In Antifragile, Nassim Taleb describes a sucker’s game as a game in which “the benefits are small and visible, and the side effects potentially severe and invisible.”

Shane Parish from Farnam Street would call this first-order positive and second-order negative, or negative asymmetry.

Basically, suckers take a small and visible win in the short term, but loose the game in the long run.

So what’s the opposite?

To flip Taleb’s description around, a winners game would be to get large but invisible benefits, with negative side effects that are small but painfully obvious.

And Parish would call this second order thinking, or positive asymmetry.

Basically, the winners are playing a game that suckers don’t play because the benefits are invisible and while the pain points are easily visible.

Let’s consider getting an education. You spend a number of years sitting at a desk studying. And each day that you sit down to study, the immediate benefit is invisible. Nothing much happens on a day to day basis. All the while the sacrifices you make are painfully obvious. And then 4 years down the road, you get a second order positive, you graduate with a key that opens doors.

It’s supposed to be a good example. Maybe it used to be a good example. But you don’t have to look around to hard to discover that it no longer works. The game changed, and a whole bunch of people who were once playing a winning game are now suckers. It’s a real, and painful problem.

And the same happens in business. The winners are just playing the new game. But how do you tell if there’s a new game afoot? … Check out pt 2.