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Duncan Sabien likes at least two games: punch bug (as long as he is the one doing the punching) and Magic: the Gathering. He has a whole theory of personality types based on colours of magic in M:tG (red, green, white, blue, and black) and got his partner the therapist into it. The four humours are old and unscientific see:

Personalities, organizations, goals, and means can all be thought of in terms of the Magic colors they typify, allowing you to draw interesting connections, make surprisingly useful predictions, identify deficits and growth areas, and increase empathy. I claim that the Magic system, which was designed to be resonant and trope-y and archetypal, does a lot of the same good work that naming things does, and is a richer intuition pump than other popular wrong-but-usefuls like Enneagram or MBTI or chakras or the integral theory colors.

Backlinks show a number of rationalists and one TTRPG designer being excited about it.

Sneerers are having fun riffing on this theory, so lets create a thread for that. https://homosabiens.substack.com/p/the-mtg-color-wheel?open=false#%C2%A7ub

I will begin with the fact that he posted it on Medium in twenty-frigging-eighteen and was offended that they eventually moved it to their "paying members only" section. Who in 2018 could have expected that a 'free' service would shut down or make the experience worse when it ran out of other people's money?

He also makes sure you know that the game designer, who also designed RoboRally, has a PhD. Try to explain Hume to them and they stone you, but invent a CCG which lets a corporation take all your lunch and newspaper-route money and they respect credentials.

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[-] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

The account of blue and black is worth reading:

Blue and black are the enemies of green, the color of tradition, which they see as complacent and passive. Black is more about taking and blue is more about optimizing, but both of them agree that green’s hands-off attitude is a silly hangup. Blue and black both agree on growth mindset — the idea that one is not defined by one’s origins or constrained to the role society has set. Blue/black characters are often intelligent, clever, arrogant, and aloof, and unimpressed with the way things have always been done — notable examples include Odysseus from The Odyssey, Sherlock Holmes, Lex Luthor, and Quirinus Quirrell from HPMOR.

A blue/black agent asks the question how can I best achieve my goals? It’s fair to describe the blue/black philosophy or attitude as belief in the value of “enlightened self-interest,” which is why it’s not surprising to find it overrepresented in communities like LessWrong and Silicon Valley, which see themselves as attempting to disrupt the status quo for the better. Transhumanism is a fundamentally blue-black worldview, in opposition to the green imperative to accept death as a crucial and inevitable part of life.

Odysseus got his entire crew killed, massacred most of his neighbours and housemaids, and was only saved by the intervention of Athena. Lex Luthor is a supervillain. Yud says that Profesor Quirrell was modeled on Robin Hanson the creepy Libertarian economist and Michael Vassar who two people say argues for sex between grown men and underage girls. So it is bad news that so many rats see Quirrell or "blue-black" as a model ("overrepresented in communities like LessWrong and Silicon Valley").

I would not recommend a therapist who identifies with this description like Sabien's and Yud's partner.

2024-Sabien claims that "I myself am green/blue with a strong splash of red, though I often find myself with goals and roles that lean white, such as running workshops or writing essays like this one." But his Dragon Army project and Anna Salamon's memories of early CFAR sound more like the above. Sabien also named a convention at Lighthaven after himself. As I said before, I think Bay Area rationalists read HPMOR and conclude that the thing to do is to set up their own smaller cult with their own crowd of disciples to manipulate.

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago

It's impressive how he manages to misread the characters of Dr. Manhattan, Han Solo and Sherlock Holmes.

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 3 points 2 days ago

I'm no fan of Myers-Briggs but at least that has some cultural cachet outside of extreme nerd circles. Or is MtG "mainstream"? Like, I'd say Star Wars fandom i mainstream in that they have been wildly succesful media franchises, and I'm kinda boggled the deckbuilder games like Slay The Spire have such huge player bases, but MtG seems to be its own little world.

[-] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I have not heard much of it since it ran though my school like lice in the 1990s (I am trying to find my old deck to sell), Zvi Mowshowitz made a living as a professional M:tG player but there are or were professional Starcraft players too. It birthed a family of collectible miniatures games and the whole CCG format.

this post was submitted on 10 May 2026
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