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Mindscape 169 | C. Thi Nguyen on Games, Art, Values, and Agency

Sean Carroll
224K subscribers
12K views 3 years ago Mindscape Podcast
Patreon:   / seanmcarroll   Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/... Games are everywhere, but why exactly do we play them? It seems counterintuitive, to artificially invent goals and obstacles just so we can struggle to achieve them. (And in some games, like Twister, the fun is in losing, even though you’re supposed to try to win.) C. Thi Nguyen is a philosopher who has developed a theory of games as an art form whose medium is agency. Within each game, we have defined goals, powers, and choices, and by playing different games we can experiment with different forms of agency. A dark side of this idea is to be found in “gamification” — turning ordinary-life activities into a game. Games give us clarity of values, and that clarity can be seductive but misleading, leading people to turn to conspiracy theories about the real world. C. Thi Nguyen received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the Uni …...more
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How Do You Think about What Is a Game and What Is Not a Game

8:33

The Aesthetic Experience of Struggle

14:01

How Do You Separate the Experts from the Non-Experts

24:06

Arguments that Striving Play Exists

32:18

Are There Achievement Games

34:25

Professional Poker Players

35:19

The Difference between Striving Players and Achievement Players

37:18

Reasons for Continuing To Play a Game

37:40

Favorite Board Game Designer

42:25

The Artistic Medium of Games Is Agency

44:08

Tabletop Role-Playing

50:13

The Filter Bubble

1:06:09

Value of Playfulness

1:11:13

Theodore Porter's Book Trust in Numbers

1:19:59
Mindscape 169 | C. Thi Nguyen on Games, Art, Values, and Agency
354Likes
12,451Views
2021Oct 18
Patreon:   / seanmcarroll   Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/... Games are everywhere, but why exactly do we play them? It seems counterintuitive, to artificially invent goals and obstacles just so we can struggle to achieve them. (And in some games, like Twister, the fun is in losing, even though you’re supposed to try to win.) C. Thi Nguyen is a philosopher who has developed a theory of games as an art form whose medium is agency. Within each game, we have defined goals, powers, and choices, and by playing different games we can experiment with different forms of agency. A dark side of this idea is to be found in “gamification” — turning ordinary-life activities into a game. Games give us clarity of values, and that clarity can be seductive but misleading, leading people to turn to conspiracy theories about the real world. C. Thi Nguyen received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is currently associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah. He has written public philosophy for venues such as Aeon and The New York Times, and is an editor of the aesthetics blog Aesthetics for Birds. He was the recipient of the 2020 Article Prize from the American Philosophical Association. His recent book is Games: Agency as Art. Mindscape Podcast playlist:    • Mindscape Podcast   Sean Carroll channel:    / seancarroll  
Mindscape Podcast
Sean Carroll

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Sean Carroll

224K subscribers