Substack essay about ambition as a non-zero-sum trait and its broad impact on careers, markets, and society.

Source: Cinema SugarI often feel there are some movies that don't have enough cultural impact on society. I remember watching Big Hero 6 in 2016 and thinking its portrayal of passion around STEM education should be shown to every kid. I remember watching In Time in 2011, and feeling like there should be a bigger conversation about what happens when we cure all diseases?I felt the same way about Arrival. I've written before about how, so often, science fiction represents "a shortage of dreams in the wake of our collective fictional nightmares." Aliens coming to earth are more like Independence Day than Arrival.If you haven't seen the movie, I don't wanna spoil it for you... but it's almost a ten year old movie so... I don't know. Skip to the next section, or go watch the movie. Cause it's really good.I wasn't thinking about the movie for today's topic until I started googling around for some interesting context on non-zero-sum games and I kept coming across images from Arrival, including T-shirts (which I bought). And I was reminded of how central the concept is to the plot of the movie.In the film, 12 massive alien pods land on earth and hover in 12 different locations: US, China, Russia, UK, Pakistan, Sudan, etc. Each country spends time engaging with the alien life forms, trying to understand them and their language. Eventually, misunderstanding of the alien's intent leads to conflict, and the various nations shutting off shared communication about their findings.Eventually, the protagonist of the film realizes that each piece of information communicated contains 1/12th of a message, and that collaboration is required to unlock the answer. The whole purpose of the alien's visit is to unify humanity by offering them a language that unlocks the ability to see time as non-linear.When asked to explain non-zero-sum thinking as presented in Arrival, this was ChatGPT's response:"In a non-zero-sum game, unlike zero-sum games where one party's gain is exactly balanced by a