"Finite and Infinite Games"
I sent this email this morning, and then realized I wanted more people to see it.
Hi Travis,
Apropos of our conversation the other day about dedication to a goal fierce enough to enable you to imagine the transformation (or death) of
the object of your dedication, I want to point out James P Carse's "Finite and Infinite Games".
It's abstract and abstruse and very weird. It's also a small book and a quick read, and available from at least some public libraries. It talks about games, in the game-theoretic sense, and how they fall into roughly two categories: finite games and infinite games. These categories are defined, examined and explored through a series of short aphorisms. It's not quite poetry-as-philosophy, but it comes close. It reads a lot like Morihei Ueshiba. I feel a little weird about my relationship to this book, because the engineer in me wants to look at its strange presentation format and lack of footnotes and throw it aside as bullshit. But it really blew my hair back.
I thought that I'd be able to point you to a blog post I wrote about it when I read it years ago, but I apparently never actually wrote the post; at least, Google doesn't think I did. I think I just told everyone I talked to for a period of about two weeks that they should read it. And now, I'm telling you to read it.
Hm, I think I'm going to post this email to my blog.
Joe
Hi Travis,
Apropos of our conversation the other day about dedication to a goal fierce enough to enable you to imagine the transformation (or death) of
the object of your dedication, I want to point out James P Carse's "Finite and Infinite Games".
It's abstract and abstruse and very weird. It's also a small book and a quick read, and available from at least some public libraries. It talks about games, in the game-theoretic sense, and how they fall into roughly two categories: finite games and infinite games. These categories are defined, examined and explored through a series of short aphorisms. It's not quite poetry-as-philosophy, but it comes close. It reads a lot like Morihei Ueshiba. I feel a little weird about my relationship to this book, because the engineer in me wants to look at its strange presentation format and lack of footnotes and throw it aside as bullshit. But it really blew my hair back.
I thought that I'd be able to point you to a blog post I wrote about it when I read it years ago, but I apparently never actually wrote the post; at least, Google doesn't think I did. I think I just told everyone I talked to for a period of about two weeks that they should read it. And now, I'm telling you to read it.
Hm, I think I'm going to post this email to my blog.
Joe