Faith sighed, opened his eyes, and sat up.
It was almost time for bidding turn 4.
...
The Sword Family holds 30 gold coins in hand, with 6 gold coins in the treasury.
The Bethel Family holds 30 gold coins in hand, with 6 gold coins in the treasury.
The Zento Family holds 20 gold coins in hand, with 24 gold coins in the treasury.
The Acer Family holds 20 gold coins in hand, with 6 gold coins in the treasury.
The Flamed Family holds 20 gold coins in hand, with 24 gold coins in the treasury.
The Madea Family holds 23 gold coins in hand, with 6 gold coins in the treasury.
The Raymon Family holds 38 gold coins in hand, with 6 gold coins in the treasury.
The Nostag Family holds 27 gold coins in hand, with 6 gold coins in the treasury.
The Don Family holds 38 gold coins in hand, with 6 gold coins in the treasury.
The Egretta Family holds 40 gold coins in hand, with 6 gold coins in the treasury.
