I'm generally a bit -1 on rigid taxonomies, but one categorisation I definitely wish books were better sorted into is "Is this book better or worse if I take it seriously while I'm reading it?"
Conversation
I'm currently reading Finite and Infinite Games and I'd previously have assumed that the answer was "better" but literally everything in it is wrong and people seem to still get a lot out of it so I guess it must have been a "worse" after all.
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I have thought seriously about writing a dissective denunciation of it. It uses a rhetorical trick to seduce unwary readers, and someone needs to warn.
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I’d love to read this. It’s been a while since I read it and I can’t remember many of the specifics, but I’ve always handwavily associated the idea of getting too engrossed in a finite game with what you might call an eternalistic stance toward purpose.
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Yeah I think the appeal of the book is that he does vaguely wave at a bunch of phenomena that are important and neglected. But his explanations of each of them is totally wrong.
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It's one of the rare books I didn't finish. The dichotomies were often too squishy and levels of abstraction often didn't stack.
You made my day with this. The book is adored by so many I respect that I've doubted my comprehension at times.
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This is a bit like saying Jurassic Park gets dinosaurs wrong. I think you guys are looking for praxis in a work of poiesis. Carse cannot be dissected like philosophy. He is best experienced as ecstatic poetry and paired with analytical writers on his themes (Arendt pairs well)
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I’ll add that I’m not at all surprised that the two of you in particular had this reaction. Knowing both your intellectual postures I’d be shocked if you *didn’t* react this way 😂




