My Favorite Nonfiction Book (Finite & Infinite Games)

when I started doing this podcast I knew it was going to be a great opportunity to read a lot of books that have been on my list that I knew I wanted to explore but haven't gotten the time to and I assumed it would be a great opportunity

to revisit some old favorites and as soon as I started doing it started talking about it on social media I had people reaching out saying hey you should do one on finite and infinite

games and here we are this is probably the book that I've reread the most times I've gone through it a bunch if you're watching then you can see the ridiculous number of sticky tabs that I have on it

and one it helps that it's short that makes it easier to revisit it into this book more than almost any other is just really special for making me think about

the world in a different way if I had to encapsulate the way of thinking that that is so magical with this book is it

trips you into kind of a mindfulness peacefulness with the world that you might get through meditation or doing a bunch of mushrooms but in more logical

cognitive reason based way it's interesting that some of the ideas in here are ideas that came up in John Gray's Straw Dogs which was episode number two if you have lost to that one but presented in a very different style

and in this book and that book really are not similar but they end up arriving at some similar places this book is weird uh it's kind of aphoristic it's

the ideas seem strange at first in a lot of sections and you do kind of have to sit with it you can just read it straight through or you can read a chapter or two let it sit come back to it think about it for a bit but there

there really isn't a linear narrative or even a specific main argument that we're hammering at there is a core idea that we will keep returning back to but then there's a lot of uh jumps off from that

idea so this podcast episode is going to be a little more Choose Your Own Adventure EU like easier to jump around in this one than some other ones or you can just hang out with me for the next

however many minutes as I go through one of my favorite books in the world and I'm very happy you're here and if you're enjoying this show I would really appreciate it if you sent it to one other person who you think might enjoy

it all right so the first topic that we're going to jump into is that there are two kinds of games finite games and infinite games and before we do I just want to remind you about read Wise It's

readwise dot IO Nat this is the ultimate reading tool I use it to read all articles and things online organize all of my highlights and things that I want to remember from them and to organize all of my highlights from books if

you're reading on Kindle or iBooks it can automatically pull out all of your highlights or if you prefer physical copies like me you can just literally Point your camera at it with the readwise app take a picture select your

highlights and then it saves your highlights from that physical book to your digital database you can keep in read wise you can automatically send them to notion or everode or whatever else you use and it really really helps

me make sure that you're getting the most out of every book you read I Love It I use it every day definitely check it out it's a readwise.io Nat all right

so into finite and infinite games by James P carce now let's start with the big topic of the book finite games versus infinite games the book starts off with there are at

least two kinds of games one could be called finite and the other infinite a finite game is played for the purpose of winning an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play and off the bat I

think it's important to clarify here that game does not necessarily mean Checkers or football he's basically encouraging you to look at everything you do in life as a game so a finite

game might be again chess or a game of football whereas an infinite game would be something like learning or Fitness uh the finite game is bounded it has rules

it has a way for you to win or lose an infinite game is something that can be done uh forever you play it to keep playing it versus playing it to win and

this kind of sets the tone for a lot of the other topics that come up in the book because you need to have this idea in your head you need to have this lens to look at life through of is this thing

that I am considering a finite game or an infinite game we're we're all choosing to play and engage in different games every day and the mentality that you have is going to vary greatly

depending on if you are in a finite game or an infinite game simply the difference between I want to win and I

want to get better are two fundamental mindsets of finite infinite games that you can choose to adopt and if you're living primarily in a finite Game World you are going to have more of a

competitive me versus you winner take all mentality if you're living and thinking in a more infinite game world you're you're going to naturally feel a little more generalists or positive

about playing it because you don't see it as a thing that you can win or lose you are playing to keep playing and something that cars points out right

away is that you can't really be forced to play a game you are always choosing to engage in a game whether you are consciously aware of your choice or not

so a little bit further on he points out that rules are not valid because the Senate passed them or because Heroes wants played by them or because God pronounced them through Moses or

Muhammad they are valid only if and when players freely play by them there are no rules that require us to obey rules if there were they would have to be a rule

for those rules and so on so even if you might think that you have to do something but you have to follow a rule you are ultimately choosing to comply with it you're always choosing to follow

the rules you're always choosing to play the game that you are playing and one of the Hallmarks of a finite player versus an infinite player is that a finite

player thinks that whatever they do they must do he says although it may be evident enough in theory that whoever plays a finite game plays freely it is

often the case that finite players will be unaware of this absolute freedom and will come to think that whatever they do they must do one of the examples he gives is that since finite games are

played to be one players make every move in a game in order to Win It Whatever is not done in the interest of winning is not part of the game the constant attentiveness of finite players to the

progress of the competition can lead them to believe that every move they make they must make but obviously you always have other options that are beyond the confines of the game like

simply not playing at all and that might be obvious in a chess game but it's less obvious in the other games of Life while no one is forced to remain a lawyer or a rodeo performer or a Kundalini Yogi

after being selected for those rules each role is nonetheless surrounded both by ruled restraints and expectations on the part of others one sense is a compulsion to maintain a certain level

of performance because permission to play in these games can be canceled we cannot do whatever we please and remain lawyers or yokis and yet we could not be

either unless we pleased so he's saying that once you are in one of these games you will often feel that you have to keep doing certain things because you want to stay within the boundaries of

that game but you are ultimately just choosing to do that whatever you think you have to do you are actually choosing to do on some level and so finite players tend to think oh I have to do

these things whereas an infinite player recognizes that those are merely choices uh to continue playing or not playing whatever finite game you find yourself in at that time it has this great line

shortly before this work he says no limitation may be imposed against infinite play because since limits are taken into play the play itself cannot

be limited finite players play Within boundaries infinite players play with boundaries so whenever you find yourself thinking oh I can't do this I can't do that that's not how it's done this is

how it's done I need to follow the structure follow these rules you are in on you are in a finite game mindset when you are seeing the world as opportunity

and seeing all of these rules structures whatever it's just like guidelines you can choose to follow or not and you're playing with the limits of what's possible that's when you're more of an infinite player and another way that

this manifest that he points out is that we don't actually uh compete with nature or struggle with nature we struggle within nature there certainly are acts

of government or acts of nature or acts of God that far exceed any contravening ability of our own but it is unlikely that we would consider ourselves losers in retaliation to them we are not

defeated by floods or genetic disease or the rate of inflation it is true that these are real but we do not play against reality we play according to

reality we do not eliminate whether or genetic influence but accept them as the realities that establish the context of play the limits within which we are to

play if I accept death as inevitable I do not struggle against mortality I struggle as a mortal really interesting subtle distinction there are you

fighting against nature or are you struggling within the given boundaries of nature all limitations of finite play are self-limitations

in most cases we choose whatever cage we are living in either real or imagined and the more you recognize that the more you can realize just how few limits there actually are on what you do how

you play how you succeed Drive live whatever it is you're trying to do and the last subject that I'll cite on this kind of like playing within the boundaries that you

choose is he talks about the law and government right and this is an interesting cultural difference right if you pull up to a stoplight in the middle of the night and there's nobody else around you stop at it right okay got an

interesting question of your individual philosophy on Law and culture where he says only by free self-concealment can persons believe they obey the law

because the law is powerful in fact the law is powerful for persons only because they obey it the law doesn't inherently have power we give it Power by continuing to follow it we do not

proceed through a traffic intersection because the signal changes but when the signal changes again we are consciously choosing at all times to continue

following these rules we give them power so it's worth asking yourself what boundaries am I honoring or giving power to that I maybe don't have to give power

to in my life like what rules am I playing by that I don't don't have to follow what expectations am I playing about that I don't have to follow what finite games am I stuck in that I might not be fully aware of I love that idea

that all limitations are self-limitations or at least the limits the limitations of finite play right we're always choosing to play by these rules uh and speaking of play there's

this interesting idea of playfulness because even though you obviously play both kinds of games there's a certain characteristic of playfulness that is inherently uh conducive to more infinite

games infinite play to be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous or to act as though nothing of consequence will happen on the contrary when we are playful with each other we relate as

free persons and the relationship is open to surprise everything that happens is of consequence it is in fact seriousness that closes itself to consequence for seriousness is a dread

of the unpredictable outcome of open possibility to be serious is to press for a specified conclusion to be playful is to allow for possible ability

whatever the cost to oneself and this is easy to imagine that usually when somebody's being serious they're trying to enforce a certain structure a certain set of rules that maybe not

everybody wants to play by being playful is being open to the rules changing to the field of play changing it's being open to those new experiences and so the more playful you are the more inherently

infinite you will be in vice versa 2 the more infinitely you are thinking with the boundaries that you allow to exist in your life the more playful and open to change in our predictability you'll

be as well this challenge is commonly misunderstood as the need to find room for playfulness within finite games this is what was referred to as playing at or

perhaps playing around a kind of play that has no consequences this is the sort of playfulness implied in the ordinary sense of such terms as

entertainment Amusement diversion comic relief Recreation relaxation inevitably however seriousness will creep back into this kind of play the executive's

vacation like the football team's time out comes to be a device for refreshing the contestant for a higher level of competition even the open playfulness of children is

exploited through organized athletic artistic and educational regiments as a means of preparing the young for serious adult competition usually clear that a lot of things we think of as like

playful right you know watching a movie or something like that's not really play because we're just doing it to relax and recover from these other finite games that we're obsessed with often work

right the vacation especially taking two weeks to go sit on a beach to recover so that you can you know come back to work refreshed is not really playfulness we

talked about this in Straw Dogs too uh where we can't really actually be idle and relaxed anymore because we see idleness as a means to it and we think that it's part of how we get ready for

more serious hard work and that's not really being playful that's not really relaxing and one of the best ways to tell if you're in true infinite play or just in like fake playfulness is surprise

uh infinite players continue their play in the expectation of being surprised if surprise is no longer possible all plays ceases you sort of need surprise and Novelty for infinite play to continue if

there are no surprises it's a finite fixed game surprise causes finite play to end it is the reason for infinite play to continue that's kind of the good Hearst that you

can use if if some major surprise major shock ended this game then it must be a finite game if it simply changed the way the game was played but the play continued in some new and interesting

way then it's probably a type of infinite game and this idea of seriousness is really important right and there's another great heuristic right the more serious you feel compelled to be the more you

were probably playing by a very limiting set of other people's rules because true infinite creative play is inherently unserious or at least playful infinite players are

not serious actors in any story but the joyful Poets of a story that continues to originate what they cannot finish so I love I love this idea as a way of

thinking about uh anything that you're caught up in right the more you feel bound to a set of rules the more serious the effort feels the more it's inherently finite and the more you might

need to think a little broader think more creatively because this is a really interesting distinction that I'd never thought of before you might think that strength and power are the same thing

but they're another part of the finite infinite dichotomy he says power is a feature only of finite games where the finite player plays to be

powerful the infinite player plays with strength a powerful person is one who brings the past to an outcome settling all its unresolved issues a strong person is one who carries the past into

the future showing that none of its issues is capable of resolution power is concerned with what has already happened strength with what has yet to happen

power is finite in amount strength cannot be measured because it is an opening and not a closing act so this sounds kind of weird but essentially what he's getting at is that you have

power for winning earlier finite games and then you can bring that power to Future games to try to preemptively resolve them with the power you've

already earned whereas strength is your ability to perform uh in future challenges in future aspects of an infinite game if you're focused on power you're focused on winning you're focused

on getting titles things that are all uh inherent to finite games but if you're just becoming stronger whatever that means physically mentally and so on then you're just preparing yourself for these

continuing infinite games of life it says power will always be restricted to a relatively small number of selected persons anyone can be strong so strength

is really a much better goal than power at least if you agree that infinite games are more worth playing than finite ones right because I said earlier that the competition is is kind of inherently

a finite game thing and he says that a people as a people has nothing to defend in the same way a people has nothing and no one to attack one cannot be free by

opposing another my freedom does not depend on your loss of freedom on the contrary since freedom is never freedom from society but freedom for it my

freedom inherently affirms yours a people has no enemies so this idea that as long as you think of yourself as opposing someone you are not free right because as soon as you've chosen an

enemy you've chosen to combat and you've chosen someone to compete with for whatever it is you're imagining you need to fight for maybe power resources something else you are no longer free

either freedom is kind of a Mutual Assurance infinite players have no interest in restricting the freedom of another to one's own boundaries of play

Infinite players recognize choice in all aspects they may see in themselves and in others for example the infant's desire to compete for the mother but they also see that there is neither

physiological nor societal destiny whoever chooses to compete with another can also choose to play with another and and another big area where this topic of

like power and competition and these zero-sum games or these kind of like thinking much larger types of perspective come in is in wealth right and resources because that's another

area where a lot of people think that you can't become wealthy except at the expense of someone else and that's simply not true and he points out how this manifests in power right the more

powerful we consider persons to be the less we expect them to do for their power can come only from that which they have done after athletic contests in which major titles have been at stake it

is common for the audience to lift the winners to their shoulders marching them about as if they were helpless in the sharpest possible contrast to the physical skill and energy they have just

displayed monarchs and divinities are often born on ceremonial transports the very wealthy are driven in carriages or limousines consumption is an activity so different

from gainful labor that it shows itself in the mode of leisure even indolence we display the success of what we have done by not having to do anything the more we

use up therefore the more we show ourselves to be the winners of past contests conspicuous abstention from labor therefore becomes the conventional Mark

of superior cuniary achievement and the conventional index of reputability and conversely since application to productive labor is a mark of poverty and subjugation it becomes inconsistent

with a reputable standing in the community so we have it's got an interesting trade-off rate where when we fight for power we fight for victory and then the way we show that we

are victorious is by not doing that thing anymore like this is really the sign of a finite game if it's something that you have to work very hard at and then as soon as you get it you stop doing it that is a finite game and this

is something else he talks about with school right where the difference between uh school and the like grade and college system and actual education is

that education is something that goes on forever it is never ending there is no way to win at education there is no end goal whereas school which is much more

like training does have a completion criteria there is a way to win you do get a grade do you use it to get a job and then you basically forget most of what you learned during your your

training and so if you're thinking of something as a means to an end a victory to be accomplished so you no longer have to do that thing then you are in a finite game you're in a circle for power

and perhaps there is a more infinite way to look at whatever it is that you're doing and one of the consequences of wealth and victory and all these things is that you kind of have to keep doing

it he says winners especially celebrated winners must prove repeatedly that they are winners the script must be played over and over again titles must be defended by new contests no one is ever

wealthy enough honored enough applauded enough on the contrary the visibility of our victories only tightens the grip of the failures in our invisible past so he creates this vicious cycle where the

more we win the more we feel like we need to win to continue showing ourselves to be winners the more you index your reputation on these finite games on these closed systems the more

you need to continue going back to the well keep doing them in order to keep proving that you are a winner an infinite player just wants to keep playing whatever game they're already playing there was no end to it in the

first place they don't care about the titles or these signs of Victory and so they just keep playing the game where he says schools are a species of finite play to the degree that they bestow ranked Awards on those who win degrees

from them those Awards in turn qualify graduates for competition in still higher games certain prestigious colleges for example and then certain professional schools beyond that with a continuing sequence of higher games in

each of the professions and so forth it is not uncommon for families to think of themselves as a competitive unit in a broader finite game for which they are training their members in the struggle

for societally Visible titles that's just so well put right it's so easy to get caught in this school game both as a kid and as a parent we're going to think that these these random accolades are super important but you're

just stuck in the confines of this very limited finite game you're not treating education and learning as this infinite ever occurring game and I think the latter is just much healthier because

the the the dark obsession with uh perfect grades performance getting to the best college getting an impressive job uh you know tends to make pretty miserable and they they wake up from it

eventually so I like that infinite game approach to to education and learning so let's continue then with this idea of self-limitations because another way that comes into play is this topic of

boundaries that we've started to touch on where whenever you're you're in a finite game you are you are seeing the limits of play right uh every move an

infinite player makes is toward the Horizon every move made by a finite player is within a boundary every moment of an infinite game therefore presents a new vision a new range of possibilities

the Renaissance like all genuine cultural phenomena was now an effort to promote one or another Vision it was an effort to find visions that promised still more Vision so it is just another interesting way to think about the

things you're doing are you playing within rules or are you moving towards some greater Horizon and as you move towards it you are discovering new forms of play new ways to express yourself

things to experience you know how rigid do the boundaries of your life feel because that's one of the strongest signs that you're stuck in some sort of finite limited game and he goes on to

say that a lot of this is a matter of perspective the strategy of infinite players is horizonal they do not go to meet putative enemies with power and violence but with poisus and fission

they invite themselves to become a people in passage infinite players do not rise to meet arms with arms instead they make use of laughter vision and

surprise to engage the state and put its boundaries back into play what will undo any boundary is the awareness that it is our vision and not what we are viewing that is limited

so again coming back to the steam that a lot of your limitations are self-limitations they're your unwillingness to go beyond the rules of the games that you have opted into or your unwillingness to see the boundaries

for what they are in another area where this comes in is is with time so he explains how time changes in finite versus infinite gains a finite game occurs within time because it has

its boundaries its beginning and end within the absolute temporal limits established by a World Time free funny player runs out it is used up it is a diminishing quantity

a finite game does not have its own time it exists in a World's time an audience allows players only so much time to win their titles early in a game time seems abundant and

there appears a greater freedom to develop future strategies late in a 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 seemed to remain so many paths open to a

successful outcome each year that passes however increases the competitive value of making strategically correct decisions the errors of childhood can be more easily amended than those of

adulthood for the finite player freedom is a function of time we must have time to be free so the more you're thinking that you you need time right you need more

time you need more time that's kind of an inherently finite Focus because you're thinking of the game as being bounded uh in some way the infinite player in US does not consume time but

generates it because infinite play is dramatic and has no scripted conclusion its time is time lived and not time viewed time does not pass for an

infinite player each moment of time is a beginning The Horizon keeps moving an infinite player does not begin working for the purpose of filling up a period of time with work but for the purpose of

filling work with time work is on infinite player's way of passing time but of engendering possibility work is not a way of arriving at a desired present in securing it against an

unpredictable future but of moving toward a future which itself has a future it's really this kind of like scarcity mindset towards work and time the more you're obsessed with using your time as efficiently as possible in order

to create some future that you want to live in you're playing a very finite game the more you are seeing your days as opportunities to pour your time into the things you care about because you're

continually creating a new and exciting future for yourself and are not trying to arrive at a certain predetermined State the more you are in a mindset of infinite play and infinite games infinite players cannot say how much

they have completed in their work or love or quarreling but only that much remains incomplete in it they are not concerned to determine when it is over but only what comes of it

for the finite player in us freedom is a function of time we must have the time to be free for the infinite player in US time is a function of Freedom we are

free to have time a finite player puts play into time an infinite player puts time into play so then from the time we can move into another big topic around

like nature and control our attempts to exercise power over nature mask our desire for power over each other we we've had this really species long

struggle against nature for control and in some ways it represents or desire to control each other as well and he uses this to draw the distinction between uh

what he calls like the machine and the garden basically things that we create that are more mechanistic and things that are natural uh and organic like nature itself he says the alternative

attitudes towards nature can be characterized in a rough Way by saying that the result of approaching nature as a hostile other whose designs are basically inimical to our interests is

the machine while the result of learning to discipline ourselves to consist with the deepest discernible patterns of natural order is the garden machine is used here as inclusive of technology and

not as an example of it as a way of drawing attention to the mechanical rationality of Technology Garden does not refer to the bounded plot at the edge of the house or the market of the

city this is not a garden one lives beside but a garden one lives within it is a place of growth of maximized spontaneity to Garden is not to engage in a hobby or an amusement it is to

design a culture capable of adjusting to the widest possible range of surprise in nature and then he goes on to explain that the most Elemental difference between the

machine and the garden is that one is driven by a force which must be introduced from without the other grown by an energy which originates from within itself and this is a really just

another great way to think about these finite versus infinite games in our lives anything that you must force yourself to do or that requires like force to continue is is this machine is

this sort of finite bounded game anything that is uh self-continuing self-supporting that you just organically put more time and energy into that is the garden that is the

infinite game of your life and is the one that you might want to it should Trend more towards and even one example that it gives is that while Machinery is meant to work changes without changing

its operators gardening transforms its workers one learns how to drive a car one learns to drive as a car but one

becomes a gardener gardening is not not outcome oriented a successful Harvest is not the end of a Garden's existence but only a phase of it as any Gardener knows

the Vitality of a garden does not end with a harvest it simply takes another form Gardens do not die in the winter but quietly prepare for another season

gardeners celebrate variety unlikeness spontaneity they understand that an abundance of styles is in the interest of Vitality the more complex the organic

content of the soil for example that is the more numerous its sources of change the more vigorous its liveliness growth promotes growth there's a fun tie-in from episode one about what your food

ate right it's so important to have this natural variety to create all of this various spontaneous growth in life and if you're gardening if you're an infinite player then you like having

this tons of variety all this surprise if you're more mechanistic if you're a more finite player than you want an extremely rigid system that you can exert your will over and kind of control

from the outside and it's interesting to think about the consequences of trying to exert that much control because he says that the contradiction In our relation to Nature is that the more vigorously we attempt to force its

agreement with our own designs the more subject we are to its indifference the more vulnerable to its unseeing forces the more power we exercise over natural process the more powerless we become

before it and then the the other interesting contradiction there is what machines do to us uh because we make use of Machinery in the belief we can increase the range of

our freedom and instead we only decrease it we use machines against ourselves and one example of what he means by that is uh travel right so and there's there's

kind of like this finite versus infinite player in travel too he says we do not move from our Point of Departure but with our Point of Departure to be moved from our living room by an automobile

whose upholstered seats differs scarcely at all from those in our living rooms to an airport waiting room and then to the airplane where we are provided the same sort of furniture is to have taken our

origin with us it is to have left home without leaving home to be at home everywhere is to neutralize space therefore the importance of reducing time in travel by arriving as quickly as

possible we need not feel as though we had left at all that neither space nor time can affect us as though they belong to us and not we to them we do not go somewhere in a car but

arrive somewhere in a car automobiles do not make travel possible but make it possible for us to move locations without traveling genuine travel has no destination Travelers do not go

somewhere but constantly discover they are somewhere else the motels around the airports in Chicago and Atlanta are so little different from the motels around the airports of Tokyo and Frankfurt that

all essential distances dissolve in likeliness what is truly separated is distinct it is unlike the only true Voyage would be not to travel through a hundred different lands with the same pair of

eyes but to see the same land through a hundred different pairs of eyes so when you're essentially having the same experience everywhere and go into all these similar places you are not really traveling you might be traveling more to

go around the corner and live as somebody in a totally different social class of your existing city than to live essentially the same life you're living here in another similar city in the

world and then finally we come to this power of stories you know stories have this organic infinite quality to them too a story attains the status of myth when it is

retold and persistently retold solely for its own sake our first response to hearing a story is the desire to tell it ourselves the greater the story the greater the desire we will go to

considerable time and inconvenience to arrange a situation for its retelling it is as though the story is itself seeking the occasion for its recurrence making

use of us as its agents we do not go out searching for stories for ourselves it is rather the stories that have found us for themselves stories that have the enduring strength

of myths reached through experience to touch the genius in each of us but experience is the result of this charity of touch not its cause so far is this the case that we can even say that if we

cannot tell a story about what happened to us nothing has happened to us these really incredible almost like magical forms of information that just naturally

spread but there's an important distinction between what a mystery story does which is resonates right it resonates it grows and grows as more people retell it the opposite of

residence is amplification a choir is the unified expression of voices resonating with each other a loudspeaker is the amplification of a single voice excluding all others the loudspeaker

successfully muting all other voices and therefore all possibility of conversation is not listened to at all and for that reason loses its own voice

and becomes mere noise whenever we succeed in being the only speaker there is no speaker at all and so I love this idea that an idea only has power if it

resonates and naturally amplifies if it or and naturally spreads through resonance if it has to be Amplified artificially then it will naturally push people away and I'm sure you've had this

experience too of feeling like some idea was being forced on you versus naturally discovering it through it resonating with other people the latter feels very organic it feels natural it feels like

something we want to adopt when it feels like an idea is being forced upon us through some sort of amplification it naturally repels us there's something disgusting and repugnant about it so

there are so many ways that this idea of finite versus infinite games plays out and then he leaves you with the last line of the book with uh there is but

one infinite game it's a great book for just making you think about your life in different ways really starting to use those lenses of is this a finite game or an infinite game if you enjoy this or release a new in-depth book summary

every weeks so make sure you subscribe to get it and thank you so much for watching