So I was thinking of a situation, purely speculative and hypothetical, a thought experiment.

Let's pretend there is a confined space and in that space exists 2 people who are after one thing and that one thing can only be utilized by one person. Say a job, position, asset, money, or significant other. Anything -- for the sake of abstractness let's call this thing "the prize". 2 people are after the prize.

The prize is given out based on merit, the best qualified of the 2 people will receive the prize, however this will be evaluated over a long amount of time by a secret observer that is outside the confined space.

The game starts and the 2 people set out to prove they are the most qualified in order to receive the prize.

Now let's consider that each person has two different types of merit -- Potential Merit and Manifest Merit. Similar to the concept of potential and kinetic energy in physics. Manifest Merit is what is explicit, the skill that is apparent in reality. Potential Merit is the talent which they possess that hasn't been turned into realistic results. Someone with a high potential merit is able to create larger gains in manifest merit with the same effort as someone without as high a potential merit.

Let's say the situation starts off with person A having a high manifest merit but low potential merit and person B having a low manifest merit but a high potential merit.

Consider the best strategy for person A to play against person B in order to win the prize.

If person B is allowed to put effort over time into their potential they could easily exceed person A. So its vital for person B to convince person A that they shouldn't even try, psychologically this effect is referred to as learned helplessness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness. An example in animal behavior is that zoo keepers will tie a stake to a baby elephant at an early age, the baby elephant will not be able to move its foot, and after a while it accepts this. The baby elephant will eventually learn it is useless to try, and when it is an adult and fully capable of escaping the stake it won't even try.

This is the psychological tactic that person B would have to use in order to win the prize, to convince person A of the futility of there efforts, so as to prevent them from defeating them. If person A though continues to ignore person B and match person A's effort though, given sufficient time they are favored.

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Now let's remove the mental boundary and consider the reality in which we live. If there is a limited number of prizes for a given population of people, these dynamics could play out in terms of potential and actual competency. However certain rules would have to be expanded.

First instead of two people you could have 3 or more, so its possible that you'd have layered relations A->B may be characterized as A having the superior potential, but A-> C may be characterized as A having the superior actual competency but inferior potential. The more you expand things the more complex the one to one interactions become. Socially the one to one interactions would become too complex and instead stereotypes would have to be used to approximate people's standing based on the subcultures to which they belong... grouping sets of individuals together, and then breaking down the sets to the individual. Basically use induction and sets to make the one to one interaction more general.

Second consider the balance between prizes and people. This is not a static relationship, but a dyanmic one. Through certain mechanisms prizes can increase, decrease or remain stable. Through certain mechanisms people can increase, decrease or remain stable.

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What do you think this means in terms of society? I've been thinking about this.

Are certain people out there psychologically at war with you to convince you of the futility of your efforts because they are threatened by your potential to exceed them? If you were on top in terms of merit would you be threatened by someones potential? Because people die does this imply that one should allow other younger than them to develop their potential, or does it imply that since your time is limited to play the game as aggresively as possible and win at as much as possible until you die? Is it good to create more prizes, act in such a way that increases the prizes -- and should these prizes go to those that don't have them or should they go to those that play the game the best? Is it bad to have a population that exceeds the population of prizes?

What do you think?

I think its a hard question