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This week's Commonplace post is about the limitations of using gaming analogies when talking about life:

Game analogies can be helpful when you're playing to win. But there's a limit to how useful they can be when thinking about life.

Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

This has mostly to do with our discussion about Playing to Play and Playing to Win — which, as you may recall, introduced the concept of a 'scrub'. The problem with this is that what might be scrub behaviour in one game might NOT be scrub behaviour in someone else's game.

1:52 PM · Jan 11, 2022Twitter Web App

Replying to

That old essay on Playing to Play vs Playing to Win may be found here: commoncog.com/blog/playing-t It was mostly reader feedback as a result of that essay that lead to this week's piece.

commoncog.com

Are You Playing to Play, or Playing to Win?

Make sure you're playing the real game, not some more complicated game you've made up for yourself.

Special thanks to

for some pushback on the 'scrub' discussion — he was the first to point out some of the limitations of using games as a way of looking at life! His notes on C. Thi Nguyen's podcast on games are worth a skim:

moontowermeta.com

Notes From C.Thi Nguyen Interview About Games and Society - Party at the Moontower

Link: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2021/10/18/169-c-thi-nguyen-on-games-art-values-and-agency/ C. Thi Nguyen received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Los...