Finite games are played to win; infinite games are played to keep playingI find that profound on many levels: the inherent meaningless of life ('just keep playing the game'), the prisoner's dilemma (screw the other guy in single-period interactions), why being nice to friends and colleagues is a good idea (you want to 'keep playing').
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Deep Thoughts by Kevin Kelly
Over at TED, which has a lot of neat videos of talks on all sorts of subjects, Kevin Kelly made this observation:
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The line is by James Carse, a retired NYU professor of religion: Finite and Infinite Games. Carse isn't at all cynical, see Breakfast at the Victory: the Mysticism of Ordinary Experience.
I picked up the slim F+IG expecting a game theory primer filled with equations. I'm a Chicago-schooled CFA who ended up at a Zen temple, so it turned out to fit with some of my other interests.
Thanks for the blog. I've been recommending it lately to friends who are still interested in intelligent abstraction even as their wealth drops precipitously.
Also, I'm often impressed with Kevin Kelly's range and vision. Just in case: kk.org/kk.
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