When I went to college for Electrical Engineering, they put all the engineers in an Engineering 101 course our freshman year. It was meant to give us a taste of what we’d be getting ourselves into.

The goal, we were told, was to build a hovercraft that would navigate an obstacle course. We had access to all the equipment we’d need - stiff pieces of foam for the body, fans, micro-controllers, batteries, etc.

But then there was a list of rules, not for the competition, but for how we were allowed to build our robot. I remember two of them.

The first was that we had to use Nickel-Metal-Hydride batteries instead of Lithium-Ion batteries, even though the latter had a better energy-to-weight ratio, which really matters when you’re trying to make something hover.

The second was that we had to put these plastic grates over our fans, even though doing so reduced the airflow and thus the thrust.

We all looked at these rules, and I remember asking the TA why they were there.

I bet you can guess.

See, apparently some dumbass stuck their finger in the fan in a previous year and nearly chopped it off, so [...]

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Outline:

(02:55) Playing Whack-A-Mole

(04:01) Adversarial Games

(04:23) Example 1: The US Tax Code

(07:22) Example 1.5: (Case Study) The Alternative Minimum Tax

(12:26) Example 2: Banking Regulation

(14:39) Example 3: The DEA and the Controlled Substances Act

(17:07) The Metaphor(s)

(18:36) Dont Hate The Player, Fault The Designer For Making A Bad Game

(20:15) The Nature of the Game

(21:09) Changing The Game

(21:31) Example 1: LVT instead of Income Tax

(23:56) Example 2: Banking

(27:04) Example 3: The DEA and the Controlled Substances Act

(29:01) Whack-A-Mole Leads to Bureaucracy and Sclerotic Government

(30:54) Refactoring as the Anti-Whack-A-Mole

(32:06) Conclusion

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First published:
February 26th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QAB3BEDRziBerNAih/whack-a-mole-is-not-a-winnable-game

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Whoever designed this mole-art clearly didn’t know a lot about moles.

I wonder what happened in the 1940s- oh right.

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“Whack-a-Mole is Not a Winnable Game” by Sable

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Whack-a-Mole is Not a Winnable Game” by Sable