Loved this quote from the book<p>“There is a contradiction here: If the prize for winning finite play is life, then the players are not properly alive. They are competing for life. Life, then, is not play, but the outcome of play. Finite players play to live; they do not live their playing. Life is therefore deserved, bestowed, possessed, won. It is not lived.” that was posted in this blog post recently <a href="https://www.youngmoney.co/p/infinite-games" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.youngmoney.co/p/infinite-games</a><p>For me the difference in what game you choose to play is a result of your mindset - are you seeing people you play with in life, or do you se objects/ obstacles that you have to win over.<p>That difference makes a huge difference in your behaviour, a person is treated with respect and love - an object is pushed, beaten, removed.<p>So, i ask myself, how would I like to treated, like a person or an object?
if there is one thing chatgpt has opened my eyes to,
it is that we live in a world teeming with BS. In particular, philosophical essays and books are full of it.<p>It seemingly makes sense, because, we contort the narrative
to squeeze meaning out of it. But a skeptical eye sees no
coherence.<p>For example, this passage:<p>"We grow, we heal, we are reborn.
Nothing is impossible. The galaxy is bursting with chaos-driven reactions. You and I are storytellers of the world."<p>Surely, all of us can squeeze meaning out of this passage, but it is actually produced by this BS generator: <a href="https://sebpearce.com/bullshit/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://sebpearce.com/bullshit/</a><p>If there is anything that should be taught in schools, it is the triumph of the reason in the forms of math/science thinking - over all the BS narratives that abound - only because, that kind of thinking is unnatural, whereas stream of consciousness BS comes naturally to us.
Haven't thought about this book in years. For anyone who might be confused- this is not a book about mathematical game theory. :) This book was kind of life-changing for me. I probably read it at about 13, and around the same time as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. But even at the time I was reading it I felt a bit conflicted. Almost like it's profound and deep at the same time as being full of nonsense. Would love to hear others thoughts on it
A related book (really a collection of essays / articles he previously wrote) I enjoy reading periodically is Infinite Baseball by Noë.<p>Noë is an analytic philosopher whose work deals largely with the nature of perception. He’s also a big baseball fan and has written quite a few articles for different sites on the intersection of the two. The first chapter describes how, in his view, baseball is really an infinite game.<p>Even if you are not a baseball fan, I think the book is an interesting read. A lot of his observations are not about the sport itself and therefore does not require detailed knowledge of the sport. Instead, they are musings on how we engage with the sport and what we get out of the sport, and those ideas can be generalized to many other activities.
One more comment as this is a tech website:<p>‘Meanwhile technologist Kevin Kelly praised it for "alter[ing] my thinking about life, the universe, and everything."’<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_and_Infinite_Games" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_and_Infinite_Games</a>
Love this ‘self-help’ book to reframe where you might need to compete for profit or where it can be competitive/play for fun.<p>But more importantly to interpret the competitive behavior of others and identify where its not even necessary to compete at all. Because you can choose to play a different level of game than those around you. (Hint: its usually people playing too small finite win/lose games that you’d like to not engage with wherever possible)