You don’t choose your birth.
You don’t choose your starting resources.
You don’t control every event.
You don’t know exactly how much time you have.
But you do make decisions.
Those decisions interact with biology,
psychology, society, economics,
relationships, technology,
other people and randomness.
Human life can be modeled as a dynamic system. The player begins with a state, encounters a changing environment, makes choices and receives consequences. Then the cycle repeats.
Birth, genetics, family, geography, culture, historical period and resources.
Discover how biology, society, money, relationships and institutions work.
Study, work, train, love, compete, rest, create, cooperate or take risks.
Luck, accidents, opportunities, other people’s choices and unexpected events.
Your state changes. You age. Your available options change.
A strategy that works at age 10 may be useless at 40. The available choices, risks, resources and objectives change throughout the game.
Survival, attachment, development and environmental exposure.
Language, education, habits, social rules and basic competence.
Autonomy, peers, attraction, status and identity.
Education, career, relationships, independence, wealth and risk.
Health, family, career, wealth, responsibility and long-term consequences.
Changing physical capacity, work, identity and priorities.
Time becomes increasingly scarce. Meaning, relationships and legacy matter.
There is no single universal score for life. Different resources interact with each other, and improving one can sometimes reduce another.
Biological capacity and physical wellbeing.
Economic resources and optionality.
Understanding, expertise and capability.
Connection, trust and social support.
Subjective wellbeing and life satisfaction.
Control over time and choices.
Recognition and social position.
Purpose, coherence and significance.
Time and energy are finite. Choosing one activity often means giving up another. The game therefore contains trade-offs rather than perfect solutions.
Every choice consumes something.
Human outcomes are not determined by individual effort alone. Other people, institutions, environments and random events continually change the game.
Unexpected opportunities and setbacks can alter a trajectory without being chosen.
Friends, partners, competitors, employers, families and strangers make independent decisions.
Economies, technology, culture, institutions and global events can change available choices.
The purpose of this project is not to claim that human life is literally a board game. The metaphor is a framework for asking better questions about existence.
Can education, wealth, geography or social mobility overcome early disadvantages?
Can we estimate the contribution of ability, effort, networks, timing and randomness?
How do money, relationships, health, autonomy, purpose and status interact?
Which decision-making principles remain robust when the future is uncertain?
How do governments, markets, cultures, institutions and technologies shape behavior?
Is it wealth, status, longevity, happiness, freedom, relationships, meaning — or something else?
Perhaps the objective is not to maximize one number. Perhaps the real challenge is balancing competing resources while making the most of limited time.
If human life behaves like a complex game, what are its rules, variables, incentives, constraints and failure conditions? These questions are not designed to confirm the theory. They are designed to test it.
How much influence do genetics, family, wealth, geography, education and childhood have on eventual outcomes?
Compare life outcomes across different starting conditions while controlling for as many relevant variables as possible.
How much of human behavior is shaped by laws, institutions, culture, religion, markets, family systems and social norms?
Identify formal and informal rules that influence what people can do, what they are rewarded for and what they are punished for.
Does increasing wealth actually increase freedom and wellbeing, or does wealth introduce new forms of competition and risk?
Study how income and wealth relate to health, autonomy, relationships, security and subjective wellbeing.
How do genetics, nutrition, exercise, sleep, disease, environment and aging affect the player’s available options?
Examine health as a form of biological capital that can influence future choices, capacity and quality of life.
How do family, friendship, love, competition, cooperation and social networks change human outcomes?
Investigate trust, cooperation, social support, conflict and network effects on individual outcomes.
How much do emotion, cognitive bias, habit, addiction, fear, reward and social pressure influence decisions?
Compare predicted rational behavior with actual human decisions under uncertainty, risk and social pressure.
Is success primarily driven by effort, intelligence, skill, opportunity, network effects, resources, timing or luck?
Separate controllable factors from environmental advantages and random variation in observed outcomes.
If every player eventually reaches the end, what should the objective actually be? Wealth? Happiness? Freedom? Meaning? Relationships? Longevity?
Compare competing theories of a good life and investigate whether a universal objective for human life is even possible.
Money can sometimes be recovered. Can lost time ever be recovered? How should finite time influence strategy?
Study how people value present versus future rewards and how awareness of mortality changes decisions.
Where does personal agency end and luck, randomness and external events begin?
Estimate the contribution of controllable and uncontrollable factors across different domains of human life.
Are choices determined by biology, environment and previous experiences, or can genuine agency exist?
Investigate the relationship between causation, decision-making, consciousness and perceived agency.
If a person understands incentives, biases, mortality, economics and psychology, can that knowledge produce better decisions?
Test whether knowledge about decision-making actually changes behavior and improves long-term outcomes.
A question becomes research when it can be defined, measured, challenged and potentially proven wrong.
Define the problem.
Make a testable prediction.
Collect reliable data.
Compare predictions with reality.
Change the model when evidence demands it.
The purpose of the project is not to prove that life is a game. It is to discover whether thinking about life this way helps us understand human behavior, society and existence more clearly.