Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And of course
Speaker 1: it's another Vault day. We're going into the vault, this
Speaker 1: time to explore the episode we did uh a little
Speaker 1: over a year ago. Um mayen about finite and infinite games.
Speaker 1: It was about this interesting little philosophy book that I
Speaker 1: read that that had this great central metaphor that I
Speaker 1: still keep thinking about all the time. That's a finite game.
Speaker 1: That's an infinite game. Yeah, yeah, based on the word
Speaker 1: bout of American scholar James P. Cars And indeed, this
Speaker 1: is one of those things that it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: a simple concept, but but once you get in your head, yeah,
Speaker 1: you end up applying it to just about everything in
Speaker 1: your life. Yeah. You kind of see elements of it
Speaker 1: all over the place, and it's just really helpful and
Speaker 1: I don't know, helpful and categorizing the whole world like
Speaker 1: you should be doing. All right, well, let's do it.
Speaker 1: Let's jump in and play the game. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind from how stuff works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. You know, Joe. I
Speaker 1: bring up the books of Ian M. Banks a lot
Speaker 1: on the podcast um and and generally because you know,
Speaker 1: these are really good books that that tie on a
Speaker 1: number of different uh uh, sci fi, psychological, you name
Speaker 1: it topics. They're they're they're rich with stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind content. Can I confess that I've considered reading
Speaker 1: them but have actually been hesitant because I want you
Speaker 1: to be able to keep explaining m banks books to
Speaker 1: me with me actually not knowing them in advance. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: then hopefully that's what's gonna happen right now. Because as
Speaker 1: we were researching the topic for today, I was reminded
Speaker 1: of his nine book, The Player of Games. Okay, so
Speaker 1: this is a book that concerns the culture, which is
Speaker 1: of course an instellar, interstellar post scarce de civilization in
Speaker 1: which AI minds do all or most of the heavy
Speaker 1: lifting and humans live in a kind of uh uh,
Speaker 1: you know, utopian anarchy. Okay, So this is not the
Speaker 1: book that Tron was based on, No, no, but but
Speaker 1: it is a wonderful treatment of games. Now, the people
Speaker 1: in the culture, they don't really have to do much
Speaker 1: beyond just enjoy life, and our protagonist in this particular book,
Speaker 1: GGA does this by playing in and excelling at a
Speaker 1: multitude of card and board games and other related games. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is often the positive vision of the sort
Speaker 1: of post singularity future, right most A lot of the
Speaker 1: visions that you get in science fiction are very negative,
Speaker 1: I guess because negative plots are more interesting to play with.
Speaker 1: But so this says, basically, you know, once humans aren't
Speaker 1: really needed to create the wealth that sustained society anymore,
Speaker 1: you can actually just do what you want. You can
Speaker 1: be creative, you can have fun, and that's what life is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh or am I off base? Is that not
Speaker 1: how it is? Um? In culture? It is, but with
Speaker 1: lots of dark caveats. Okay. Now, some members of the
Speaker 1: culture choose to involve themselves in matters of greater importance,
Speaker 1: such as service in Special Circumstances, which deals with pending
Speaker 1: and emergent threats to the culture uh and general interplanetary stability.
Speaker 1: And they recruit Gurga and send him to the Empire
Speaker 1: of Azad uh to to master and play the game
Speaker 1: of Azad which is a complex game that consists of
Speaker 1: various sub games that serves as the basic system of
Speaker 1: all political and social order in the Empire of Azad. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what is is it? What like a big board
Speaker 1: game or something. It's it's like a board game built
Speaker 1: out of board games. It's a kind of like imagine
Speaker 1: a board game that is just the center of all culture.
Speaker 1: Like I guess it's kind of hard to to to
Speaker 1: pick out something in like imagine if the Bible in
Speaker 1: say medieval Europe, if the Bible were a board game instead,
Speaker 1: if it was like Settlers of Ghatan instead of the
Speaker 1: Bible at the center of this, uh, this sort of
Speaker 1: Catholic world. And on top of that it was not
Speaker 1: just settlers of good time, but are ridiculously complex settlers.
Speaker 1: You have to devote your entire life to playing it.
Speaker 1: So a labyrinthine game that contains pronouncements of authority that
Speaker 1: is intermingled with government. Yes, And so they want they
Speaker 1: apparently need to send him there because they want to
Speaker 1: disrupt as odd and topple its current systems and bring
Speaker 1: about something more in line with culture values. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and also because the the the the empire of his
Speaker 1: they also are a very brutal people given to spectacles
Speaker 1: of fatal violence. So it's a great book and one
Speaker 1: I always recommend as a starting point for the culture
Speaker 1: and banks in general. But instant interesting how we see
Speaker 1: the mixture of different games here. So we see the
Speaker 1: contained and restricted board and card games within Gurga's life,
Speaker 1: so those are like normal games. We see the open
Speaker 1: ended game of Gurga's life, in which he essentially tries
Speaker 1: to fill a lengthy trans human lifetime with pleasure and meaning.
Speaker 1: We have the complex but ultimately contained game of as Odd.
Speaker 1: We have the intricate game of special circumstances, various plots
Speaker 1: and operations. We have the greater game that's played by
Speaker 1: these minds that are operating, you know, on scales beyond
Speaker 1: anything that human intelligence can can really comprehend. And then
Speaker 1: we have the looming possibility of the game of interplanetary war. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting the way games so readily serve as metaphors
Speaker 1: for almost any kind of human endeavor or for life itself. Right,
Speaker 1: a game, in its more narrow definition tends to be
Speaker 1: a thing with rules that is done for recreation or
Speaker 1: for fun. And yet you can clearly see how that
Speaker 1: concept of a game gets mapped onto essentially anything humans
Speaker 1: do whatever you're doing right now, in one way or another,
Speaker 1: can be thought of as a game. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: read one quick quote from from the player of Games
Speaker 1: just to give everyone taste. This is the story of
Speaker 1: a man who went far away for a long time
Speaker 1: just to play a game. The man is a game
Speaker 1: player called Gurga. The story starts with a battle that
Speaker 1: is not a battle and ends with a game that
Speaker 1: is not a game. And you have to read the
Speaker 1: book to get the rest. But but I, like I said,
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but think of this book in uh
Speaker 1: in comparison to the topic we're discussing today. Right, So
Speaker 1: today we're gonna be talking about an interesting little philosophy
Speaker 1: book that I read within the past couple of weeks
Speaker 1: by an American scholar named James P. Cars, who for
Speaker 1: more than thirty years was a professor of the history
Speaker 1: and literature of religion at New York University. Now, this
Speaker 1: book isn't directly about religion, though it addresses religion and
Speaker 1: some of its parts. It's it's a short little philosophy book,
Speaker 1: and it's called Finite and Infinite Games, a vision of
Speaker 1: Life as Play and Possibility. And it was published in
Speaker 1: ninety six from Free Press. Now, over years, I've read
Speaker 1: several writers and thinkers who I admire in one way
Speaker 1: or another mentioned this book as influential on their thinking,
Speaker 1: and I recently decided to check it out. And ever
Speaker 1: since I started reading it, I have been captivated by
Speaker 1: the idea at the core of this book. And really,
Speaker 1: the idea is just a very interesting metaphor. It's not
Speaker 1: a scientific book. It's not a book really I think
Speaker 1: that is necessary for explaining anything important about how things are.
Speaker 1: But it's a very interesting metaphorical framework for how to
Speaker 1: look at the behavior of beings like you and me
Speaker 1: using this metaphor of play right. And I also want
Speaker 1: to drive home that it's it's not it's it's rather
Speaker 1: different from a lot of the books we've discussed on
Speaker 1: the show because it's not filled with a bunch of,
Speaker 1: you know, descriptions of various histories or mythologies or other
Speaker 1: philosophical topics. It's a very it's a very easily consumed book. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't want to criticism I don't I don't want
Speaker 1: to relegate it to the bathroom. But this is a
Speaker 1: book that you could keep in the bathroom. Him it's
Speaker 1: very much a casual read. Yeah, and you you can
Speaker 1: pick up any part of it, any page of it.
Speaker 1: Usually there will be a short section that you could
Speaker 1: read that that will, you know, make you think about things,
Speaker 1: that's kind of interesting and provocative. If it were kept
Speaker 1: by a toilet, I would call it a butt number.
Speaker 1: You know the button numbers button number books. No, I've
Speaker 1: never heard this terminol. They're the ones that if you
Speaker 1: keep them by the toilet, they're going to keep people
Speaker 1: on the toilet a little bit too long because you'd
Speaker 1: get interested interesting. I've I've never heard them described as such.
Speaker 1: I might have made that up. I'm not sure. I
Speaker 1: can't remember if I got that from the culture or
Speaker 1: from my own brain. Well, now it's out there so
Speaker 1: everyone can use it. Okay, So what is this this
Speaker 1: core idea that James P. Cars talks about in his book.
Speaker 1: The main idea is that when we do things, we're playing,
Speaker 1: and the things we do are games, and Cars's main
Speaker 1: move in this book is to separate the games we
Speaker 1: play into two major types, finite and infinite. It's there
Speaker 1: in the title Finite and Infinite Games and a quote
Speaker 1: from the opening of the book. Quote there are at
Speaker 1: least two kinds of games. One could be called finite,
Speaker 1: the other infinite. A finite game is played for the
Speaker 1: purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of
Speaker 1: continuing the play. Okay, In fact, I could say that
Speaker 1: you could skip reading the rest of the book and
Speaker 1: just contemplate that sentence and get a lot of the
Speaker 1: same value. For instance, one example that probably comes to
Speaker 1: a lot of people's minds is that it's perhaps the
Speaker 1: difference between playing tennis and keeping score and just batting
Speaker 1: the ball around, right, I mean that could potentially be
Speaker 1: a good example where one is played with a finite
Speaker 1: definite outcome in mind, where the other is played to
Speaker 1: see how long play can go on. Well, let's get
Speaker 1: into a little bit. Let's flesh out the core concept here.
Speaker 1: Let's look at a few of the characteristics that Car
Speaker 1: slays out that that he thinks go along with the
Speaker 1: difference between a finite game and an infinite game. So
Speaker 1: what are the characteristics of finite and infinite games in
Speaker 1: Cars's mind? Alright, So a finite game must come to
Speaker 1: an end when a player or a group of players win. Now,
Speaker 1: what constitutes winning might be spelled out in some set
Speaker 1: of external rules or or you know, it depend on
Speaker 1: the judgment of a referee. But ultimately the only thing
Speaker 1: that can decide whether the game has been one is
Speaker 1: the players agreeing that, hey, the game is over in
Speaker 1: this person one or this team one. Right. So if
Speaker 1: the players don't agree the game is over in practice,
Speaker 1: it is in fact not over right, It ain't over yet.
Speaker 1: And if the players agree the game is over in practice,
Speaker 1: they can't continue playing sort of by definition, maybe they
Speaker 1: could continue some activity, but they're no longer really playing
Speaker 1: the same game they were if they all think it's over, right.
Speaker 1: And then also there are temporal boundaries in place here.
Speaker 1: Time matters. Do you know when your game began? Do
Speaker 1: you care? If your answers are yes, then your game
Speaker 1: is finite. And then, of course the game again is
Speaker 1: over is if someone wins, right. And by contrast, the
Speaker 1: purpose of an infinite game is not to win, but
Speaker 1: to prevent the game from coming to an end. And
Speaker 1: thus there really is no decisive way to win, except
Speaker 1: maybe by indefinitely continuing play. Yes, and he says quote,
Speaker 1: there is no finite game unless the players freely choose
Speaker 1: to play it. No one can play who is forced
Speaker 1: to play now. One of the things he talks about
Speaker 1: with a finite game is that finite games need to
Speaker 1: have players agree on the rules before play starts. Right.
Speaker 1: If you've not agreed on the rules and advance, or
Speaker 1: players try to change the rules after play begins, the
Speaker 1: legitimacy of the outcome could be in danger. Players might
Speaker 1: not accept the outcome, they might not accept the winner.
Speaker 1: But by contrast, infinite games, by necessity, tend to evolve
Speaker 1: over time. Sometimes you change the rules, the teams, the players,
Speaker 1: the play space so that play can continue and can
Speaker 1: get around obstacles that would impede play. Carstwrights quote, finite
Speaker 1: players play within boundaries. Infinite players play with boundaries, and
Speaker 1: finite game has encourage players to create predictability and discourage surprise.
Speaker 1: So in an infinite game, usually the very purpose is
Speaker 1: to be surprised, right, Because if you're playing a finite game,
Speaker 1: you want to win. What gets in the way of
Speaker 1: you winning you not expecting what comes next, right, Right,
Speaker 1: You want to control the conditions of the game when
Speaker 1: you're trying to win. When you're playing an infinite game,
Speaker 1: where the purpose is not to bring it to an end,
Speaker 1: but to let it go on forever. You always want
Speaker 1: there there to be the potential for variation, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I think about role playing games a lot with this,
Speaker 1: Like playing Dungeons and Dragons. It's not a situation where
Speaker 1: the players are necessarily playing against each other, though there
Speaker 1: are games that play out like that. It should not, be,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, a situation where the dungeon master is
Speaker 1: playing against the players. Uh. Instead, it should be, in
Speaker 1: my mind, uh, a collective storytelling effort by the players
Speaker 1: and the dungeon master. And therefore, it's not about which
Speaker 1: which a choice or which which role of the dice
Speaker 1: is going to hurt the other side the most. It's
Speaker 1: about what is going to create the most engaging situation.
Speaker 1: I want to come back to your D and D
Speaker 1: example in a bit, because that goes along with something
Speaker 1: I think I've observed when when I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: finite and infinite games. One more characteristic I want to
Speaker 1: mention before I move on to an example is that
Speaker 1: Car says finite games tend to engender and attitude of seriousness, focus,
Speaker 1: and single mindedness within the players. Meanwhile, infinite games tend
Speaker 1: to encourage a spirit of playfulness, exploration and curiosity quote.
Speaker 1: Whoever must play cannot play well. That, of course, he says,
Speaker 1: applies to both types of games. Right. You might not
Speaker 1: like the fact that you say, have to earn money
Speaker 1: to make a living or have to eat in order
Speaker 1: to survive, but you must agree to play that game
Speaker 1: or you're not playing right now. Before we consider dungeons
Speaker 1: and dragons or dungeons and dragons at gunpoint any further,
Speaker 1: we should probably turn to a more you know, classically
Speaker 1: established game as a model for this for this subject,
Speaker 1: sure well to understand the simplest version of the difference
Speaker 1: I think between a finite game in an infinite game,
Speaker 1: consider a game of chess versus the game of chess. So,
Speaker 1: in a single game of chess, a player's goal is
Speaker 1: to defeat her opponent and become the winner. The game
Speaker 1: of chess doesn't have a set number of players who
Speaker 1: play against each other and want to win over another.
Speaker 1: It's it's an abstract space that allows individual games to
Speaker 1: keep on happening. Within it, it goes on forever. It
Speaker 1: could have infinitely many finite games within it. You can
Speaker 1: win a game of chess, but you can't win the
Speaker 1: game of chess. It exists, so people can keep playing it. Now.
Speaker 1: I just want to throw in a couple of quick
Speaker 1: facts from a two thousand ten Popular Science article by
Speaker 1: Natalie Wolchover in which she quotes computer scientists Jonathan Schaefer,
Speaker 1: who points out that quote, the possible number of chess
Speaker 1: games is so huge that no one will ever invest
Speaker 1: the effort to calculate the exact number. Uh. And in
Speaker 1: the article she also points out there, while there are
Speaker 1: only so many opening moves a player can make, the
Speaker 1: possibilities just quickly spiral out of control with each subsequent move.
Speaker 1: So in a sense, there are almost an infinite I guess,
Speaker 1: maybe not an actually infinite, but but a seemingly infinite
Speaker 1: number of chess games that could be played. But even
Speaker 1: that doesn't in fact matter, because you could say that
Speaker 1: tic tac toe, which has a much smaller number of
Speaker 1: possible games, is in a sense an infinite game. If
Speaker 1: you're talking about the game of tic tac toes, you
Speaker 1: can't win the game. You could win a game that
Speaker 1: you play against somebody, right. In fact, there's there's no
Speaker 1: excuse not to win a game if you play first. Now,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I can't remember what is that solved
Speaker 1: in the first player? Can always win at tic tac toe?
Speaker 1: Or can you always force a draw? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Playing against a child really kind of screws things up
Speaker 1: for me because I've had to throw games of Tic
Speaker 1: tac toe, uh, to the point where I don't remember
Speaker 1: how it really works because I'm trying to win the
Speaker 1: infinite game of parenting. But that's a that's a bad strategy.
Speaker 1: You need to teach him the pain of losing. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I want to do that with games that are fun. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe we should take a quick break and then when
Speaker 1: we come back, we can talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about why we think this idea of finite and infinite
Speaker 1: games is interesting and some more ways that can be applied. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back, so let's let's get do some some more
Speaker 1: examples here. What are some examples of finite games? Okay, well,
Speaker 1: we're totally surrounded by finite games, and we're just you know,
Speaker 1: they make up the bulk of everyday endeavor. Right, competition
Speaker 1: among co workers for a single available promotion, or among
Speaker 1: job candidates for a single position at a company, that's
Speaker 1: a finite game, right, You there's an end that you
Speaker 1: want to win. You want to be the person who
Speaker 1: gets that position, and you're competing for it. Another example
Speaker 1: would be an actual game, like a game of football.
Speaker 1: You're you're trying to win the game. Okay, yeah, and
Speaker 1: it has a it has a time even though time
Speaker 1: See I don't know much about football, but it does
Speaker 1: seem like time works differently in football because the the
Speaker 1: time on the ticker there does not equal the the
Speaker 1: exact uh length of the game. Well, whatever the length is,
Speaker 1: there are boundaries. I mean, you could have a game
Speaker 1: that doesn't have a necessary time limit on it, but
Speaker 1: it starts at a certain time and you know how
Speaker 1: the ending is decided, right. I'm not sure what happens
Speaker 1: in football if you don't have a winner, Like if
Speaker 1: you're just tied and you just keep going and you
Speaker 1: can't win, do they do they just call it a draw?
Speaker 1: Or do they play until somebody wins? Oh? Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you have other games where you have sudden death over
Speaker 1: times or a draw is is permittable. I I am
Speaker 1: not sure we're showing how cool we are here knowing
Speaker 1: all about football. Well that our football fan listeners will
Speaker 1: have to chime in. Okay, So Another clearly finite game
Speaker 1: would be a chase, an individual chase between predator and prey.
Speaker 1: Right there, there is somehow going to be a decisive conclusion.
Speaker 1: Either the predator might get a meal and the prey
Speaker 1: will die, or maybe the prey will escape and survive
Speaker 1: and the predator will lose and go hungry, and then
Speaker 1: there can be all kinds of sort of ranked intermediate outcomes,
Speaker 1: but there will be an outcome, right yeah. And that's
Speaker 1: the one thing that's important keep in mind with the
Speaker 1: infinite versus finite games is you can kind of nitpick
Speaker 1: a lot of these. You can say, well, well, you
Speaker 1: know what if they both did the predator and pray
Speaker 1: both die, that's finite. Yeah, I mean it's it's still finite.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you have to the mind can help. But
Speaker 1: I said, I think pick at the distinction of finite
Speaker 1: and infinite, and you can kind of go down a
Speaker 1: rabbit hole with any of these examples. In addition to
Speaker 1: predator and pray competition, of course, the other great competition
Speaker 1: of the natural world is mating. Oh sure, this is
Speaker 1: a finite game though, mating, and I would say mating
Speaker 1: and procreation itself is an infinite game, right, it doesn't
Speaker 1: have a finite outcome. Reproduction is something that seems to
Speaker 1: be designed to go on as long as it can
Speaker 1: and just keep the game going. But say in a
Speaker 1: more finite contest between two stags fighting for the right
Speaker 1: to mate with a female in the area, there is
Speaker 1: a winner and a loser. The winner gets to make
Speaker 1: there's no way to win the game of reproduction. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, it's played so that play may continue
Speaker 1: indefinitely down the generations. Yeah, but but but in terms
Speaker 1: of the actual encounter, Uh, it's gonna end. Attenborough is
Speaker 1: going to tell you when it's over, and then you're
Speaker 1: gonna go to the next segment on the Nature documentary. Now,
Speaker 1: you actually pointed out something interesting about how it can
Speaker 1: get weird when you you think a game is one type,
Speaker 1: but then you can nitpick about ways that it could
Speaker 1: be the other type. One thing is that wars very
Speaker 1: often get presented as a finite game. Right there, there
Speaker 1: is a goal to achieve, we will win over the enemy.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting to consider the idea of war as
Speaker 1: an infinite game, as imagined by George Orwell in nine
Speaker 1: four You know, in Orwell's Dystopia in that novel, war
Speaker 1: is not fought for the purpose of ultimately winning over
Speaker 1: the enemy and achieving some finite goal. The purpose of war,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not like to control territory for the
Speaker 1: long haul. In the end, it is to be continuously
Speaker 1: at war, to fight continuously for political purposes. And in
Speaker 1: this circumstance, the purpose of war is not to win,
Speaker 1: but to be at war. And in the sense, this
Speaker 1: makes war an infinite game. Of course, you know, many
Speaker 1: critics have argued that there are elements of this in
Speaker 1: the rationale for some real wars taking place in the
Speaker 1: real world. Now I've seen this example brought up before,
Speaker 1: specifically by motivational speaker A Simon Cynic who used the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War as an example of of an infinite war.
Speaker 1: But but I kind of want to go with a different,
Speaker 1: broader example, just to to lay it out. So in
Speaker 1: any story that pits besiegers against the besieged, and you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of like an army that is besieging a fortress, uh,
Speaker 1: there are two games at play, So you can argue
Speaker 1: that the besiegers and attackers are playing a finite game.
Speaker 1: They are playing to take the castle. Their game ends
Speaker 1: when they actually conquer Troy or Gondor or gall got Or.
Speaker 1: But the besiegers that offenders, their game is more infinite.
Speaker 1: Their game is survival. So they don't have to conquer
Speaker 1: their enemy. They just have to avoid being conquered. They
Speaker 1: have to survive. Well, yeah, that's interesting, because Cars ultimately says,
Speaker 1: though I think this sort of undercut some of the
Speaker 1: interesting parts of his metaphor. He says in the very
Speaker 1: last chapter of his book, there is but one infinite game.
Speaker 1: So therefore he's implying that life itself really is the
Speaker 1: infinite game, and the things within it are the finite games.
Speaker 1: But I think it's useful to imagine the other types
Speaker 1: of infinite games there can be within life. But of course,
Speaker 1: the way you point out there, there's sort of like
Speaker 1: levels that a finite game can be close or distant
Speaker 1: from the infinite game. The attackers on a city are
Speaker 1: playing a finite game to achieve a finite goal, and
Speaker 1: for the people within the city, what's at risk in
Speaker 1: the finite game of defending the city is ultimately the
Speaker 1: viability of the infinite game of getting to continue living. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you if you really sort of picking a part
Speaker 1: enough you can you can bring a lot of these
Speaker 1: games back to the infinite game of survival. So we
Speaker 1: discussed the game of war, But how about one of
Speaker 1: the other great games that is continually covered by the media,
Speaker 1: the game of politics. Well, sure, I mean there are
Speaker 1: ways of thinking about politics as a finite game or
Speaker 1: as an infinite game. There are lots of obviously finite
Speaker 1: games within politics, like an election, you know, as a
Speaker 1: clear outcome there's a winner and you're trying to win,
Speaker 1: or an attempt to pass a bill. Uh, these have
Speaker 1: finite win loss outcomes. But the entire political structure itself
Speaker 1: should be designed primarily to allow the continued existence and
Speaker 1: evolution of a civil society. You've got people and they
Speaker 1: want to live, and the goal of of a politics
Speaker 1: should be allow them to allow them to live and
Speaker 1: allow play to continue. But sometimes, of course, you get
Speaker 1: political actors who seem to lose sight of the infinite
Speaker 1: nature of the game, right, and that they have a
Speaker 1: kind of more finite total orientation towards politics. It's almost
Speaker 1: like you can win the game of politics. And I
Speaker 1: guarantee no matter where you are listening to this episode,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be able to find examples of that in
Speaker 1: your own political sphere. Yeah, I mean when we see it,
Speaker 1: that's like one of the most troubling and distasteful things
Speaker 1: we tend to see in politics, right when you see
Speaker 1: somebody who's who doesn't seem to have a an infinite
Speaker 1: view of what the future of their political system could be,
Speaker 1: but almost like they want to conquer it as a
Speaker 1: single act with an end goal. Yeah. Though I will
Speaker 1: say on the buffet of distasteful things about politics that
Speaker 1: that does cover a number of the different steamer trays
Speaker 1: that are available. Yeah, that's the whole seafood section. Yeah.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it's you think about the infinite game,
Speaker 1: and you think about how you interact with the infinite game,
Speaker 1: and a lot of that does come down to breaking
Speaker 1: it up into finite games, right, So, and even with politics,
Speaker 1: it can you can see where it can happen where
Speaker 1: it's a situation of like, well, yes, I want ultimately
Speaker 1: I want this, but in the short term, I need
Speaker 1: to get this bill passed and may and getting that
Speaker 1: bill passed is a part of the infinite game, but
Speaker 1: it is a finite battle. And yeah, I guess it
Speaker 1: comes down to you lose sight of the infinite in
Speaker 1: pursuing the finite. This is where I want to come
Speaker 1: back to your D and D example. So I think
Speaker 1: this is true about what I'm about to say. I
Speaker 1: think it's true about politics, but I think it's true
Speaker 1: about all kinds of things, and I'm sure it's going
Speaker 1: to be somewhat relevant to your D n D example.
Speaker 1: One of the things I keep thinking about ever since
Speaker 1: I started reading cars is how so much of our
Speaker 1: frustration with other people in life comes as a result
Speaker 1: of our belief that other people are not playing a
Speaker 1: game under its correct finite versus infinite distinction. And so
Speaker 1: when you're trying to play a finite game and other
Speaker 1: people engaged in the same activity or treating it as
Speaker 1: an infinite game, it can feel very annoying and tedious
Speaker 1: and pointless and frustrating. Right You're like, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get this done, I'm trying to get this outcome, and
Speaker 1: other people around me are just playing around as if
Speaker 1: they don't want to get to the point. And then,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, when you're trying to play an
Speaker 1: infinite game and other players around you are treating it
Speaker 1: like a finite game, it can feel cruel and hopeless
Speaker 1: and depressing and unfair. And there are all kinds of
Speaker 1: games that are gonna have mixed players within them, right,
Speaker 1: some people treating a certain type of play space is
Speaker 1: finite and other people treating it as more infinite. And
Speaker 1: I bet you get that kind of conflict within a
Speaker 1: D and D game, Right, You've got some people there
Speaker 1: who would be happy for the campaign to just go
Speaker 1: on and evolve forever and just continue being fun, versus
Speaker 1: other people who are very goal and outcome oriented within
Speaker 1: the game. Would you agree, Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, luckily,
Speaker 1: I think a game like Dungeons and Dragons tends it
Speaker 1: has stuff in it for for both types of players.
Speaker 1: Because on one hand, some may say, yeah, I just
Speaker 1: I want to finish the story. I want to finish
Speaker 1: this campaign. I want to I want to beat the
Speaker 1: game like it's a typical video game. Or they might
Speaker 1: they're they're they're thinking about leveling up. I want to
Speaker 1: get to that next level because then I get more
Speaker 1: more powers, more stats, you know what have you? Or
Speaker 1: I want to get more loot. So you can think
Speaker 1: of all these sort of finite levels within what is
Speaker 1: ultimately an infinite game. It's about the storytelling and the
Speaker 1: experience and the possibilities within this uh, this this mutually
Speaker 1: created world. Though. That highlights to me in an interesting way,
Speaker 1: the differences between finite and infinite storytelling. Um, I mean,
Speaker 1: they're there are very different ways that you can approach
Speaker 1: telling a story. Do you ever think about how different
Speaker 1: it feels to be in the hands of, say, a
Speaker 1: well written movie that has a tight plot, you know,
Speaker 1: well well conceived story structure, versus being in one of
Speaker 1: the opening seasons of a TV show where you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're in one of those first couple of seasons and
Speaker 1: the writers very likely do not know how the show
Speaker 1: is going to end yet. Um, I mean, we must assume,
Speaker 1: based on the laws of physics and of economics, that
Speaker 1: at some point the show will come to an end.
Speaker 1: But it's not being written that way yet. It's just
Speaker 1: going on and expanding. And that can feel very different
Speaker 1: and almost more enticing in a way, because it feels
Speaker 1: like it feels more like life itself, Like this could
Speaker 1: just go on. Yeah, I mean, I feel that definitely
Speaker 1: with the Game of their own series right now, because
Speaker 1: the the earlier books and earlier seasons everything, Everything is possible.
Speaker 1: You don't know where it's going, but at this point
Speaker 1: in the in the TV series, at any rate, it's
Speaker 1: become very finite, Like you know, everything is wrapping up
Speaker 1: in a set number of episodes, and there's so there's
Speaker 1: only so there are only so many battles that can happen,
Speaker 1: there are only so many shocking twists that can occur.
Speaker 1: You know. I couldn't help but think about Fallout four
Speaker 1: in all of this, I can't. I can't recall if
Speaker 1: you've played the Fallout games before. For you, okay, so
Speaker 1: you know in that game, you you you level up,
Speaker 1: as is typical in these role playing games, but the
Speaker 1: higher level becomes, the more work it requires, more time
Speaker 1: it requires to reach that next level. For people who
Speaker 1: haven't played, can we basically say what it is? It's
Speaker 1: post apocalyptic ultimately. I mean, there's a there's a set
Speaker 1: storyline in it, but it's also a sandbox world. It
Speaker 1: also has this open aspect and you can keep playing
Speaker 1: it no matter where you are in the various big
Speaker 1: and small storylines. So so there's a finite storyline in
Speaker 1: the middle of it, but you can just keep going
Speaker 1: around and doing different things. And you'd never run out
Speaker 1: of things to do. It's just sort of a limitless world. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: and no, right, because you can run out of worthwhile
Speaker 1: things to do, you can run out of interesting things
Speaker 1: to do. That there will always be some sort of rand.
Speaker 1: There will always be random monster encounters there will, you know,
Speaker 1: And I imagine there'll be a sort of a repetition
Speaker 1: on some of the random quests that pop up. But
Speaker 1: I was looking into this, and according to the Fallout wiki,
Speaker 1: Fallout for does not have an actual level cap. So
Speaker 1: you can keep becoming more godlike. Yeah, you can keep
Speaker 1: you can tend to you essentially, you can keep playing forever. However,
Speaker 1: they say that there is a hard limit at level
Speaker 1: sixty five hundred and thirty five. If you try to
Speaker 1: level past this point by any means, uh, then you'll
Speaker 1: crash the game due to the value overflowing back to zero.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so. That seems like a kind of maybe
Speaker 1: not well articulated, but finite limited on something that seemed
Speaker 1: like it could be infinite. Right, But I maintain that
Speaker 1: you would you would either go insane or just becoming
Speaker 1: just increasingly bored before you got anywhere close to level
Speaker 1: say sixty. Yeah, well, I don't know how you can
Speaker 1: get past, you know, level thirty. If you if you
Speaker 1: were in Stephen kinge short story of the Jaunt, and
Speaker 1: you were like sucked into the timeless, another realm between
Speaker 1: the fabric of reality, and you happen to bring your
Speaker 1: Xbox three sixty with you, then then I think maybe
Speaker 1: you could get close to that level more tedious than
Speaker 1: you think, more tedious than you think. Well, this, this
Speaker 1: doesn't make me think though about the fact that, on
Speaker 1: one hand, you could actually say, if we accept the
Speaker 1: laws of physics, there is no such thing as any
Speaker 1: infinite game in an objective sense, and that objectively no
Speaker 1: game will go on forever, right, You'd run out of
Speaker 1: you'd run out of energy, you'd run out of useful energy,
Speaker 1: you'd run out of the ability to do work at
Speaker 1: some point, an entropy in the future. But so that
Speaker 1: makes me think that I still think the idea of
Speaker 1: infinite games is very useful and it reflects not really
Speaker 1: like what the actual potential future of the game is,
Speaker 1: but what the mindset of the player is. That an
Speaker 1: infinite game could in fact come to an end within
Speaker 1: an hour. But what makes it an infinite game is
Speaker 1: the way the players treat it. They're treating it as
Speaker 1: if it could never come to an end. Right, So
Speaker 1: in that respect, fallout for is it's it's it's an
Speaker 1: infinite game as long as you have an infinite gaming
Speaker 1: attitude about it. Yeah, and that and that difference in
Speaker 1: attitude can come through in all kinds of other things.
Speaker 1: I mean, one example that I keep thinking about is
Speaker 1: the distinctions in how you might approach running a business. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't want to you know, this isn't gonna become
Speaker 1: a bit in this podcast. Robert and are not known
Speaker 1: for our insights in business, But just one thing to
Speaker 1: think about is does a business exist in order to
Speaker 1: create things of value employee people live and grow and
Speaker 1: keep on doing stuff in the economy and for its employees,
Speaker 1: or does it exist on a sort of path of
Speaker 1: financial conquest with a terminal end goal. Uh? Does the
Speaker 1: leadership of a business think about like, Okay, we're going
Speaker 1: to grow this until the point where we, you know,
Speaker 1: can sell or something like sell our position or something
Speaker 1: like that, or dominate the market. And this can get
Speaker 1: even more complicated because a business is usually going to
Speaker 1: be run by multiple leaders at various levels who might
Speaker 1: have somewhat different ideas about this, and the unspoken conflicts
Speaker 1: between the finite players and the infinite players in a
Speaker 1: business can create dysfunction. Yeah, I can see that. On
Speaker 1: one hand, someone saying we we created this company to
Speaker 1: change the world. This other player in the game is saying, well, actually,
Speaker 1: we created this company so we can sell it to
Speaker 1: Microsoft next quarter. Now, in both cases, the company may
Speaker 1: continue existing after a certain point that's being perceived as
Speaker 1: finite by the players, or a company may not continue.
Speaker 1: In fact, there is probably no such thing as an
Speaker 1: infinite company right that that will go on for the
Speaker 1: rest of time. But again it's about the mindset of
Speaker 1: the players. Are they thinking about this as something that
Speaker 1: is designed to be continuous and continue going on or
Speaker 1: something that has a winning condition? Now, Joe, you turned
Speaker 1: me onto a two thousand fourteen interview with Cars on
Speaker 1: CBC's Ideas with Paul Kennedy. Yeah, I actually haven't listened
Speaker 1: to that, but I saw that Cars did it. And
Speaker 1: I know you're big into Paul Kennedy and his optimist
Speaker 1: prime his Canadian optimist prime voice. Uh so I I
Speaker 1: let you know about that, knowing that you would go
Speaker 1: investigate and find out if it was worthwhile. Was it
Speaker 1: it is? It's it's very interesting. The title you can
Speaker 1: look it up and I'll try and link to it
Speaker 1: on the landing page. It's stuffitably your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: But it's titled After Atheism, New Perspectives on God and
Speaker 1: Religion and it's a wonderful episode. Dealing mostly with the
Speaker 1: ideas presented in Cars. Cars is two thousand and eight book,
Speaker 1: The Religious Case against Belief, and he makes a compelling
Speaker 1: case that belief is actually the enemy of religion and
Speaker 1: that the true beauty of religion is its ability to
Speaker 1: foster new ideas and approaches to life. And this all
Speaker 1: ends up tying in with with this idea of finite
Speaker 1: and infinite games as well. He argues that when you
Speaker 1: start walling religion up in belief, you rob it of
Speaker 1: that power. I believe this, and by the extension, I
Speaker 1: do not believe in that it becomes a dogmatic exercise
Speaker 1: and authority and pits us not only against our fellow humans,
Speaker 1: but against ourselves. He makes the case that the closed
Speaker 1: mindedness and hostility of belief has corrupted religion and spawned
Speaker 1: violence all over the world. Yeah, that's interesting. I've encountered
Speaker 1: this type of belief before, like the idea that UM
Speaker 1: that at its core, if you go back far enough
Speaker 1: in history, religion may not necessarily have been about about
Speaker 1: dogmatic beliefs like here is what God is and here's
Speaker 1: what you must do, but instead was more akin to
Speaker 1: a type of culture, like it involved settings and practices,
Speaker 1: ways of giving getting people into a certain state of minds,
Speaker 1: a contemplative state of mind or a thankful state of mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and Cars touches on some of these ideas UH
Speaker 1: in Finite and Infinite Games as well, particularly the topic
Speaker 1: of myth and religion. So chapter seven UM in Finite
Speaker 1: Infinite Games is titled Myth provokes explanation but accepts none
Speaker 1: of it. So the idea is that a culture can
Speaker 1: be no stronger than its strongest myths. He says that
Speaker 1: stories attain the status of myth when they are retold
Speaker 1: and persistently retold solely for their own sake, so that
Speaker 1: essentially the core of a myth is a is an
Speaker 1: infinite storytelling tradition. It's the infinite game of telling a story. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he he points something out that I think
Speaker 1: this is rather obvious to anyone who's ever crafted, or
Speaker 1: or or consumed any amount of fiction or art. But
Speaker 1: he says that whenever you stop telling the story for
Speaker 1: the story's sake and tell it to drive home like
Speaker 1: a clear social or political message, then you're no longer
Speaker 1: a storyteller. You've become a you know, a preacher or
Speaker 1: a propagandist. Yeah, it is weird how stories. I feel
Speaker 1: like a stories can demonstrate values. I wouldn't argue with that.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, when you start to get
Speaker 1: a sense that a story is being told to make,
Speaker 1: say a political point or an educational point or something
Speaker 1: like that, it becomes immediately far less interesting as a story. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and the thing is, even kids, little kids can
Speaker 1: tell when a children's book has an ax to grind
Speaker 1: when it's clearly about it's it's not about the joy
Speaker 1: of sharing a story, it's about driving home some point
Speaker 1: about how they should clean up their room. So Car
Speaker 1: says quote, great stories cannot be observed anymore than an
Speaker 1: infinite game can have an audience. Once I hear the story,
Speaker 1: I enter into its own dimensionality, I inhabit its base
Speaker 1: at its time. I do not therefore understand the story
Speaker 1: in terms of my experience, but my experience in terms
Speaker 1: of the story. Stories that have the enduring strength of
Speaker 1: strength of myths reach through experience to touch the genius
Speaker 1: in each of us. But experience is the result of
Speaker 1: this generative touch, not its cause. So far is this
Speaker 1: the case that we can even say that if we
Speaker 1: cannot tell a story about what happened to us, nothing
Speaker 1: has happened to us. I love this. I mean I
Speaker 1: if you're a listener to the show, you'll probably know
Speaker 1: that we have generally a pretty healthy respect for the
Speaker 1: mythological storytelling tradition. And yet at the same time can
Speaker 1: can take plenty of issue with what dogmatic religions and
Speaker 1: stuff like that due to the world, especially when you've
Speaker 1: got a specific destructive belief that's being insisted on. Right,
Speaker 1: But yeah, the mythological storytelling tradition is a wonderfully generative
Speaker 1: thing because one of the things that I think doesn't
Speaker 1: get brought up enough in discussion of creativity is how
Speaker 1: experience of the creativity of the other spawns the creativity
Speaker 1: within yourself. That people are inspired to tell stories because
Speaker 1: they consume stories, and that a lot of times the
Speaker 1: way stories happen is that you hear a story that's
Speaker 1: been told many times and you want to tell not
Speaker 1: exactly the same story, but a variation on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what would have happened if this had happened? Or what
Speaker 1: if this character had thought this instead of what we've
Speaker 1: merely assumed to be the case. But of course, variation
Speaker 1: on the mythological storytelling tradition is great if that's allowed.
Speaker 1: But if you're insisting on a very finite point of
Speaker 1: view that the myth must convey, then variations on the
Speaker 1: myth are not going to be accepted. Right, And this
Speaker 1: is where he gets into the idea that ideology is
Speaker 1: the apple. It is the amplification of myth. He gets
Speaker 1: into this concept in the Ideas interview as well, that
Speaker 1: that belief in sacred text fix fixes the past and
Speaker 1: the future. He says, quote, it is the assumption that
Speaker 1: since the beginning and the end of history are known,
Speaker 1: there's nothing more to say. Uh So it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a treatment of myth that no longer promotes infinite interpretation.
Speaker 1: Uh it's it's no longer a situation of saying, hey,
Speaker 1: what do you think this means? Instead you're saying This
Speaker 1: is the Mets message of the Holy Word. This is
Speaker 1: what the text means, and nothing else. So he proposes
Speaker 1: the use of religion as the necessary template for interacting
Speaker 1: with the world, for imagining the cosmos, etcetera. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I really like this, this treatment of myth and religion.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think back on stories that I grew
Speaker 1: up with, be it you know, the Christian Bible, or
Speaker 1: Greek myth the Lord of the Rings, or or my
Speaker 1: dad telling me the story the Battle of Hastings and
Speaker 1: Stamford Bridge. You know, I can't help but carry those
Speaker 1: with me and summon them in consideration of new myths
Speaker 1: and news stories and new ideas. So when I reached
Speaker 1: the point in my life where I started learning about Hinduism,
Speaker 1: for example, I could look at a character like Krishna
Speaker 1: and say, oh, well, you know, he kind of lines
Speaker 1: up with say this Jesus character in some respects. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, as far as A, B and C are concerned,
Speaker 1: Like you bring the story, these stories with you to
Speaker 1: make sense of new stories and interpret them, but not
Speaker 1: as a like finite text about what is true and
Speaker 1: what should be believed, but as a sort of like
Speaker 1: generative mechanism it causes you to be creative to think
Speaker 1: about things, right, Yeah, And he argues that the appeal
Speaker 1: of Christ and of Buddha both come down to the
Speaker 1: infinite nature of their quests. So God it becomes human
Speaker 1: in order to listen to humanity, immortal prince undertaking a
Speaker 1: spiritual quest to release everyone from all forms of bondage.
Speaker 1: And he says, quote, those Christians who deafened themselves to
Speaker 1: the residence of their own myth have driven their killing
Speaker 1: machines through the garden of history, but they did not
Speaker 1: kill the myth. The empty divinity, whom they have made
Speaker 1: into an instrument of vengeance, continues to return as the
Speaker 1: Man of Sorrows, bringing with him his unfinished story and
Speaker 1: restoring the voices of the silenced woe. Now that as
Speaker 1: a sermon, so yeah, I wouldn't have necessarily originally thought
Speaker 1: how to apply the framework of finite and infinite games
Speaker 1: to types of mythology and religious storytelling. But that's a
Speaker 1: really interesting place to take it. And I you know,
Speaker 1: when he does get into that in the book, it
Speaker 1: it does make sense because he is a scholar of religion.
Speaker 1: But when I first encountered the idea, I originally started
Speaker 1: thinking about it in terms of technology. All Right, we'll
Speaker 1: hold that thought, Joe, because we're gonna take one more
Speaker 1: break and then we're back. Thank alright, we're back. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk a little bit about the idea
Speaker 1: of conceptions of technology in terms of finite or infinite
Speaker 1: games along carses framework. So we've talked on the show
Speaker 1: before about Jarren Lannier, right, Yes, I believe so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's so. He's a computer scientist, technology philosopher, one of
Speaker 1: the most important minds behind the history and development of
Speaker 1: virtual reality. And interestingly, though he says that in his
Speaker 1: earlier years he was in many ways kind of a
Speaker 1: techno utopian guru, in recent years he has become increasingly
Speaker 1: critical of the role of digital technology in our lives
Speaker 1: and of the techno utopian mindset. Though I think you
Speaker 1: can still sound very positive about the potential of virtual
Speaker 1: reality when you get him going on it while acknowledging
Speaker 1: the dangers as well. But he was very critical, for example,
Speaker 1: of the crowdsourcing trends of web two point oh in
Speaker 1: his two thousand tin book You Are Not a Gadget, Robert,
Speaker 1: I know you remember that crowdsourcing era. Oh yes, I
Speaker 1: do remember it well because it it does. It reared
Speaker 1: its ugly head in our own business here. Why should
Speaker 1: we write the articles. Let's get the people to write
Speaker 1: the Yeah. Yeah, let's you know, free content coming right
Speaker 1: out of the mouths of the mass. Yeah. And I
Speaker 1: mean I And I say that as someone who loves
Speaker 1: Wikipedia and I love browsing crowdsourced articles about the various things.
Speaker 1: In case you're wondering, I did mean to say mass
Speaker 1: singular and not mass because it is a monolith, isn't
Speaker 1: at once you're you're monetizing it. Yes. So. Lenear has
Speaker 1: also been very critical of the role of social media,
Speaker 1: the advertising driven model of digital content, with the idea
Speaker 1: that you know, advertising driven media platforms like social media
Speaker 1: tend to trend toward manipulation and the stoking of negative emotions,
Speaker 1: degrading the quality of relationships. One example I found is
Speaker 1: that he writes that if you can say you have
Speaker 1: thousands of friends on Facebook, quote, this can only be
Speaker 1: true if the idea of friendship is reduced. I think
Speaker 1: that's pretty true. He's also been really critical of singularity
Speaker 1: type thinking, which he's called cybernetic totalism, a sort of
Speaker 1: you know, reduces humans and human creativity towards this single
Speaker 1: achievement sort of point in history that we can get to,
Speaker 1: and then the machines will be able to take over
Speaker 1: and really everything that humans can do now, and all
Speaker 1: human creativity and culture and all that can ultimately be
Speaker 1: represented by computing power. Anyway, I found a section on
Speaker 1: his website that is a sort of cut chapter. He
Speaker 1: called it a deleted scene from his book You Are
Speaker 1: Not a Gadget, where he talks about the idea of
Speaker 1: his old techno utopian guru talk and uh, in some
Speaker 1: ways in which he still agrees with it, in some
Speaker 1: ways he doesn't agree with it anymore. So he's talking
Speaker 1: about this idea of post symbolic communication, which is something
Speaker 1: that he envisions in the world of virtual reality. So, Robert,
Speaker 1: imagine you've got a virtual reality machine where you can
Speaker 1: use it to essentially, at very high fidelity, translate the
Speaker 1: contents of your imagination directly into some digital space that
Speaker 1: can be shared with other people without having to use
Speaker 1: symbolic encoding of things like words. Okay, so instead of
Speaker 1: writing a short story about a world that I've imagined,
Speaker 1: instead of painting it on a canvas. I am just
Speaker 1: like brain blasting it right in your face. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can transmit the contents of your imagination in a very
Speaker 1: high fidelity and convincing way into a place where you
Speaker 1: can experience them in a sensory way, and other people
Speaker 1: can experience them as well. And that's sort of what
Speaker 1: he calls the idea of post symbolic communication is like
Speaker 1: you can get around having to use things like digital
Speaker 1: encoding of of you know, like drawings and words and stuff,
Speaker 1: all these things that are sort of bottlenext towards sharing creativity.
Speaker 1: He contrasts that path towards post symbolic communication with other
Speaker 1: types of quote ramps or visions of the progress or
Speaker 1: visions of possible progress in technology, like singularitarian thinking, where
Speaker 1: the power of technology through computation and artificial intelligence will
Speaker 1: will sort of cross an event horizon of power and progress.
Speaker 1: And here's where he brings in cars. He uses cars
Speaker 1: is framework of finite and infinite games to think about
Speaker 1: types of ramps or visions of technological progress. And this
Speaker 1: is a major reason some ramps are better than others,
Speaker 1: he argues. Quote, here's how I like to put it.
Speaker 1: Good technology connects people in new and deeper ways, while
Speaker 1: bad technology merely grants people more raw our. Once you
Speaker 1: have the fastest car, the biggest bomb, the most capacious computer,
Speaker 1: what then it is an empty form of ambition. A
Speaker 1: drive for pure technological power is not only a finite game,
Speaker 1: but often a destructive one. And he writes, quote improving
Speaker 1: computation for its own sake instead of for the cause
Speaker 1: of empathy results in misfortunes like the plague of fragments
Speaker 1: were now enduring. Uh and also quote an approach to
Speaker 1: any underlying technological capability that solely expands human powers will
Speaker 1: probably lead to evil. And I really think about this
Speaker 1: in the context of the conversations we had earlier this
Speaker 1: year about social media, Like think about how the pure,
Speaker 1: open minded drive towards expanding the power of a social
Speaker 1: media platform like Facebook ended up manifesting in terms of
Speaker 1: horrible finite games like get as many users as possible
Speaker 1: onto the platform and then monetize you know, like that
Speaker 1: is a finite game, and that is a very destructive
Speaker 1: finite game ultimately, right, because it's it's in so many
Speaker 1: ways limiting of what good is actually possible through technology.
Speaker 1: So Ultimately, I think Landier is saying that if we
Speaker 1: want technology to serve us, we can't just make it
Speaker 1: more powerful, because technology that in a blind way is
Speaker 1: just made more powerful will tend naturally towards becoming a
Speaker 1: tool in a series of increasingly destructive finite games played
Speaker 1: by the people who have the most power to wield
Speaker 1: the technology. Instead, as technology progresses, we have to have
Speaker 1: an ethic of progress, and the ethic of progress should
Speaker 1: be one where the considering technology as part of an
Speaker 1: infinite game must be built into the technological advance itself. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not just about say, I can't help to
Speaker 1: think of it like a loud speaker creating a powerful loudspeaker,
Speaker 1: But then you have to also think about the message
Speaker 1: that's going through the loudspeaker. Yeah, there must be a
Speaker 1: way of shaping the progress of developing louder and louder
Speaker 1: loudspeakers so that I don't know, so that it's used
Speaker 1: for purposes that make people's lives better, maybe for playing
Speaker 1: loud concerts and public that people would enjoy or something
Speaker 1: like that, and not to be used as a sonic
Speaker 1: weapon to pacify crowds of protesters. Or something like that,
Speaker 1: because if you just say, well, it's just brought you know,
Speaker 1: it's just increasing our power to do whatever. It's a tool,
Speaker 1: it could be good or evil. You know. He's pointing
Speaker 1: out the many ways that if you just give people
Speaker 1: more tool power that's morally neutral, it will just tend
Speaker 1: to get used for evil purposes, even unintentionally. People at
Speaker 1: Facebook or other social media platforms that have created all
Speaker 1: these things we've been pointing out and complaining about. Again,
Speaker 1: I want to emphasize I don't think they're necessarily evil people.
Speaker 1: They're not trying to do bad in the world. They
Speaker 1: just allowed a process to have evil consequences. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean because basically finite players are going to flock to
Speaker 1: whatever your technology is. Yeah, to think about another way
Speaker 1: that technological power could affect the balance of finite and
Speaker 1: infinite games. You know, remember that distinction we were making
Speaker 1: earlier about how you can win a finite game of
Speaker 1: an individual chess match, but you can't win the infinite
Speaker 1: game of chess itself. Right, You can't walk out and
Speaker 1: say I just won chess. Everybody, I'm done. But what
Speaker 1: if you're a computer program like Alpha zero? That might
Speaker 1: actually change things, because then it's you know, so Alpha
Speaker 1: zero is, as of the time of recording this, I think,
Speaker 1: currently the most powerful AI chess engine, but even a
Speaker 1: generation beyond that, maybe a chess engine that can just
Speaker 1: win without question a hundred out of a hundred games
Speaker 1: against any human player or any other player of any type.
Speaker 1: At this point, could you actually say that you've not
Speaker 1: just won mini games of chess, but the game of
Speaker 1: chess itself. You have reached a level of mastery within
Speaker 1: the game where you literally cannot be challenged by any
Speaker 1: conceivable player. So if you were able to do that,
Speaker 1: have you turned what was supposed to be an infinite
Speaker 1: game into a finite game? Yeah? I mean, you can
Speaker 1: make an argument that this is a case where you've
Speaker 1: broken the game by becoming too good at it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And of course, you know, card counters are in a
Speaker 1: way accused of that all the time in uh in
Speaker 1: the in Vegas game houses. Yeah. And under this scenario,
Speaker 1: it seems like like the new incarnation of the game
Speaker 1: could actually be designing better and better AI chess engines, right, Like,
Speaker 1: maybe human players can no longer participate in this infinite
Speaker 1: game as chess players against them, but they can still
Speaker 1: play the meta game of working on designing AI players.
Speaker 1: I guess until the AI AI designers outstripped the human
Speaker 1: AI designers. Well, you know, Banks got into that a
Speaker 1: little bit in the player of games because Gurga is
Speaker 1: a master gamer, but he's no match for any of
Speaker 1: the minds He's He's practices some of these games on
Speaker 1: the way to the Empire of Azad and Uh, and
Speaker 1: he's no match for a powerful AI. But there's this
Speaker 1: distinction between the games that emans play in the games
Speaker 1: that the minds play. Well, maybe that's an important distinct
Speaker 1: to keep in mind as we consider technological progress and
Speaker 1: how that affects human endeavor. I mean, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of talk about like will humans become obsolete? People always
Speaker 1: ask variations on that question, like, as you know, automation
Speaker 1: becomes more productive, you know, suddenly, well, we have an
Speaker 1: economy where humans can't really do any meaningful work. You know,
Speaker 1: there's not much we can do that can't be done
Speaker 1: better by a robot. There are a lot of critics
Speaker 1: of that idea, by the way, um and I think
Speaker 1: Jared Landier is one of them. But if there's anything
Speaker 1: to that idea, one wonders like, does that even undercut
Speaker 1: our motivation to participate in the infinite game? You know? Uh?
Speaker 1: And how do we have to adapt ourselves to think
Speaker 1: differently about the infinite games we play and that make
Speaker 1: life worth living if we can't really compete in any
Speaker 1: of the smaller finite games within them. Yeah? I agree,
Speaker 1: and I think in in the culture books you do again,
Speaker 1: you see computers playing more of the the infinite game,
Speaker 1: but leading space either for definance, certainly for the finite
Speaker 1: games in which humans may play and the infinite game
Speaker 1: of their lives, but also realizing where they can play
Speaker 1: a pivotal role within these these overarching schemes. If you will,
Speaker 1: may there always be a place for us within the schemes. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's all. That's all I ask of our future AI overlords.
Speaker 1: Just let me. Let me have a role in your
Speaker 1: scheme whatever it is. I'm sure I could do it.
Speaker 1: I can smuggle some sort of sensor into a factory.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I leave it to you. I'm not
Speaker 1: the the artificial intelligence here. Yes, our power is finite,
Speaker 1: and so is our is our episode length? Because once
Speaker 1: more we have reached the end of an episode of
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind. But that's not the end,
Speaker 1: because you have well a finite number of episodes. But still,
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Speaker 1: to support this show, I've said it, uh plenty of
Speaker 1: times before, but really, infinite numbers an infinite number the
Speaker 1: death of a finite number of times I have said
Speaker 1: you can help us out by rating and reviewing the
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Speaker 1: out there that distribute our work. Give us infinite stars, Yes,
Speaker 1: infinite stars. Insist on it. I'm sorry if I was
Speaker 1: laughing while you were talking. I was imagining already the
Speaker 1: infinite number of emails we're gonna get where people are
Speaker 1: explaining the rules of football to us. Yeah, well, I'm
Speaker 1: I welcome it, uh and more and more emails about
Speaker 1: finite and infinite. Really, anytime you start breaking down infinity,
Speaker 1: it just it complicates everything, doesn't it. Yeah, anyway, infinite
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