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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. You know, Joe.

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Speaker 1: I bring up the books of Ian M. Banks a

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Speaker 1: lot on the podcast um and and and generally, because

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Speaker 1: you know, these are really good books that that tie

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Speaker 1: on a number of different uh uh, sci fi, psychological,

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Speaker 1: you name it topics. They're they're they're rich with stuff

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Speaker 1: to blow your mind content. Can I confess that I've

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Speaker 1: considered reading them but have actually been hesitant because I

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Speaker 1: want you to be able to keep explaining m banks

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Speaker 1: books to me with me actually not knowing them in advance. Okay, well,

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Speaker 1: then hopefully that's what's gonna happen right now. Because as

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Speaker 1: we were researching the topic for today, I was reminded

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Speaker 1: of his nine book, The Player of Games. Okay, so

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Speaker 1: this is a book that concerns the culture, which is

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Speaker 1: of course an instellar, interstellar post scarcity civilization in which

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Speaker 1: AI minds do all or most of the heavy lifting

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Speaker 1: and humans live in a kind of uh uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: utopian anarchy. Okay, so this is not the book that

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Speaker 1: Tron was based on No No, but but it is

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Speaker 1: a wonderful treatment of games. Now, the people in the culture,

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Speaker 1: they don't really have to do much beyond just enjoy life,

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Speaker 1: and our protagonist in this particular book, Gurga does this

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Speaker 1: by playing in and excelling at a multitude of card

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Speaker 1: and board games and other related games. Yeah. So this

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Speaker 1: is often the positive vision of the sort of post

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Speaker 1: singularity future, right most A lot of the visions that

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Speaker 1: you get in science fiction are very negative, I guess

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Speaker 1: because negative plots are more interesting to play with. But

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Speaker 1: so this says, basically, you know, once humans aren't really

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Speaker 1: needed to create the wealth that sustained society anymore, you

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Speaker 1: can actually just do what you want. You can be creative,

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Speaker 1: you can have fun, and that's what life is. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and uh or am I off base? Is that not

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Speaker 1: how it is? Um in the culture? It is, but

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Speaker 1: with lots of dark caveats Okay. Now, some members of

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Speaker 1: the culture choose to involve themselves in matters of greater importance,

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Speaker 1: such as service in Special Circumstances, which deals with pending

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Speaker 1: and emergent threats to the culture uh and general interplanetary stability,

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Speaker 1: and they recruit Gurga and send him to the Empire

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Speaker 1: of Azad uh to to master and play the game

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Speaker 1: of Azad, which is a complex game that consists of

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Speaker 1: various sub games that serves as the basic system of

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Speaker 1: all political and social order in the Empire of Azad. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So what is is it? What like a big board

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Speaker 1: game or something. It's it's like a board game built

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Speaker 1: out of board games. It's a kind of like imagine

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Speaker 1: a board game that is just the center of all culture. Like,

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Speaker 1: I guess it's kind of hard to to to pick

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Speaker 1: out something like imagine if the Bible in say medieval Europe,

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Speaker 1: if the Bible were a board game instead, if it

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Speaker 1: was like Settlers of Ghatan instead of the Bible at

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Speaker 1: the center of this, uh, this sort of Catholic world.

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Speaker 1: And on top of that, it was not just settlers

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Speaker 1: of Gatton, but are ridiculously complex settlers. Do you have

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Speaker 1: to devote your entire life to playing it? So a

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Speaker 1: labyrinthine game that contains pronouncements of authority that is intermingled

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Speaker 1: with government. Yes, And so they want they apparently need

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Speaker 1: to send him there because they want to disrupt as

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Speaker 1: odd and topple its current systems and bring about something

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Speaker 1: more in line with culture values. Uh and and also

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Speaker 1: because the the the the empire of his they also

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Speaker 1: are a very brutal people given to spectacles of fatal violence.

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Speaker 1: So it's a great book and one I always recommend

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Speaker 1: as a starting point for the culture and banks in general.

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Speaker 1: But isn't it interesting how we see the mixture of

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Speaker 1: different games here. So we see the contained and restricted

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Speaker 1: board and card games within Gurga's life, so those are

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Speaker 1: like normal games. We see the open ended game of

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Speaker 1: Gurga's life, in which he essentially tries to fill a

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Speaker 1: lengthy trans human lifetime with pleasure and meaning. We have

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Speaker 1: the complex but ultimately contained game of add we have

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Speaker 1: the intricate game of special circumstances, various plots and operations.

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Speaker 1: We have the greater game that's played by these minds

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Speaker 1: that are operating, you know, on scales beyond anything human

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Speaker 1: intelligence can can really comprehend. And then we have the

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Speaker 1: looming possibility of the game of interplanetary war. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: interesting the way games so readily serve as metaphors for

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Speaker 1: almost any kind of human endeavor or for life itself. Right,

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Speaker 1: A game, in its more narrow definition tends to be

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Speaker 1: a thing with rules that is done for recreation or

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Speaker 1: for fun. And yet you can clearly see how that

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Speaker 1: concept of a game gets mapped onto essentially anything humans do.

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Speaker 1: Whatever you're doing right now, in one way or another,

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Speaker 1: can be thought of as a game. I'm just gonna

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Speaker 1: read one quick quote from from the player of games,

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Speaker 1: just to give everyone a taste. This is the story

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Speaker 1: of a man who went far away for a long

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Speaker 1: time just to play a game. The man is a

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Speaker 1: game player called Gurga. The story starts with a battle

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Speaker 1: that is not a battle and ends with a game

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Speaker 1: that is not a game. And you have to read

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Speaker 1: the book to get the rest. But but I, like

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Speaker 1: I said, I couldn't help but think of this book

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Speaker 1: in uh in comparison to the topic we're discussing today. Right,

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Speaker 1: So today we're gonna be talking about an interesting little

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Speaker 1: philosophy book that I read within the past couple of

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Speaker 1: weeks by an American scholar named James P. Cars, who

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Speaker 1: for more than thirty years was a professor of the

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Speaker 1: history and literature of religion at New York University. Now,

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Speaker 1: this book isn't directly about religion, though it addresses religion,

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Speaker 1: and some of its parts it's it's a short, little

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Speaker 1: philosophy book, and it's called Finite and Infinite Games, a

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Speaker 1: vision of Life as Play and Possibility, and it was

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Speaker 1: published in nineteen eighty six from Free Press. Now, over

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Speaker 1: the years, I've read several writers and thinkers who I

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Speaker 1: admire in one way or another mentioned this book as

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Speaker 1: influential on their thinking, and I recently decided to check

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Speaker 1: it out. And ever since I started reading it, I

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Speaker 1: have been captivated by the idea at the core of

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Speaker 1: this book. And really, the idea is just a very

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Speaker 1: interesting metaphor. It's not a scientific book. It's not a

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Speaker 1: book really I think that is necessary for explaining anything

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Speaker 1: important about how things are. But it's a very interesting

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Speaker 1: metaphorical framework for how to look at the behavior of

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Speaker 1: beings like you and me using this metaphor of play, right,

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Speaker 1: And I also want to drive home that it's it's

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Speaker 1: not it's it's rather different from a lot of the

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Speaker 1: books we've discussed on the show because it's not filled

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Speaker 1: with a bunch of, you know, descriptions of various histories

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Speaker 1: or mythologies or other philosophical topics. It's a very it's

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Speaker 1: a very easily consumed book. Um, I don't want to criticism.

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Speaker 1: I don't. I don't want to relegate it to the bathroom.

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Speaker 1: But this is a book that you could keep in

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Speaker 1: the bathrooms. It's very much a casual read. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: you you can pick up any part of it, any

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Speaker 1: page of it. Usually there will be a short section

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Speaker 1: that you could read that that will, you know, make

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Speaker 1: you think about things. That's kind of interesting and provocative.

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Speaker 1: If it were kept by a toilet, I would call

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Speaker 1: it a butt number. You know the button numbers, button

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Speaker 1: number books. No, I've never heard this terminol. They're the

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Speaker 1: ones that if you keep them by the toilet, they're

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Speaker 1: going to keep people on the toilet a little bit

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Speaker 1: too long because you'd get interested interesting. I've I've never

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Speaker 1: heard them described as such. I might have made that up.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I can't remember if I got that

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Speaker 1: from the culture or from my own brain. Well, now

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Speaker 1: it's out there so everyone can use it. Okay, So

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Speaker 1: what is this this core idea that James P. Cars

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Speaker 1: talks about in his book. The main idea is that

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Speaker 1: when we do things, we're playing, and the things we

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Speaker 1: do are games. And Cars's main move in this book

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Speaker 1: is to separate the games we play into two major types,

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Speaker 1: finite and infinite. It's there in the title Finite and

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Speaker 1: infinite Games. And to quote from the opening of the book, quote,

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Speaker 1: there are at least two kinds of games. One could

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Speaker 1: be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is

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Speaker 1: played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for

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Speaker 1: the purpose of continuing the play. Okay, In fact, I

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Speaker 1: could say that you could skip reading the rest of

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Speaker 1: the book and just contemplate that sentence and get a

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Speaker 1: lot of the same value. For instance, one example that

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Speaker 1: probably comes to a lot of people's minds is that

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Speaker 1: it's perhaps the difference between playing tennis and keeping score

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Speaker 1: and just batting the ball around, right. I mean, that

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Speaker 1: could potentially be a good example where one is played

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Speaker 1: with a finite definite outcome in mind, where the other

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Speaker 1: is played to see how long play can go on. Well,

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Speaker 1: let's get into a little bit. Let's flesh out the

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Speaker 1: core concept here. Let's look at a few of the

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Speaker 1: characteristics that Car slays out that that he thinks go

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Speaker 1: along with the difference between a finite game and an

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Speaker 1: infinite game. So, what are the characteristics of finite and

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Speaker 1: infinite games in cars? Is mine, alright. So a finite

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Speaker 1: game must come to an end when a player or

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Speaker 1: a group of players win. Now, what constitutes winning might

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Speaker 1: be spelled out in some set of external rules or

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Speaker 1: or you know, it depends on the judgment of a referee.

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Speaker 1: But ultimately the only thing that can decide whether the

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Speaker 1: game has been one is the players agreeing that, hey,

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Speaker 1: the game is over in this person one or this

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Speaker 1: team one. Right. So if the players don't agree the

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Speaker 1: game is over in practice, it is in fact not

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Speaker 1: over right, It ain't over yet. And if the players

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Speaker 1: agree the game is over in practice, they can't continue

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Speaker 1: playing sort of by definition, maybe they could continue some activity,

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Speaker 1: but they're no longer really playing the same game they

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Speaker 1: were if they all think it's over, right. And then

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Speaker 1: also there are temporal boundaries in place here. Time matters.

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Speaker 1: Do you know when your game began? Do you care?

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Speaker 1: If your answers are yes, then your game is finite.

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Speaker 1: And then, of course the game again is over is

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Speaker 1: if someone wins, right. And by contrast, the purpose of

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Speaker 1: an infinite game is not to win, but to prevent

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Speaker 1: the game from coming to an end. And thus there

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Speaker 1: really is no decisive way to win except maybe by

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Speaker 1: indefinitely continuing play. Yes, and he says, quote, there is

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Speaker 1: no finite game unless the players freely choose to play it.

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Speaker 1: No one can play who is forced to play. Now.

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Speaker 1: One of the things he talks about with a finite

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Speaker 1: game is that finite games need to have players agree

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Speaker 1: on the rules before play starts. Right. If you've not

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Speaker 1: agreed on the rules and advance, or players try to

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Speaker 1: change the rules after play begins, the legitimacy of the

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Speaker 1: outcome could be in danger. Players might not accept the outcome,

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Speaker 1: they might not accept the winner. But by contrast, infinite games,

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Speaker 1: by necessity, tend to evolve over time. Sometimes you change

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Speaker 1: the rules, the teams, the players, the play space so

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Speaker 1: that play can continue and can get around obstacles that

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Speaker 1: would impede play. Cars Wrights quote, Finite players play within boundaries.

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Speaker 1: Infinite players play with boundaries, and finite games encourage players

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Speaker 1: to create predictability and discourage surprise. So in an infinite game,

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Speaker 1: usually the very purpose is to be surprised. Right, Because

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Speaker 1: if you're playing a finite game, you want to win.

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Speaker 1: What gets in the way of you winning, you not

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Speaker 1: expecting what comes next, right, Right, You want to control

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Speaker 1: the conditions of the game when you're trying to win.

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Speaker 1: When you're playing an infinite game where the purpose is

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Speaker 1: not to bring it to an end but to let

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Speaker 1: it go on forever, you always want there there to

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Speaker 1: be the potential for variation, right, Yeah, it's I think

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Speaker 1: about role playing games a lot with this, Like playing

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Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons. It's not a situation where the players

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Speaker 1: are necessarily playing against each other, though there are games

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Speaker 1: that play out like that. It should not be, in

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Speaker 1: my opinion, a situation where the dungeon master is playing

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Speaker 1: against the players. Uh. Instead, it should be, in my mind, uh,

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Speaker 1: a collective storytelling effort by the players and the dungeon master.

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Speaker 1: And therefore it's not about which which a choice or

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Speaker 1: which which role of the dice is going to her

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Speaker 1: the other side the most. It's about what is going

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Speaker 1: to create the most engaging situation. I want to come

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Speaker 1: back to your D and D example in a bit,

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Speaker 1: because that goes along with something I think I've observed

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Speaker 1: when when I've been thinking about finite and infinite games.

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Speaker 1: One more characteristic I want to mention before I move

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Speaker 1: on to an example is that car says finite games

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Speaker 1: tend to engender an attitude of seriousness, focus, and single

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Speaker 1: mindedness within the players. Meanwhile, infinite games tend to encourage

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Speaker 1: a spirit of playfulness, exploration, and curiosity. Quote whoever must

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Speaker 1: play cannot play well. That, of course, he says, applies

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Speaker 1: to both types of games. Right. You might not like

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Speaker 1: the fact that you say, have to earn money to

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Speaker 1: make a living, or have to eat in order to survive,

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Speaker 1: but you must agree to play that game or you're

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Speaker 1: not playing. Now, before we consider dungeons and dragons or

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Speaker 1: dungeons and dragons at gunpoint any further, we should probably

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Speaker 1: turn to a more you know, classically established a game

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Speaker 1: as a model for this for this subject. Sure well.

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Speaker 1: To understand the simplest version of the difference I think

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Speaker 1: between a finite game in an infinite game, consider a

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Speaker 1: game of chess versus the game of chess. So, in

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Speaker 1: a single game of chess, a player's goal is to

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Speaker 1: defeat her opponent and become the winner. The game of

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Speaker 1: chess doesn't have a set number of players who play

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Speaker 1: against each other and want to win over another. It's

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Speaker 1: it's an abstract space that allows individual games to keep

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Speaker 1: on happening within it. It goes on forever. It could

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Speaker 1: have infinitely many finite games within it. You can win

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Speaker 1: a game of chess, but you can't win the game

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Speaker 1: of chess. It exists, so people can keep playing it now.

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Speaker 1: I just want to throw in a couple of quick

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Speaker 1: facts from a two thousand ten Popular Science article by

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Speaker 1: Natalie Wolchover, in which she quotes computer scientists Jonathan Schaefer,

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Speaker 1: who points out that quote, the possible number of chess

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Speaker 1: games is so huge that no one will ever invest

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Speaker 1: the effort to calculate the exact number. Uh And in

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Speaker 1: the article, she also points out that while there are

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Speaker 1: only so many opening moves a player can make, the

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Speaker 1: possibilities just quickly spiral out of control with each subsequent move.

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Speaker 1: So in a sense, there are almost an infinite I guess,

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Speaker 1: maybe not an actually infinite, but but a seemingly infinite

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Speaker 1: number of chess games that could be played. But even

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Speaker 1: that doesn't in fact matter, because you could say that

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Speaker 1: tic tac toe, which has a much smaller number of

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Speaker 1: possible games, is in a sense an infinite game. If

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Speaker 1: you're talking about the game of tic tac toes, you

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Speaker 1: can't win the game. You could win a game that

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Speaker 1: you play against somebody. Right. In fact, there's there's no

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Speaker 1: excuse not to win a game tec if you play first. Now,

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Speaker 1: wait a minute, I can't remember what is that solved

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Speaker 1: in the first player? Can always win at tic tac toe?

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Speaker 1: Or can you always force a draw? I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Playing against a child really kind of screws things up

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Speaker 1: for me because I've had to throw games of Tic

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Speaker 1: Tac toe, uh, to the point where I don't remember

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Speaker 1: how it really works because I'm trying to win the

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Speaker 1: infinite game of parenting. But that's a that's a bad strategy.

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Speaker 1: You need to teach him the pain of losing. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: but I want to do that with games that are fun. Well,

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Speaker 1: maybe we should take a quick break and then when

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Speaker 1: we come back, we can talk a little bit more

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Speaker 1: about why we think this idea of finite and infinite

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Speaker 1: games is interesting and and some more ways that can

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Speaker 1: be applied. Alright, we're back, So let's let's get do

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Speaker 1: some some more examples here. What are some examples of

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Speaker 1: finite games? Okay, well, we're totally surrounded by finite games

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Speaker 1: and we're just you know, they make up the bulk

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Speaker 1: of everyday endeavor right, competition among co workers for a

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Speaker 1: single available promotion or among job candidates for a single

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Speaker 1: position at a company. That's a finite game, right, You

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Speaker 1: there's an end that you want to win. You want

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Speaker 1: to be the person who gets that position, and you're

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Speaker 1: competing for it. Another example would be an actual game,

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Speaker 1: like a game of football. You're you're trying to win

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Speaker 1: the game. Yeah, and it has a it has a

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Speaker 1: time even though times. See I don't know much about football,

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Speaker 1: but it does seem like time works differently in football

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Speaker 1: because the the time on the ticker there does not

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Speaker 1: equal the the exact uh length of the game. Well,

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Speaker 1: whatever the length is, there are boundaries. I mean, you

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Speaker 1: could have a game that doesn't have a necessary time

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Speaker 1: limit on it, but it starts at a certain time

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Speaker 1: and you know how the ending is decided, right. I'm

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Speaker 1: not sure what happens in football if you don't have

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Speaker 1: a winner, Like if you're just tied and you just

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Speaker 1: keep going and you can't win, do they do they

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Speaker 1: just call it a draw? Or do they play until

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Speaker 1: somebody wins? Oh? Yeah, because you have other games where

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Speaker 1: you have sudden death over times or a draw is

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Speaker 1: is permittable? I I am not sure we're showing how

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Speaker 1: cool we are here knowing all about football. Well, our

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Speaker 1: football fan listeners will have to chime in. Okay. So

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Speaker 1: another clearly finite game would be a chase, an individual

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Speaker 1: chase between predator and prey. Right there, there is somehow

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Speaker 1: going to be a decisive conclusion. Either the predator might

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Speaker 1: get a meal and the prey will die, or maybe

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Speaker 1: the prey will escape and survive and the predator will

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Speaker 1: lose and go hungry, and then there can be all

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Speaker 1: kinds of sort of ranked intermediate outcomes, but there will

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Speaker 1: be an outcome, right yeah. And that's the one thing

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Speaker 1: that's important keep in mind with the infinite versus finite

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Speaker 1: games is you can kind of nitpick a lot of these.

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Speaker 1: You can say, well, well, you know what if they

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Speaker 1: both the predator and prey both die, that's finite. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean it's it's still finite. But but yeah, you

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Speaker 1: have to the mind can help. But I said, I

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Speaker 1: think pick at the distinction of finite and infinite, and

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Speaker 1: you can kind of go down a rabbit hole with

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Speaker 1: any of these examples. In addition to predator and prey competition,

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Speaker 1: of course, the other great competition of the natural world

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Speaker 1: is mating. Oh sure, this is a finite game though

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Speaker 1: mating and I would say mating and procreation itself is

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Speaker 1: an infinite game, right It doesn't have a finite outcome.

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Speaker 1: Reproduction is something that seems to be designed to go

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Speaker 1: on as long as it can and just keep the

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Speaker 1: game going. But say in a more finite contest between

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Speaker 1: two stags fighting for the right to mate with a

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Speaker 1: female in the area, there is a winner and a loser.

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Speaker 1: The winner gets to mate. There's no way to win

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Speaker 1: the game of reproduction. On the other hand, it's played

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Speaker 1: so that play may continue indefinitely down the generations. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but but but in terms of the actual encounter, Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's gonna end. Attenborough is going to tell you when

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Speaker 1: it's over, and then you're gonna go to the next

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Speaker 1: segment on the Nature documentary. Now, you actually pointed out

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Speaker 1: something interesting about how it can get weird when you

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Speaker 1: you think a game is one type, but then you

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Speaker 1: can nitpick about ways that it could be the other type.

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Speaker 1: One thing is that wars very often get presented as

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Speaker 1: a finite game. Right there, there is a goal to achieve,

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Speaker 1: we will win over the enemy. But it's interesting to

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Speaker 1: consider the idea of war as an infinite game, as

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Speaker 1: imagined by George Orwell in ninety four. You know, in

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Speaker 1: Orwell's Dystopia, in that novel, war is not fought for

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Speaker 1: the purpose of ultimately winning over the enemy and achieving

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Speaker 1: some finite goal. The purpose of war, you know, it's

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Speaker 1: not like to control territory for the long haul. In

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Speaker 1: the end, it is to be continuously at war, to

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Speaker 1: fight continuously for political purposes. And in this circumstance, the

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Speaker 1: purpose of war is not to win, but to be

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Speaker 1: at war. And in the sense this makes war an

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Speaker 1: infinite game. Of course, you know, many critics have argued

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Speaker 1: that there are elements of this in the rationale for

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Speaker 1: some real wars taking place in the real world. Now.

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Speaker 1: I've seen this example brought up before, specifically by motivational

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Speaker 1: speaker A Simon Cynic, who used the Vietnam War as

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Speaker 1: an example of of an infinite war. But but I

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Speaker 1: kind of want to go with a different, broader example,

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Speaker 1: just to to lay it out. So in any story

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Speaker 1: that pits besiegers against the besieged, and you know, in

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Speaker 1: terms of like an army that is besieging a fortress, Uh,

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Speaker 1: there are two games at play, So you can argue

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Speaker 1: that the besiegers and attackers are playing a finite game.

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Speaker 1: They are playing to take the castle. Their game ends

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Speaker 1: when they actually conquer Troy or gond Or or gall

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Speaker 1: got Rath. But the besiegers that offenders, their game is

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Speaker 1: more infinite. Their game is survival, so they don't have

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Speaker 1: to conquer their enemy, they just have to avoid being conquered.

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Speaker 1: They have to survive. Well, yeah, that's interesting, because Cars

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Speaker 1: ultimately says, though I think this sort of undercut some

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Speaker 1: of the interesting parts of his metaphor. He says in

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Speaker 1: the very last chapter of his book, there is but

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Speaker 1: one infinite game. So therefore he's implying that life itself

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Speaker 1: really is the infinite game, and the things within it

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Speaker 1: are the finite games. But I think it's useful to

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Speaker 1: imagine the other types of infinite games there can be

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Speaker 1: within life. But of course, the way you point out there,

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Speaker 1: there's sort of like levels that a finite game can

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Speaker 1: be close or distant from the infinite game. The the

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Speaker 1: attackers on a city are playing a finite game to

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Speaker 1: achieve a finite goal, and for the people within the city,

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Speaker 1: what's at risk in the finite game of defending the

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Speaker 1: city is ultimately the viability of the infinite game of

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Speaker 1: getting to continue living. Yeah, if you, if you really

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Speaker 1: sort of pick it apart enough, you can you can

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Speaker 1: bring a lot of these games back to the infinite

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Speaker 1: game of survival. So we discussed the game of war.

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Speaker 1: But how about one of the other great games that

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Speaker 1: is continually covered by the media, the game of politics. Well, sure,

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Speaker 1: I mean there are ways of thinking about politics as

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Speaker 1: a finite game or as an infinite game. There are

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Speaker 1: lots of obviously finite games within politics, like an election,

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Speaker 1: you know, as a clear outcome there's a winner and

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Speaker 1: you're trying to win, or an attempt to pass a bill. Uh,

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Speaker 1: these have finite win loss outcomes. But the entire political

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Speaker 1: structure itself should be designed primarily to allow the continued

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Speaker 1: existence and evolution of a civil society. You've got people

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Speaker 1: and they want to live, and the goal of of

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Speaker 1: a politics should be allow them to allow them to

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Speaker 1: live and allow play to continue. But sometimes, of course,

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Speaker 1: you get political actors who seem to lose sight of

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Speaker 1: the infinite nature of the game, right, and that they

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Speaker 1: have a kind of more finite total orientation towards politics.

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Speaker 1: It's almost like you can win the game of politics.

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Speaker 1: And I guarantee no matter where you are listening to

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Speaker 1: this episode, you're gonna be able to find examples of

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Speaker 1: that in your own political sphere. Yeah, I mean when

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Speaker 1: we see it, that's like one of the most troubling

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Speaker 1: and distasteful things we tend to see in politics, right

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Speaker 1: when you see somebody who's who doesn't seem to have

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Speaker 1: a an infinite view of what the future of their

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Speaker 1: political system could be, but almost like they want to

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Speaker 1: conquer it as a single act with an end goal. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Though I will say on the buffet of distasteful things

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Speaker 1: about politics that that does cover a number of the

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Speaker 1: different steamer trays that are available. Yeah, that's the whole

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Speaker 1: seafood section. On the other hand, it's you think about

431
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:44,280
Speaker 1: the infinite game, and you think about how you interact

432
00:22:44,280 --> 00:22:46,200
Speaker 1: with the infinite game, and a lot of that does

433
00:22:46,280 --> 00:22:49,720
Speaker 1: come down to breaking it up into finite games. Right. So,

434
00:22:49,880 --> 00:22:51,960
Speaker 1: and even with politics, it can you can see where

435
00:22:51,960 --> 00:22:53,960
Speaker 1: it can happen where it's a situation of like, well,

436
00:22:54,040 --> 00:22:56,919
Speaker 1: yes I want ultimately I want this, but in the

437
00:22:56,960 --> 00:22:59,639
Speaker 1: short term, I need to get this bill passed and

438
00:22:59,680 --> 00:23:02,080
Speaker 1: may and getting that bill passed is a part of

439
00:23:02,080 --> 00:23:06,440
Speaker 1: the infinite game, but it is a finite battle, and yeah,

440
00:23:06,760 --> 00:23:08,399
Speaker 1: I guess it comes down to you lose sight of

441
00:23:08,440 --> 00:23:11,359
Speaker 1: the infinite in pursuing the finite. This is where I

442
00:23:11,359 --> 00:23:12,960
Speaker 1: want to come back to your D and D example.

443
00:23:13,520 --> 00:23:15,160
Speaker 1: So I think this is true about what I'm about

444
00:23:15,200 --> 00:23:16,800
Speaker 1: to say. I think it's true about politics, but I

445
00:23:16,800 --> 00:23:18,760
Speaker 1: think it's true about all kinds of things, and I'm

446
00:23:18,760 --> 00:23:21,240
Speaker 1: sure it's going to be somewhat relevant to your D

447
00:23:21,320 --> 00:23:24,560
Speaker 1: n D example. One of the things I keep thinking

448
00:23:24,600 --> 00:23:28,160
Speaker 1: about ever since I started reading cars is how so

449
00:23:28,240 --> 00:23:32,800
Speaker 1: much of our frustration with other people in life comes

450
00:23:32,840 --> 00:23:35,280
Speaker 1: as a result of our belief that other people are

451
00:23:35,320 --> 00:23:39,600
Speaker 1: not playing a game under its correct finite versus infinite distinction.

452
00:23:40,480 --> 00:23:43,240
Speaker 1: And so when you're trying to play a finite game

453
00:23:43,480 --> 00:23:46,760
Speaker 1: and other people engaged in the same activity or treating

454
00:23:46,800 --> 00:23:50,280
Speaker 1: it as an infinite game, it can feel very annoying

455
00:23:50,400 --> 00:23:53,800
Speaker 1: and tedious and pointless and frustrating. Right You're like, I'm

456
00:23:53,840 --> 00:23:56,280
Speaker 1: trying to get this done, I'm trying to get this outcome,

457
00:23:56,640 --> 00:23:59,320
Speaker 1: and other people around me are just playing around as

458
00:23:59,359 --> 00:24:02,560
Speaker 1: if they don't want to get to the point. And

459
00:24:02,560 --> 00:24:04,400
Speaker 1: then on the other hand, when you're trying to play

460
00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:07,320
Speaker 1: an infinite game and other players around you are treating

461
00:24:07,320 --> 00:24:10,399
Speaker 1: it like a finite game, it can feel cruel and

462
00:24:10,520 --> 00:24:14,200
Speaker 1: hopeless and depressing and unfair. And there are all kinds

463
00:24:14,240 --> 00:24:16,960
Speaker 1: of games that are gonna have mixed players within them, right,

464
00:24:17,040 --> 00:24:20,080
Speaker 1: some people treating a certain type of play space is

465
00:24:20,119 --> 00:24:23,439
Speaker 1: finite and other people treating it as more infinite. And

466
00:24:23,480 --> 00:24:26,240
Speaker 1: I bet you get that kind of conflict within a

467
00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:28,400
Speaker 1: D and D game, right, You've got some people there

468
00:24:28,560 --> 00:24:30,800
Speaker 1: who would be happy for the campaign to just go

469
00:24:30,920 --> 00:24:34,639
Speaker 1: on and evolve forever and just continue being fun, versus

470
00:24:34,640 --> 00:24:38,240
Speaker 1: other people who are very goal and outcome oriented within

471
00:24:38,359 --> 00:24:41,600
Speaker 1: the game. Would you agree, Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, luckily,

472
00:24:41,680 --> 00:24:43,840
Speaker 1: I think a game like Dungeons and Dragons tends it

473
00:24:43,920 --> 00:24:46,560
Speaker 1: has stuff in it for for both types of players,

474
00:24:47,600 --> 00:24:49,679
Speaker 1: Because on one hand, some may say, yeah, I just

475
00:24:49,760 --> 00:24:51,320
Speaker 1: I want to finish the story. I want to finish

476
00:24:51,320 --> 00:24:53,359
Speaker 1: this campaign. I want to I want to beat the

477
00:24:53,440 --> 00:24:57,159
Speaker 1: game like it's a typical video game, or they might

478
00:24:57,320 --> 00:24:59,800
Speaker 1: they're they're they're thinking about leveling up. I want to

479
00:24:59,840 --> 00:25:02,360
Speaker 1: get to that next level because then I get more

480
00:25:02,600 --> 00:25:05,119
Speaker 1: more powers, more stats, you know, what have you? Or

481
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:07,160
Speaker 1: I want to get more loot, So you can think

482
00:25:07,160 --> 00:25:09,919
Speaker 1: of all these sort of finite levels within what is

483
00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:14,560
Speaker 1: ultimately in an infinite game. It's about the the storytelling

484
00:25:14,600 --> 00:25:18,239
Speaker 1: and the experience and the possibilities within this, uh, this,

485
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:21,359
Speaker 1: this mutually created world. Though. That highlights to me in

486
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:27,160
Speaker 1: an interesting way, the differences between finite and infinite storytelling. Um,

487
00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:29,359
Speaker 1: I mean, they're there are very different ways that you

488
00:25:29,400 --> 00:25:32,160
Speaker 1: can approach telling a story. Do you ever think about

489
00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:34,520
Speaker 1: how different it feels to be in the hands of, say,

490
00:25:34,680 --> 00:25:38,840
Speaker 1: a well written movie that has a tight plot, you know,

491
00:25:38,960 --> 00:25:43,159
Speaker 1: well well conceived story structure, versus being in one of

492
00:25:43,200 --> 00:25:47,639
Speaker 1: the opening seasons of a TV show where you're you know,

493
00:25:47,720 --> 00:25:49,640
Speaker 1: you're in one of those first couple of seasons and

494
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:52,480
Speaker 1: the writers very likely do not know how the show

495
00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:55,400
Speaker 1: is going to end yet. Um I mean, we must assume,

496
00:25:55,440 --> 00:25:57,840
Speaker 1: based on the laws of physics and of economics, that

497
00:25:57,920 --> 00:25:59,640
Speaker 1: at some point the show will come to an end,

498
00:25:59,840 --> 00:26:02,359
Speaker 1: but it's not being written that way yet. It's just

499
00:26:02,520 --> 00:26:06,040
Speaker 1: going on and expanding, and that can feel very different

500
00:26:06,119 --> 00:26:09,280
Speaker 1: and almost more enticing in a way, because it feels

501
00:26:09,359 --> 00:26:12,120
Speaker 1: like it feels more like life itself, like this could

502
00:26:12,200 --> 00:26:15,160
Speaker 1: just go on. Yeah, I mean I feel that definitely

503
00:26:15,200 --> 00:26:18,000
Speaker 1: with the game of their own series right now, because

504
00:26:18,040 --> 00:26:21,640
Speaker 1: the the earlier books and earlier seasons, everything everything is possible.

505
00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:23,320
Speaker 1: You don't know where it's going. But at this point

506
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:26,480
Speaker 1: in the in the TV series at any rate, it's

507
00:26:26,480 --> 00:26:29,880
Speaker 1: become very finite, Like you know, everything is wrapping up

508
00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:32,400
Speaker 1: in a set number of episodes, and there's so there's

509
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:34,480
Speaker 1: only so there are only so many battles that can happen,

510
00:26:34,720 --> 00:26:37,399
Speaker 1: there are only so many shocking twists that can occur.

511
00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:40,200
Speaker 1: You know. I couldn't help but think about Fallout four

512
00:26:40,280 --> 00:26:41,919
Speaker 1: in all of this, I can't. I can't recall if

513
00:26:41,920 --> 00:26:45,520
Speaker 1: you played the Fallout games before. For you, okay, so

514
00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:47,880
Speaker 1: you know in that game, you you you level up,

515
00:26:47,920 --> 00:26:51,840
Speaker 1: as is typical in these role playing games, but the

516
00:26:51,920 --> 00:26:56,280
Speaker 1: higher level becomes, the more work it requires, more time

517
00:26:56,320 --> 00:26:59,840
Speaker 1: it requires to reach that next level. For people who

518
00:26:59,840 --> 00:27:02,480
Speaker 1: have played, can we basically say what it is? It's

519
00:27:02,520 --> 00:27:06,600
Speaker 1: a post apocalyptic ultimately, I mean, there's a there's a

520
00:27:06,600 --> 00:27:10,080
Speaker 1: set storyline in it, but it's also a sandbox world.

521
00:27:10,119 --> 00:27:12,600
Speaker 1: It also has this open aspect and you can keep

522
00:27:12,640 --> 00:27:16,360
Speaker 1: playing it no matter where you are in the various

523
00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:19,879
Speaker 1: big and small storylines, so so there's a finite storyline

524
00:27:19,880 --> 00:27:21,560
Speaker 1: in the middle of it. But you can just keep

525
00:27:21,600 --> 00:27:24,240
Speaker 1: going around and doing different things, and you'd never run

526
00:27:24,280 --> 00:27:26,040
Speaker 1: out of things to do. It's just sort of a

527
00:27:26,840 --> 00:27:30,920
Speaker 1: limitless world, yes and no, right, because you can run

528
00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:33,280
Speaker 1: out of worthwhile things to do, you can run out

529
00:27:33,280 --> 00:27:35,560
Speaker 1: of interesting things to do. But there will always be

530
00:27:35,600 --> 00:27:37,879
Speaker 1: some sort of rand. There will always be random monster

531
00:27:38,720 --> 00:27:41,359
Speaker 1: encounters there will, you know, and I imagine there'll be

532
00:27:41,359 --> 00:27:43,800
Speaker 1: a sort of a repetition on some of the random

533
00:27:43,880 --> 00:27:46,280
Speaker 1: quests that pop up. But I was looking into this

534
00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:49,960
Speaker 1: and according to the Fallout wiki, Fallout for does not

535
00:27:50,160 --> 00:27:53,360
Speaker 1: have an actual level cap. So you can keep becoming

536
00:27:53,359 --> 00:27:58,000
Speaker 1: more godlike. Yeah, you can keep you can tend to you. Essentially,

537
00:27:58,040 --> 00:28:00,760
Speaker 1: you can keep playing forever. However, they say that there

538
00:28:00,880 --> 00:28:04,720
Speaker 1: is a hard limit at level sixty five hundred and

539
00:28:04,720 --> 00:28:08,440
Speaker 1: thirty five. If you try to level past this point

540
00:28:08,440 --> 00:28:11,600
Speaker 1: by any means, uh, then you'll crash the game due

541
00:28:11,640 --> 00:28:14,639
Speaker 1: to the value overflowing back to zero. Oh that's so

542
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:17,760
Speaker 1: that seems like a kind of um, maybe not well articulated,

543
00:28:17,840 --> 00:28:20,480
Speaker 1: but finite limit on something that seemed like it could

544
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 1: be infinite, right, but I maintain that you would you

545
00:28:24,080 --> 00:28:28,359
Speaker 1: would either go insane or just becoming just increasingly bored

546
00:28:28,400 --> 00:28:33,320
Speaker 1: before you got anywhere close to level say sixty. Yeah, well,

547
00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:35,359
Speaker 1: I don't know how you can get past, you know,

548
00:28:35,560 --> 00:28:38,800
Speaker 1: level thirty. If you if you were in Stephen king

549
00:28:38,880 --> 00:28:41,240
Speaker 1: short story of the Jaunt, and you were like sucked

550
00:28:41,240 --> 00:28:45,840
Speaker 1: into the timeless nether realm between the fabric of reality,

551
00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:47,920
Speaker 1: and you happen to bring your Xbox three sixty with you,

552
00:28:48,520 --> 00:28:50,920
Speaker 1: then then I think maybe you could get close to

553
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:54,160
Speaker 1: that level more tedious than you think, more tedious than

554
00:28:54,240 --> 00:28:57,600
Speaker 1: you think. Well, this, this doesn't make me think though

555
00:28:57,600 --> 00:29:01,280
Speaker 1: about the fact that, on one hand, you could actually say,

556
00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:03,560
Speaker 1: if we accept the laws of physics, there is no

557
00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:07,520
Speaker 1: such thing as any infinite game in an objective sense,

558
00:29:07,600 --> 00:29:11,560
Speaker 1: and that objectively no game will go on forever. Right,

559
00:29:11,960 --> 00:29:14,160
Speaker 1: You'd run out of you'd run out of energy, you'd

560
00:29:14,240 --> 00:29:16,280
Speaker 1: run out of useful energy, you'd run out of the

561
00:29:16,280 --> 00:29:18,800
Speaker 1: ability to do work at some point an entropy in

562
00:29:18,840 --> 00:29:21,400
Speaker 1: the future. But so that makes me think that I

563
00:29:21,440 --> 00:29:24,760
Speaker 1: still think the idea of infinite games is very useful,

564
00:29:24,800 --> 00:29:28,240
Speaker 1: and it reflects not really like what the actual potential

565
00:29:28,320 --> 00:29:30,520
Speaker 1: future of the game is. But what the mindset of

566
00:29:30,560 --> 00:29:33,560
Speaker 1: the player is that an infinite game could in fact

567
00:29:33,640 --> 00:29:36,640
Speaker 1: come to an end within an hour. But what makes

568
00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:39,280
Speaker 1: it an infinite game is the way the players treat it.

569
00:29:39,440 --> 00:29:41,680
Speaker 1: They're treating it as if it could never come to

570
00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 1: an end. Right, So in that respect, fallout for is

571
00:29:45,840 --> 00:29:48,120
Speaker 1: it's it's it's an infinite game as long as you

572
00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:51,560
Speaker 1: have an infinite gaming attitude about it. Yeah, and that

573
00:29:51,720 --> 00:29:53,840
Speaker 1: and that difference in attitude can come through in all

574
00:29:53,920 --> 00:29:55,640
Speaker 1: kinds of other things. I Mean, one example that I

575
00:29:55,720 --> 00:29:58,080
Speaker 1: keep thinking about is the distinctions in how you might

576
00:29:58,120 --> 00:30:01,400
Speaker 1: approach running a business. Now, I don't want to you know,

577
00:30:01,560 --> 00:30:03,960
Speaker 1: this isn't gonna become a business podcast. Robert and are

578
00:30:04,280 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 1: not known for our insights in business. But just one

579
00:30:08,480 --> 00:30:11,640
Speaker 1: thing to think about is does a business exist in

580
00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:15,480
Speaker 1: order to create things of value, employ people, live and

581
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:18,920
Speaker 1: grow and keep on doing stuff in the economy and

582
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 1: for its employees, or does it exist on a sort

583
00:30:21,800 --> 00:30:26,360
Speaker 1: of path of financial conquest with a terminal end goal. Uh.

584
00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:28,880
Speaker 1: Does the leadership of a business think about like, Okay,

585
00:30:28,920 --> 00:30:31,920
Speaker 1: we're going to grow this until the point where we,

586
00:30:32,080 --> 00:30:34,560
Speaker 1: you know, can sell or something like sell our position

587
00:30:34,720 --> 00:30:38,000
Speaker 1: or something like that, or dominate the market. Uh. And

588
00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:40,240
Speaker 1: this can get even more complicated because a business is

589
00:30:40,280 --> 00:30:42,680
Speaker 1: usually going to be run by multiple leaders at various

590
00:30:42,760 --> 00:30:45,760
Speaker 1: levels who might have somewhat different ideas about this, and

591
00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:50,040
Speaker 1: the unspoken conflicts between the finite players and the infinite

592
00:30:50,040 --> 00:30:53,400
Speaker 1: players in a business can create dysfunction. Yeah, I can

593
00:30:53,440 --> 00:30:56,080
Speaker 1: see that. On one hand, someone saying we we created

594
00:30:56,080 --> 00:30:59,360
Speaker 1: this company to change the world. This other player in

595
00:30:59,400 --> 00:31:02,160
Speaker 1: the game is sing, well, actually, we created this company

596
00:31:02,200 --> 00:31:06,120
Speaker 1: so we can sell it to Microsoft, uh next quarter. Now,

597
00:31:06,160 --> 00:31:09,800
Speaker 1: in both cases, the company may continue existing after a

598
00:31:09,840 --> 00:31:12,760
Speaker 1: certain point that's being perceived is finite by the players,

599
00:31:13,280 --> 00:31:15,720
Speaker 1: or a company may not continue. In fact, there is

600
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:19,040
Speaker 1: probably no such thing as an infinite company right that

601
00:31:19,040 --> 00:31:21,000
Speaker 1: that will go on for the rest of time. But

602
00:31:21,040 --> 00:31:23,360
Speaker 1: again it's about the mindset of the players. Are they

603
00:31:23,440 --> 00:31:26,280
Speaker 1: thinking about this as something that is designed to be

604
00:31:26,400 --> 00:31:29,960
Speaker 1: continuous and continue going on or something that has a

605
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:32,800
Speaker 1: winning condition? Now, Joe, you turned me onto a two

606
00:31:32,840 --> 00:31:37,200
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen interview with Cars on CBC's Ideas with Paul Kennedy. Yeah,

607
00:31:37,200 --> 00:31:39,440
Speaker 1: I actually haven't listened to that, but I saw that

608
00:31:39,560 --> 00:31:41,560
Speaker 1: Cars did it, and I know you're big into Paul

609
00:31:41,600 --> 00:31:45,040
Speaker 1: Kennedy and his Optimist Prime, his Canadian Optimist prime voice.

610
00:31:45,320 --> 00:31:47,800
Speaker 1: Uh so, I I let you know about that, knowing

611
00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:49,920
Speaker 1: that you would go investigate and find out if it

612
00:31:49,960 --> 00:31:52,400
Speaker 1: was worthwhile. Was it? It is? It's it's very interesting.

613
00:31:52,400 --> 00:31:54,160
Speaker 1: The title you can look it up and I'll try

614
00:31:54,160 --> 00:31:55,920
Speaker 1: and link to it on the landing page. It's definitably

615
00:31:56,000 --> 00:31:58,560
Speaker 1: your mind dot com. But it's titled After Atheism, New

616
00:31:58,600 --> 00:32:02,160
Speaker 1: Perspectives on God and Religion And it's a wonderful episode.

617
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:05,480
Speaker 1: Dealing mostly with the ideas presented in Cars. Cars is

618
00:32:05,520 --> 00:32:08,720
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight book The Religious Case Against Belief,

619
00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 1: and he makes a compelling case that belief is actually

620
00:32:12,360 --> 00:32:15,200
Speaker 1: the enemy of religion and that the true beauty of

621
00:32:15,240 --> 00:32:18,400
Speaker 1: religion is its ability to foster new ideas and approaches

622
00:32:18,440 --> 00:32:21,560
Speaker 1: to life. And this all ends up tying in with

623
00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:23,680
Speaker 1: with this idea of finite and infinite games as well.

624
00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:28,480
Speaker 1: He argues that when you start walling religion up in belief,

625
00:32:28,560 --> 00:32:32,000
Speaker 1: you rob it of that power. I believe this, and

626
00:32:32,080 --> 00:32:34,960
Speaker 1: by the extension, I do not believe in that it

627
00:32:35,000 --> 00:32:38,240
Speaker 1: becomes a dogmatic exercise and authority and pits us not

628
00:32:38,320 --> 00:32:41,760
Speaker 1: only against our fellow humans, but against ourselves. He makes

629
00:32:41,760 --> 00:32:44,720
Speaker 1: the case that the closed mindedness and hostility of belief

630
00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:48,240
Speaker 1: has corrupted religion and spawned violence all over the world. Yeah,

631
00:32:48,280 --> 00:32:50,880
Speaker 1: that's interesting, I've encountered this type of belief before. Like

632
00:32:50,960 --> 00:32:54,280
Speaker 1: the idea that um that at its core, if you

633
00:32:54,320 --> 00:32:57,920
Speaker 1: go back far enough in history, religion may not necessarily

634
00:32:57,960 --> 00:33:02,720
Speaker 1: have been about about dogmatic beliefs like here is what

635
00:33:02,840 --> 00:33:06,080
Speaker 1: God is and here's what you must do, but instead

636
00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:09,480
Speaker 1: was more akin to a type of culture, like it

637
00:33:09,600 --> 00:33:14,440
Speaker 1: involved settings and practices, ways of giving getting people into

638
00:33:14,480 --> 00:33:18,080
Speaker 1: a certain state of minds, a contemplative state of mind

639
00:33:18,200 --> 00:33:21,880
Speaker 1: or a thankful state of mind. Yeah, and and Cars

640
00:33:21,920 --> 00:33:24,960
Speaker 1: touches on some of these ideas UH in Finite and

641
00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:28,480
Speaker 1: Infinite Games as well, particularly the topic of myth and religion.

642
00:33:29,000 --> 00:33:33,000
Speaker 1: So chapter seven UM in Finite Infinite Games is titled

643
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:37,400
Speaker 1: Myth provokes explanation but accepts none of it. So the

644
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:40,120
Speaker 1: idea is that a culture can be no stronger than

645
00:33:40,160 --> 00:33:43,360
Speaker 1: its strongest myths. He says that stories attain the status

646
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:47,240
Speaker 1: of myth when they are retold and persistently retold solely

647
00:33:47,240 --> 00:33:50,400
Speaker 1: for their own sake, so that essentially the core of

648
00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:54,120
Speaker 1: a myth is a is an infinite storytelling tradition. It's

649
00:33:54,160 --> 00:33:57,040
Speaker 1: the infinite game of telling a story. Yeah, yeah, I

650
00:33:57,080 --> 00:33:59,040
Speaker 1: mean he he points something out that I think this

651
00:33:59,080 --> 00:34:02,880
Speaker 1: is rather obvious to anyone who's ever crafted, or or

652
00:34:03,120 --> 00:34:05,480
Speaker 1: or consumed any amount of fiction or art. But he

653
00:34:05,520 --> 00:34:07,640
Speaker 1: says that whenever you stop telling the story for the

654
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:10,440
Speaker 1: story's sake and tell it to drive home like a

655
00:34:10,480 --> 00:34:13,759
Speaker 1: clear social or political message, then you're no longer a storyteller.

656
00:34:13,840 --> 00:34:16,839
Speaker 1: You've become a you know, a preacher or a propagandist. Yeah,

657
00:34:17,080 --> 00:34:19,320
Speaker 1: it is weird how stories. I feel like a stories

658
00:34:19,360 --> 00:34:22,799
Speaker 1: can demonstrate values. I wouldn't argue with that. But at

659
00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:25,560
Speaker 1: the same time, when you start to get a sense

660
00:34:25,680 --> 00:34:28,680
Speaker 1: that a story is being told to make, say a

661
00:34:28,680 --> 00:34:32,000
Speaker 1: political point or an educational point or something like that,

662
00:34:32,360 --> 00:34:36,080
Speaker 1: it becomes immediately far less interesting as a story. Yeah.

663
00:34:36,160 --> 00:34:38,600
Speaker 1: And and the thing is, even kids, little kids can

664
00:34:38,640 --> 00:34:41,560
Speaker 1: tell when a children's book has an ax to grind,

665
00:34:41,719 --> 00:34:44,560
Speaker 1: when it's clearly about it's it's not about the joy

666
00:34:44,719 --> 00:34:47,360
Speaker 1: of sharing a story, it's about driving home some point

667
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:53,200
Speaker 1: about how they should clean up their room. So Car says, quote,

668
00:34:53,200 --> 00:34:56,719
Speaker 1: great stories cannot be observed anymore than an infinite game

669
00:34:56,920 --> 00:34:59,640
Speaker 1: can have an audience. Once I hear the story, I

670
00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:03,680
Speaker 1: enter into its own dimensionality, I inhabited space at its time.

671
00:35:04,080 --> 00:35:06,560
Speaker 1: I do not therefore understand the story in terms of

672
00:35:06,600 --> 00:35:09,480
Speaker 1: my experience, but my experience in terms of the story.

673
00:35:09,960 --> 00:35:12,960
Speaker 1: Stories that have the enduring strength of strength of myths

674
00:35:13,239 --> 00:35:17,080
Speaker 1: reach through experience to touch the genius in each of us.

675
00:35:17,320 --> 00:35:20,279
Speaker 1: But experience is the result of this generative touch, not

676
00:35:20,440 --> 00:35:23,600
Speaker 1: its cause. So far is this the case that we

677
00:35:23,840 --> 00:35:26,319
Speaker 1: can even say that if we cannot tell a story

678
00:35:26,360 --> 00:35:29,160
Speaker 1: about what happened to us, nothing has happened to us.

679
00:35:29,600 --> 00:35:32,200
Speaker 1: I love this. I mean I if you're a listener

680
00:35:32,200 --> 00:35:34,680
Speaker 1: to the show, you'll probably know that we have generally

681
00:35:34,680 --> 00:35:38,480
Speaker 1: a pretty healthy respect for the mythological storytelling tradition, and

682
00:35:38,560 --> 00:35:40,880
Speaker 1: yet at the same time can can take plenty of

683
00:35:40,920 --> 00:35:44,720
Speaker 1: issue with what dogmatic religions and stuff like that due

684
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:48,520
Speaker 1: to the world, especially when you've got a specific destructive

685
00:35:48,560 --> 00:35:52,799
Speaker 1: belief that's being insisted on. Right. But the yeah, the

686
00:35:52,840 --> 00:35:57,600
Speaker 1: mythological storytelling tradition is a wonderfully generative thing. Because one

687
00:35:57,640 --> 00:36:00,239
Speaker 1: of the things that I think doesn't get broad up

688
00:36:00,360 --> 00:36:05,319
Speaker 1: enough in discussion of creativity is how experience of the

689
00:36:05,320 --> 00:36:09,640
Speaker 1: creativity of the others spawns the creativity within yourself. That

690
00:36:09,880 --> 00:36:13,400
Speaker 1: people are inspired to tell stories because they consume stories,

691
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:16,240
Speaker 1: and that a lot of times the way stories happen

692
00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:19,000
Speaker 1: is that you hear a story that's been told many

693
00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:22,160
Speaker 1: times and you want to tell not exactly the same story,

694
00:36:22,200 --> 00:36:24,840
Speaker 1: but a variation on it. Yeah, what would have happened

695
00:36:24,880 --> 00:36:27,440
Speaker 1: if this had happened, or what if this character had

696
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:30,120
Speaker 1: thought this instead of what we've merely assumed to be

697
00:36:30,160 --> 00:36:33,319
Speaker 1: the case. But of course, variation on the mythological storytelling

698
00:36:33,360 --> 00:36:37,080
Speaker 1: tradition is great if that's allowed. But if you're insisting

699
00:36:37,160 --> 00:36:39,919
Speaker 1: on a very finite point of view that the myth

700
00:36:40,040 --> 00:36:43,080
Speaker 1: must convey, then variations on the myth are not going

701
00:36:43,120 --> 00:36:45,000
Speaker 1: to be accepted. Right, And this is where he gets

702
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:47,480
Speaker 1: into the idea that ideology is the apple, it is

703
00:36:47,520 --> 00:36:51,200
Speaker 1: the amplification of myth. He gets into this concept in

704
00:36:51,239 --> 00:36:54,360
Speaker 1: the Ideas interview as well, that that belief in sacred

705
00:36:54,440 --> 00:36:58,960
Speaker 1: text fix fixes the past and the future. He says, quote,

706
00:36:58,960 --> 00:37:00,880
Speaker 1: it is the assumption that's since the beginning and the

707
00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:04,240
Speaker 1: end of history are known, there is nothing more to say.

708
00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:08,239
Speaker 1: Uh So, it's it's it's a treatment of myth that

709
00:37:08,360 --> 00:37:12,879
Speaker 1: no longer promotes infinite interpretation. Uh, it's it's no longer

710
00:37:12,920 --> 00:37:15,600
Speaker 1: a situation of saying, hey, what do you think this means? Instead,

711
00:37:15,680 --> 00:37:18,680
Speaker 1: you're saying, this is the Mets message of the Holy Word,

712
00:37:18,760 --> 00:37:21,680
Speaker 1: this is what the text means, and nothing else. So

713
00:37:21,719 --> 00:37:24,960
Speaker 1: he proposes the use of religion as the necessary template

714
00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:29,200
Speaker 1: for interacting with the world, for imagining the cosmos, etcetera. Uh.

715
00:37:29,239 --> 00:37:32,440
Speaker 1: And I really like this, this treatment of myth and religion.

716
00:37:32,560 --> 00:37:34,640
Speaker 1: I mean, I think back on stories that I grew

717
00:37:34,719 --> 00:37:37,759
Speaker 1: up with, be it you know, the Christian Bible, or

718
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:40,560
Speaker 1: Greek myth the Lord of the Rings, or or my

719
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:43,360
Speaker 1: dad telling me the story the Battle of Hastings and

720
00:37:43,400 --> 00:37:46,120
Speaker 1: Stanford Bridge. You know, I can't help but carry those

721
00:37:46,200 --> 00:37:49,360
Speaker 1: with me and summon them in consideration of new myths

722
00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:52,040
Speaker 1: and news stories and new ideas. So when I reached

723
00:37:52,120 --> 00:37:55,480
Speaker 1: the point in my life where I started learning about Hinduism,

724
00:37:55,520 --> 00:37:58,600
Speaker 1: for example, I could look at a character like Krishna

725
00:37:58,800 --> 00:38:00,759
Speaker 1: and say, oh, well, you know, he kind of lines

726
00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:03,719
Speaker 1: up with say this Jesus character in some respects. Uh.

727
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:06,120
Speaker 1: You know, as far as A, B and C are concerned,

728
00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:09,080
Speaker 1: like you bring the story, these stories with you to

729
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:12,160
Speaker 1: make sense of new stories and interpret them, but not

730
00:38:12,360 --> 00:38:15,200
Speaker 1: as a like finite text about what is true and

731
00:38:15,239 --> 00:38:17,319
Speaker 1: what should be believed, but as a sort of like

732
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:21,160
Speaker 1: generative mechanism. It causes you to be creative to think

733
00:38:21,160 --> 00:38:24,200
Speaker 1: about things, right, Yeah, And he argues that the appeal

734
00:38:24,320 --> 00:38:27,759
Speaker 1: of Christ and of Buddha both come down to the

735
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:31,160
Speaker 1: infinite nature of their quests. So God it becomes human

736
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:35,480
Speaker 1: in order to listen to humanity, immortal prince undertaking a

737
00:38:35,520 --> 00:38:39,440
Speaker 1: spiritual quest to release everyone from all forms of bondage.

738
00:38:39,719 --> 00:38:42,719
Speaker 1: And he says, quote, those Christians who deafened themselves to

739
00:38:42,960 --> 00:38:46,520
Speaker 1: the residence of their own myth have driven their killing

740
00:38:46,520 --> 00:38:49,239
Speaker 1: machines through the garden of history, but they did not

741
00:38:49,320 --> 00:38:52,200
Speaker 1: kill the myth. The empty divinity, whom they have made

742
00:38:52,239 --> 00:38:55,799
Speaker 1: into an instrument of vengeance, continues to return as the

743
00:38:55,840 --> 00:38:59,359
Speaker 1: Man of Sorrows, bringing with him his unfinished story and

744
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:02,920
Speaker 1: restoring the voices of the silenced. WHOA. Now that is

745
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 1: a sermon. So yeah. I wouldn't have necessarily originally thought

746
00:39:07,200 --> 00:39:10,680
Speaker 1: how to apply the framework of finite and infinite games

747
00:39:10,680 --> 00:39:14,440
Speaker 1: to types of mythology and religious storytelling, but that's a

748
00:39:14,480 --> 00:39:16,960
Speaker 1: really interesting place to take it. And I, you know,

749
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:19,120
Speaker 1: when he does get into that in the book it

750
00:39:19,120 --> 00:39:22,480
Speaker 1: it does make sense because he is a scholar of religion.

751
00:39:22,760 --> 00:39:26,000
Speaker 1: But when I first encountered the idea, I originally started

752
00:39:26,040 --> 00:39:29,560
Speaker 1: thinking about it in terms of technology. All Right, we'll

753
00:39:29,600 --> 00:39:31,480
Speaker 1: hold that thought, Joe, because we're gonna take one more

754
00:39:31,520 --> 00:39:36,279
Speaker 1: break and then we're back. Thank thank Alright, we're back.

755
00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:38,680
Speaker 1: So I wanted to talk a little bit about the

756
00:39:38,760 --> 00:39:43,400
Speaker 1: idea of conceptions of technology in terms of finite or

757
00:39:43,440 --> 00:39:47,600
Speaker 1: infinite games along cars is framework. So we've talked on

758
00:39:47,640 --> 00:39:51,239
Speaker 1: the show before about Jarren Lannier, right, Yes, I believe so. Yeah,

759
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:54,880
Speaker 1: he's so. He's a computer scientist, technology philosopher, one of

760
00:39:54,920 --> 00:39:57,680
Speaker 1: the most important minds behind the history and development of

761
00:39:57,760 --> 00:40:01,360
Speaker 1: virtual reality. And interestingly, though he says that in his

762
00:40:01,400 --> 00:40:03,360
Speaker 1: earlier years he was in many ways kind of a

763
00:40:03,400 --> 00:40:06,920
Speaker 1: techno utopian guru, in recent years he has become increasingly

764
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:10,360
Speaker 1: critical of the role of digital technology in our lives

765
00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:13,719
Speaker 1: and of the techno utopian mindset. Though I think you

766
00:40:13,760 --> 00:40:16,360
Speaker 1: can still sound very positive about the potential of virtual

767
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:19,279
Speaker 1: reality when you get him going on it while acknowledging

768
00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:22,360
Speaker 1: the dangers as well. But he was very critical, for example,

769
00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:25,440
Speaker 1: of the crowdsourcing trends of Web two point oh in

770
00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:27,840
Speaker 1: his two thousand tin book You Are Not a Gadget, Robert,

771
00:40:27,880 --> 00:40:31,120
Speaker 1: I know you remember that crowdsourcing era. Oh yes, I

772
00:40:31,160 --> 00:40:33,920
Speaker 1: do remember it well because it, uh, it does. It

773
00:40:34,360 --> 00:40:36,960
Speaker 1: reared its ugly head in our own business here. Why

774
00:40:36,960 --> 00:40:38,680
Speaker 1: should we write the articles. Let's get the people to

775
00:40:38,680 --> 00:40:41,640
Speaker 1: write the Yeah. Yeah, let's you know, free content coming

776
00:40:41,800 --> 00:40:43,640
Speaker 1: right out of the mouths of the mass. Yeah. And

777
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:45,319
Speaker 1: I mean I and I say that as someone who

778
00:40:45,320 --> 00:40:51,840
Speaker 1: loves Wikipedia and I love browsing crowdsourced articles about various things.

779
00:40:52,040 --> 00:40:54,120
Speaker 1: In case you're wondering, I did mean to say mass

780
00:40:54,160 --> 00:40:57,680
Speaker 1: singular and not mass because it is a monolith, isn't

781
00:40:57,680 --> 00:41:01,160
Speaker 1: at once you're you're monetizing it. Yes. So. Lanier has

782
00:41:01,200 --> 00:41:03,960
Speaker 1: also been very critical of the role of social media,

783
00:41:04,120 --> 00:41:06,920
Speaker 1: the advertising driven model of digital content, with the idea

784
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:10,520
Speaker 1: that you know, advertising driven media platforms like social media

785
00:41:10,640 --> 00:41:15,239
Speaker 1: tend to trend toward manipulation and the stoking of negative emotions,

786
00:41:15,560 --> 00:41:19,560
Speaker 1: degrading the quality of relationships. One example I found is

787
00:41:19,600 --> 00:41:21,680
Speaker 1: that he writes that if you can say you have

788
00:41:21,840 --> 00:41:25,040
Speaker 1: thousands of friends on Facebook, quote, this can only be

789
00:41:25,120 --> 00:41:28,439
Speaker 1: true if the idea of friendship is reduced. I think

790
00:41:28,480 --> 00:41:32,480
Speaker 1: that's pretty true. He's also been really critical of singularity

791
00:41:32,560 --> 00:41:36,120
Speaker 1: type thinking, which he's called cybernetic totalism, a sort of

792
00:41:36,160 --> 00:41:39,720
Speaker 1: you know, reduces humans and human creativity towards this single

793
00:41:39,800 --> 00:41:43,080
Speaker 1: achievement sort of point in history that we can get

794
00:41:43,120 --> 00:41:45,799
Speaker 1: to and then the machines will be able to take over,

795
00:41:46,160 --> 00:41:48,359
Speaker 1: and really everything that humans can do now, and all

796
00:41:48,440 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 1: human creativity and culture and all that can ultimately be

797
00:41:51,040 --> 00:41:55,359
Speaker 1: represented by computing power. Anyway, I found a section on

798
00:41:55,480 --> 00:41:57,960
Speaker 1: his website that is a sort of cut chapter. He

799
00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:00,400
Speaker 1: called it a deleted scene from his Q You Are

800
00:42:00,440 --> 00:42:03,080
Speaker 1: Not a Gadget, where he talks about the idea of

801
00:42:03,120 --> 00:42:06,879
Speaker 1: his old techno utopian guru talk and uh, in some

802
00:42:06,920 --> 00:42:08,799
Speaker 1: ways in which he still agrees with it, in some

803
00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:11,240
Speaker 1: ways he doesn't agree with it anymore. So he's talking

804
00:42:11,239 --> 00:42:16,120
Speaker 1: about this idea of post symbolic communication, which is something

805
00:42:16,160 --> 00:42:19,680
Speaker 1: that he envisions in the world of virtual reality. So, Robert,

806
00:42:19,719 --> 00:42:23,960
Speaker 1: imagine you've got a virtual reality machine where you can

807
00:42:24,200 --> 00:42:28,960
Speaker 1: use it to essentially, at very high fidelity, translate the

808
00:42:29,120 --> 00:42:34,319
Speaker 1: contents of your imagination directly into some digital space that

809
00:42:34,440 --> 00:42:37,680
Speaker 1: can be shared with other people without having to use

810
00:42:38,200 --> 00:42:41,799
Speaker 1: symbolic encoding of things like words. Okay, so instead of

811
00:42:41,800 --> 00:42:44,680
Speaker 1: writing a short story about a world that I've imagined,

812
00:42:44,719 --> 00:42:48,239
Speaker 1: instead of painting it on a canvas, I am just

813
00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:51,200
Speaker 1: like brain blasting it right in your face. Yeah, you

814
00:42:51,239 --> 00:42:55,279
Speaker 1: can transmit the contents of your imagination in a very

815
00:42:55,360 --> 00:42:58,880
Speaker 1: high fidelity and convincing way into a place where you

816
00:42:58,920 --> 00:43:01,879
Speaker 1: can experience them in sensory way, and other people can

817
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:04,200
Speaker 1: experience them as well. And that's sort of what he

818
00:43:04,239 --> 00:43:07,080
Speaker 1: calls the idea of post symbolic communication. It's like you

819
00:43:07,120 --> 00:43:11,080
Speaker 1: can get around having to use things like digital encoding

820
00:43:11,200 --> 00:43:14,040
Speaker 1: of of you know, like drawings and words and stuff,

821
00:43:14,120 --> 00:43:17,720
Speaker 1: all these things that are sort of bottlenext towards sharing creativity.

822
00:43:18,120 --> 00:43:22,200
Speaker 1: He contrasts that path towards post symbolic communication with other

823
00:43:22,280 --> 00:43:25,759
Speaker 1: types of quote ramps or visions of the progress or

824
00:43:25,840 --> 00:43:30,720
Speaker 1: visions of possible progress in technology, like singularitarian thinking, where

825
00:43:30,800 --> 00:43:34,600
Speaker 1: the power of technology through computation and artificial intelligence will

826
00:43:34,640 --> 00:43:38,360
Speaker 1: will sort of cross an event horizon of power and progress.

827
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:41,280
Speaker 1: And here's where he brings in cars. He uses cars

828
00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:44,319
Speaker 1: is framework of finite and infinite games to think about

829
00:43:44,480 --> 00:43:48,920
Speaker 1: types of ramps or visions of technological progress, and this

830
00:43:49,000 --> 00:43:52,160
Speaker 1: is a major reason some ramps are better than others.

831
00:43:52,160 --> 00:43:55,080
Speaker 1: He argues, quote Here's how I like to put it.

832
00:43:55,480 --> 00:43:59,160
Speaker 1: Good technology connects people in new and deeper ways, while

833
00:43:59,239 --> 00:44:03,640
Speaker 1: bad technolog g merely grants people more raw power. Once

834
00:44:03,680 --> 00:44:06,520
Speaker 1: you have the fastest car, the biggest bomb, the most

835
00:44:06,560 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 1: capacious computer, what then it is an empty form of ambition.

836
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:14,040
Speaker 1: A drive for pure technological power is not only a

837
00:44:14,080 --> 00:44:17,440
Speaker 1: finite game, but often a destructive one. And he writes,

838
00:44:17,560 --> 00:44:21,040
Speaker 1: quote improving computation for its own sake instead of for

839
00:44:21,080 --> 00:44:24,520
Speaker 1: the cause of empathy results in misfortunes like the plague

840
00:44:24,520 --> 00:44:28,160
Speaker 1: of fragments were now enduring. Uh and also quote an

841
00:44:28,160 --> 00:44:32,800
Speaker 1: approach to any underlying technological capability that solely expands human

842
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:37,279
Speaker 1: powers will probably lead to evil. And I really think

843
00:44:37,320 --> 00:44:40,799
Speaker 1: about this in the context of the conversations we had

844
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:43,719
Speaker 1: earlier this year about social media, Like think about how

845
00:44:43,760 --> 00:44:47,400
Speaker 1: the pure, open minded drive towards expanding the power of

846
00:44:47,440 --> 00:44:51,359
Speaker 1: a social media platform like Facebook ended up manifesting in

847
00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:55,400
Speaker 1: terms of horrible finite games like get as many users

848
00:44:55,440 --> 00:44:59,200
Speaker 1: as possible onto the platform and then monetize you know,

849
00:44:59,360 --> 00:45:02,000
Speaker 1: like that is a finite game, and that is a

850
00:45:02,120 --> 00:45:06,040
Speaker 1: very destructive finite game ultimately, right, because it's it's in

851
00:45:06,120 --> 00:45:09,759
Speaker 1: so many ways limiting of what good is actually possible

852
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:13,319
Speaker 1: through technology. So, ultimately I think Landier is saying that

853
00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:16,480
Speaker 1: if we want technology to serve us, we can't just

854
00:45:16,719 --> 00:45:20,560
Speaker 1: make it more powerful, because technology that, in a blind

855
00:45:20,640 --> 00:45:24,360
Speaker 1: way is just made more powerful will tend naturally towards

856
00:45:24,520 --> 00:45:28,560
Speaker 1: becoming a tool in a series of increasingly destructive finite

857
00:45:28,640 --> 00:45:31,320
Speaker 1: games played by the people who have the most power

858
00:45:31,360 --> 00:45:35,000
Speaker 1: to wield the technology. Instead, as technology progresses, we have

859
00:45:35,040 --> 00:45:37,719
Speaker 1: to have an ethic of progress, and the ethic of

860
00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:41,799
Speaker 1: progress should be one where the considering technology as part

861
00:45:41,800 --> 00:45:45,320
Speaker 1: of an infinite game must be built into the technological

862
00:45:45,360 --> 00:45:49,640
Speaker 1: advance itself. Okay, so it's not just about say, I

863
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:51,920
Speaker 1: can't help to think of it like a loud speaker

864
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:54,799
Speaker 1: creating a powerful loudspeaker. But then you have to also

865
00:45:54,840 --> 00:45:57,479
Speaker 1: think about the message that's going through the loudspeaker. Yeah,

866
00:45:57,719 --> 00:46:00,080
Speaker 1: there must be a way of shaping the progress of

867
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:03,440
Speaker 1: developing louder and louder loud speakers so that I don't know,

868
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:07,000
Speaker 1: so that it's used for purposes that make people's lives better,

869
00:46:07,080 --> 00:46:10,399
Speaker 1: Maybe for playing loud concerts and public that people would

870
00:46:10,440 --> 00:46:12,359
Speaker 1: enjoy or something like that, and not to be used

871
00:46:12,400 --> 00:46:15,600
Speaker 1: as a sonic weapon to pacify crowds of protesters or

872
00:46:15,640 --> 00:46:18,080
Speaker 1: something like that. Because if you just say, well, it's

873
00:46:18,120 --> 00:46:20,799
Speaker 1: just raw, you know, it's just increasing our power to

874
00:46:20,840 --> 00:46:23,120
Speaker 1: do whatever. It's a tool, it could be good or evil.

875
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:26,160
Speaker 1: You know. He's pointing out the many ways that if

876
00:46:26,200 --> 00:46:30,640
Speaker 1: you just give people more tool power that's morally neutral,

877
00:46:30,719 --> 00:46:33,680
Speaker 1: it will just tend to get used for evil purposes,

878
00:46:33,840 --> 00:46:38,000
Speaker 1: even unintentionally. People at Facebook or other social media platforms

879
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:40,200
Speaker 1: that have created all these things we've been pointing out

880
00:46:40,200 --> 00:46:42,839
Speaker 1: and complaining about. Again, I want to emphasize I don't

881
00:46:42,840 --> 00:46:45,680
Speaker 1: think they're necessarily evil people. They're not trying to do

882
00:46:45,800 --> 00:46:49,279
Speaker 1: bad in the world. They just allowed a process to

883
00:46:49,400 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 1: have evil consequences. Yeah, I mean, because basically, finite players

884
00:46:53,120 --> 00:46:57,040
Speaker 1: are going to flock to whatever your technology is. Yeah.

885
00:46:57,160 --> 00:47:00,000
Speaker 1: To think about another way that technological power could effect

886
00:47:00,239 --> 00:47:02,840
Speaker 1: the balance of finite and infinite games. Um, you know

887
00:47:02,880 --> 00:47:05,880
Speaker 1: remember that distinction we were making earlier about how you

888
00:47:05,880 --> 00:47:09,240
Speaker 1: can win a finite game of an individual chess match,

889
00:47:09,360 --> 00:47:13,160
Speaker 1: but you can't win the infinite game of chess itself, right,

890
00:47:13,320 --> 00:47:16,000
Speaker 1: you can't walk out and say I just won chess. Everybody,

891
00:47:16,040 --> 00:47:19,239
Speaker 1: I'm done. But what if you're a computer program like

892
00:47:19,280 --> 00:47:23,799
Speaker 1: Alpha zero? That might actually change things, because then, you know,

893
00:47:23,840 --> 00:47:26,200
Speaker 1: so Alpha zero is, as of the time of recording this,

894
00:47:26,280 --> 00:47:30,000
Speaker 1: I think, currently the most powerful AI chess engine, but

895
00:47:30,280 --> 00:47:33,960
Speaker 1: even a generation beyond that, maybe a chess engine that

896
00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:36,719
Speaker 1: can just win without question a hundred out of a

897
00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:39,840
Speaker 1: hundred games against any human player or any other player

898
00:47:39,880 --> 00:47:42,560
Speaker 1: of any type. At this point, could you actually say

899
00:47:42,560 --> 00:47:45,520
Speaker 1: that you've not just won mini games of chess, but

900
00:47:45,760 --> 00:47:49,200
Speaker 1: the game of chess itself. You have reached a level

901
00:47:49,280 --> 00:47:52,840
Speaker 1: of mastery within the game where you literally cannot be

902
00:47:53,000 --> 00:47:56,759
Speaker 1: challenged by any conceivable player. So if you are able

903
00:47:56,800 --> 00:47:59,279
Speaker 1: to do that, have you turned what was supposed to

904
00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:03,040
Speaker 1: be and infinite game into a finite game? Yeah? I mean,

905
00:48:03,160 --> 00:48:04,759
Speaker 1: you can make an argument that this is a case

906
00:48:04,800 --> 00:48:08,920
Speaker 1: where you've broken the game by becoming too good at it. Yeah. Uh.

907
00:48:09,160 --> 00:48:11,319
Speaker 1: And of course, you know, card counters are in a

908
00:48:11,360 --> 00:48:14,279
Speaker 1: way accused of that all the time in uh, in

909
00:48:14,360 --> 00:48:17,840
Speaker 1: the in Vegas game houses. Yeah. And under this scenario,

910
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:20,800
Speaker 1: it seems like like the new incarnation of the game

911
00:48:20,920 --> 00:48:24,759
Speaker 1: could actually be designing better and better AI chess engines, right, Like,

912
00:48:25,160 --> 00:48:28,400
Speaker 1: maybe human players can no longer participate in this infinite

913
00:48:28,480 --> 00:48:31,319
Speaker 1: game as chess players against them, but they can still

914
00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:34,400
Speaker 1: play the meta game of working on designing AI players.

915
00:48:34,440 --> 00:48:37,600
Speaker 1: I guess until the AI AI designers outstripped the human

916
00:48:37,640 --> 00:48:40,400
Speaker 1: AI designers. Well, you know, Banks got into that a

917
00:48:40,400 --> 00:48:42,880
Speaker 1: little bit in the player of games, because Gurga is

918
00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:47,319
Speaker 1: a master gamer, but he's no match for any of

919
00:48:47,320 --> 00:48:51,359
Speaker 1: the minds he's He's practices some of these games on

920
00:48:51,440 --> 00:48:54,319
Speaker 1: the way to the Empire of Azad and Uh, and

921
00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:57,480
Speaker 1: he's no match for a powerful AI. But there's this

922
00:48:57,520 --> 00:49:00,279
Speaker 1: distinction between the games that humans play in the games

923
00:49:00,320 --> 00:49:02,680
Speaker 1: that the mind's play. Well, maybe that's an important distinction

924
00:49:02,719 --> 00:49:05,360
Speaker 1: to keep in mind as we consider technological progress and

925
00:49:05,400 --> 00:49:07,319
Speaker 1: how that affects human endeavor. I mean, there's a lot

926
00:49:07,360 --> 00:49:11,240
Speaker 1: of talk about like will humans become obsolete? People always

927
00:49:11,239 --> 00:49:15,120
Speaker 1: ask variations on that question, like, as you know, automation

928
00:49:15,200 --> 00:49:18,400
Speaker 1: becomes more productive, you know, suddenly, well, we have an

929
00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 1: economy where humans can't really do any meaningful work. You know,

930
00:49:22,080 --> 00:49:23,879
Speaker 1: there's not much we can do that can't be done

931
00:49:23,920 --> 00:49:25,760
Speaker 1: better by a robot. There are a lot of critics

932
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:27,600
Speaker 1: of that idea by the way, um, and I think

933
00:49:27,680 --> 00:49:29,800
Speaker 1: Jared Landier is one of them. But if there's anything

934
00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:34,440
Speaker 1: to that idea, one wonders like, does that even undercut

935
00:49:34,440 --> 00:49:37,919
Speaker 1: our motivation to participate in the infinite game? You know? Uh?

936
00:49:37,960 --> 00:49:41,080
Speaker 1: And how do we have to adapt ourselves to think

937
00:49:41,120 --> 00:49:43,839
Speaker 1: differently about the infinite games we play and that make

938
00:49:43,920 --> 00:49:47,239
Speaker 1: life worth living if we can't really compete in any

939
00:49:47,239 --> 00:49:52,600
Speaker 1: of the smaller finite games within them? I agree, And

940
00:49:52,760 --> 00:49:56,719
Speaker 1: I think in in the culture books you do again,

941
00:49:56,760 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 1: you see computers playing more of the the infinite game,

942
00:49:59,800 --> 00:50:03,000
Speaker 1: but leaving space either for the finite certainly for the

943
00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:05,520
Speaker 1: finite games in which humans may play and the infinite

944
00:50:05,560 --> 00:50:09,680
Speaker 1: game of their lives, but also realizing where they can

945
00:50:09,680 --> 00:50:14,480
Speaker 1: play a pivotal role within these these overarching schemes. If

946
00:50:14,480 --> 00:50:16,799
Speaker 1: you will, may there always be a place for us

947
00:50:16,880 --> 00:50:19,239
Speaker 1: within the schemes. Yes, that's all. That's all I ask

948
00:50:19,320 --> 00:50:22,200
Speaker 1: of our future AI overlords. Just let me. Let me

949
00:50:22,239 --> 00:50:25,400
Speaker 1: have a role in your scheme whatever it is. I'm

950
00:50:25,440 --> 00:50:27,239
Speaker 1: sure I could do it. I can smuggle some sort

951
00:50:27,280 --> 00:50:30,239
Speaker 1: of sensor into a factory. I don't know. I leave

952
00:50:30,239 --> 00:50:33,239
Speaker 1: it to you. I'm not the the artificial intelligence here. Yes,

953
00:50:33,280 --> 00:50:37,359
Speaker 1: our power is finite, and so is our is our

954
00:50:37,360 --> 00:50:39,880
Speaker 1: episode length because once more we have reached the end

955
00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:41,719
Speaker 1: of an episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. But

956
00:50:41,800 --> 00:50:44,960
Speaker 1: that's not the end, because you have well a finite

957
00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:48,279
Speaker 1: number of episodes. But still, it's a long list of

958
00:50:48,280 --> 00:50:50,960
Speaker 1: episodes you can seek out at stuff to Blow your

959
00:50:50,960 --> 00:50:53,399
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. We have them all listed there, as

960
00:50:53,400 --> 00:50:55,760
Speaker 1: well as links out to our various social media accounts.

961
00:50:55,880 --> 00:50:58,440
Speaker 1: And hey, if you want to support this show, I've

962
00:50:58,440 --> 00:51:02,359
Speaker 1: said it, uh plenty of times before, but really, infinite number,

963
00:51:02,520 --> 00:51:05,279
Speaker 1: an infinite number, that death of a finite number of

964
00:51:05,320 --> 00:51:08,040
Speaker 1: times I have said, you can help us out by

965
00:51:08,120 --> 00:51:11,160
Speaker 1: rating and reviewing the show at any of the finite

966
00:51:11,239 --> 00:51:15,200
Speaker 1: number of podcast websites out there that distribute our work.

967
00:51:15,320 --> 00:51:18,360
Speaker 1: Give us infinite stars, Yes, infinite stars. Insist on it.

968
00:51:18,480 --> 00:51:20,240
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if I was laughing while you were talking.

969
00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:23,239
Speaker 1: I was imagining already the infinite number of emails we're

970
00:51:23,239 --> 00:51:25,680
Speaker 1: gonna get where people are explaining the rules of football

971
00:51:25,719 --> 00:51:28,719
Speaker 1: to us. Yeah, well, I'm I welcome it, uh and

972
00:51:28,760 --> 00:51:31,560
Speaker 1: more and more emails about finite and infinite. Really, anytime

973
00:51:31,600 --> 00:51:35,840
Speaker 1: you start breaking down infinity, it just it complicates everything,

974
00:51:35,880 --> 00:51:40,600
Speaker 1: doesn't it. Yeah, anyway, infinite thanks to our excellent audio

975
00:51:40,680 --> 00:51:43,640
Speaker 1: producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison. If you would like

976
00:51:43,680 --> 00:51:45,360
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with an email of

977
00:51:45,440 --> 00:51:48,560
Speaker 1: finite length, you can email us at blow the Mind

978
00:51:48,640 --> 00:51:59,840
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. We're more on the

979
00:52:00,120 --> 00:52:02,760
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Workstop

980
00:52:02,800 --> 00:52:14,640
Speaker 1: column big Believe the bigg