The very first second I entered SN I was kindly greeted by one of the members and immediately given some sats. And while I do have the impulse of stacking sats, upon such a gentle reception I had the impulse to give sats in return. And that dynamic persisted, receiving and giving, which solely leaded me to stack even more sats without really thinking about it.
And I couldn't help but to feel like I was playing Go. It's the exact same thing, and maybe part of the reason I reacted instinctively by giving back.
If you don't know Go, it's an ancient game of Chinese origin (though it reached its final shape in Japan, from where the name Go became more known).
Its rules have the beauty of being the most simple yet the most complex strategy game humanity invented, and such a simplicity and it's hypnotic appeal has also made it the most ancient game known which has been played by its original rules for millennia, until present day.
It remarkably shares with the bitcoiner principles the virtues of humility and discipline, which the game teaches very well, humbling you down real quick if you lose yourself. So that much that the legend has it that the invention of Go was commissioned by an emperor to teach his son discipline of spirit and balance.
The basic rules are
- Start: the goban starts empty, and players take turns to place their go-ishi on any empty place.
- Life and Death: for has long as there is an open path, a go-ishi lives. When there are no more open paths, a go-ishi must leave the goban.
- Infinity: you can not make any move that would return the game to a previous state.
- End: whenever both players agree that the game should end, the area they had covered until then is counted, and the one who has the most wins.
As you might have seen yourself already, you can always trace clear parallels of Go principles to life, and I'm all about talking about it and teaching Go principles if anyone is interested :)