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3.6 AVERAGE
3.6 AVERAGE
I chose this audiobook because leadership writer and YouTube star, Simon Sinek refers to it in his material. Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse is a lively and engaging lecture presentation, it is not an actual book. The ideas presented here are very useful in today's world. I would like to see the ideas in this lecture expanded and developed into a book. This recording does not pick up the questions from the audience members clearly enough. It is surprising that the publisher, Simon and Schuster, did not clean up the audience questions or redub them from a transcript. The author presents his material very well. He draws the audience in with humor and offers additional time for Q&A at the end. Overall, I would recommend this in its current form to fans of Simon Sinek and to fans of the author. If this ever does become a book, I believe that I would recommend it to everyone.
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
reflective
Just finished my first read and it's already coloring every interaction. I put it down for a few days because it was prying my mind open faster than I was comfortable with, but I'm going back for a second read right now... This is true.
Provocative philosophical argument applying notions generally applied only to games to broader questions. Finite games are meant to be played and won; infinite games are meant to be played perpetually. Carse takes these ideas and explicates them across the fields of gaming, society, diplomacy and religion.
Mr. Carse's work can help open ones view of the world and the way we approach it.
The book starts with a promising tone. It tries to create a frame through which we can see life as two types of game – Finite and Infinite. In the Finite games we play them throughout our lives, most often playing many different games at once, and the object is to end the game and be the winner, and then showcase the title won for all to see and admire. In contrast, Infinite games are played so that they do not end. There are no winners, losers or titles. It is played for the sheer joy of playing. Even though it is a naive and oversimplified world view, it has a novelty of presentation that seemed rather attractive.
However, beyond the first few chapters, once the author is done presenting this basic idea, he starts to illustrate with various games we play to build our profession life, our sexual life, our politics and ideology, and our moral philosophy. This is where the book starts to fail. Believing it is building up a grand structure, the author relies on unsubstantiated concepts which are standing on weak legs of semantic manipulation. There are tiring repetitions of statements like “a culture does not have a tradition; it is a tradition”, or “Such museums are not designed to protect art from people, but to protect the people from art”. They sound clever and wise on the surface, but as you read them back, it becomes clear that they are just assertions dressed with sematic juggling.
This type of baseless assertion becomes more apparent as we move deeper in the book. His confident assertion, without any attempt to prove it, that we can never create nature (“a plant cannot be designed or constructed”) and machines can never be creative (“A machine has not the merest trace of its own spontaneity or vitality”) smells of vitalist principles, where living things are imbibed with some external magic that is entirely beyond rational understanding. While it is fine for someone to believe that, but we cannot just make such assertions and walk away. Similarly, his claim that myths, all myths, are necessarily without an identifiable source. They just exist, and that’s what makes them powerful. This is a strange assertion, since it implies that our cultures are incapable to generating new myths, and the only myths are the ancient ones, passed down from times when history was vague and untraceable.
In conclusion, I am glad that I read it, and there are certainly many interesting and thought provoking passages, but it didn’t have the power to offer a new frame to understand the lives we live. It is at best a highly synthetic and limited model that reflects some of what we do, but it is too ambitious to believe that it is an effective system to guide our lives.
However, beyond the first few chapters, once the author is done presenting this basic idea, he starts to illustrate with various games we play to build our profession life, our sexual life, our politics and ideology, and our moral philosophy. This is where the book starts to fail. Believing it is building up a grand structure, the author relies on unsubstantiated concepts which are standing on weak legs of semantic manipulation. There are tiring repetitions of statements like “a culture does not have a tradition; it is a tradition”, or “Such museums are not designed to protect art from people, but to protect the people from art”. They sound clever and wise on the surface, but as you read them back, it becomes clear that they are just assertions dressed with sematic juggling.
This type of baseless assertion becomes more apparent as we move deeper in the book. His confident assertion, without any attempt to prove it, that we can never create nature (“a plant cannot be designed or constructed”) and machines can never be creative (“A machine has not the merest trace of its own spontaneity or vitality”) smells of vitalist principles, where living things are imbibed with some external magic that is entirely beyond rational understanding. While it is fine for someone to believe that, but we cannot just make such assertions and walk away. Similarly, his claim that myths, all myths, are necessarily without an identifiable source. They just exist, and that’s what makes them powerful. This is a strange assertion, since it implies that our cultures are incapable to generating new myths, and the only myths are the ancient ones, passed down from times when history was vague and untraceable.
In conclusion, I am glad that I read it, and there are certainly many interesting and thought provoking passages, but it didn’t have the power to offer a new frame to understand the lives we live. It is at best a highly synthetic and limited model that reflects some of what we do, but it is too ambitious to believe that it is an effective system to guide our lives.
reflective
slow-paced
A great idea written in a boring way.
The book talks about how you can live your life as a finite game where the end goal is to win at something (be it money, status, sense of security…) or as an infinite game where there is no victory but a string of playful moments.
The idea is wonderful and he brings some nice
insights. But imagine Aristotle commenting on a soccer game while proposing distinctions and categories of passes.
The book talks about how you can live your life as a finite game where the end goal is to win at something (be it money, status, sense of security…) or as an infinite game where there is no victory but a string of playful moments.
The idea is wonderful and he brings some nice
insights. But imagine Aristotle commenting on a soccer game while proposing distinctions and categories of passes.
I was surprised by how good this little book was. On the surface, I've never heard of Carse, the text looks a little too easy to read for philosophy and the presentation looks popularist...but it's much better than all that. A bit wanky and self-involved, but still good. Nicely packed with heavy-while-light thinking.