May 30, 2023
Life is not a zero-sum game
If one person wins, does another have to lose?
No. Life is not a zero-sum game. Life is how you choose to react to whatever challenges come your way. If it takes two to have a relationship, and only one person wins, well, guess where that’s heading?
Democrats and Republicans seem bound and determined to play a zero-sum game over the looming debt ceiling, due to collapse on June 5. It’s a strategy that should get them all voted out of office.
It’s not surprising, though, since much of society holds a zero-sum game mentality.
Winning for yourself only is also the underlying premise of Anthony McCarten’s new thriller, “Going Zero” (Harper, 295 pp). In his novel, 10 Americans have been chosen to Beta test a ground-breaking piece of surveillance. Tech billionaire Cy Baxter, in collaboration with the CIA, is betting that his FUSION spyware can track anyone on earth.
If any of the 10 participants in the test can go off-grid and stay undetected for 30 days, they will win $3 million. If Baxter’s spyware wins, he’ll get a $90 million government contract to change surveillance in America forever.
The book’s other question – can anyone really go off the grid anymore, with surveillance everywhere and AI growing in human-competitive intelligence – is no longer just hypothetical.
More than 350 business leaders and public figures, including executives of companies behind AI’s development, are sounding the threat that AI’s development poses. The signatories of their public statement say that “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” The statement was released May 30 by the nonprofit Center for AI Safety.
In “Going Zero,” one woman fights against Baxter’s plans and greed, motivated not by winning dollars, but to save someone she loves.
Love, of course, is what will save us all from living a zero-sum game.
Imagine what Congress could do if love was the criteria for how money was allocated in the budget. A debt ceiling could cease to exist. Demanding that people who receive food stamps work for their aid would end because there would no longer be hunger in America.
Think this could never happen? If you read “Going Zero,” you’ll see how close we are to losing privacy in America. If that version of reality can happen, why can’t we move closer to a reality where positive actions rule the day?
All we need is the will to do better, and be better human beings.
Dinah Eng 