In the world of Dragon Ball Z, they have a room-size device (let's call it a form of sandbox) where they could go into, come out in five minutes having gained superior skills.

Unlike in The Matrix (where skills are uploaded), time within this sandbox is heavily distorted. Five minutes outside it is equivalent to many years inside it. Characters gained powers in five minutes because they have spent decades practicing inside the sandbox.

To the outside world, everything that happens inside the sandbox is sped up. That is the unreasonable effectiveness of rapid iteration.

There was a time when I practiced playing poker. Not because I enjoyed it, but because good poker players tend to overlap with good traders and investors.

I even read a book or two on poker.

All games are some form of sandbox. Game create fake worlds that are caricatures of what they intend to simulate. They then demand something of you to survive and thrive in this virtual world. But they allow you to live, die, repeat.

I only get to play poker at normal speed. Whatever I gained from it, it was inconsequential.

There is getting good at something, and there's getting to know something really well. They are not the same thing, only often confused as though they should be. Try look for economists who are extremely rich, then you'll get this point.

If getting good at something hinges on picking the right game, then everything falls on game-designs that draw the required qualities out of you.

Rather than reading bluffs over a poker table, I am better off learning to read the abstract market sentiments over price actions.

Only it should be done with speed. So I switched to using TradingView Bar Replay as a game to fake-trade.

It's possible that most knowledge is tacit. Of all knowledge that can be clearly expressed in words, very little of them is tacit. Think of tacit knowledge as the dark web of internet.

In the domain of tacit knowledge, practice trumps theory by a wide margin. It's largely a matter of language-failure. That explains why martial art languages are incredibly clumsy and nebulous.

Stopping to make sense after gaming is typically an afterthought. You may even say it's a luxury, of which the benefits are questionable depending on who is doing the thinking.

If you could design a virtual world where you gain the skill to be extremely happy (if you're a dopamine-chaser), how would you design it? Would it end up looking like TikTok?

What are the feedback mechanism? How would the player know if what he's doing does not work?

Sandboxing, virtual environment, level design, worldbuilding. The Venn diagram overlap tremendously. It's an under-studied art.

If you could design a game where you could gain the skill to be charismatic, how would you design it? What are the feedback mechanism?