In game theory, there’s a concept called a solved game.

In a solved game, the optimal moves for each player are completely known (or in some weaker cases, the optimal moves beginning at the starting position are). Tic-tac-toe is one example: you can play a completely optimal game of tic-tac-toe and guarantee a draw (if your opponent plays perfectly) or always win when possible (if they don’t) by doing so. That’s why only small children play tic-tac-toe: any reasonably intelligent adult can play it perfectly, and as a result it’s boring and pointless for two adults to play.

In the information age, solving a game is a question of steady progress. Any progress towards solving a game is permanent, and thus every game inches closer towards being solved over time. Every new advance in theory, every game played by experts (whether human or AI), advances the theory a little bit further.

Most games aren’t completely solved, and some probably never will be. But we don’t need complete solutions to render humans helpless, and human progress is easily outpaced by machine learning. No human has beaten a top chess computer in a decade. No human can beat a top checkers computer, even in principle, because such computers can now provably play perfectly to avoid losing.

One by one, the slow march of information-age knowledge has moved these games out of human reach. It is very likely that, barring some major changes in human beings ourselves (via, say, speculative genetic engineering) that we will never be able to compete again even in games that haven’t been perfectly solved once artificial opponents have gotten anywhere close. And eventually, we will be surpassed in the game of dictating our own lives and defending ourselves against manipulation.

Humans are creatures of finite, practically-unpatchable complexity. We vary a lot from individual to individual, of course, and we can learn to defend ourselves from some attacks. But each individual human is now pitted against a machine greater than any of us, a machine devoted to isolating and exploiting our weaknesses to ever greater degrees. The machine never forgets; it never backslides; it never resets. We do.

Every new generation of children has to learn how to win a game of tic-tac-toe, and it takes them years. What hope can they possibly have against a body of knowledge that can wipe the floor with Garry Kasparov or Magnus Carlsen? And, by analogy, every new generation of children has to learn that “Just $59*” means “a lot more than $59”. What hope can they possibly have against advanced ad targeting and unprecedented tracking?

Again, I don’t think I’m saying anything entirely new here. I think we all feel the vague sense of creeping defeat, and I think it explains a lot of the recent explosive discontent on the part of populations around the world (for better and for worse). And yet we go about our day as though none of this is happening, as though the clock isn’t already running even setting aside more existential risks. It’s not even just technology: the knowledge that can slowly strangle us is not only on silicon, it’s built into the structure of a thousand institutions.

The game of manipulators versus the public is going to be solved — practically so, if not perfectly in a game-theoretic sense. And it won’t be the public that solves it.

For now, I’ll leave you with the problem. Chew on it. Let it marinade. Look around you as you go about your day, try to see just how many ways others are trying to manipulate you. Like my previous article on contingency, this one is one part of a broader groundwork, and we’ll get to the solutions later — but for right now, just appreciate what we’re up against.

If you’re not scared, you should be.