This can lead to the paradoxical phenomenon of a party becoming increasingly successful while simultaneously inflicting negative outcomes to the majority of their supporters; or of "players" deliberately abandoning accurate sources of objective information about their current and future "game state", in favor of sources controlled by other players that are designed to offer narratives about those states that are factually inaccurate to the point of being detrimental as guidance, but nevertheless provide emotional payoffs such as a sense of identity, comfort, or being on a "winning" side.

Tao undervalues the importance of identity. As he says, it's not a single-player game, and as we all know, players will form teams. If you can convince your opponents to instead play solo (by, say, deconstructing their sense of identity), while you keep yours, you've basically won.