Shakespeare and Dataism

If perfect knowledge is the theoretical endpoint of human understanding—an omniscient, frictionless clarity—then perhaps its inverse, incomplete information, is the essential condition of drama, comedy, and life itself.

Consider Shakespeare. Nearly every one of his plots hinges on someone not knowing something: Viola disguising herself as a man, Iago's manipulation of Othello through misperception, letters lost or forged, twins mistaken for each other. The comedy and tragedy alike arise from gaps—of knowledge, of identity, of intention. To a God-like observer, nothing surprising happens in Twelfth Night. But to its players, the unknown is everything.

This tension between what is known and what cannot be known isn't just theatrical, it's fun! In Sam Sorensen's game Cataphracts, a wargame simulating Byzantine campaigns, you can see how the real drama lies not in combat mechanics but in the fog of war—supply chains faltering, orders misunderstood, messengers ambushed. The challenge isn't what to do, but whether your intention will survive the distance between thought and action.

Dataism tends to frame complete information as some oerfect state, and income knowledge as a bug to be fixed. But these examples indicate it might be a little dull knowing everything.