Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert lamp and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. All right, today's episode, we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about board games. So the most obvious place to
Speaker 1: start here is, Joe, what about you? What are what
Speaker 1: is your favorite board game? Or what are what board
Speaker 1: games are you most nostalgic for? Well, uh, to have
Speaker 1: a very conventional answer. I have a lot of fun
Speaker 1: memories of playing Monopoly as a child, but I was
Speaker 1: just thinking about how the board games I got most
Speaker 1: excited about as a kid really had no staying power whatsoever.
Speaker 1: They weren't games that people would still be talking about
Speaker 1: or still playing really much twenty years later. I was
Speaker 1: very interested in games that had a lot of complicated
Speaker 1: physical apparatus, like I remember seeing the commercials for mouse Trap.
Speaker 1: I think the game was that had all these traps
Speaker 1: that would fall down on years, and I was really
Speaker 1: into that, though I don't know if I ever actually
Speaker 1: played it. It was a lot to set up in
Speaker 1: mouse Trap, but more recent versions of mouse Trap, by
Speaker 1: the Way, have simplified the set up a lot easier
Speaker 1: to play. The game itself is still pretty basic, but
Speaker 1: at least it's not this just box of junk that
Speaker 1: has to be assembled. Well. Another example I remember being
Speaker 1: super excited about but never actually playing, was I took
Speaker 1: a class when I took I was in a class
Speaker 1: when I was in elementary school's computer class, and it
Speaker 1: was one of those cases where they tried to make
Speaker 1: it cool by gamifying the class. So if you did
Speaker 1: good things in the class, you get points and you
Speaker 1: could spend those on prizes like it's Chucky cheese or something,
Speaker 1: you know, get a switchblade comb but that I never
Speaker 1: got enough points to get this one prize, but I
Speaker 1: always I did, and every time we went into the
Speaker 1: room and it was a it was a board game
Speaker 1: called the Omega Virus, and I just had, like with
Speaker 1: my wildest fantasies were about how cool this game was
Speaker 1: because it seemed like it involved a talking robot on
Speaker 1: the board, and I think the premise was like you're
Speaker 1: on a space station and an evil computer virus takes
Speaker 1: it over and you like go to spaces with your
Speaker 1: little figuring. You have to press the robot and it
Speaker 1: talks at you. It's like, you know, infection spreads and stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: I can't be sure because I haven't played it. But
Speaker 1: I'm almost positive this game must be terrible, like not
Speaker 1: very fun, not very replayable. But I just sucked in
Speaker 1: by that that fluff component, just this like the machine
Speaker 1: that comes with it that you interact with. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure I would have been suckered in the same way
Speaker 1: by those horrible looking board games that have like VHS
Speaker 1: tapes that would accompany them. As has been documented on
Speaker 1: everything is terrible, like that Star Trek board game that
Speaker 1: has h the guy who keeps saying experience beach. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you mentioned the fluff. We should go ahead and
Speaker 1: h and describe this for everyone who may not be
Speaker 1: familiar when when we when we talk about board games
Speaker 1: and just gaming in general. Uh, generally there is a
Speaker 1: distinct between fluff and mechanics, and I would add that
Speaker 1: there is an additional um part of this trifecta, that
Speaker 1: being materials. So, for instance, the pure mechanics of a
Speaker 1: game are just the rules of the game, how things move,
Speaker 1: how points are acquired, and how a winner or winners
Speaker 1: is determined. So like if someone's play testing a game
Speaker 1: that they've developed, it may have very little or even
Speaker 1: no fluff. It could just be a system of numbers,
Speaker 1: the kind of game that would would just totally not
Speaker 1: appeal to someone like me, Like I like, I like
Speaker 1: a hefty, hefty dose of good fluff, fluff being the story,
Speaker 1: the character is the setting, Like, oh, I'm moving pieces
Speaker 1: around on the board. What are they? Oh? They it's
Speaker 1: a king and a queen and an army and some
Speaker 1: guy's riding horses. Okay, now you're talking fluff. An example
Speaker 1: of a game I think with no fluff is like go.
Speaker 1: It is just tiles with rules or not. You know,
Speaker 1: pieces on a board with rules, and there's no imagery.
Speaker 1: There's no story there. You know that all that's gone.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could apply things like that to it, and
Speaker 1: maybe people have in some cases for all I know.
Speaker 1: But the Bear game itself is the draw is just
Speaker 1: the mechanics. Then you've got all these other games I
Speaker 1: think of, like candy Land and the Game of Life,
Speaker 1: where really what's attractive about the game is like the
Speaker 1: illustrations on the board and the idea of what your character,
Speaker 1: the story of what your characters are doing as you
Speaker 1: you know, spin a wheel or roll dice and advance
Speaker 1: along spaces. Yeah. So so the fluff and candy Land
Speaker 1: is really good but also the material. You know, it
Speaker 1: has a has a neat looking board. Also, it wasn't
Speaker 1: Life the one that had the pophumatic bubble. That being
Speaker 1: a bit maybe I'm thinking of another game I think
Speaker 1: you are. I think Life has a spinning wheel like
Speaker 1: the Wheel of Fortune, because you know it's Life so well,
Speaker 1: there was some other game. I'm sure listeners will will
Speaker 1: will clue us in here have the paphumatic bubble. You know.
Speaker 1: I had this material aspect of the game where you're like,
Speaker 1: that looks so fun. I just want to press that
Speaker 1: thing all day and play this game, even though it
Speaker 1: might suck. Um. Like one example from my childhood, I
Speaker 1: remember being a super board with Monopoly. I hate Monopoly passion,
Speaker 1: but I do remember loving Fireball Island like that was.
Speaker 1: That was this game. For anyone who hasn't played it
Speaker 1: or or seen that it's been it's actually been reissued.
Speaker 1: There was like a Kickstarter for it. It's this game
Speaker 1: with tremendous material and fluff features. It is a it's
Speaker 1: like a three D topographic island, and there is a
Speaker 1: monster head um temple at the top of a volcano
Speaker 1: in the center that shoots out marbles at certain times
Speaker 1: in the game to knock your player back down the mountain,
Speaker 1: and so it's just you know, it had a great
Speaker 1: ad campaign, but it was clearly the game itself is
Speaker 1: not that complicated and probably not that good. I haven't
Speaker 1: played it since I was a kid, but but clearly
Speaker 1: it was leaning very heavily on material and fluff. But
Speaker 1: this makes board games an interesting thing to discuss in
Speaker 1: the context of invention, because board games are not the only,
Speaker 1: not the only thing we use that has appeal on
Speaker 1: both the material or not the both the mechanical side
Speaker 1: and the fluff side. I mean lots of inventions. Uh,
Speaker 1: the success of them depends on both. Some things become
Speaker 1: very popular because they are inherently very useful in in
Speaker 1: their most basic functional sense, and other things become popular
Speaker 1: just because there's something esthetically cool about them. Oh yeah, um.
Speaker 1: Like Like, another game that instantly comes to my mind
Speaker 1: is Space Hulk, which was a game that that I
Speaker 1: saw advertisements for as a kid, and I wanted just
Speaker 1: because the the the Warhammer forty thou fluff too. It
Speaker 1: was so good, you know, it's like these space soldiers
Speaker 1: and armor fighting xenomorph like aliens, the tyranned gene Steelers,
Speaker 1: and so I was instantly in I was instantly sold
Speaker 1: by the fluff, the the figurines looked great, So I
Speaker 1: was sold by the material, and later when I actually
Speaker 1: got to play it, it's a fine game as well.
Speaker 1: So all three of these things can line up, and
Speaker 1: when they do, you often have a game that stands
Speaker 1: the test of time. But the curious thing about time
Speaker 1: in board games is you can look at something like Monopoly,
Speaker 1: or you can look at a game like Space Hulk,
Speaker 1: and if you strip them down, there's nothing about this
Speaker 1: game that could not exist thirty years ago, a hundred
Speaker 1: years ago, a thousand years ago, because you're ultimately just
Speaker 1: moving pieces around, like the fluff can change, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just like what is space? So it's it's people
Speaker 1: in monsters and people have been battling monsters in human
Speaker 1: myth uh for in a since time out of mind. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's nothing about about most of these games when you
Speaker 1: strip them down, that can't exist in another age. But
Speaker 1: they but they didn't. There's this there's still this evolution
Speaker 1: of of the mechanics of games, the way we play
Speaker 1: games and the sort of games we play. Yes, that
Speaker 1: is really interesting. The way that you know, it can
Speaker 1: seem like, how how did it take thousands of years
Speaker 1: for this game to be invented? But then again, almost
Speaker 1: all board games are you could probably say, derivative of
Speaker 1: forms of other board games that previously existed. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are a few basic types. There's like the type
Speaker 1: where you try to reach a space on a board
Speaker 1: before everyone else does, or the type where you try
Speaker 1: to accumulate the most of a certain type of token
Speaker 1: or you know, money, type of currency. Uh, And then
Speaker 1: there's the kind where you have armies that battle each
Speaker 1: other until the other one is eliminated. So while we
Speaker 1: keep coming up with new games that have never existed before,
Speaker 1: almost all the games we come up with are in
Speaker 1: some way that they've got ancestors in terms of their
Speaker 1: basic format and play style. Absolutely, so you could take
Speaker 1: various modern games take them back in time, and not
Speaker 1: only would would would even ancient people recognize it as
Speaker 1: a game, they would probably they might even be able
Speaker 1: to say, oh, well, that's that's that's kind of like
Speaker 1: this game that we play. It's kind of like a
Speaker 1: it's a racing game, or it's a fighting game, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Of course, board games are not something that is found
Speaker 1: in nature. They are a product of human civilization, so
Speaker 1: they had to be invented at some point. And that's
Speaker 1: what we're going to be looking at today. What is
Speaker 1: a board game, what does it mean, how is it invented?
Speaker 1: And what role does it play for us? Now, before
Speaker 1: we explore the the invention and the role of board
Speaker 1: games in human culture, we usually like to ask the
Speaker 1: question about an invention, what came before it? Right? That
Speaker 1: helps you understand what it actually is. And so I
Speaker 1: was trying to think what came before the board game.
Speaker 1: It's not like, you know, there was a there was
Speaker 1: a pre board game board game that we know about,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't quite like that. But one thing we
Speaker 1: can be very sure of is that before we had
Speaker 1: board games, what do you do with a board game?
Speaker 1: You play it. So before we had board games, we
Speaker 1: had play That's right. If you look at a at
Speaker 1: a board game or you know, in this whole episode,
Speaker 1: you can also think a little outside of just board
Speaker 1: game and think of games that maybe don't actually involve
Speaker 1: a board or a play surface. What are they but
Speaker 1: kind of a simulation of something in reality with lower
Speaker 1: stakes usually uh, And that's something that can exist even
Speaker 1: without some sort of phy the coal apparatus or materials. Right,
Speaker 1: and certainly that's something we see animals do as well. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean we certainly don't see animals play board games.
Speaker 1: We do see them play, yeah, yeah, we we see them,
Speaker 1: let say, play fighting where it's like they're fighting, but
Speaker 1: they're not really fighting. The stakes are not the same, right,
Speaker 1: And this is a really interesting psychological and biological question.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to me. But also there's a whole field
Speaker 1: of study around the study of play. What is play? Exactly?
Speaker 1: What is a game? It's one of those things, you know,
Speaker 1: it's in the pornography category. We know when we see it.
Speaker 1: But it's hard to set out a comprehensive definition of
Speaker 1: what exactly play is, or what exactly a game is.
Speaker 1: In fact, the philosopher Ludvig Wittgenstein used the example of
Speaker 1: a game as his prime illustration of how not all
Speaker 1: useful categories can be bounded by a fixed set of
Speaker 1: universal characteristics. You know, this is one of his philosophical principles,
Speaker 1: like some concepts and categories instead operate on this principle
Speaker 1: that he called family resemblances. Quote A complicated network of similarities,
Speaker 1: overlapping and criss crossing. And to give a better example
Speaker 1: of this, I want to quote from a section of
Speaker 1: his book Philosophical Investigations that explains this thinking with with
Speaker 1: a few abridgments. So Wittgenstein writes, quote, consider, for example,
Speaker 1: the proceedings that we call games, I mean board games,
Speaker 1: card games, ball games, Olympic games, and so on. What
Speaker 1: is common to them all? For if you look at them,
Speaker 1: you will not see something that is common to all,
Speaker 1: but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at
Speaker 1: that Look, for example, at board games with their multifarious relationships.
Speaker 1: Now pass to card games. Here you find many correspondences
Speaker 1: with the first group, but many common features drop out
Speaker 1: and others appear when we pass next to ball games.
Speaker 1: Much that is common is retained, but much is lost.
Speaker 1: Are they all amusing? Compare chess with knots and crosses,
Speaker 1: or is there always winning and losing or competition between players?
Speaker 1: Think of patients. In ball games, there is winning and losing,
Speaker 1: But when a child throws his ball at the wall
Speaker 1: and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at
Speaker 1: the parts played by skill and luck at the difference
Speaker 1: between skill and chess and skill and tennis. I think
Speaker 1: now of games like ring a ring of roses. I
Speaker 1: think that's like ring around the rosie. Uh, here is
Speaker 1: the element of amusement. But how many other characteristic features
Speaker 1: have disappeared? And we can go through many many other
Speaker 1: groups of games in the same way, can see how
Speaker 1: similarities crop up and disappear. And the result of this
Speaker 1: examination is we see a complicated network of similarities, overlapping
Speaker 1: and criss crossing, sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.
Speaker 1: And I've always thought that's a really interesting observation that
Speaker 1: we have these categories. Game is one of them. I
Speaker 1: guess play would be another one where we can identify
Speaker 1: it when we see it. We point out a thing
Speaker 1: and say that's a game or that is play, but
Speaker 1: can't put together a comprehensive definition that includes everything that
Speaker 1: is a game or everything that is play. Right. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love I love what he's said here because it
Speaker 1: it makes me think, for instance, of something like like bowling,
Speaker 1: like bowling is is this uh this activity that you know?
Speaker 1: Certainly one can make an argument for game. One can
Speaker 1: make a strong argument for sport. And I think there
Speaker 1: are elements of the two, like bowling. To me, it
Speaker 1: feels like an activity where the world of sport and
Speaker 1: game converge and perhaps cause a little bit of category confusion.
Speaker 1: Wait do I detect from this? Are you staking out
Speaker 1: of position that sports are not games? I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: saying that the distinction kind of falls into what he's
Speaker 1: talking about here. You know, like you look at the
Speaker 1: baseball game, you look at a game of monopoly or cards,
Speaker 1: and yeah, there are some things that line up about them,
Speaker 1: and yet there is a distinctive difference between the two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it can be really difficult because so if Witgenstein is right,
Speaker 1: we're faced with a problem trying to say, organize a
Speaker 1: scientific study of the idea of play or of games,
Speaker 1: because we want to understand what play is and what
Speaker 1: role it plays, what games are, and what purpose they serve.
Speaker 1: But we have trouble creating like an airtight definition. There
Speaker 1: always seem to be some examples of things that just
Speaker 1: don't quite fit the definition you come up with. But
Speaker 1: we would still look at those things and call them
Speaker 1: games or play. And yet for the purposes of research,
Speaker 1: it's important to have clear definition. So a lot of
Speaker 1: what these researchers do is just try to come up
Speaker 1: with the definition, and they can end up feeling kind of, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the word is, kind of kind
Speaker 1: of multifarious and plotting as far as definitions go, like,
Speaker 1: they've got a lot of clauses in them, But I
Speaker 1: want to read one I came across that I feel
Speaker 1: like is a pretty good biological definition of play. Might
Speaker 1: not get everything, but it's one of the best I've read.
Speaker 1: And it was set up by a University of Tennessee
Speaker 1: researcher named Gordon Burghardt in the American Journal of Play
Speaker 1: in two thousand ten. And this is this is his
Speaker 1: definition quote. Play is repeated behavior that is incompletely functional
Speaker 1: in the context or at the age in which it
Speaker 1: is performed, and is initiated voluntarily when the animal or
Speaker 1: person is in a relaxed or low stress setting. So
Speaker 1: that that that might be kind of hard to wrap
Speaker 1: your brain around, but I want to break out it's
Speaker 1: got like five parts there, because already I'm thinking this
Speaker 1: applies to everything from hunting to well, no, that's the part, okay,
Speaker 1: So so first thing is that the behavior is not functional,
Speaker 1: It doesn't contribute to current survival. So hunting wouldn't count
Speaker 1: unless you're doing it recreation. I feel like a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are a lot of people who do
Speaker 1: it recreation. There are a lot of people who certainly
Speaker 1: need to hunt to some degree or certainly consume the
Speaker 1: the food that they obtain through hunting. But anyway, I continue. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you might in that case class recreational hunting in
Speaker 1: fact as a form of play. Maybe it is, but
Speaker 1: so it's at least in the animals who need to
Speaker 1: hunt to survive. Hunting is not play because hunting is functional.
Speaker 1: So play is not functional. Number Two, it's done for
Speaker 1: its own sake. It's this is what we would call fun.
Speaker 1: It's intrinsically motivating. Right. You don't have to do it
Speaker 1: for some other reason. It is itself attractive to you
Speaker 1: as an activity. Right. You're not expecting to obtain food
Speaker 1: by it. You're not expecting to obtain a mate by it. Uh,
Speaker 1: you were doing it just for the love of the game, right.
Speaker 1: It pulls you in on its own power. Three, The
Speaker 1: behavior is different from normal survival behaviors in at least
Speaker 1: one respect. So something that is exactly the same as
Speaker 1: things you do for survival, even if you're not currently
Speaker 1: doing it for survival. That's probably not play right. Play
Speaker 1: tends to, in Burghart's words, quote, it is incomplete generally
Speaker 1: through inhibited or dropped final elements. Think about the way
Speaker 1: like play fighting can like have the first parts of
Speaker 1: a fight there, but don't actually go in for the
Speaker 1: kill or anything. So gladiator competition play in some cases, well,
Speaker 1: that might be something up for debate. Yeah, But Burghart
Speaker 1: also points out exaggerated awkward or precocious movements um or
Speaker 1: behavior patterns with a modified form sequencing or targeting um
Speaker 1: so like attack behaviors against a thing that would not
Speaker 1: be normally a target of attack. I think about the way,
Speaker 1: like a dog will play with a ball like it
Speaker 1: is a piece of prey that I don't think the
Speaker 1: dog actually thinks that the ball has meat in it.
Speaker 1: It's playing with the ball, right, But it does the
Speaker 1: same things to the ball roadly that it would do
Speaker 1: to say, a rat that was in the house. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the third thing. Fourth thing, behavior is repeated. You
Speaker 1: know you can do it more than once. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then fifth it happens when stress is low. And this
Speaker 1: doesn't have to mean that there is no stress, but
Speaker 1: it just means it's not something that happens while you're
Speaker 1: currently like be chase to buy a predator. And given
Speaker 1: this kind of definition, again, I think we can probably
Speaker 1: find ways that it might not perfectly fit what our
Speaker 1: intuitive ideas of play are. But I think that's a
Speaker 1: really good place to start, um and and that sort
Speaker 1: of helps us think about what the roles of play
Speaker 1: and games might be for biological organisms like us. All right,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back, and we're back. One of
Speaker 1: the things, of course, we mentioned earlier, is that we
Speaker 1: know play predates things like board games because play is
Speaker 1: present in non human animals. I mean, it's there, and
Speaker 1: they're actually debates over how many animals it's present in, like,
Speaker 1: for example, it's extremely common among mammals. It seems almost
Speaker 1: universal among mammals. Like people have generally seen the way
Speaker 1: dogs will chase and wrestle each other, the way kittens
Speaker 1: stalk and pounce on each other and engage in various
Speaker 1: forms of play. Fighting, cats are I think, sometimes even
Speaker 1: more playful than people give them credit for. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: especially in the indoor variety that are cut off from
Speaker 1: their natural world, and of course, you know, partially insane
Speaker 1: because of what we've done to them. They're kind of
Speaker 1: in a permanent state of kitten hood. For instance, my
Speaker 1: cat um stalks and attacks my feet pretty much every day,
Speaker 1: but does not seem to be doing it with intent
Speaker 1: to um maim and consume my feet. No, I mean,
Speaker 1: I would guess that's probably play. It is done intrinsically
Speaker 1: for the fun of doing it right for her. It's not.
Speaker 1: I don't find it tremendously fun myself, but she loves it.
Speaker 1: She can't get enough of it. Well, why can't your
Speaker 1: feet take a joke? It's more the claws and the
Speaker 1: teeth than the joke. I'm all hot for the joke.
Speaker 1: Uh So, yeah, we we know this is there in
Speaker 1: these Uh. I guess we consider them since their predatory mammals.
Speaker 1: We you know, we think about them as having like
Speaker 1: more complex brains. But it's also there in say mice
Speaker 1: like I was reading an article by the researchers Leel
Speaker 1: and Dugatkin and Serena Rodriguez for a Berkeley publication, and
Speaker 1: they were pointing out the research has found that mice
Speaker 1: usually start playing about fifteen days after they're born. UH,
Speaker 1: and that play activities peak around nineteen to twenty five days,
Speaker 1: and this seems to coincide with neurosciences revealed coincide with
Speaker 1: development of synapses in the cerebellum and those those synapses
Speaker 1: are necessary for muscle control in life. So there seems
Speaker 1: to be something going on where like young mice are
Speaker 1: playing around the same time, their brains are developing the
Speaker 1: stuff that they need for for running around and surviving
Speaker 1: with with muscle control. And also, mice tend to show
Speaker 1: greater brain development when they're raised in environments with wheels
Speaker 1: and other play structures than in environments without them. Give
Speaker 1: my something to play with and their brains do better.
Speaker 1: So this is the basic idea that of play as
Speaker 1: a rehearsal for something, play is practice for skills one
Speaker 1: will need as an adult, yes, or play being necessary
Speaker 1: for just normal brain development. Um. And both of those
Speaker 1: are strong theories about why play exists in the animal world.
Speaker 1: That will come back to that in some caveats in
Speaker 1: just a minute. UH. An interesting question I came across
Speaker 1: is is their play among non mammals. We know it's
Speaker 1: pretty much universal among mammals but there are all these
Speaker 1: debatable reports of play among various birds and reptiles. Um,
Speaker 1: it does seem, for example, that ravens play. They do
Speaker 1: stuff that's hard not to look at and say that's play.
Speaker 1: Like juvenile ravens are attracted to novel objects almost in
Speaker 1: the way, uh, you know, like like a dog would
Speaker 1: be with toys, and they seem to play around with them.
Speaker 1: One really interesting thing I came across was in the
Speaker 1: zoologist Vladimir Denett's published a paper in Animal Behavior and
Speaker 1: Cognition describing the play behaviors of crocodilians playful crocodiles, which
Speaker 1: apparently was not news to people who worked regularly with
Speaker 1: these animals. But you might be wondering, well, how the
Speaker 1: heck does a crocodile play, or an alligator? You know,
Speaker 1: what does that look like? They're all kinds of ways. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they chase after inflata balls, they surf in waves,
Speaker 1: they snap at flowing water, They give each other piggyback rides,
Speaker 1: they blow bubbles. These are all things that seem to
Speaker 1: meet these biological and ethological definitions of play. That's that's crazy,
Speaker 1: because I would certainly have thought, okay, the raven might play,
Speaker 1: it is an intelligent creature, but reptiles reptile Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would have been there with you. But but apparently
Speaker 1: this is just common knowledge to people who are hands
Speaker 1: on with crocodilians a lot even fish. There there is
Speaker 1: debate about this about whether this really counts is play.
Speaker 1: But for example, they sometimes jump when there's no need to,
Speaker 1: when stress levels are low. Why there's nothing chasing them.
Speaker 1: They're not getting anything from it. We've talked about fish
Speaker 1: jumping on stuff to blow your mind before. Uh, and
Speaker 1: so there there are some ideas that maybe they're playing.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is a form of play. Now, once you
Speaker 1: get down to invertebrates, it really does get much trickier
Speaker 1: to find things that could reasonably be classed as play, except,
Speaker 1: of course, in the case of you know what, cephalopods right, Oh,
Speaker 1: of course, yeah, I was. I was. I was thinking
Speaker 1: about insects and I was thinking, oh, well, well, Dr
Speaker 1: Seth Brundle told us that there there are no insect
Speaker 1: politics and he didn't say anything about play. But it
Speaker 1: kind of stands to reason that insects would not play.
Speaker 1: But then, of course, I forget about about the the
Speaker 1: invertebrate superstars of the cephalopod world. Yeah, which are you know,
Speaker 1: the true aliens on Earth? Like octopuses are clearly one
Speaker 1: of the most playful animals on this planet, though their
Speaker 1: play might seem very strange to us. They seem to
Speaker 1: enjoy puzzles and new toys and challenges, and sometimes they
Speaker 1: like pull on people in what seemed to be strange
Speaker 1: examples of social play. There are also even reports of
Speaker 1: play like behaviors among insects like ants and wasps, but
Speaker 1: these reports this is very controversial. I guess a lot
Speaker 1: of this is getting into an individual organisms tendencies towards neophilia. Uh,
Speaker 1: the the you know, the likelihood that they're gonna seek
Speaker 1: out novel experiences or items if there's if they are
Speaker 1: you know, a curious cree sure that benefits has a
Speaker 1: survival benefit in trying things out, such as we talked
Speaker 1: about raccoons on stuff to blow your mind before. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: of course raccoons being mammals, do seem to be somewhat playful.
Speaker 1: But also we talked about the idea that like raccoons
Speaker 1: who have stronger, stronger neophilia instincts, the ones that seek
Speaker 1: out novel objects and approach them rather than avoid them.
Speaker 1: They tend to do better and say urban environments, which
Speaker 1: that makes sense. You approach some novel objects in an
Speaker 1: urban environment, you will often get some fries out of
Speaker 1: it or something. Um. But anyway, so I want to
Speaker 1: come back and kind of rope in just a basic
Speaker 1: overview of the ideas about why play exists in animals,
Speaker 1: what biological purpose does it serve? Of course, this is
Speaker 1: something we don't fully know the answer to right this
Speaker 1: is this is an unsolved question, but there are some
Speaker 1: some strong hypotheses with with some evidence behind them. So
Speaker 1: one we already mentioned is that play is training for
Speaker 1: crucial survival or reproductive skills. And in the words of
Speaker 1: the English psychologist Peter case Myth, this would mean quote,
Speaker 1: play primarily affords juveniles practice towards the exercise of later skills.
Speaker 1: And you can already probably imagine tons of reasons for
Speaker 1: thinking this is the case, Like think about, um, how
Speaker 1: much of the play we see in other animals and
Speaker 1: in humans frankly resembles forms of survival and reproduction behavior.
Speaker 1: Play very often looks like fighting, hunting, escaping, feeding, or
Speaker 1: mating actions that you know mimic. These activities in an
Speaker 1: exaggerated or incomplete form make up a huge portion of
Speaker 1: play behaviors, but there are also there's some evidence against
Speaker 1: this too. There's studies in many animals, including some types
Speaker 1: of mice and merecats, that have found that animals who
Speaker 1: play at a skill like hunting or fighting do not
Speaker 1: later show advantages at this skill compared to individuals that
Speaker 1: play at the skill less. So maybe sometimes this isn't
Speaker 1: the case. Uh. There's also the question of why forms
Speaker 1: of play sometimes continue into adulthood after survival skills are mastered,
Speaker 1: or why some play behaviors, especially in humans, do not
Speaker 1: mimic physical survival behaviors. A classic example of this would
Speaker 1: be the board game Yes. A couple of alternate theories
Speaker 1: that came across because they were mentioned by dugatt Ken
Speaker 1: and Rodriguez. One is that play is essentially for like
Speaker 1: social species, it's for learning the rules. This is from
Speaker 1: the University of Colorado biologist Mark baykoff Uh and he
Speaker 1: basically says that play is useful for developing a sense
Speaker 1: of morality and social skills. Like play allows animals to
Speaker 1: experience and internalize their social clan sense of fairness of
Speaker 1: inclusion and exclusion of justice, and what cheating is. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a very good, good point and something that
Speaker 1: I see coming up in my own life with a
Speaker 1: six year old playing some board games with him while
Speaker 1: he's also learning how to play chess at school. And
Speaker 1: a lot of it is, you know, certainly there's a
Speaker 1: there's a you know, stressing abstract thought and learning systems
Speaker 1: of rules and strategy, but a lot of it is
Speaker 1: like learning how to lose, learning how to win, how
Speaker 1: to do both of those things gracefully, how not to cheat,
Speaker 1: how to respond to cheating, like these are all all
Speaker 1: sort of aspects of the general exercise. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: think that that's a strong possibility as well. Another theory
Speaker 1: is from the check researcher Mark Spinka, who says that
Speaker 1: play is to help animals not necessarily just practice individual
Speaker 1: skills like hunting, fighting and all that, but to generally
Speaker 1: prepare for the unexpected. It's how an animal readies its
Speaker 1: brain to be surprised by life and deal with that
Speaker 1: surprise gracefully. So things like being knocked off balance when
Speaker 1: you're not expecting it, or things like encountering failure in
Speaker 1: a in a chase or something like this. Another way
Speaker 1: of putting this is that play and games serve to
Speaker 1: increase versatility. This is this is very a very good point,
Speaker 1: because I'm thinking about like various physical sports, a lot
Speaker 1: of it does seem to have a it seemed to
Speaker 1: stress bodily awareness and being able to react physically to change.
Speaker 1: And then most board games of any of any note,
Speaker 1: you know, there's some level of you go into the
Speaker 1: game with a certain strategy, there's a certain way you
Speaker 1: can and perhaps will win. But then the best laid
Speaker 1: plans right and foiled foiled. You have to figure out, well,
Speaker 1: how am I going to react to this and still
Speaker 1: try and achieve my initial goals. Maybe there's a different
Speaker 1: way I'm going to have to win after all. Well,
Speaker 1: and this, you know, you you can see it in
Speaker 1: the way that we really we have an extremely derisive
Speaker 1: attitude toward people who do not lose or face adversity
Speaker 1: in games. Well, you know, the person who flips the
Speaker 1: table when they get when they you know, get frustrated
Speaker 1: in risk or something that's like an archetype we all
Speaker 1: know about. We all know that guy, and that behavior
Speaker 1: is strongly frowned upon. Right now, part of it might
Speaker 1: be because they're playing Monopoly or some garbage game like that,
Speaker 1: but but no, Yeah, people who react like that to games,
Speaker 1: they can probably react like that too to just about
Speaker 1: any game. And I think one of the important lessons
Speaker 1: of gaming, like one that I continually try to embrace,
Speaker 1: is in enjoying the way in which you lose. I
Speaker 1: think I think it's a testament too of a well
Speaker 1: designed game, because I've also played some games where I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this game is kind of BS and I'm losing. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's really what am I doing? You know? But but
Speaker 1: a really good game, you're like, oh, I see disaster
Speaker 1: is coming, and isn't it interesting how it's playing out?
Speaker 1: What can I do to minimize disaster? That can sometimes
Speaker 1: become the new game that you're playing that is a
Speaker 1: really great kind of game. I haven't even thought about that,
Speaker 1: games that are interesting to lose. Yeah. Um So, one
Speaker 1: more theory I want to mention before we move on.
Speaker 1: The last one I came across was in a presentation
Speaker 1: called what is Play for by the Penn State professor
Speaker 1: Gary Chick, and this discusses the possibility that play is
Speaker 1: favored by sexual selection, that it's at a Playfulness is
Speaker 1: a signaling mechanism of fitness in adults, and that might
Speaker 1: answer why even adults are playful and not just children.
Speaker 1: Like animals including humans, tend to prefer mates that play
Speaker 1: because play is interpreted as a signal of a few things.
Speaker 1: Play signals youth, youthfulness, play signals good health, play signals intelligence,
Speaker 1: and it signals good socialization. Yeah, these are all solid points.
Speaker 1: But plus, in the more of the human context, there's
Speaker 1: a sense of leisure there, right, Like this individual has
Speaker 1: space in their life for something of little or no consequence,
Speaker 1: like a game. Right, I mean in the animal context,
Speaker 1: I think that's part of the good health signaling. Right,
Speaker 1: If you show off that you can play a game,
Speaker 1: you're showing off that you're not starving and sick and
Speaker 1: at the edge, Like, hey, look, I'm chasing a ball.
Speaker 1: This isn't gonna feed me, but I'm big enough I
Speaker 1: can catch something later. Yeah. So, I mean, ultimately, we
Speaker 1: don't know which of these theories are correct, and there
Speaker 1: are other ones too, we don't have time to chase
Speaker 1: them all on here. I guess you could also posit that,
Speaker 1: of course, play is not for anything that it doesn't
Speaker 1: serve any adaptive biological purpose. But given how widely play
Speaker 1: is selected for, I really find this unlikely. But anyway
Speaker 1: to come back to board games here, Given all of
Speaker 1: this we've looked at, I think one of the interesting
Speaker 1: questions to ask is what kind of play does a
Speaker 1: board game represent? And how does does a board game
Speaker 1: fit into this whole model. So if you take the
Speaker 1: view that well, maybe a lot of play is training
Speaker 1: for skills later in life. Maybe that's what most of
Speaker 1: play is for in the animal world. That's obviously plausible
Speaker 1: for a lot of different things, because, as we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: how many types of play involved things that are necessary
Speaker 1: for survival, like chasing, fighting, uh, you know, playing house,
Speaker 1: imaginative playing with skills of you know, maintaining a domestic life,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, right, finding your mystery date, um,
Speaker 1: you know, creating your ensuring your financial future, battling barbarians
Speaker 1: um or or or so simply just responding to luck,
Speaker 1: responding to chance, responding to to unforeseen events. Well, I
Speaker 1: think that last one might be especially relevant with games
Speaker 1: with board games, because what sets board games apart from
Speaker 1: so many of these other games like play, fighting, play, chasing, playing,
Speaker 1: house and all that is that, unlike these physical sports
Speaker 1: and stuff, board games become almost entirely abstracted from any
Speaker 1: physical activity that is important for survival or reproduction. They're
Speaker 1: abstract games. Their games taken into an imaginary space that
Speaker 1: you don't act out full behaviors with your body, you know, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it becomes even though you may have some impressive, uh fluff,
Speaker 1: you may have some you know, impressive materials, some very
Speaker 1: nice figurines, etcetera, it's still largely something that is taking
Speaker 1: place in the mind with the aid of some physical
Speaker 1: materials and of course the system of rules. With that
Speaker 1: in mind, I think we should maybe take a break
Speaker 1: and then come back and focus on some of the
Speaker 1: earliest known board games and and see what we can
Speaker 1: make of them. Alright, we're back. So in researching this,
Speaker 1: we we look to a number of different sources, but
Speaker 1: of course I ended up picking up Brian and Fagin's
Speaker 1: excellent The seventy Grade Inventions of the Ancient World is
Speaker 1: a fun starting put place. Uh. He only devotes two
Speaker 1: pages to board games, but it provides a nice overview,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that he drives home is
Speaker 1: that board games are probably as old as human culture.
Speaker 1: Uh that pretty much any ancient or modern society has
Speaker 1: some sort of board game. It just seems innately tied
Speaker 1: to how we think and how we use objects and rules.
Speaker 1: And you can even go so as far as to
Speaker 1: say that they're a defining element of human society. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously they came out of something though, right, But but
Speaker 1: the details are lost to the myths of history. Is
Speaker 1: unlikely that there's a single necess city or breakthrough that
Speaker 1: evolved into game playing. But there are a couple of
Speaker 1: key theories that I think are worth considering. So the
Speaker 1: first is that, and this ties in with some of
Speaker 1: the discussions we've had about play, is it is the
Speaker 1: the safe sublimation of competition and rivalry. Oh, this is
Speaker 1: often a theory about sports as well. That it does
Speaker 1: something to Uh. It takes an instinct that we have
Speaker 1: that can be destructive and gives us an outlet for
Speaker 1: that instinct that is not destructive. Right. You know, today
Speaker 1: we have a game night in which say employee employee,
Speaker 1: fellow employees or friends or family members members will gather
Speaker 1: together and attempt to crush each other so that one
Speaker 1: may rise up victorious over the rest. This would be
Speaker 1: terrible if we did this four real zes. But since
Speaker 1: we're doing it within the confines of a board game
Speaker 1: or card game or what have you, uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: perfectly acceptable, it's even beneficial. I mean, look at the
Speaker 1: way people practice sports fandom. You can clearly see in
Speaker 1: this that we have some powerful instincts that that that
Speaker 1: caused us to want to band together in groups and
Speaker 1: support of, you know, against a common enemy that's also
Speaker 1: banding together. We have, I think some inherent warlike instincts,
Speaker 1: and I think it would probably be bad if we
Speaker 1: just had these instincts bouncing around without any way to
Speaker 1: express them. That wasn't actually harmful. But generally speaking, you're
Speaker 1: dealing with with far lower stakes. Yes, even if there
Speaker 1: is money on the line, it is still generally generally
Speaker 1: your life is not on the line right now. The
Speaker 1: second idea, and this one, this one I really find interesting,
Speaker 1: is that board games emerged out of ritual and divination practices. Yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: this is really interesting. Now. Of course, divination practices would
Speaker 1: be what would be trying to answer an unanswerable question
Speaker 1: or gain some piece of knowledge by the invocation of
Speaker 1: the gods or spirits or something, usually using a physical medium,
Speaker 1: yeah too. Yeah, And sometimes it's overt it is, say,
Speaker 1: asking spirit um deceased loved one or an ancestor or
Speaker 1: a god or a goddess or a supernatural entity for help.
Speaker 1: Other times it's it's a bit more obscure, like what
Speaker 1: you're actually asking and why you're using a particular means
Speaker 1: to do so. We had an episode of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind where we talked about the eaching where
Speaker 1: we get into a lot of this. Yeah, talking about
Speaker 1: the eaching is essentially a randomization engine for divination that
Speaker 1: depends on physical objects to create and record randomized events. Uh.
Speaker 1: Specifically uh tossing a few coins, laying some sticks down
Speaker 1: to keep track of what what the coins tell you,
Speaker 1: and then referring to a system of rules to tell
Speaker 1: you what these lines mean, and then of course how
Speaker 1: you should act what you should expect based on that. Now, remember,
Speaker 1: in the Stuff to Blow your Mind episode, we talked
Speaker 1: about how even though you know, we're not positing that
Speaker 1: sort of ledge methods where you like you know, cast
Speaker 1: lots or something are actually giving you, say, knowledge of
Speaker 1: the future or anything like that, they could still be
Speaker 1: useful or adaptive in that they might tend to prompt
Speaker 1: action when you were otherwise frozen, like it's possible, you know,
Speaker 1: you're just faced with a problem, you don't know what
Speaker 1: to do. And in fact it's the case that really
Speaker 1: any action is better than no action, and thus consulting
Speaker 1: a divination method gives you impetus to go forward with
Speaker 1: some type of response. I remember in that issuing episode
Speaker 1: that we did, we we looked to a quote from
Speaker 1: Julian Jaynes, who is the individual that was behind the
Speaker 1: the bicameral mind hypothesis. But but this particular quote has
Speaker 1: has little to do with with with that particular hypothesis.
Speaker 1: But he was talking about sortilage and uh he said quote.
Speaker 1: But this simplicity, even uh, triviality to us, should not
Speaker 1: blind us from seeing the profound psychological problem involved, as
Speaker 1: well as appreciating its remarkable historical importance. We're so used
Speaker 1: to the huge variety of games of chance, throwing dice
Speaker 1: through let wheels, etcetera, all of them vestiges of this
Speaker 1: ancient practice of divination by lots, that we find it
Speaker 1: difficult to really appreciate the significance of this practice historically.
Speaker 1: It is a help here to realize that there was
Speaker 1: no concept of chance whatever until very recent times. So
Speaker 1: he had to think about and he's tying that in
Speaker 1: a little bit to his hypothesis. But but for the
Speaker 1: most partly thinking of the primordial uh, you know, ancestors
Speaker 1: to the board game, to games of chance being simply
Speaker 1: a way of of figuring out how to act, like
Speaker 1: what I must do something? But how do I possibly
Speaker 1: weigh these two things? I must appeal to some other force? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's something to that. We we
Speaker 1: can't know this for sure, that you know, ancient or
Speaker 1: prehistoric people's had no concept of chance. But judging by
Speaker 1: their writings when we have access to those, it does
Speaker 1: seem like they didn't really have much of an idea
Speaker 1: of endomness, at least to me. It seems more like
Speaker 1: there's a general belief in sort of like determinism by
Speaker 1: the gods or by some kind of power of fate
Speaker 1: that you know, win something that that appears random happens,
Speaker 1: say even just the outcome of a dice roll, that
Speaker 1: was the will of the gods for it to happen
Speaker 1: that way. And so if you imagine board games in
Speaker 1: this context, they would take on a very different cast, right,
Speaker 1: every time you throw the dice, which I guess at
Speaker 1: that time probably wouldn't have been dice, but would have
Speaker 1: been something like, you know, sticks that fall in a
Speaker 1: certain way to tell you how many places to move
Speaker 1: or what the outcome of something is, or a knuckle
Speaker 1: bones or a common one. Yeah, yeah, rattle the bones.
Speaker 1: I think there's this old Babylonian inscription that's like a
Speaker 1: gambler's lament that says like, woe, woe, woe to me
Speaker 1: the knuckle bones. It's like, you know, oh no that
Speaker 1: you know, they gave me bad fate. But the bad
Speaker 1: fate could be within a game, and within the game
Speaker 1: this would still be interpreted, perhaps as a deliverance by
Speaker 1: the gods or or a punishment by the gods, like
Speaker 1: the gods are determining who wins your dice game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's kind of like you're going, all right, God,
Speaker 1: I need some help on this. Give me a sign,
Speaker 1: all right, I don't see a sign. What I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do is I'm gonna i'm gonna throw this stick. If
Speaker 1: it lands this way, i'm gonna assume that's a yes.
Speaker 1: And if it lands the other way, I'm going to
Speaker 1: take that as a no, So balls in your court. God,
Speaker 1: here we go. But what if it's not a yes
Speaker 1: or no about a question in your life, but about
Speaker 1: do I get to advance a space in this game
Speaker 1: on the board? Wow? Imagine if that was the case.
Speaker 1: Every time we play a board game, a divine being
Speaker 1: has to has to like clock in today, like, oh
Speaker 1: my goodness, they're playing arkham Harror. I'm gonna be here
Speaker 1: all night. I hate this one. Can't they just play
Speaker 1: play checkers? You know? I wonder if this may come
Speaker 1: in as One of the things I often wonder about
Speaker 1: is like why do some religions for bid games of
Speaker 1: chance or forbid gambling? What is it about that activity
Speaker 1: that makes it detestable to the religious authorities and the
Speaker 1: people who come up with the with these religious dogmas.
Speaker 1: I wonder if games of chance, especially in the ancient
Speaker 1: frame of mind, tend to suggest a belief in like
Speaker 1: consulting demons and a non sanctioned spiritual authorities, you know,
Speaker 1: so that when you roll a die or roll a knucklebone,
Speaker 1: you may in fact be uh having a consult every
Speaker 1: time you do it with some kind of illicit spirit
Speaker 1: with a demon or something, huh, And it would be
Speaker 1: interested to come back and do an Invention episode on gambling.
Speaker 1: But I also wonder, and I may be completely off
Speaker 1: on this, I wonder if it's ever a case where Okay,
Speaker 1: if a board game or a game is simply a simulation,
Speaker 1: simplification with lowered stakes, if you then raise the stakes again,
Speaker 1: does that become gambling? And it's because that's kind of
Speaker 1: how I always think about gambling. It's like playing cards
Speaker 1: for fun, that's fun, playing cards for money. Okay, you've
Speaker 1: taken taken something fun and you've made it a little dirty,
Speaker 1: and you've made losing feel more real, and you've made
Speaker 1: winning a little more icky. Somehow everyone's mileage is going
Speaker 1: to vary on that. Well, but that's my take on
Speaker 1: I think there could also be when you're talking about
Speaker 1: not just games of chance, but like adding the gambling element, yes,
Speaker 1: which does seem to be often crucial, you know, is
Speaker 1: their money on the line there. You could also just
Speaker 1: say that it's like, well, it's a basic social control
Speaker 1: problem because for some reason, where there's gambling, there also
Speaker 1: tends to be disorder and crime. You know, gambling tends
Speaker 1: to lead to fights, and murder and stuff. It could
Speaker 1: just be something like as simple as that, right. I know,
Speaker 1: we were looking at at some sources about Islamic law
Speaker 1: and the interpretation of Islamic laws concerning games of chance
Speaker 1: versus games of skill, and it seems like for the
Speaker 1: for the most part, based on what we're looking at,
Speaker 1: generally gambling is bad. Gambling is against the rules. But
Speaker 1: games that have dice in them, if they are games
Speaker 1: of skill, you know, it's generally okay. So that specifically
Speaker 1: the uh, you know, gungeon and dragons is fine. I
Speaker 1: think there's a difference opinion among difference. Yes, you're still
Speaker 1: you're still going to find some some individuals that have
Speaker 1: you know, there are a lot stricter on this and
Speaker 1: and and stricter on the interpretation and would say that no,
Speaker 1: if their dice involved, or there's some sort of chance element,
Speaker 1: then then it is not permitted. You know. Going back
Speaker 1: to the sort of adaptive or revolutionary framework, I wonder
Speaker 1: if you can fundamentally class games of chance versus games
Speaker 1: of skill as as having different kinds of roles in
Speaker 1: our biology and our psychology. Yeah, yeah, probably so. And
Speaker 1: maybe that's again one of the reasons that it's so
Speaker 1: perfect when when those two things are balanced in a
Speaker 1: single game where you do need skill to win, and
Speaker 1: yet there are these these these unpredictable moments, these these
Speaker 1: turning points that can totally change the outcome, and no
Speaker 1: amount of skill, Like maybe skill will be essential to
Speaker 1: survive those twists and turns. Yeah, I mean dealing with
Speaker 1: dealing with unforeseen circumstances is a skill in a way.
Speaker 1: The the skill of versatility is the ability to face
Speaker 1: the vicissitudes of fate and come up with a with
Speaker 1: a way around. Like candy Land is definitely a game
Speaker 1: that requires no skill. You know, if anybody has ever
Speaker 1: played with the child knows virtually it's just all random movement.
Speaker 1: There's there's not really any there are no decisions to
Speaker 1: be made. You're the complete whims of the universe. When
Speaker 1: it comes to that, that's going to be the one
Speaker 1: that God's really hate clocking in for because they have
Speaker 1: to do all the work. But then you have games
Speaker 1: like chess right where yes you're having to respond to
Speaker 1: changes that are perpetrated, but they're perpetrated by your opponent
Speaker 1: at any rate. I do want to drive home that
Speaker 1: whether we're looking at this idea of of games and
Speaker 1: board games as the safe sublimation of competition, or as
Speaker 1: something that emerged out of divination practices. Uh, we can't
Speaker 1: really know for sure. There's evidence for both of these. Uh,
Speaker 1: They're likely other reasons in play as well, including just
Speaker 1: the desire to do something that is amuses you, something
Speaker 1: that is fun. But I'm still haunted by that question.
Speaker 1: How did the thing that amuses us, the thing that's fun,
Speaker 1: become moving around little tiles on top of a pattern surface,
Speaker 1: or you know, or like rolling a knucklebone and seeing
Speaker 1: how many of a piece of tokens we got to take,
Speaker 1: or something such a strange and abstract way of approaching games,
Speaker 1: which in their core, they should involve the body, right,
Speaker 1: they should involve like you should be playing house, or
Speaker 1: you should be play fighting, you should be running a race,
Speaker 1: but instead we're doing it in this abstract space with
Speaker 1: these little representative figurines. I mean, it almost seems like
Speaker 1: it suggests to me that there could be some kind
Speaker 1: of relationship between the emergence of board games as this
Speaker 1: abstracted form of play and the emergence of writing as
Speaker 1: this abstracted form of representing thoughts. This abstracted form of speech. Yeah,
Speaker 1: taking what's going on inside our minds and put in
Speaker 1: externalizing it because they think of one of the the
Speaker 1: key things that our mind does is we're we're simulating
Speaker 1: future events. We're engaging in mental time travel, both past
Speaker 1: and future. We're trying to envision what is going to
Speaker 1: happen and how we're going to react to stuff like
Speaker 1: that happening. And it's a purely mental, uh mental exercise.
Speaker 1: So it's in a sense planning it all out or
Speaker 1: doing just very abstract versions of planning it all out
Speaker 1: in a physical system in a board game like that's
Speaker 1: that's perfectly in keeping with the spirit of play fighting,
Speaker 1: but it's a different type of fight. It's the kind
Speaker 1: of fight that that that really only conscious beings are
Speaker 1: capable of engaging. This is really interesting, and that's why
Speaker 1: I am so excited to come back next time and
Speaker 1: talk about the earliest known evidence of board games. What
Speaker 1: do the earliest board games look like? What are they?
Speaker 1: That's right, it's it's there's some fascinating examples to to
Speaker 1: run through, but we've run the full course for this episode.
Speaker 1: So in the meantime, as you're waiting for next week's
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