Will Sargent reviewed Finite and infinite games by James P. Carse
Review of 'Finite and infinite games' on 'Storygraph'
3 stars
It's not a bad book. Or even a wrong book. It just doesn't work.
The book talks about finite and infinite games and ascribes qualities to them, then tries to map life into games of various types. These are not games in the old economic Nash sense of the word -- they're about play, seriousness, roles, and rules.
It doesn't work. I don't buy it. I will accept that you can define various activities as games, but the sheer variety and scale of it all defeats the purpose -- if everything in life is a game, up to and including the Holocaust, then it trivializes life itself.
Time after time I would read a couple of sentences and double take. He couldn't have meant that. He couldn't have said that. And while from a certain perspective I could see that it was meant to be insightful, it looked to me …
It's not a bad book. Or even a wrong book. It just doesn't work.
The book talks about finite and infinite games and ascribes qualities to them, then tries to map life into games of various types. These are not games in the old economic Nash sense of the word -- they're about play, seriousness, roles, and rules.
It doesn't work. I don't buy it. I will accept that you can define various activities as games, but the sheer variety and scale of it all defeats the purpose -- if everything in life is a game, up to and including the Holocaust, then it trivializes life itself.
Time after time I would read a couple of sentences and double take. He couldn't have meant that. He couldn't have said that. And while from a certain perspective I could see that it was meant to be insightful, it looked to me to be looking at reality from the wrong end of the telescope. Making it smaller and less complex. More trivial. I read the word "play" and wondered whether he was describing lightness of spirit, or simply an escape.
Ultimately, I think that if you're going to talk about reality, you're going to have to talk about it on its own terms. Games are abstractions of reality. And you can't make reality an abstraction of a game.