Although I like the idea of "chess of life" it can very easily be problematic (primarily from a moral standpoint) to describe your broader human interactions, even everyday ones, as attempts to "affect the behavior of intelligent (and not-so-intelligent) agents."
Now, a lot of the moral objections that come to mind associated with this are stemming primarily from Sissela Bok's Lying to Children. In short, she writes specifically about paternalistic lies, she defines acting paternalistic as "to guide and even coerce people in...
I like this type of discussion a lot. Major voting reform is hard to come by (if not almost impossible in the US) and I would mostly agree that there are changes that need to be made in the US voting system. Although, even though Canada and the UK also use FPTP I personally favor their parliamentary system and I would be hesitant to group them in with the US as being crap because like I said they do share the FPTP system but so do close to 1/3 of other countries. Not to mention that although they can be labeled all the same they can also vary widely in how... (read more)