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James P. Carse

Finite and Infinite Games Paperback – January 5, 2013

by James Carse (Author)

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“There are at least two kinds of games,” states James P. Carse as he begins this extraordinary book. “One could be called finite; the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.”

Finite games are the familiar contests of everyday life; they are played in order to be won, which is when they end. But infinite games are more mysterious. Their object is not winning, but ensuring the continuation of play. The rules may change, the boundaries may change, even the participants may change—as long as the game is never allowed to come to an end.

What are infinite games? How do they affect the ways we play our finite games? What are we doing when we play—finitely or infinitely? And how can infinite games affect the ways in which we live our lives?

Carse explores these questions with stunning elegance, teasing out of his distinctions a universe of observation and insight, noting where and why and how we play, finitely and infinitely. He surveys our world—from the finite games of the playing field and playing board to the infinite games found in culture and religion—leaving all we think we know illuminated and transformed. Along the way, Carse finds new ways of understanding everything, from how an actress portrays a role to how we engage in sex, from the nature of evil to the nature of science. Finite games, he shows, may offer wealth and status, power and glory, but infinite games offer something far more subtle and far grander.

Carse has written a book rich in insight and aphorism. Already an international literary event, Finite and Infinite Games is certain to be argued about and celebrated for years to come. Reading it is the first step in learning to play the infinite game.

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

James P. Carse is Professor Emeritus of history and literature of religion at New York University. A winner of the University’s Great Teacher Award, he is author of The Religious Case Against Belief (2008) and Breakfast at the Victory: The Mysticism of Ordinary Experience (1994). Carse lives in New York City and Massachusetts.

Product details

Item Weight : 5.4 ounces
Paperback : 160 pages
ISBN-10 : 1476731713
ISBN-13 : 978-1476731711
Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.38 inches
Publisher : Free Press (January 5, 2013)
Language: : English

Best Sellers Rank: #19,539 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5 in Philosophy of Logic & Language
- #14 in Philosophy Metaphysics
- #16 in Social Philosophy

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Jia

One of My All-Time Favorite Books

Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2018

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Carse's book is so aphoristically written that it's polarizing. Some people think it's genius, some people think it's nonsense, some people feel there's something deep behind it but can't put their finger on it and figure maybe they're just not smart enough to get it.

The book is basically about competition (finite games) vs cooperation (infinite games), written in aphorisms without any mathematics or reference to game theory. Carse is a theologist, not a mathematician, so I'm guessing he discovered patterns of interaction that he didn't have the mathematical tools to explain and this is the result - a long list of fortune cookie style descriptions.

If you want to get the math that drives it, look up game theory, in particular Axelrod's work on Cooperation. Axelrod found that lengthening time in the form of allowing multiple iterations (which in Carse's terms means going from finite to infinite), causes people to cooperate and pursue win/win situations instead of the standard win/lose inherent in competition.

The genius in this as well as Carse's descriptions is that every interaction can fall into one of these categories and there are a ton of implications for adopting the wrong approach. This is especially relevant in the age of tribalism when we have politicians/groups/countries who are in it to win at any cost, even at the expense of burning bridges with people/groups/countries they're still gonna have to deal with in the future. Maybe they should have played the Infinite Game instead of the Finite one?

Anyway, if you read this, just think competition vs cooperation (game theory) instead of finite vs infinite and everything will start to make sense. And to quote Venkat Rao, this book pays back your thinking many times fold

86 people found this helpful

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Ken Cox

A new and clearer reality, compatible with all religions and non-religions.

Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2017

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An important book. It starts out deceptively simple. Small words, easy ideas. Next thing you know, Carse has taken you into a new world of thought, a new reality, a more relevant and REAL reality. Step by step, idea by idea, Carse presents nothing difficult in itself; but, suddenly the reader finds himself as if walking on water, in an unexpected place. A good place. Compatible with all religions and non-religions. Compatible with all values. Nothing threatening. Just a new and clearer reality.

36 people found this helpful

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Life as a simple game with rules but full of meanings.

Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2016

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This is a book hard to classify. I bought it because I read some fragments of it in Robert Fulghum's Words I Wish I Wrote: A Collection of Writing That Inspired My Ideas , where he quotes some of the aphorisms with what James P. Carse, the author, fills and charms the book.

As the title suggests, this is a work on finite and infinite games that purports "a vision of life as play and possibility." So if life is a game you should play it and if you play it you should follow the rules. Right, but what are the rules. Well, here enters Carse, who in seven chapters defines the game and unfolds and explains the rules.

The seven chapters are named in a very sportive (and even poetic) manner: There are at least to kind of games; No one can play a game alone; I am the genius of myself; A finite game occurs within a world; Nature is the realm of the unspeakable; We control nature for societal reasons; Myth provokes explanation but accepts none of it.

And there you are. As I said, the book is written in an aphoristic mode, as in Also sprach Zarathustra/Thus Spoke Zarathustra: German/English Bilingual Text (German Edition) , but with much more sense than that Nietzsche's brick. "Finite and Infinite..." is not a wanton sum of sayings more or less wise. So please do not confound games with lightness or pastime. At least not in this book. So you have to keep in mind, as long as you read, that this is a book about life ("A vision of life..."), not about playing games as a part of your life.

Then, what are the rules? The rules are simple but full of derivatives or branches that have no limit. Like life itself that starts with a very simple origin and grows up in complexity and variety. That's why the first paragraph says that "There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite; the other infinite." As long as this rule begins to increase in complexity is very helpful to keep that definition in mind. Carse says that a game can be won, so the game ends, which is the finite case. Or the game is playing continuously because the purpose is not winning but to follow up the game, which is the infinite case.

Let's quote Carse: "Infinite players cannot say when their game began, nor do they care. They do not care for the reason that their game in not bounded by time. Indeed, the only purpose of the game is to prevent it from coming to an end, to keep everyone in play." Sounds mysterious? It is. We play infinite games as long as we live, and the finite games we play are there not only to compensate (or to maintain under control the anxiety and) our ignorance of who wins at last in the infinite version, but also to be prepared against, and to be educated for the surprises and twists that life put in front of us: "To be prepared against surprise is to be 'trained.' To be prepared for surprise is to be 'educated.'"

The probe of this work descends very deep. That's the reason why the last chapter is dedicated to the myth issue. For several years I've been studying the singularities of a myth, the purpose they have, why they appeared, why they are here with us in spite of the exponential growing of knowledge through science and the technological development associated with it. And Carse offers here one of the most astounding answers to my search, which is presented in the very title of the chapter: "Myth provokes explanations but accepts none of it." It is as if finite and infinite games collide in this final movement of the play, remembering us what the author told us at the beginning of the book: "Infinite players cannot say when their game began, nor do they care. They do not care for the reason that their game is not bounded by time. Indeed the only purpose of the game is to prevent it from coming to an end, to keep everyone in play." If that is not the very source of a myth, then what.

Insofar as this book (a very brief book indeed, with 149 pages) is about games, we as a readers are players also, so maybe there are as many readings as readers. Or almost. Yet, it remains (or let) something that to me is unequivocal: life can be seen as a game so it has rules. This book propose that rules in a temporal basis (finite vs. infinite). If you look for, you could find others, but to me this book offers the most amazing explanation to the philosophical question that beats under our skins all the time: what is life?

A game. "There are at least to kind of games..."

Highly recommended.

61 people found this helpful

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j_jones

Answers the question: What is it all about?

Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2016

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If I had been introduced to this book as a young person - I wonder what my life would be like now. Should come leather bound and placed on the shelf next and prior to the bible and other holy or important works. Provides the most concise and unbiased explanation for why the world is the way it is in the absolutely clearest possible terms. Mind blowing, pure and simple.

27 people found this helpful

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Nathan Harter

Changed how I look at everything

Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2018

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This book is written in accessible, almost poetic language, yet it makes a complex point. I came away finding so many applications of the major distinction to my career, to leadership, to life, to retirement, to anxiety, to politics and current events...the lesson is versatile. I gave up trying to highlight passages, there were too many to count. I found excuses to talk about this book almost everywhere, including unplanned expositions during lectures. I highly recommend and wish we could distribute to college students.

9 people found this helpful

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Danack

Incoherent nonsense

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 22, 2019

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A few years ago, some students wrote a program to automatically generate academic papers that on the surface sound like they have meaning, but once you start trying to really understand the paper, you realise there is nothing there.

This book far exceeds that effort.

It starts of making reasonably reasonable statements on what could be interesting topic, but then devolves on the following pages to end up saying meaningless goobledegook, such as: "As an infinite player one is neither yound nor old, for one does not live in the time of another. There is therefor no external measure of an infinite player's temperality. Time does not pass for an infinite player. Each moment of time is a beginning."

I have a strong suspicion that many people who claim to enjoy this book, do so on the basis that they are afraid that if they admit that the book doesn't make much sense, they think they are saying that "they're not smart enough to understand the book".

I don't think that's the case. Really the book takes what could be an interesting concept and says nothing useful about it.

22 people found this helpful

GavH

Read, re-read, and read again...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 17, 2018

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It's no exaggeration to say that this book changed my way of thinking. As a trainer / coach trapped in a corporate world of daily, weekly, quarterly results, I struggled to understand why my desire to see people achieve their best selves. Then I found out about finite and infinite play, and then this book, and suddenly I understood how i was attempting to play a finite game by infinite rules. Half philosophy, half metaphor, half self improvement, this is definitely a book and a half. It's not always an easy read - really one of those books where you read a bit, sometimes just a sentence, and take some time to process it and think about its relevance. I've finished !t second reading, and will be staring again tomorrow.

8 people found this helpful

Tom Cassidy

Disturbingly good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 19, 2018

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I use the word disturbingly simply to recognise that this book shook some of the foundations of my thinking. It’s not often that a book casts a totally different light on something you feel like you know well.

A very interesting and thought-provoking book. I love the idea of starting something you know you cannot finish.

Life perhaps?

10 people found this helpful

Cleo

Hmm. Not sure.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 11, 2018

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Might suit those with a more logical/engineering mindset. Couldn't relate to it at all.

5 people found this helpful

Nicholas Heap

Fascinating and challenging

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 25, 2014

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This is a remarkable book. I expect it will need several readings to get all the value from it. The central idea is quite simple. Everything in life is a game. There are games that have a winner and a loser and therefore an end, and games that you play in order to go on playing them.

He makes some compelling arguments that we need to become infinite game players.

His language is simple and elegant. The challenge of the book is the sheer number of ideas and the profound implications of the argument. It's hard work but worth it.

8 people found this helpful

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