[…] the demand for obedience is inherently evil.

While rules in a finite game define who wins, rules in an infinite game change to continue play.

We laugh not at what has surprisingly come to be impossible for others, but over what has surprisingly come to be possible with others.

[…] it’s because I do not see what you see that I can see at all.

[…] change is itself the very basis of our continuity as persons. Only that which can change can continue […]

Generally, we live believing in absolute truths and defining finite boundaries around those truths from which we live within, completely disregarding the beliefs of others and other truths.

Expectations (Pre-defined Boundaries)

At a high level, a significant portion of life is about setting and fulfilling societal expectations to reduce friction and improve convenience.

Finite Theatricality Versus Dramatic Infinity

In theater performances, people read pre-defined scripts in act roles. When these actors make their roles believable, we are touched by their performance. Similarly, our performances in the finite games of life, while possibly touching, are still just performances where behaviour is defined by prior experience. When we don’t assume pre-defined roles based on prior experience, we are playing the unknown, dramatic, infinite game.

In finite games, we know each others roles and as we act in those roles based prior experience, our opponents know what to expect. Knowing that the game has an end makes play, in the end, theatrical. Often, we know the outcome of the finite game before it is played. To win a finite game, you must surprise your opponent. Giving a truly meaningful apology is an example of something surprising.

I believe that we operate a significant portion of our lives on autopilot, assuming our roles and when we are surprised, it is at that instant that we pause in our role and freely respond. However, infinite players play the game expecting to be surprised.

To be prepared against surprised is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.

Training regards the past as finished […]. Education leads toward a continuing self-discovery; training leads towards a final self-definition.

Training repeats a completed past in the future. Education continues an unfinished past into the future.

Theatrical Conversations

[Conversations] remain oblivious to the degree to which choice is involved in the passage of one world to another"

We often talk to those whose opinions — both agreeing and disagreeing — are already known as to avoid surprise.

Explanations only succeed by convincing resistant hearers of their error. If you will not hear my explanations until you are suspicious of you own truths, you will not accept my explanations until you are convinced of your error.

I will press my explanations on you because I need to show that I do not live in the error that I think others think I do.

“Casual Continuity” for Future Convenience

Theatricality and “casual continuity” is continuing in the roles defined before us, for us. We choose to continuing acting in a role, mostly out of convenience. When something happens that we don’t have control over and we can no longer choose to act in the role as it was previously defined, we say that we are “ill”.

One is never ill in general. One is always ill with relation to some [desirable] bounded activity.

To become “healed” is to do the bounded activity either by achieving the current definition of the bounded activity or redefining the bounds.

Defined Winners (i.e., Titles) in Finite Games

Titles in finite games help in assuming our finite roles and set expectations of our teammates and opponents.

In finite games, one wins public titles. The effectiveness of the title depends on its visibility and relatability to others.

Consider the scenario where a new person joins your team — you don’t know this yet, but this person is very senior in the domain and deserves to be respected — and starts changing things and giving orders without first displaying their titles of past experiences. People on the team would probably cause friction and ask the question “why is this person doing this?”. Now, consider if this same person, joined, displayed their titles and then made the same changes. Sure, there probably is still going to be some questioning and friction, but probably less so because people believe that their past experiences — or games — prepared them for this game.

Titles and past experiences define sturdy boundaries and are significant factors in setting expectations. We heavily weigh these titles in the hiring process. Titles carry different expectations. Consider for example, what personality characteristics come to mind when I say, “early engineer at SuccessfulWellKnownCompany” versus “developer at SmallUknownCompany”.

The assumptions that come along with these roles are exactly the titles that we have “won”. Not only are the specific job titles our trophies, but so are the stories of our past experiences. Both job titles and “stories” of past experiences help predict the successes and failures — or set expectations — of the candidate for the role under question. Similarly, the role under question itself carries expectations which attract or repel candidates.

Once we are at a company, we do what we can to acquire the next title and so on, until the next title is less meaningful than leaving the company for a title at another company — e.g., first VP of Engineering.

It is a principal function of society to validate titles [earned or inherited] and to assure their perpetual recognition.

Property

If property is to be persuasively emblematic, that is if it is to draw attention to the owner’s titles in past victories, a double burden must fall on its owners:

  1. Property must be seen as compensation.
  2. Property must be seen to be consumed.

There is an expenditure of property during the game, but one expects to receive compensation equal to or greater than that expenditure in return.

[Property …] is, however, a theatrical attempt which can succeed only to the degree that it is conspicuous to its audience. Property must take up space.

One looks toward external validation of their wealth. Therefore, the wealthier one is, the more time one must spend visibly consuming that wealth in order to receive the external validation. People buy fancy things, go extravagant places and tell stories of experiences.

Relatedly, a visible display of wealth can also be not having to do something (e.g., not having to go to work, not having to worry about bills, etc.).

It is apparent to infinite players that wealth is no so much possessed as it is performed.

Titles are not limited to just job titles, one can also acquire titles such as “generous”, “reliable” or “helpful”. What matters is that a title sets expectations.

To be explicit, titles are not a bad thing. But titles necessarily define boundaries and set expectations. A goal in life may be to be the individual that leads a movement to redefine the boundaries or expectations set by a title as titles are a unifying object between life and death. They remind and reinforce expectations in the infinitely many finite games to come. Death in this case can be both “death in life” — i.e., one’s life is spent trying to acquire titles — and “life in death” — i.e., one lives on through their acquired titles.

Stepping back and looking at it from a big picture perspective, titles are exactly what life is for. We spend our lives either reinforcing or redefining titles, and the beautiful thing is that the choice is ours. The challenge is that this choice is between either convenience or friction in our life and humans are selfish and lazy. It takes an extremely strong person to be willing to “spend” one’s life to reduce future friction. Additionally, the amount of friction one must endure in redefining a given title depends on the depths and breadth of the roots of the title and the support one gets.

We laugh not at what has surprisingly come to be impossible for others, but over what has surprisingly come to be possible with others.

Veils in Finite Games

As finite players, we veil ourselves from “actual freedom” based on “experienced necessity”.

Carse goes on to describe how in finite games, we take on pre-defined roles and veil ourselves from reality.

We freely assume roles with a seriousness and performance so powerful and believable that sometimes we even fool ourselves.

We have freely chosen to face the world through a mask.

The issue with self-veiling is not its existence, but that we remember and acknowledge its existence.

[…] self-veiling is a contradictory act — a free suspension of our freedom.

As finite players, we believe that if we don’t impose this veil, we would lose our competitiveness. When players choose to remove their veils and make themselves vulnerable to the space of what is possible, they are free and begin an infinite game.

Do Infinite Players Die?

Carse says, “Infinite players die. […] infinite players offer their death as a way of continuing play”. I disagree. While players in the infinite game die physically, as I’ve said above, they live on infinitely through their titles. Their titles reinforce, or (continue to) inspire redefinition for future generations of players.

[…] infinite players both live and die from continuing life of others.

Where the finite player plays for immortality, the infinite player plays as a mortal.

The Role of Society and Culture

If a state has no enemies it has no boundaries.

Carse describes societies as groups of mostly like-minded people in defined boundaries, who together theoretically oppose other societies with a different definition of the boundaries. However, a lot of time and energy is spent dealing with internal disagreement. It is with this society that we share wins — namely property gained from wins. This society is who we externally validate those wins with.

While at a micro-scale, individuals in a society may differ from the whole, the culture of a society is not the composite of all that they do individually, but the congruence of what they choose to do together.

Culture is dynamic because as individuals join societies, they bring with them views of prior societies of association. Carse says that culture is like the view of the horizon, it’s indefinitely in front of you and always changing as you move.

To enter a culture is not to do what the others do, but to do whatever one does with the others.

This is why every new participant in a culture both enters into an existing context and simultaneously changes that context.

Finite play is all about convincing an audience of a winner.

Imposter Syndrome as a Motivating Factor

A lot of people in tech talk about imposter syndrome — i.e., feeling like they are a fraud of their achievements.

Carse says that it is precisely this belief that others will disbelieve oneself or identify one as a fraud that gives one the desire to “win”. The more titles that we achieve, the more visible our failures become. Therefore, while one is “invisible” is when one is most free! One can fail without many people noticing.

Thinking about many of the points made, they oppose many of the ideals of societies. Societies encourage “sameness” (i.e., unoriginal thought) and becoming a widely-recognized winner of many titles. However, once one achieves these things, one has essentially given up their freedom as an individual. So to “win” is to actually lose the most important thing that one can possibly possess.

Genius

To speak, or act, or think originally is to erase the boundary of the self.

One’s genius is one’s original thoughts.

To be labeled as “different” should be received as the highest compliment. Think about what this means. It means that one has effectively displayed the power to challenge an entire society, rather than to be consumed and follow the masses!

To be the genius of my speech is to be the origin of my words, to say them for the first, and last, time. Even to repeat my own words is to say them as though I were another person in another time and place.

I think if you think more generally about how societies describe “geniuses”, they are the individuals who redefined the boundaries of which society lives. However, we define them as geniuses often after we have seen what their original thought is capable of. At the time, we may have labeled them as “crazy”.

Anyone can be genius to their own thoughts. I do believe that often people spend a majority of their time repeating thoughts, values, opinions of those before and around them.

This is something that I am just beginning to wrap my head around as this is the third or forth time that the notion of “genius” has been described. I first read about it in the book titled Mastery by Robert Greene, then Richard Hamming’s talk You and Your Research, then Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, then this book, Finite and Infinite Games, and more recently began reading Richard Hamming’s The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn, an expansion of the aforementioned talk.

To be “touched” by someone is to listen their genius thoughts. To expand on this a bit, people say that they have been “touched” or “moved” when they have heard or experienced something that surprised them and therefore, shifted their own genius. They were expecting the other to recite a script or act in their role, but were instead surprised.

When I am touched, I am touched only as the person I am behind all the theatrical masks, but at the same time I am changed from within […]

When we are touched at our core, this shift in genius propagates outward through all of our “masks” or societal roles.

[…] it’s because I do not see what you see that I can see at all.

[One’s genius] is a field of vision, however, that is recognized as a field of vision only when we see that it includes within itself the original centers of other fields of vision.

One’s original thoughts are inspired by the original thoughts of those one chooses to surround — not necessarily physically close, but surrounding ideas — oneself with. “Overlapping fields of vision”.

Roles with Respect to Time

Early in a game time seems abundant, and there appears a greater freedom to develop future strategies. Late in the game, time is rapidly being consumed. As choices become more limited they become more important. Errors are more disastrous.

We look on childhood and youth as those “times of life” rich with possibility only because there still seem to remain so many paths open to a successful outcome. Each year that passes, however, increases the competitive value of making strategic all correct decisions. The errors of childhood can be more easily amended than those of adulthood.

It is this fear of error and the difficulty to amend that prevents us from making the choice to change. Moreover, we feel that now is not the appropriate time and that there will become a more appropriate time in the perceived abundant future.

For an infinite player, each moment of time is a beginning. Not a beginning to a bounded period. [… M]oving toward a future which itself has a future.

Hope and Possibility

If the silence of nature is the possibility of language, language is the possibility of history.

There is hope to be found in that we often can’t describe or capture nature’s beauty. This shows that language has limits far smaller than nature and because our language has limits, we are limited in how we discuss today in the future. In other words, the description of history is bounded by our language.

[…] infinite speech has the form of listening. Infinite speech does not end in the obedient silence of the hearer, but continues by way of the attentive silence of the speaker.

It is not a silence into which speech has died, but a silence from which speech is born.