Game Theory #5: The World Game

SUMMARY

Professor Jiang lectures Beijing high school students on using game theory to explain why marginalized, poor states historically rise to conquer wealthy empires, emphasizing metrics like energy, openness, and cohesion over resources.

STATEMENTS

States and empires rise and fall not due to population, resources, or technology, but through dynamics of energy, openness, and cohesion.
During China's Warring States period around 250 BCE, the poor, isolated Qin state unexpectedly unified China despite lacking advantages in mass, farmland, or innovation.
Marginalized groups from borders or mountains often conquer richer areas because poverty fosters unity and solidarity, as theorized by historian Ibn Khaldun's concept of asabiyyah.
Wealthy societies suffer from low energy among elites who exploit rather than innovate, leading to stagnation and corruption.
Openness involves humility, resilience, and adaptability, which declines in prosperous areas due to arrogance and insulation.
Cohesion measures group solidarity, where poorer groups see themselves as a family willing to sacrifice, unlike divided, individualistic rich societies.
Greek city-states like Athens, with superior navy, population, and innovation in 500 BCE, failed to unify due to internal decline, allowing Macedonians to conquer them.
Macedonians, seen as uncivilized and poor, used high energy, openness, and cohesion to unify Greece and then topple the vast Persian Empire in just 10 years under Alexander the Great.
Romans, as backward tribes on the Italian peninsula colonized by Greeks, gradually conquered Italy, Greece, and Carthage to form their empire, following the pattern of outsiders overtaking complacent powers.
The Aztecs, a starving northern tribe exiled to a marsh in 15th-century Mexico, innovated farmland and built an empire over millions, only to fall to 500 Spanish conquistadors in 1519.
Sumerian city-states in Mesopotamia, centered on trade hubs like Ur, competed creatively but were conquered by Akkadian mercenaries from isolated regions.
As societies rise, initial cooperation via dynamic religion motivates energy and cohesion, with poets and priests as early elites in a startup-like phase.
Hereditary elites shift religion to bureaucracy, enforcing hierarchy and rules to pass privileges, leading to elite overproduction and factional splits.
Warring states periods represent peaks of creativity through open cooperative competition, where colonies innovate, trade best practices, and invite talent via meritocracy.
Intermarriage among elites creates equilibrium, turning warfare into organized population control to manage overproduction, forming empires with rigid hierarchies.
In empires, court politics revolve around factions solving secrecy, trust, and coordination through secret societies using hierarchy, transgressions like ritual sacrifice, and eschatology.
Factions become insular, corrupt, and divided, prioritizing internal victory over empire welfare, weakening against energetic border tribes.
Internal factions invite mercenaries from borders via trade, banditry, or alliances, who learn technologies, merge via secret society mechanics, and eventually overthrow hosts.
Modern simulations like the "World Game" show resource-poor teams (e.g., Pakistan) outperforming rich ones (e.g., USA) by being energetic, open, and cohesive.
In STEM teaching workshops, lowest-ranked teams on day one often win on day two due to forced reflection, adaptability, and humility absent in top teams.
Defeated nations like post-WWII Germany, Japan, and Israel exhibit high energy, openness, and cohesion, positioning them for future dominance.
International aid and organizations prevent emergent leaders in poor regions, maintaining dependency to avert unified threats.

IDEAS

Historical predictions based on traditional metrics like population and resources fail spectacularly, as seen with Qin's conquest despite its mountainous isolation.
Poverty paradoxically breeds strength by enforcing group solidarity, turning marginalized tribes into unstoppable forces against decadent cores.
Ibn Khaldun's asabiyyah reveals that wealth erodes unity, making rich civilizations vulnerable to unified poor challengers as an iron law of history.
Elite overproduction inevitably fragments societies into factions, exiling losers to form competitive colonies that spark innovation bursts.
Warring states eras, like China's 100-year philosophical golden age, thrive on "open cooperative competition," blending rivalry with shared advancements.
Inter-elite marriages stabilize empires but corrupt warfare into elite population control, prioritizing status quo over true progress.
Secret societies in empires solve factional intrigue via compartmentalized hierarchies, shared transgressions for trust, and mythic eschatologies for coordination.
Inviting border mercenaries for factional gain backfires, as they absorb elite technologies through trade and service, then seize power.
The Aztec fall to 500 Spaniards defies numbers because game theory uncovers motivations: disease, divine myths, and local alliances mask deeper factional betrayals.
Sumer's Ur, as a global trade nexus, grew wealthy but fell to Akkadians, showing centrality invites competition without guaranteeing dominance.
Modern "World Game" mirrors history: resource-poor Pakistan teams beg, cheat, and innovate to surpass abundant USA groups.
In education competitions, bottom teams rebound strongest, as failure cultivates humility and drive, while success breeds complacency.
Post-WWII Japan and Germany's "wealth" is illusory vassalage to America, lacking sovereign power to impose their game, thus preserving their dynamism.
North Korea's isolation and poverty position it better than China's wealth for future East Asian dominance, per historical patterns.
International interventions like UN aid deliberately stifle leader emergence in Africa to prevent cohesive rises.
Eschatological myths in secret societies justify conquest as divine quests, binding members to world-altering ambitions.
Rome's tribal origins on a Greek-colonized peninsula highlight how backward groups exploit imperial overextension.
Macedonian conquest of Persia in a decade underscores how cohesion trumps size, turning small forces into empire-breakers.
Qin's unification involved factions sequentially inviting and betraying each other to external allies, not brute strength.

INSIGHTS

True societal power stems not from material wealth but from intangible dynamics like unified purpose, which decays in prosperity.
Cycles of rise and fall are driven by evolving games: from cooperative startups to bureaucratic equilibria, then factional intrigue inviting external disruptors.
Marginalization fosters resilience, as necessity compels innovation and solidarity absent in insulated elites.
Elite overproduction ensures entropy, fragmenting unity into rival secret societies that undermine the whole.
Open competition in divided states catalyzes peaks of human achievement, blending rivalry with knowledge exchange.
Warfare evolves from innovative chaos to ritualized control, serving elite interests over national vitality.
Factions thrive on secrecy's paradoxes: hierarchy limits leaks, shared crimes build loyalty, myths align actions.
Mercenaries embody the outsider advantage, learning from hosts while retaining primal energy to subvert them.
Simulations reveal poverty's creative edge, where lack forces adaptive strategies over resource hoarding.
Defeat can rebirth nations by shattering arrogance, enabling reflection and renewed cohesion if power remains externalized.
Global interventions suppress potential unifiers, perpetuating chaos to maintain hegemonic control.
Eschatology transforms personal ambition into collective destiny, fueling empires from tribes.

QUOTES

"It's usually the weakest most marginalized area that will eventually come and conquer the entire territory and create an empire."
"The people in the margins, they're poorer, but because they're poorer, they're more unified."
"Energy just means that you're willing to work hard, you're focused, you have a clear goal and you're motivated to achieve this goal."
"Poverty leads to creativity."
"Just because you have the most resources, just because you have the most people does not mean you'll win the game at the end."
"Once you're number one, you become so arrogant that it's impossible for you to be humble again."
"Power means that you're able to impose your game on other people."
"If you left Africa alone, Africa will be a lot better. But because you have all these schools, all these NGOs, all these organizations in Africa, what they're really doing is ensuring that Africa is in a continuous state of development."

HABITS

Marginalized groups maintain high cohesion by viewing themselves as family, sacrificing for collective survival.
Poorer societies adapt through constant begging, trading, and innovating with limited resources in simulations like the World Game.
Defeated nations like post-WWII Japan cultivate energetic work ethics, focusing on national rebuilding and vengeance.
Border tribes engage in trade, banditry, and mercenary service to learn advanced technologies while sustaining poverty-driven unity.
Underdog teams in competitions reflect deeply after failures, prioritizing relationships and humility over complacency.
Faction leaders in empires build trust via shared transgressions, such as ritual sacrifices, to ensure loyalty.
Emerging leaders unify imaginations through prophetic or poetic narratives, fostering religious motivation for hard work.

FACTS

China's Warring States period (around 250 BCE) saw over 100 years of invasions coinciding with philosophical peaks like Confucius and Laozi.
Athens at its height had only 50,000 people, yet controlled Aegean trade via the greatest navy.
Alexander the Great's Macedonians conquered the Persian Empire—spanning Egypt to Persia—in about 10 years starting from a small force.
500 Spanish conquistadors under Hernán Cortés toppled the Aztec Empire of millions in 1519, aided by disease and local allies.
Ur in Mesopotamia was the first great world city due to its position at the Euphrates-Tigris confluence, linking trade to India and Egypt.
Greek city-states numbered in thousands, averaging 1,000 people each, fostering intense competition.
Post-WWII firebombing of Japan killed more than the atomic bombs, yet it rebuilt with high cohesion.
Germany lost millions in World Wars I and II, eliminating imperial pretensions and enabling future potential.

REFERENCES

Ibn Khaldun's theory of asabiyyah (cohesion or group solidarity).
Homer, Plato, Phidias, Sophocles as foundations of Western civilization from Greek city-states.
Chinese Warring States philosophers: Confucius, Mozi, Laozi.
Zoroaster as a unifier through new religion.
Jesus as an example of prophetic leadership fostering cohesion.
The World Game simulation with envelopes of resources like paper, scissors, rulers for teams representing countries.
STEM workshops building toy cars, airplanes, catapults with limited materials.
Plaza Accord (1985) forcing Japan to weaken its economy by encouraging spending over saving.
US Treasury bonds as a mechanism for vassal states like Japan and Germany to fund American power.
Mongol unification under Genghis Khan as a mercenary-to-empire example.
United Nations and international development aid as tools to prevent leader emergence.
Akkadian conquest of Sumerian city-states.
Persian Empire under Cyrus unifying Zagros Mountains regions.

HOW TO APPLY

Assess any society's potential by measuring energy (motivation and focus), openness (humility and adaptability), and cohesion (willingness to sacrifice as a team) rather than GDP or population.
In competitive environments, like business or teams, simulate under-resourced scenarios to force creativity, such as trading favors or innovating with scraps, mirroring the World Game.
During rise phases, cultivate dynamic religion or shared purpose through leaders like poets or prophets to motivate hard work and unity.
Avoid elite overproduction by promoting meritocracy in early stages, inviting external talent to maintain openness.
In equilibrium empires or large organizations, watch for factional secret societies forming around secrecy, trust via transgressions, and mythic goals—disrupt them early.
When facing decline, invite controlled external mercenaries or allies judiciously, ensuring they integrate without subverting, through monitored trade and technology sharing.
Predict global shifts by identifying poor, cohesive border groups (e.g., North Korea) versus corrupt, divided wealthy powers (e.g., China), and prepare alliances accordingly.

ONE-SENTENCE TAKEAWAY

Marginalized societies conquer empires through superior energy, openness, and cohesion, as game theory reveals cycles of rise, corruption, and external overthrow.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Prioritize building group solidarity in under-resourced teams to outmaneuver resource-rich competitors via unified effort.
Foster humility in success by regularly simulating failure, like rotating underdog roles in workshops, to prevent arrogance.
Seek prophetic leaders or narratives to unify divided groups, transforming poverty into cohesive motivation.
In organizations, monitor for secret factions by encouraging transparency and merit-based promotions over hereditary privileges.
Engage in open cooperative competition during growth phases, sharing innovations across rivals to accelerate collective peaks.
Avoid vassalage traps by retaining sovereign power, ensuring wealth translates to game imposition rather than external extraction.
Intervene globally to nurture or suppress emergent unifiers based on threat assessment, using aid to maintain strategic dependencies.
Reflect post-defeat like Japan or Germany, channeling humiliation into energetic national rebuilding without imperial overreach.
Use poverty's edge ethically: encourage begging, trading, and creative cheating in simulations to build resilience.
Dismantle bureaucratic religions in mature societies, reverting to startup-like enthusiasm to restore dynamism.

MEMO

In a riveting lecture to his Beijing high school students on January 20, 2026, Professor Jiang upends conventional history with game theory, arguing that empires crumble not from external might but internal decay. Drawing from China's Warring States era, he spotlights the improbable rise of the Qin dynasty—a poor, mountainous backwater that defied predictions of dominance by richer states like Qi or Zhao. Traditional metrics like population, farmland, and technology, Jiang explains, mislead; instead, success hinges on three vital forces: energy (relentless motivation), openness (adaptive humility), and cohesion (sacrificial unity). This framework, inspired by 14th-century historian Ibn Khaldun's asabiyyah, reveals how poverty welds marginalized groups into formidable units, while wealth breeds elite complacency and corruption.

The pattern recurs across civilizations. Greek city-states, epitomized by innovative Athens with its unmatched navy and cultural zenith—birthing Homer, Plato, and democracy—fractured under rivalry, paving the way for barbaric Macedonians to unify them and, under Alexander the Great, dismantle the colossal Persian Empire in a mere decade. Similarly, tribal Romans overran Greek-colonized Italy, then Carthage, forging an empire from the fringes. In Mesoamerica, starving Aztecs ingeniously farmed a marsh exile to rule millions, only to succumb to 500 Spanish conquistadors in 1519—a puzzle game theory unravels through factional betrayals, disease, and mythic awe masking deeper disunity.

Mesopotamia's tale echoes this: trade-rich Ur, the world's first global hub linking India, Egypt, and Anatolia, spawned Sumerian city-states that innovated wildly but fell to Akkadian mercenaries from isolation. Jiang traces the lifecycle: nascent groups cooperate via energizing religions led by poets and priests, forming startup-like societies. Hereditary elites bureaucratize faith into rigid hierarchies, sparking overproduction that exiles factions into warring colonies—ironically, eras of explosive creativity through "open cooperative competition," as in China's philosophical golden age or Greece's classical bloom.

Equilibrium arrives via elite intermarriages, ritualizing warfare as population control to curb surplus ambition, birthing stagnant empires. Court intrigue then festers in secret societies, resolving secrecy through compartmentalized hierarchies, trust via shared transgressions like ritual sacrifices, and coordination via eschatological myths promising divine conquest. Factions turn insular and corrupt, siphoning resources while inviting border mercenaries for advantage—traders, bandits, or hires who learn elite ways, absorb via shadowy initiations, and inevitably revolt, as Qin's sequential betrayals or Macedonian city-state conquests illustrate.

Modern parallels abound. In the "World Game" simulation, resource-poor Pakistan teams beg, cheat, and innovate past abundant USA groups, embodying poverty's creative fire. Jiang's STEM workshops show bottom-ranked teams surging ahead on day two, their humility trumping top teams' arrogance—much like worst students outshining valedictorians in life. Defeat forges comebacks: post-WWII Japan and Germany, humbled by nukes and firebombing, rebuilt with fierce cohesion, though as American vassals via Plaza Accords and Treasury bonds, their "wealth" funds U.S. dominance without true power.

Looking ahead, Jiang predicts North Korea's edge over complacent China in East Asia, and rising stars in humiliated Germany, Japan, and Israel—nations reflecting on persecution to reclaim vigor. Yet, he warns, once atop, arrogance dooms repeats; empires die, rarely resurrecting unchanged. Global puppeteers like the UN and NGOs, he posits, stifle African unifiers to preserve chaos, ensuring no Genghis Khan emerges. This theory demands scrutiny: observe openness in daily work, energy in assignments, cohesion in sacrifices. History's iron law whispers that the periphery always hungers to center.