Nguyen offers a piercing critique of how institutional metrics hijack the logic of games to trap human agency in a mandatory, soul-crushing scoreboard. He reminds us that when we mistake the metric for the value, we lose the very freedom that makes play meaningful.
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DATA BREACH: Prof. C. Thi Nguyen | Games, Metrics, Values本站添加:
There's versions of these that I kept running into where like someone would say like, "I love this movie." And someone would be like, "I didn't really like that movie." And one of the people would be like, "Let's settle this." And open up Rotten Tomatoes.
>> Yeah.
>> As if.
>> Yeah.
>> That settled the issue.
>> Yeah.
>> CT win is a philosopher of art, games, and values. His latest book, The Score, discusses how institutional metrics work like gameplay scoring systems to shape human agency. I've been a longtime admirer of his work and recently I had the pleasure of sharing a stage with him and then sitting down for a wide-ranging conversation about a lot. I'm CJ the X, an artist and public philosopher. This is a microphone. That's a camera. You're a person and this is data breach.
One of the centers of what this book is about is why scoring systems are so delightful in games and so uh life-thraining in institutions. Why?
Like I mean there's this weird experience I would have where I would be at school as an administrator struggling against like learning outcomes against metrics about feeling that like feeling like everything I cared about dissolve into nothing because like the bureaucrats and administrators I struggled under would not acknowledge the value philosophy. Right? I mean, I had so many cases where the things we were trying to do with students like nobody would care about because it didn't translate directly into students graduating faster >> or students getting a higher starting salary. In fact, maybe I shouldn't say this because people probably use this against me in my profession, but um sometimes what might happen is if you teach someone to be more reflective and you get them to be more ethical, they might take longer to get through college and they might not take the highest paying job because it's evil and they might take a slower or more difficult or more careful path and none of that shows up.
>> Yeah. in main largecale metrics for success. And so there was this moment in my life where I was writing my first book about games and that book is all about how people don't understand the beauty of games because they keep trying to make it like a movie. They keep pointing to the fixed qualities or what games are are they're action sculptures, right? The core idea of the book, which I I'm I'm sure that you've talked about with everyone a billion times, but the core idea of the book is that game designers work in the art of agency itself. That they sculpt an alternate self for you by giving you new abilities and new obstacles and new environments. But most especially, they give you a new desire, right? They give you a new goal center through point systems. And part of that first book, the heart of the first book was about how incredibly ecstatic this could be, right? How incredibly carefully a game designer could just tweak the incentive structure of a game. Like some of my favorite examples are from tabletop role playing, like Dungeons and Dragons gives you experience points for killing things. And then one of my favorite games, Apocalypse World, gives you experience points for failing in character or getting yourself in trouble in character. And I mean, this seemed like such a beautiful action sculpture.
And so many games, I mean, so many games could do a thing. One of the most interesting things to me about tabletop role playing games is you can sit people down at a table and just say, "Tell a story." And either they will I mean if they are kind of natural or trained storytellers a very rare class able to do it but most of the time they either sit there awkwardly and do nothing or they repeat the most >> trit yeah >> tropy stories and then if you give them a role playing system right with an interesting point system it'll start nudging them into particular kinds of stories. So one of my favorite uh tabletop role playing systems Blades of the Dark. Can we talk about Blades in the Dark? I'm not sure if we have is this but did you reference it in like is this where where it's like there's like a like a princess getting escorted by like a guy and it's like is let's think about a different thing >> this is same author >> but their next development so the idea of Blades in the Dark is that you are all it's like a magical fantasy world there are >> great wizards and great generals and you don't play them you play the cons and the thieves >> and you're going to rob the generals and the great wizards. And the way you do it is you say like, "Okay, our our our team is going to break into the wizard's vault in a month." And then the game force skips play a month in the future.
And your characters have planned, but you, the players, have not. And you have no idea what your characters have planned. And then you go to the break-in, right? You do the job. And then when you run into trouble, the game lets you spend your points to call for a flashback and go back in time and retroactively tell the story of how it's like it's I I remember one time we were playing and um my uh my spouse Mel like her character gets thrown off of the ship into sharkinfested waters and as she's like flying backwards through the air, she calls for a flashback to like when she went 3 weeks in the past, 3 weeks ago, how she went to like try to do a treaty with the mermaid queen. We were making up that exact moment and she had some roles and then she ended up seducing the mermaid queen and then it went bad and then the mermaid queen was your jilted lover and then suddenly we were back in the present >> with her jilted ex-lover, the mermaid queen rising out of the water and rage and all of that got generated by this rule set.
>> Yeah.
>> Right. And by this point structure and so sorry, long ass digression. So sick.
I mean, it's so sick and it's it's a great example of how like again the scoring system guides. So the one distinction in the games agency as art that I think is very important to make is like that like you say it's like people try to justify games as art sometimes by just saying oh it's like another valid art thing, right? So it's like the best example I think is like people always with the Last of Us they're like that game it's like a movie, right? And when you're talking like sculpt your agency and help you be another person, it's not about being a character. It's actually a much more like alchemical level. Um I mean I this is exactly right cuz I think the the core ma I mean tabletop role playing games to me are such a clear illustration of the core magic of games and how different they are from movies because a movie is a very I mean I love movies but a movie is a different art form. someone else fixes the narrative >> and then you experience that fix and you can have your own emotions but someone else has fixed the narrative. In a tabletop role playing game, someone else has made a structure and that structure when it acts on you, it pulls stories out of you. You and your friends suddenly invent stories on the fly that are fascinating and explosive and like have emotions and have tensions and those stories are yours.
But you couldn't have gotten there without this like in it's like support infrastructure, right? It's like a thing that helps you be creative rather than someone else's creativity put in front of you. And like I mean I I guess one way to put it is I think games are often like a little a structure that a structure designed to crystallize your freedom to both encourage it and nudge it in a way that's particularly interesting.
>> Right?
>> And that's I mean that's magic, right?
So this is by the way this has been like a 10-minute long bracket. So games.
So So the weirdest So I was working on that stuff about games.
>> Uhhuh.
>> And then I was going to work and having to justify to people that were trying to >> budget cut all the humanities and cut our department and cut gened because we weren't helping people get jobs. And I was having to fill out forms with learning outcomes metrics justifying to the Utah State Legislature that we were actually educating our students in the terms that could be measured outwards.
And it was >> [ __ ] It was like things that did not capture what was important. So that's when I started writing the the stuff about value capture about how metrics are harmful because they start up they >> get us to outsource our values. They get us to um guide ourselves in institutional terms and how that like missed out on all the particular subtlety of our values because it had to be something that could be measured in institutional level and that was always something that had to fit this clear decontextualized comprehensible by anybody executed by anybody rule set. H yeah, this is I was I've been following over years of this. Like you have that one great lecture that's filmed well on YouTube and I've literally played clips of it in my lectures.
>> Wait, which one?
>> The one I don't know. You're wearing like a cardigan and >> Oh, right. But but I thought about putting a clip of that. I thought it'd be so funny if at the lecture that we were doing together, if I played a clip of you lecturing in my lecture while you're just sitting there. So, we're here just to kind of uh So, here >> but but it's like kind of like a narrower kind of uh string of what of what the score ended up being specifically on like like what's the famous the quote it's like oh any when a metric becomes a goal it's a bad measure or whatever.
>> So, this is so this is this is um goodart's law when a measure becomes an incentive it ceases to be a good measure. But the thing that I was worried about, value capture is like one step further.
>> Okay?
>> Cuz goodart's law is about like it's about incentives. It's about people offering you resources to do things.
>> But when things are only incentives, you can still choose against them. You can still decide the money isn't worth it to you.
>> Right.
>> Value capture is what happens when the metric intrudes inside your soul.
>> Right. Right. And I think one of the really interesting things about value capture is that in value capture >> you lose your ability to do the trade-off, right? Because you've forgotten that there's something more important outside the metric.
>> Yeah. It depends reality like you can only see that that's the only value you can see. You don't you have a choice actually.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. We got to go back to the reality Ben because this is what I this Yeah.
This is the thing that happened with Charlie yesterday. But okay, so >> I want to I I feel I feel like I actually want to like cap the games tangent which just like one extra example there just so like for myself just to be like how does like games craft your agency and guide your freedom so you get to be things and I'm just thinking about like Settlers of Katan about like how the point system where you get points by building roads and by industrializing. It's like okay so you get points through that so you get to be the person that really cares about colonizing this land. And so games just work as packages of like based on what the points are and the obstacles like okay I am this person. I'm a person who cares about accomplishing this goal in this particular way. We were talking about like root right this kind of political battleground where it's like that you can be either like what I care about is inciting a socialist uprising or what I care about is I'm building style or what I care about is like bureaucracy or like politics in some way. The point system makes you that person basically.
>> Yeah. And I I think it game designers are crafting alternate care systems. And I think like the way to really admire it is to look at >> like with any other art like it's to see these tiny subtle choices that genuinely transform.
I mean I think games are like different packages of angles of seeing the world.
And so like okay so here's some examples like classic old school German board games a lot of the times you're just trying to collect as much of stuff as possible and you're just trying to collect it as efficiently as possible.
Then Riner Kinio, my favorite board game designer, had this game Tigris and Euphrates and he had a different scoring system. And that scoring system was everyone was collecting in five different colors and then through a complex economic warfare system, but your points were whichever color you had the least of.
>> Oh, okay.
>> Right. Okay. And this is reorienting your weakness, right? It doesn't matter if you have a ton of red >> if you only have five blue, right? So you're not actually thinking about gathering tons of stuff. You're thinking about >> balance complicated your weak points. So now you're suddenly focused on your weakness and now you're hyperfocused on other people's weakness cuz what you're trying to figure out and >> usefully like you hide your points. You have to like constantly tracking and figuring out what other people's weak points are and hiding from your actions what your weak points are. And if you can figure out you attack other people's weak points. So instead of a game of like just like do as much as possible, suddenly this subtle scoring system has changed it to a game of like balance and vulnerability and weakness.
>> It's like you it's like it reminds me also what you told me yesterday about like the root expansion packs. You get to be that >> that it's like there's all these different like uh different systems of power working against each other. The root is kind of like every a team is playing a different game with different rules and you're all trying to get points but you get points by different ways. So that's why we get it's like so this group is like they're just trying to incite socialist uprising. This person is just doing settlers of kitan building and then the birds the funniest ones. It's just like whatever you call it like religious order campaign promises like chain of like it's just hilarious. But then like you were telling about the expansion pack one where it's the guys that are arms dealers and so they're selling like weapons or munitions or something and you were like you couldn't figure out how to win with them until you were like oh I need to intentionally destabilize other people like I have to like make it so that they fight each other. I need that to happen. I need to make that happen.
>> Yeah. You have to engineer conflict. I think my favorite version of these is completely evil. It is it is an experience of pure evil. uh which and it's delightful. It's a delightful experience Imperial. Um but it's also been very useful to me. Uh so it's the board game Imperial, >> right?
>> So Imperial is a game that looks like Risk in which it's World War I and all the forces uh of the world are fighting each other. Um but you don't play the countries. You play uh the shadowy investors trading investments in the countries in order to profit.
So you can actually in this game stage a fake war between two countries you can control for profit. It's horrible.
>> Like two of your own countries.
>> The most evil possible move the game permits um is that you can start a fake war between two countries of you that you own to kill all your own armies before you have to pay them their salaries.
>> By the way, I will just say >> just get the people to die in war that you have debt to or whatever.
This helps me understand certain moves from Silicon Valley Tech Bros more.
>> Like I could not understand what they were doing without this game. The game is a bridge into a different way of looking at the world. There's also a more friendly. So another thing in Imperial start to realize so I didn't this happens a lot when people start playing the game. They play it in a more conventional way. I took over England.
Someone else took over Germany and we just controlled them when we tried to win. Yeah. And then my friend Sarah, I was controlling England. She was mostly controlling Germany. And it was clear that Germany was about to attack England. And I was like gearing up to defense. And then I realized we didn't have to fight a war. All I had to do was sell her some cheap stock in England.
Shows she was co-invested and now the incentive structure had changed and she had no reason to attack England.
>> Crazy. Yeah. Yeah.
>> And Right. That's imagine the difference between a game that says you're this country now go to war versus a game that says manipulate the incentive structures of different people's co-investments for profit. It's a com and I mean >> my god it's so insane. That's >> it's beautiful. And I mean I I hate to talk about instrumentalizing play but also a when I am like negotiating in my university to keep people from defunding the philosophy department.
>> Yeah. Right. that co-incentive thing which I never had before lives in my brain. Yeah. Because the game gave me access to that kind of thinking and that kind of orientation by packaging a point system together.
>> When you're saying instrumentalize, of course, what we're talking about is like play is one of the that is intrinsic value. Like play is the place you want to be when you're when you're doing engaged in play. It's a it's like this is it. I'm not doing this for something else. Like this is it. What I do is rock climbing. Like I work and make money so that I can rock climb. I'm not rock climbing so that I can achieve some goal and be done. Like this is heaven in the Bernard suits way. And so there's the intrinsic beauty I'm sure of that designed experience you're talking about. But then there's the instrumental purpose of it is also packages of information. You can't actually learn to be different kinds of people and understand things you wouldn't have understand understood without it. So the thing that is that we both care about is I mean my path to it is so burner toots you know this this this philosophy of games that was really inspirational to me that has the definition of games where playing a game is taking on unnecessary obstacles voluntarily to create the struggle to overcome them.
>> Yeah.
>> He thinks that I mean you can play a game instrumentally but the heart of what he cares about is playing a game just to be just for the beauty of the process itself. And he has this argument at the end of his book, The Grasshopper, where he says, "Imagine a technological utopia, um, where we've solved of all all of our practical problems with technology. Uh, what would we do with our time? We would play games or we would be bored out of our minds. Therefore, games are the meaning of life >> because in heaven, that's all there is.
taking on unnecessary obstacles for the pleasure of overcoming them. Like what else do you do?
>> Wait, wait. Oh, I have a story. I I don't know if I've told you the story.
This is this is a story that Okay, so teaching this class and I had this student and she was like super attentive. I think she was a nursing student. She was she really liked the class. When I gave her that argument, she was so offended. Did I tell you the story?
>> No. No.
>> She was just she just thought it was disgusting. Why? That the well the meaning of life was playing games. She was like, "It's so unproductive. It's so grotesque. Like what a what a hedonistic luxury like just [ __ ] Like right she was just repelled by it.
>> So at the end of the class >> um we're doing a review session for the for the final >> and um we talk about Kant, you know, where the value of life comes from what you freely choose.
>> Then you talk about Aristotle where meaning and value in life come from the exercise of your abilities and capacities in difficult action. Yeah.
And she was like, you know, I love Kant and I love Aristotle and I believe both of them and is there any way to fuse the two of them? And I was like, you know, the theory would be if the meaning of life were difficult activities that we voluntarily chose. Is there a theory that we have for that?
And she thinks about it for a second and then she SCREAMS LIKE, "FUCK NO, [ __ ] SUIT." AND THEN SHE PUTS her head down and she slams the table and then everyone in the class starts like laughing and I was like philosophy ecstasy.
>> But I do think >> Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful.
>> Suit is kind of an existential aricatilian.
>> Yeah. What is >> I thought this even what you mentioned earlier. We were talking about evil. I was thinking about like the like Kierre guard actually when you were talking about um we're talking about like what the sorry so many things tied together but like but but but but having to yeah choose to struggle like and having to risk that and like engage in that process like with art is what you're saying is in order to get the value of art first you have to like go in have an opinion like or or uh submit yourself to watching a whole movie. So like there is like an existentialist tinge to it where it's like you have to go risk being wrong. Oh, that's so interesting cuz I think Okay, this is cuz this is exactly this puzzle we were talking about yesterday. We're back at this thing we were talking about before cuz I think there are two there are two really interesting things about games. One is that they're voluntary. We have a choice over them and the other is that they're rigid, right? And I think they're they're stable. Like they're these structures of rules made by somebody else. They flirt with authoritarianism while not being authoritarian, right?
>> Yeah. They limit your freedom, but somehow they they they free you.
>> Yeah.
>> And I think maybe one way to put it is they're metal level freedom.
>> So the whole point this thing they were talking about, the thing that's so interesting to me that I like um viewers at home don't know that they had to give me a 20-minute break cuz my brain fried out and I had to like lie down in the bathroom.
>> You're burning yourself out real bad.
Real bad. So, so um so I think one of the most interesting things to me and I truly learned this from the philosopher Tal Brewer in the book Retrieval of Ethics is the value of activities is subtle. You don't understand immediately the value of gardening, the value of philosophy, the value of rock climbing. Like when I started rock climbing, I thought it was for like fitness. I didn't realize >> it was because movement itself is beautiful. And I I didn't know that cuz I was too dumb about my body. And it was the very specific point system of rock climbing. I started rock climbing just to get some exercise. And I followed this point system. And the point system was like do more difficult clims. And in order to do that, I had to become more elegant in my movement. And in doing that over four years, that is how I discovered that there is an ecstasy to movement, >> right?
>> And I had to learn that. So it was the external structure of games and me submitting myself to that external structure and just following it for a while that taught me a new kind of action and a new kind of attention that was be it taught me how to basically taught me how to love being in a physical body. Yeah.
>> Um, and I needed that outside stimulus >> and you you thought you were going into rock climbing to get exercise and then inside of rock climbing you realize, oh, I've realized that I'm in rock like rock through the experience and process of rock climbing. You're like, no, this is actually about experiencing the beauty and harmony of movement, the elegance of your own body and sensitivity to motion and >> yeah, and this is exactly what you're talking about about elders and out like this is not something that this was not pure choice. If I had pure choice and no structure, I would never have seen this.
I saw it because there was a community that created a rule system to transmit a and guide people into a kind of activity. And I needed to do that for a long time. I have something crazy to tell you. Okay. Um it's because you talked about pickup artists at the at the show last night. Um, and uh I it's what's so wild is I got to speak at an event called Slutcon this past year and it was kind of like a like a like a it's kind of like it's kind of the pickup it's they're kind of the successors of the pickup artists like the point of the event was specifically to like just uh teach like and talk to about like sex and seduction and flirtation and do all this, you know, and um and so I was talking to some of the people that was running it and they speak of like they they speak like not too shy highly about that they're kind of the successors of the pickup artist. But what's interesting of what happened in the pickup artist community is like you like you talked about there's a lot of sociological data, a lot of interviews, a lot of things happened like where people looked into um these pickup artists, how they work, how they think and and you know how they feel and all this and and what happened as you talked about is like the pickup artists end up like gifying uh how many how much sex can I get in one night? How many girls numbers can I get? And they're just so dead focused on like kind of uh like like algorithmizing and and cheating and hacking the process of of sex and seduction that all of them are miserable. And the weird thing is they actually can succeed at having a lot of sex or getting a lot of girls phone numbers even if they look strange, right? There's they have brain hacks that kind of work or whatever, but none of them are enjoying sex or flirtation at all. And so it was so interesting talking to these guys that like are still doing the sort of dating coaching work. And I was talking to them and they were all like, "Yeah, like the thing is like they we we we we get our clients and our clients think that they want to uh get get more [ __ ] or whatever." They they think that that that's the thing is they want to get laid or they want to become a lethario. Um which is fine and we work with that, but the real thing that we're like, "Okay, we'll teach you how." But what they're teaching them is only self loveve cuz all of it's like you actually >> like not love for other people and respect.
>> It's it's self love. It's it's like they're like why can't I get girls or like I really want to like get like sex or whatever and it's like no what you in the best way to do that is you actually get comfortable in your skin start to enjoy the process of speaking to people have more self-respect like confront those insecurities that are making you think you need to like get those things that are repulsive to other people socially that make you like afraid to walk up to people the things that make you incapable of taking rejection and afraid of it. And all that really amounts to basically just kind of like the life coaching turns into just like we're teaching you self- loveve as a man which is so funny. That's where it's at now which I thought was really sick actually.
>> There's a sense in which I mean this is there's a sense in which games can be a trick >> and what you're talking about is another kind of trick. Um this is super interesting. So okay let me let me walk through this slowly. So, one of the things that I find super interesting about games is the way they let you approach self- aacing ends. So, there's this idea in philosophy that some ends are self- aacing. This means you can't pursue them directly.
>> Like the paradox of hedenism. It's like if you try to be happy all your life, you're not going to succeed. Happiness is kind of an emergent product of other things like I don't know working on a meaningful problem or >> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Like the happiest people are not trying to be happy. They're in they are trying to write a great novel or trying to uh they're immersed in like a charity problem or building a beautiful building or building like activism in their community. Like that kind of focus >> is what makes you happy. This is what Aristotle thought.
>> Um I mean for me the simplest version is just that I can't relax by trying to relax, right? I need >> I need to just try to climb a rock or just try to learn a yo-yo trick or just try to like >> um optimize my way through some dumb tech tree in a computer game >> in order to relax.
>> I think maybe another simple example of this that's staring us in the face is just party games. Cuz if you tell people >> relax and meet each other, everyone gets clams up. And if you're like, "Okay, you're going to play this part of the game and now your goal is to communicate using your hands."
>> People gonna do it. So, wait, why was I talking about this? Jesus Christ. Okay.
Because one of the things about games is Okay, this is a slightly different thought, but I think they're related.
Tell me why they're related.
>> Sure. Let me see if I can like >> I think it's that one of the interesting things about games is when you start them, you don't need to know what they're for. Like, I didn't know what climbing was for. I thought it was for fitness and then I started >> and then it the struct it in some way it doesn't matter what you think it's for >> the structure guides you in a kind of activity and then you spend some time there and you're like oh this is this is great this is this new thing that I've never experienced and I could never have gotten there unless my activity were so tightly structured by these rules and these these point structures or by you know like a yoga sequence or by like >> and there's some like >> oh yeah >> like I what's the connection to that and selfaciness I think so the what I so what uh John Vervey talks about um the philosopher neuro um neuroscientist friend of the pod >> that's the first time ever >> friend of the pod >> the first time I've ever described this as a pod cast um >> sorry that's what you are.
>> Is that what I am now? [ __ ] I guess this is very Yeah, clearly I this IS THERE'S A PLANT.
>> Uh what John Veriki uh talks about, he describes it as there's a difference between propositional knowing and perspectival knowing. And that propositional knowing is like a kind of logical thing, right? So the purpose of rock climbing is to get fit or so it's the purpose of a sport is to get fit.
or even to the kind of perspect and knowing how it feels to be a person, right? So, you can know information about me, CJ. But you don't know what it's like to be with me until now we do know what it's like to be with me. You know what I mean? And that's that's knowing uh what it's like to be from a perspective and that's an embodied knowing. And so it's one that you can't get through logical propositions.
>> Yeah. This is and this is this is super interesting because there's this thing that I think okay here's here's another way to put I think this is the same point. Sometimes I'm teaching someone a board game and they keep pausing and they're like why is that rule the there?
Why is that rule the way it is? Like explain to me give me the logical argument why I have to follow that rule.
>> And what I often want to say is >> I can't tell you and this is kind of why games are an art form, right? Like the whole the whole point of what an art form is, one of one of the views about what art is, is it's something where you can't explain where each part is, what each part is doing. There's some kind of weird dynamic emergence of the whole.
Yeah. and that you're feeling what so what a what a game designer like you know a lot of the times I think a novelist they can't quite justify why this is action is there but they've tried different plot lines and they know this one has a when they try it that way it has a kind of energy yes to it and I think when I work with game design students and you can see this really clearly you're like oh this needs something and then they'll change a little rule detail and suddenly the game pops to life and you don't quite it's don't quite know Why? But those rules lead to this kind of emergently great activity. And I think it's like a you often have to trust the game designer and b you have to trust them because you're not going to see the value until you plunge into the thick action until you're in it. And you're not going to do that until >> you follow the rules.
>> Yeah. And there and there's a there is a there is a a a the so is it how do you say Maria Lagonus?
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. um her essay world traveling playfulness world traveling the loving gays in some order those that's the title um there >> the um the I think the that's the freedom that that games give you that I'm very interested in you know there's um there's also there's a the Hindu word also leela speaks to this is like as is a spirit of playfulness and experiencing everything as if it is play like the purpose of everything is play like it gives you a different perception of like you know who you are and what it means to be a person and even what truth is and all this is cuz it's like if you're feeling about um if you're I think you get you gain a new level of freedom if you're like autonomy is achieved not by just like doing whatever you want according to like who you are right now but when you realize that I can go and be other people and then come out of that and then I'm still exist right and so when you do games like you immerse yourself in being somebody else and then you're allowed to step back out of it so it's like and once you do that it's like holy [ __ ] I can all sorts of people and then you can experience even the joys and the highs of being evil and imperial and you're like I was that and now I'm out and I'm I just you have a more like a kind of enlightened idea of your freedom instead of kind of clinging tightly to like your established like rule set which which I think ironically makes you a bit more anxious about your identity and a little less free because you you have the scarcity mindset thing AND YOU'RE LIKE AND IT'S LIKE IT'S LIKE THAT uh that that student in your class who was like who's like enraged by the notion of um that the meaning of life is play, then they're like offended by it.
And it's like, but the way that she's seeing the world, right? That it makes sense. And I I can go into that world and and it feels good to go I want to if you want to do Kimu or whatever instead of uh instead of Bernard Suits or something, you know what I mean? Or some sort of life is pain and struggle all this sort of [ __ ] Um like like you can do that, but like can you come and imagine that it's all play, you know?
And if you can go between those worlds, like that's I think that's the more valuable thing, which is kind of why this one wins out. But the reason I brought up Maria Lagonus is because when she describes this as world traveling, I think that's that's probably the best thing. Can I travel into this world and feel like what it means to be this person in a different world?
>> Yeah. I mean, this is this is the thing that I was trying to get at earlier.
This is a really beautiful way to get at this thing that I was calling metaph.
>> Yeah. Which is I think exactly as you were saying the freedom that comes from being able to plunge into restricted into restriction temporarily. The freedom that comes from being able to let yourself enter. I mean I mean it's not just games. Like a lot of the times with a fiction you're letting someone dictate your emotional experience for a while. you're following them into a world they've made and a person they've made. I mean, this is, >> you know, this is the thing I was trying to get at with this idea from the first book that like >> yoga helps you be more flexible through like being really strict. Cuz when you're free, you don't learn when you're just totally free, you don't learn new movements. It's that the strictness of yoga forces you into different >> shapes that you've never had before and different alignments. And that like unyieldingness is how you find your way in. And I think there's something >> I mean >> what's interesting about games for me is the degree to which temporary restrictions force you into finding new possibilities for action, into finding new ways to tell stories and tabletop role playing. uh into finding I mean it's like there's this tabletop role playing game I really like where you I mean I was used I was used to playing games where I'm always trying to succeed and then then there was a game that was like you get experience points and you level up your character if you fail dramatically in a character-based way that is interesting and suddenly I was looking at a stories from a I'd never >> gone through a storytelling process with my mind fixated on what's the most interesting way to fail.
>> The game like forced me into that new thing >> and then I could like >> see a new glimmering of a new way of being >> through this external structure. But I mean, okay, here maybe here's another way to put it. It was just there's this part of the new book in which I was talking about different ways you could fail to explore and learn and one way is to be a rules dogmatist.
>> Yes. Right. I love this. This is very underlined note taken for me.
>> And and you can be like stuck in one rule set the rule set you were born in and you refuse to leave. You believe it all the way. You're do you it is like hyper sacred and inflexible to you. You will never explore. Yeah.
>> If if if on the other hand, so that's a rules documentist. You can also be a rule skeptic. And a rule skeptic is a person who's like, >> I don't know why I should play that game. You never plunge in. You never you never make the Jamesian plunge of trying on >> a new value to see what it's like.
>> It's kind of like that board game prison. I was like, why that? Why is that rule? Why is that rule there? Yeah.
You need to justify it to me on my terms before I plunge in.
>> Exactly. Right. you you you want to be able to understand everything before you plunge in and then you'll never learn new values because what you have to do with a game this is I don't think this is in anything I've written about games but I think talking about James with you is making it clear like >> there's a Jamesian loving >> leap yeah >> to playing games you got to trust y >> and you have to commit and you have to before you see the value of the game >> here's the funny thing What about Oh my god. Okay, let me go back. So, the thing that has guided all the games work is this distinction between a goal and a purpose, right? The goal is what you chase in the game. The person purpose is why you play, right? Sorry. I I'm talking cuz I'm like, I don't want to go back. Like, I loved where I was going and I have all these feelings about I just want So, >> yes, >> but goals and purpose >> and whenever I present this, it's always like, well, you do the goal like I chase the goal of getting to the top of the rock in order to have meditation. But here's the funky thing.
>> The goal of the game is the purpose is the mergent thing inside of it, but the goal is what the game tells you to do.
But that's not the same as the Okay.
Yeah.
>> But here's the funky thing, and this is something I I'm only realizing right now.
>> Yeah.
>> A lot of the times you have to plunge yourself into the goal without knowing the purpose.
>> Yeah.
>> Cuz you don't know the fun or the joy that's to be had there. You just have to try it on. And that's a Jamesian loving plunge. You have to be willing to take the risk and try it on and commit yourself to the goal and really want it and have no idea what's going to come out of the game. And sometimes it sucks and some I mean, have we talked about the mind yet? It's in the book, but have you >> about the mind? The game?
>> Yeah. Have you played it?
>> No. Uh oh. Is this the one where you have to communicate stuff without like you have to invent a language? Yeah, I've read.
>> No, it's not the invent a language one.
It's the game. It's a super simple game where you have cards from one to 100 and the game tells you as a group. It deals out random cards.
>> Oh, you have to Yeah.
>> And you have to play them out in order, >> but you can't communicate. So, you have to somehow basically be telepathic.
>> You have to read each other's minds cuz everyone has different cards. You have to just vibe it out. It's like that camp game or whatever. It's like you sit all laying down in the dark and try to count to 100 and if you speak at the same time it's over. It's kind of It's similar but it's like >> Yeah, exactly. It's like it's a pure timing vibes game. You just have to learn each other's sense of timing. So, I started playing this. Here's how I would have described the game before I started playing it.
>> This is dumb.
>> What? This is impossible. This is a joke.
>> It sounds I haven't played it. So, I That sounds impossible and frustrating to me.
>> It sounds either impossible.
>> I'm not even interested in doing it.
Actually, I got that's what's in my body right now. I don't want to do >> Yeah, this is awesome. This is how I felt, too. I mean, literally, I would never have played this game except my co-instructor for a class, uh, Jose Zagal, who's a game designer, uh, was like, that was his pick for me to play.
I was like, well, I have to play it.
>> After playing it, what I would say is it is an extraordinary experience of intimacy because in order to play it, what you have to do is slowly tune in to each other's sense of timing about how to long to wait. So, if I've got a 20 and a 50, so I play down the 20 >> and now I have to wait.
>> And I don't want to play the next card too fast >> cuz if you've got an in between card, I want you to play it.
>> But I don't want to play it too slow cuz then if you've got a if I've got a 50 and you've got a 70, >> then you have you have to get it down.
You have to get for them for all of us.
Yeah.
>> So, we have to share a sense of timing.
What you do is when you play this thing with a group of people, >> you will slowly develop an almost physical sense of shared time >> where you can feel you can feel yourself tune in and have a sensation and you suddenly know exactly how everyone is experiencing time.
>> It's so much. Yeah. Yeah.
>> But I never would have had that unless I could be like, "Okay, I'll play this game. Okay, I'm going to try to do it."
Oh, right. I had to commit.
>> Yeah.
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cop tick at cj thex.com/ lectures. Back to the thing.
>> Oh, and here's something to say about the mind. Uh >> we were talking about >> what it was like >> and again our students when they start they inevitably every like this is dumb and then they love it.
>> Um and one of we asked like what does this feel like to you? And one of my students was like this feels exactly like learning to play jazz with a group.
You slowly tune into the same sense of time. Except the magic of this game is that my jazz group >> took six months to tune in. And this game because the act is so simple gets you there in 20 minutes.
>> Yeah. That's the power of games. It's like >> crystallizing, >> right? Yeah. Crystallizing. That's what you say in like in like games, right?
It's like that that's what the the the they work as an art as a art of agency in that like this point system and this rule set and like these objects or whatever it is like literal objects or like conceptual objects whatever it is like if you put these together in this shape then it'll crystallize a particular delightful way of being or delightful action and it's like just like it's compressed or something like that. It's a little magic orb.
>> Magic orb.
>> To me, like the thing that's really beautiful about this and Maria Lagonus really ties up to my other research on this cuz my other research is about like um a very prominent philosopher of love named Harry G. Frankfurt. I don't know if you ever heard between him and the work I do with like John Reviki, my more like religious like philosophizing stuff is is this ability to >> it's the the thing is like what Maria Lagonus talks about and you already have made this connection. you're taking like her um work uh which is partly like work on like kind of intersectionality and of identity and of being like a black woman in particular a culture like being mixed race or all the different you know what I mean and that and like realizing what it feels like to move between worlds like functionally to code switch um and and that but and then she describes this as the ability to have like a loving gaze can I look at you and like really kind of abandon myself figure out on your terms what it means to be you can I world travel to your perspective um and you make this connection where like games teach you this sort of self-trcendent empathy. And I also think that I love how Harry G. Frankfurt talks about like love is and he and one of the things he describes it as is something that echoes what we've been talking about. It's a voluntary necessity, right?
>> Which is like a a contradiction. Like it seems like a paradox cuz it's like it's voluntary but also is like mandatory.
Because when I like when you love someone, they impose upon you and they demand of you and they require you change and change how you perceive things. But like you want to be demanded of. It's a demand that you welcome that you actually you're happy to be limited in this way. And I think the other thing he talks about is that to love someone is to intrinsically value them. He says when you love someone you actually um again it has this sort of like he says it's weird because it's like intrinsically delightful to love someone to be around someone because because you just love them, right? And then also weirdly it instrumentally is valuable because it it gives you like coherence to your life like to love something to so it has this paradoxical thing and that really what it is is when you love someone you actually identify them as part of yourself which is so interesting but so so anyways all of this goes to I mean though it's like I feel like to love like another human being is kind of like this >> root germ version of of uh of learning to like transcend your own perspective and to to world travel. Exactly. This is what Maria Loon says makes this connection, right? And so I think a game like that that self-trcendence in like games and in relationship. I think there's a similar effect of like I need to just like to to really you know like of course you're mar you're married, right? And you have a successful relationship, right? And you have successful relationship ships like in in your life professionally and socially and everything. And so like you know that in order to have that you have to really care what the other person thinks and feels for its own sake. Like if you were instrumentalizing someone, John McMurray, a philosopher I love very much like he says if you ask someone like you know why do you love your best friend and you go like because I don't know they're be beautiful. I like looking at them. They give me rides places like it's only instrumental benefits to you.
They'd be like that's not love. The only thing you'll say is like no they're my best friend because I love them. It's like this cyclical thing cuz it's intrinsic valuation. Um end sentence.
You know what I mean?
Intrinsic valuation means you're world traveling to them as you just care about whatever they feel and think for its own sake.
>> The connections you're making are making me think that there's just a kind of isomorphic shape to all these things we're thinking about.
>> I don't know what does isomeorphic mean.
>> Uh similar structure, similar shape.
>> Okay. Um, and it's all about how eerily close love and domination are, how eerily close play and authoritarianism are, and how eerily close travel to connect >> and then >> the decontextualization >> of portability are.
>> Absolutely. Okay, let's do the joint now. Let's go because this is something I was thinking from games over to the score >> because this is where the tension comes in. you were talking about the beauty of surrendering yourself to some other like measurement thing and then why is it sometimes ugly though and that's where the score comes in >> and I think but this is like the thing I was just realizing about the connection you you made was something like what the the interesting thing about the whisper thin line between games and authoritarianism is that each of them tells you a way to be and tells you something to care about and it looks so similar except there's this profound I mean the difference in some ways is really obvious right like what metrics are is somebody else from a distant place telling you the terms in which you'll Oh yeah, I remember exactly what I want to say. Okay, here's here's my here's the crazy. So, um there's this sometimes I teach uh the philosophy of [ __ ] There's one definition from Aaron James who's a ethicist and he says he's like, "What's a definition of assholes?" And he says, "To be an [ __ ] is to let yourself take special exemptions from the rules you expect of everyone else."
>> Amazing. Perfect. Yeah. Great. And then but Tanahi Coasts has a blog post where he gives an alternate definition of [ __ ] and he says to be an [ __ ] is to expect the world to interact with you on your terms.
>> Right.
>> Yeah. And I think the whisper thing thing that I was thinking about was the closeness of I totally believe that what it is to love someone, what it is to love each other is being able to willing to take on to enter into someone else's terms. Yes. Right. And it's but it's a weird push pull because sometimes you're entering into the other person's terms and sometimes you're letting someone enter into your terms. And that's and that but that possibility of tra I mean >> sorry I'm going nuts but like I think >> what's interesting about games is games what makes games possible is our basic fluidity that we can take on other values just because someone writes them down in a point scoring system.
>> Yeah.
>> But there are two ways to take advantage of that. With games, you go into and out of different scoring systems. Yeah.
>> And then you try them on and you step back and you try a different one on and you step back. And when you're doing it well, >> when you step back, you ask yourself, do I want to do this again? Do I want to do something different?
>> Do we want to change the rules of the game? Yeah.
>> And metrics are different. And I think like I don't know, maybe maybe >> different. They impose like they're like they don't make themselves opt outable or one of many options. They universalize and impose the >> metrics. The basic difference of metrics is that they make themselves hard to opt I mean they make it hard to opt out of them and part of the way they make it hard to opt out of them is by becoming pervasive and monolithic right like there's typically when you're in a institutional landscape there's only a couple there's only one primary metric around page views ranking on Spotify like your favorite example right like YouTube views or like one or two and they're like the they're they're inescapable >> and that discourages this kind of travel in and out. I don't know. Maybe the thing I'm thinking is just dumb. It's just that they're so it's so interesting that games take advantage of fluidity in a useful way.
>> Yeah.
>> And I mean I guess the twin if you think that love and if you think that play and domination by metrics take advantage of the same fluidity. I think the thing I was thinking was just that what it is what makes love possible what you're saying is that we want to be fluid enough to take on somebody else's terms.
>> Yeah.
>> And that's also the basis for like I don't know domination.
>> But I think that so the difference is whether or not it's reciprocal. Yeah.
Because the the the thing about love is that it's you you you're you're uh someone is demanding of you and they're imposing their world on you and you have to travel to their world, right? Um but but what the difference between domination and love is whether or not they're also doing that for you.
>> And if you have this mutual reciprocal like opening up to each other and you get that looseness and playfulness or you're able to do that, I think that's that's the love. Like that's the thing we're looking for. And I think that's probably what we're also looking for out of our games. Yeah. and and the difference is when it comes to like metrics, when it comes to like Spotify listens or like all these things, it's like they they do not they're not being like and what do you think it should be?
>> They're just they're just kind of infecting it into you and making you think that that's all there is.
>> I was going to give you a stupid counter example and then I realized it was wrong. So the super counter example is I think you're right with love and a relationship there's this constant play back and forth a negotiation of whose terms are vivid or like a change in the terms that you expect each other there's a back and forth immediately I was going to say but that's not true with games like games are this like stat like especially when we're talking about design games right they're the static object that someone made it and now you're playing it and it's this fixed thing.
>> There is a correct way to play it.
>> Yeah.
>> But I think if you zoom out like what's going on in the space of games in the long term is that game designers are designing games with their players and their players experiences in mind.
>> Yeah. Right.
>> And then players play them and then they respond and they talk about how they felt. They talk about what it meant to them. And then game designers listen to that and they change the games. They make new games in like you we evolve games evolve in this like complex give and take ecosystem of like designers and players like players are willing to enter into the game design >> space that goodwill. Yeah, >> but the designers are also willing to transform the game based on what players and critics say about the game as they build their next one. And that's not institutional design. No one is out there being like, I YouTube is not being out there being like, well, we're going to change the subscriber metric to make the process of YouTubing more joyful for you, CJ.
>> They say that they're doing it, but but the but the version of the thing that they're like responding to that they're saying represents us, like the users or the creators or whatever, their metrics, too. So, it's always going to be like engagement or it's going to be profit or this sort of thing. And so, like they say, oh, we listened because we did the thing that's most profitable that got the most views or whatever, right? But at no point where they're like are they checking? It's like, do we actually maybe want our lives be better? Would humanity be better if it views wasn't the thing driving us? Like the one example, I wrote an essay about this on my it's on my site called uh I just called against uh analytics. Oh, against analytics. I just talk about like when that uh YouTube introduced this mechanism where when you upload it, it shows you a one out of 10 of how well it's performing against all the other stuff. And the metric to me it's it's this weird like nightmarish thing to try to because for one immediately instantly value captured everyone it it is designed in this beautiful little way where if you get a one out of 10 it gives you confetti and says good job, right? like you did better than all the and then when you don't like I this pisses me off but like when I talk to like other YouTubers where I go like hey how do you feel about that project that you just finished you know I've been working three months on a piece and it's out right and they go like yeah it's okay it's kind of underperforming like seven out of 10 >> right >> and I'm like that's so that's the first thing they always say it and I'm like I did not ask for that like that is not like I'm wondering how you're feeling but how does your audience feel about it like even like I look maybe I just like my view count to be like is it kind of an average view count or is it low but even if it is flow. Sometimes you need to do a deepening with your existing audience instead of a widening to a new audience, you know? And but so like there can be a qualitative thing. That's what I'm trying to ask. But this this one out of 10 thing, it really it's so perfectly designed to get into your [ __ ] head. And like what's it even measuring is so strange. So what my essay is arguing is that like these analytics, they say it's for you as the YouTuber to you're going to do better and understand your audience better and all that, but it's not. It's for YouTube. It's like these are the metrics for if you wanted to be the best worker be for YouTube. If you wanted to make yourself into the optimal Mr. Beast clone or whatever you just that's what it's shifting you into the more that you let it decide what is valuable. Even the one out of 10 thing is like so trippy because it's like what it's measuring is and it keeps expanding. This is so hard to wrap my head around. You upload it and immediately it says here's how this video is performing in the first 5 minutes versus the first 5 minutes of all of your other things. And then that keeps expanding. So it's like it's performing a 1 out of 10 right now for the first hour, but then it goes on and it's like ah but it's actually kind of a five out of 10 for like the longest.
Like this is so brainmelty and it's not a reasonable way to think about a thing.
You know what I mean? And so I don't know. It's just the way that this can like hook into you so so bad, right? And anyway, sorry this long rant about my personal field.
>> No, this is I mean this is okay. I want to talk about something and I have an end point in mind and I just want to name the end point so I don't forget it.
>> Sure.
that and I'll I'll hold on to it.
>> The end point is the endless labyrinth of metrics.
>> Metrics all the way down. Metrics all the way down.
>> And because what we're trying to do is understand the true difference between games and metrics. Okay. So, >> I think the one of the thoughts I had at the beginning of this that I'm trying to hold on to is >> the profound difference between my mediated experience of value on Twitter.
>> Yeah. and my unmediated experience teaching and I mean this is this the simplest thing for me to hang on to is that if I'm teaching a lecture class to 100 people and I can see their faces and I say something >> and 99% it just misses 99 of them and one of them just lights up and you can see this like >> like >> that's worth it that's fine it is I can completely value and have as an emotional experience. This moved one person. This mattered to one person. I can ma I can focus on that.
Twitter just destroys that with the like system, right? The only thing that Twitter emphasizes is an aggregate total number and it the agg the the aggregated total number is based on responses yay or nay. So something that so a it's it's really important that Twitter doesn't distinguish it loses and doesn't capture the information of people who was like deeply moved by someone or who mildly liked it >> and it by boosting up this aggregation and hiding the rest it makes it much harder >> to hang on to this independent sense of meaning. But I mean, okay, >> there's the weird this also tells weird stories, right? Because then it's like what is significant? What's a significant thing on Twitter is another question, right? And so another significant thing on Twitter is something that like >> pisses a lot of people off and is really like outrage, right? Um because then that's something that gains a ton of traction, tons of engagement, and then that turns into, okay, so this is what Twitter is. This is what the conversation is. So like there's also that. So it's like not only like if you do impact somebody like but it's one person in a deep way then like you don't get a strong signal of it but then you get super strong like positive signals when you cause a lot of pain and suffering and confusion and upset.
>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's funny because it also speak it's it it's part of it is that the un user interface I mean quantifications are abstractions and I think a thing that you're saying that's super interesting is that the quantification process here it abstracts away it I was talking about how it doesn't distinguish between mild like >> and depth right >> and depth but you're also noticing that like you know >> it also screens me off from like people being the misery of people being deeply upset like that also >> the it's it's quantity in any direction is the other thing right because so it could actually be like oh this is a large amount of bad and it registers it as that's high relevance high significance like we should all be looking at it >> okay I I don't forgot that we have metrics all the way down over here >> we we we should do that and then we should chase this because this is really important I think the biggest thing back here is the essential abstracting quality of Abstractions or forgettings is what we should go.
>> Okay. Do we What? How long have we been running?
>> Just wondering time. I don't know what time is.
>> Like an hour and a half.
>> An hour. That's exactly. I think you want to crack a beer and then make our way to metrics all the way down and and that and then we landed.
>> Let me do metrics all the way down cuz it's in my head. And then let's crack and then >> so when I was trying to figure out why it was that >> metrics so invariably missed what was important why it wasn't just like oh you can build a better metric and I was trying to understand why it was that I mean this intuition that institutional metrics couldn't capt what was really valuable there are two key ideas um that helped me so theore Porter says that qualitative information is rich in contexts sensitive and dynamic but it travels badly between contexts because it requires a lot of shared background information. So to get around that, we build something that's stable across context. So here we're thinking of like letter grades, right? And so instead of all the complexity of comments to students, you have an A or a B. And the thing that makes it travel well across context is precisely the fact that we've removed any high context information and any subtlety. It's the desensitization and the dnuancing that makes it able to travel across contexts, right? which I find it kind of reminds me of like you know rock climbing like in order to get the value of it you have to do it right >> but if you just wanted to like if you were given like a TED talk you had to be like oh you have to rock climbing will help me get fit you like it's like yeah >> yeah because you can't transmit to people immed you the whole context you want it takes if it takes this is exactly right like if it takes it took me years to see how much ecstasy there could be in movement If someone hasn't been if someone's been down that path, we can talk about it instantly and share it. But if someone hasn't been it, they're gonna look at me like I'm crazy.
Yeah.
>> And so I have to change to something >> that is easy for everyone to see together increases the number of years you have. I mean, this is so cool. We I I forgot to tell the story at the very beginning. The whole point of skateboarding, I'm talking about skateboarding, right? is that skateboarding in its original form was a game, but it was a game with an unclear goal. It was a game where you're trying to be cool or stylish or expressive.
>> Steey.
>> Steey.
Uh, by the way, did you know that comes from stylish ease? Like, >> yeah, kind of. Yeah. Yeah. I also I always feel suspicious of those two, right? Because that's like the thing where it's like they would always like in hip-hop they always do this, right?
Where it's like it's like what is the meaning of gangster? And then they always make like an acronym like like they're like rap stands for rhythm and poetry. I don't think so.
>> Oh, no.
>> I don't think so. I don't like that easy explanation. I feel like it comes from like the normal thing where people just start saying easy.
>> You should have an entire episode where you just make up fake etmologies.
>> Oh my god, that's a nightmare. Yeah. So the whole point of skate the skateboarding story is that in its natural kind of on the street uninstitutionalized uninstitutionalized form, you can go for an unclear aesthetic goal and it doesn't matter if people disagree. That's fine. If if different people think that different skaters had different like different people fall in love with different skater style, that's cool. But when you move to the to ESPNX or the Olympics and you need a system that declares a single winner, >> then we get a topic shift towards what's easy to measure like height, >> right?
>> Number of flips. Same. It's the same point as the pickup artist stuff, right?
The whole point is the transition. Like pickup artists don't care about happiness, don't care about pleasure, don't care about relationship quality.
Why? Because those things aren't easily countable in public. number of sex acts >> speed to a sex act that is countable.
>> But then that that means that you're missing out of like what makes someone charismatic and what makes a great uh moment of flirting. And it's like it's when you're enjoying talking to someone.
It's like when you when you are someone and there's someone else that's different and you're enjoying your differences and you're just enjoy you're doing it cuz you're like I'm having a conversation because I'm interesting and you're interesting and it's fun. Like I'm not thinking this is for this is when I gave my lecture at sleptcon this is this what I did right is like I did a whole thing on the philosophy of seduction and I was like and I basically made this point it's like the misconception is that seduction is about having sex not true sex is like the excuse goal the goal of having sex is the excuse goal for the pleasurable intrinsically playful experience of of what seduction is which is like play and extimacy you know >> hold on my microphone just fell you laugh hard enough that I [ __ ] audio you You you made me laugh hard enough that my microphone slipped off of >> the Is this how it should be?
>> Yeah.
>> Okay.
So then the the the skateboarding thing is like if you're just just in like hanging out with a bunch of people around a half pipe and you're doing tricks, right? Who did the steeyest [ __ ] trick that day is something that you're like socially negotiating and like and while you're negotiating who did the steeyest trick, you're also like defining the meaning of steey. You're like what does what you're saying like who did the sickest one and also what does it mean to be sick and we're discovering that while we're talking about it >> we're discovering it we're negotiating it or inventing it and if different people invent it in different ways or if we have a long process and we diverge that's all okay we still had a great time >> that's so cool because I'm imagining because in the circle right even like in like rap battles stuff like this right where it's sort of like the socially negotiated thing where it's like where it's like where it's like you know this person's the winner but it's like that one thing that that one guy did like that's kind of my favorite though you know what I mean there's a lot of space for carving out identities and social consensus.
>> And I mean, I think here's okay, here's the deadly here. Okay, let me I think the saddest thing is the reason that pickup artists don't care about pleasure or the subtle joy of interesting flirting is if you say, "Well, I had a really nice night. I had a really fun, complicated flirting experience." And I say, "Prove it."
>> Right?
you can't prove it. To accept that I would have to trust you, right?
>> And the whole thing about public mechanical accountability is it eliminates >> trust and in some sense >> pickup artists and refocusing skateboarding on height and number of flips is about finding an institutional solution so that we don't have to trust each other anymore. Right. Right.
>> And what it is to be captured by that is to be captured by a system that has been built to eliminate trust for different people's sensitive perceptivity.
>> And to be like wonderfully clear, right, and this I'm taking this from your book specifically, right? Like the elimination of trust, it sounds almost like it's like it's a negative thing, right? And and there there's there can be a truth to that where it's like Twitter kind of is like a trust elimination machine. Like it's actually atrophying all that. Um but also like the way that you've talked about in the score um that sometimes the elimination of trust is a good thing. So like in terms of medical care like when you have things are measured and like standardized and there's like a you know algorithms and specific mechanical ways to do things then it's like okay now the you don't need as much trust so that a nurse can like change shift 40 times while taking care of someone that that might die and they don't. And that happens through having systems that don't require you to trust every new individual person and have like deep high context deep relationships with everybody.
>> You really don't want to trust people that are untrustworthy.
>> I don't I don't necessarily want to like uh fully trust like a I don't know like a Walmart. Yeah.
>> Right. Like I mean so there are so I mean in some sense a lot of these objective counting systems are built to create systems that run without trust.
And that's really good in environments where we don't have a lot of reason to trust people, where we'd be heavily screwed over when if someone did something to us, but it also prevents us from taking advantage of people's expertise or their sensitivity. And I mean I I the whole point is just this massive tradeoff between trusting people to enrich our lives and to do things we can't do and to show us new beautiful things and the fact that trusting people exposes us to their power. Like when you trust someone, you kind of let them into your brain and you trust it means vulnerability. Like it means that someone might have might exercise some sway over you in some negative way. They might take advantage of you and just you write of this beautifully in um obviously again like one of those papers that I've always I've loved of yours that has ended up um like like fused into the score. Um but uh trust surveillance and transparency trust you know and that the the notion that like oh in the name of transparency which you would think is a good thing. It's like so in terms of uh like publicly accountable like experts or like government specialists or whatever, right? That when everything needs to be uh transparent and uh that that actually people start only doing things that they can justify in like a contextlesswide way. They actually stop exercising their expertise that they specifically can do because now they have to be transparent and and and accountable which means that they they have to like they have to justify them. they have they get afraid of doing things that they don't think that uh everyone can understand quickly which you so then you're erasing the value of having expertise in the first place.
>> You're erasing the subtlety of value.
You're if you think that the the value in something takes time to understand if it takes you think it takes time to understand the value of hip-hop. If you think it takes time to understand the value of authentic Sichuan food and then you expo or if it takes you think it takes time to understand the value of taking philosophy and art classes, >> right?
>> And you suddenly have to justify that to someone that isn't willing to take the time, then you can't justify it, right?
That's the whole point that the reason that transparency metrics >> the very reason that when we demand transparency we eliminate bias and corruption is also the reason we eliminate sensitivity which is this brute demand that everything conform to the standard of instant comprehensibility of value to everybody.
>> Have we hit metrics all the way down yet?
>> Wait, no. Okay, we should. Okay, here we go. I know you want wine. Let me get there. YOU KEEP YOU KEEP DISTRACTING ME.
YOU SAID I KEEP DOING IT AND YOU SAY other interesting [ __ ] and then we have to talk about that and we cannot get to the point. Okay, so let me say okay so here's the big question. So if if we've said this thing about how scoring systems if they're mechanical then they're these things are easy to count and that eliminates sensitivity and delicacy. So then you might ask then how can games be beautiful if games are guided by simple mechanical scoring systems?
How could they get us to weird subtle interesting beauty?
>> And the answer is I think that game design and game choice in game design and and choosing which game to play mechanical scoring systems are under the control of larger inco8 values. And I mean like right for the game designer and for the player. You can play something and you plunge yourself in to that intense clear score and you back up and you ask yourself from outside the scoring system, was that fun? Was that interesting? Was that beautiful? Was that rich? And if it wasn't, you change games. Similarly, a game designer plunges into a scoring system.
>> Yeah. Like if I tweaked this.
>> Yeah. And then they step back and they're like, was that >> rad? Was it Were the choices interesting? Those aren't clear mechanical terms.
>> And then they tweak the mechanical rules in the light of trying to create >> a more beautiful experience >> from a non- mechanical angle. Right.
>> Right. They tweak the game rules looking for some feel or vibe that they want from the game.
And I think the problem with institutional metrics is not the metrics themselves, but the fact that we don't have a non-metriified standpoint >> from which we judge the metrics. And that's not necessary. That's one particular social setting. I think it's possible. And I can do this. I'm a teacher. I can set a scoring grading is a scoring system. I can set a scoring system in my class and I and my students can vibe it out.
>> I can vibe it out with my students. What I can do is like we can try the scoring system and then I can ask myself is this helping my students become wiser or more thoughtful and I can change it or I can ask them is this productive to you? Is this engaging to you? And then we can change it. But the thing you're talking about in your YouTube rant is a case where in an institution, >> our only method, >> our only method for justifying changes to a scoring system is another scoring system. If you would only modify a metric in the light of a another metric, then you're in the infinite labyrinth of metrics. Metric all the way down.
>> Yeah. It's metrics all the way down.
>> So, does it make sense? Like >> Yeah. like the the the humanity comes when at some point you got to trust a person that like is making a choice, a values based choice above the metrics.
If there's a and I think this is what this reveals, >> I can't believe that that was such a big payoff for metrics all the way down.
That was great. But I mean, I guess the way to put it is the real heart is not games versus metrics cuz you can guide games by metrics. If someone is just programming games to maximize extraction of money through addiction to free-to-play systems, that is metrics and control.
>> Yeah. Phone games or whatever like that.
Yeah, exactly. Sports betting or something, I don't know. Yeah.
>> And if you have a good institution of which there are occasionally few that is guiding its metrics choice in the light of some weird richer value, then you don't have that problem. The problem comes and the reason I was worried about value capture in the first place is because in value capture what you put at the bottom of your justificational structure is a metric that's limited by this mechanicity. And the big worry is that when you get large scale institutions, if they're set up so they can so the only thing that counts as a real justification is a is a metric is data, then you're in this mirror world.
>> Yeah.
>> Where the only thing you can reach for is something that is insensitive.
>> If you made it this far, there's going to be an extra 30 minutes or so of this conversation on the Patreon. We're editing it now. It's going to be there soon. and consider subscribing to my independent personal mailing list at cjx.com. That's where I'm actually sending things out first now because I like to be able to communicate to an audience without a platform looking over my shoulder. That's where lecture tickets are always first available.
That's where merch is going to be available shortly and where I'm going to post essays for my website that aren't on a platform. And finally, make sure to subscribe to my new second channel, CJD Extras, where I'm going to be streaming and posting clips. Just kidding. That one's fake.
>> This was so legendary of you.
>> You're touching my heart so well. Yeah, I brought wine.
>> You brought wine?
>> Uh, let's just be clear.
>> In case anyone is thinking, this is not my house.
>> It's not No, no, neither of our house.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
>> This is not how philosophers live.
>> It's not.
>> I I do buy bread and cheese though.
>> Um, so uh to to wind down to land the whole thing.
>> Mhm.
>> Is there anything else that we did not complete touch on?
>> There's a billion things. We should maybe we should talk talk about our relationship actually just a little bit because um there's uh the beautiful thing from from my side is that like in 2022 uh I was just starting I was one year into running my channel and I was just starting to study philosophy like a little more seriously was getting a little into it and then I I interviewed you. I found your work and I interviewed you.
>> Hello and thank you so much for doing this.
>> And over the course of that interview like by the end of it like you were just like recommending me name after name after name. like you figured out what kind of my aesthetic interests were and I wrote all of them down and I read everything and so that was a really major step in my philosophical journey and then I followed you closely ever since and taking your value capture things and all that and then I got an email from your publisher that was like do you want an advanced copy of the new book and that was very exciting for me and then I sent you this heartfelt review >> that was like the most you were like one of the first readers outside of my little inner circle and you got like everything about every weird thing I'd gotten in the book I You also I mean I remember one of the things you said and I was just so struck that you noticed it cuz you caught my motivation. So I spent a lot of the book crapping on metrics.
Um and then like at the end I like pull back and I'm like also we can't forget that the same process of clear mechanical cutting up the world is also the source of the data that runs the medical improvements that we have.
You talk about you don't normally talk about like your your kids really your kid but like you spoke of your newborn like about you know >> yeah like that I am alive and my kid is alive >> because of the interventions of the kinds of antibiotics and the kinds of treatments that like the kind of asthma treatments because we're both asthmatic that depend on this kind of largecale data chopping. you were I mean I think you um you I think you said something like it was really striking because it like undercut the the PMIC like you're like it's it's really hard to be like this is all terrible and also >> it saved my child's life.
>> It's a crushingly like personal emotional vulnerability moment at the end that was on the side of the metrics.
I thought that was very very very poetically done.
>> And I think this is related to this thing that I mean I started this thing on this like whole like the metric is terrible. They're crushing everything.
And I think the more you think about it, the more you have to be caught. I mean, when I talk about the Porter thing, the thing that's so striking to me is the decontextualization of data is also the source of its power. The reason it's so fast and unifying and the reason we can collect large scale data is that we've created this bucket that everyone shares. So its weakness and its strength are together and that makes things hard.
I think there's a way in which if you're like met metrics are terrible, there can be a kind of weird optimistic utopianism of like we can just get past them.
There's an imaginable world without them.
>> Stop measuring everything.
>> Yeah.
>> It's going to be so beautiful. We just >> I mean I also think the book in general like the hardest part was also the most interesting part when you keep them separate when you're like games are all awesome because of scoring systems.
>> Yeah.
>> And metrics are terrible because of scoring systems. Like those are simpler problems and when you stick them together and >> get weird. Yeah, it's >> it's weird and like you have to be honest about the weirdness. You can't let yourself have an easy clean theory >> and I don't know that was really >> satisfying. But so you're asking about the show we did last night. It's I mean it was >> I just want to say how many people know who the C10 winners?
Do >> you know how weird it is to be a philosophy profession of this world and actually have people cheer for you?
never happened before.
>> Honestly, one of the better moments of my life >> cuz like >> I don't know, the world doesn't care much about philosophers anymore. People think that what we do is like weird and empty and worthless. And I when I started writing about games, like no one cared about that. And I spent so much time having everything I was writing rejected because no one was interested in it. And I would just go to um I just remember going to conferences and I mean a philosophy a discipline that almost no one's willing to fund and no one cares about and inside that I was doing philosophy of art which is the tiniest most like no one gives a crap about our corner. And then even in philosophy of art, I started doing philosophy of games and like I would go into rooms with eight people and I would start talking about games and like five of them would walk out because like no one there wanted to talk about games. And so I've been doing this thing for the longest time that I thought was interesting and that no one else cared about. And then I don't know then I got more and more people to find it interesting in my profession. And then like it live shows are really important for me and live experiences are important for me because I like now I'm starting to get this sense now I've written this book and some people some people find it meaningful some people find this way of thinking about metrics like it helps them get a grip on their lives. It helps them understand the world that's around them.
>> Yeah. And um but yesterday and I think this is a credit to you and the audience you've built like people cared so much and they were so excited to hear us talk about really weird abstruse analyses of how data flows through institutions and they cared.
There were people afterwards who came up to me and they were like like I never know I needed philosophy in my life but you two have showed me that like I've always needed this and I didn't know it and I was and just like I don't know a lot of what I'm doing is I read these things like Lorraine Daston, Theodore Porter and Mary Puy and they blew my mind and then I tried to like >> connect them and then having people hear like weird stuff about like I don't know like that I mean Mary Puy this is someone that I find so interesting when she's talking about is the history of accounting as a way of like the so she's a historian that's interested in the fact that we used to think that facts >> were things that came from good people and then we've transitioned to the idea that facts come from nowhere and are produced by mechanical empty systems and that's what's trustworthy and she tells it through the history of she thinks this comes from accounting and be able to talk about this and have a crowd of People be like, "That is so interesting.
That teaches me so much about the world." I mean, this basically legitimizes my entire life. Legitimize is the wrong word. Let me take that back. I hate that word. Legitimize is the wrong word.
>> So, what's the right one?
>> It makes me feel okay. Beautiful. It does feel I did feel even just reading the score, I was like it felt like a I don't know, a tri a triumphant conclusion of a story I didn't know I was inside of.
almost spent wine on you. Tell me >> you know I was I I I think that that you you nailed the like you've been writing about even like the concept of public philosophy, the necessity of public philosophy. You wrote like that manifesto from public philosophy that I again I I read that early and I was like interesting and then I didn't realize that would be like my life like you describe my career the trajectory my career was to be. Um, and I think it's really important because like there is a like there I think people require ideas and they require things to hold on to and they need ways to describe and navigate like an extremely confusing world. And so I think philosophy is very important and then it's sad or difficult that like the two options I feel like we have with philosophy. It's like there's this analytic institutional captured very like compromised like and I'm talking about most of professors that I speak to feel this way you know and then there's like the other side which is you know my career which I find very concerning because it's just like random people that can get views and they're just programming how we all think and so like you know what I mean like there's like either like the the attentional metric thing or there's like the crushing like institutional thing where it's like it's too difficult for everyone to get through and like the notion of you know you creating like such a great piece I think of real like original philosophy and like public philosophy and it's emotional and it's embodied and like it's about your life and it's about our lives and you know I just uh you're such an inspiration and role model to me as a philosopher. So >> thank you.
>> It's my honor to share a stage with you.
Also was the first time that anyone has ever been like as swarmed after the show as I am and I felt a little status anxiety over that.
A lot of people came up to you and wanted to talk and I was like that's supposed to be me. Normally the other person gets a little less but it was so s I mean okay so a few things to say I think so writing this book was really emotionally releasing to me because before I was in philosophy I was in creative writing. I wanted to be a novelist and I was a journalist and I studied narrative writing and emotional writing and developed my own voice and then philosophy academic institutional philosophy. He said, "No, no, no. You cannot have a voice. You need to sound >> objective, professional, emptied of emotion."
>> Yeah. And I had to learn to do that.
>> And it's funny cuz when I was talking to other academics, they often think of like writing a popular book as a dumbing down and a removing.
>> Yes. Ex. Exactly. Sorry. cuz that's always the dichotomy set up in the thing is that like oh in order to explain this super stuff to the dum dums that is the public I have to make it narrow and not and I know there's a real tension there but then like but reading the score I was like there was no dumbing down I mean like it was it was it was well said >> you know and it was it was narrative and it was emotional and it was embodied and it felt honest and and clear but I didn't feel like there was a dumbing down I feel like you were pulling the things and like you weren't doing which I know can give is a pleasurable and meaningful thing to do is just the analy necessarily But like I didn't think there was much like uh I didn't feel like a compromise. I felt like harmony.
>> I mean I think on the one hand I could not be as technical as my full philosophy academic side could wants to be sometimes but I got to move in a completely different way because I was permitted to be narrative. So my my editor if you're ever watching this >> Virginia Smith you're the greatest editor ever. And what she she gave me did I tell you this? She gave me possibly the most wonderful. So, you know, when you go through professional philosophy, like graduate schools, people being like, "Don't sound human.
You can't sound like that. You have to sound like this. This is how professional sounds." And then I sent my first chapter to my editor at Penguin, Jenny Smith.
>> And she sent me the note. She said, "The teaching is good. The arguments are clear, but it just doesn't sound as gonzoy humane as you sound when I'm talking to you and you're excited about something."
>> And I was like, >> "Okay, >> I get to be >> myself. I'm allowed." And so I got to work on this aesthetic. I think, you know, since I care equally parts about philosophy and fiction, I got to try to work on this thing that I found in a few other places. I find it in like the food writer John Thorne has moments like this. Um, moments where you set up a rigorous argument and then the the moment it peaks is a narrative a moment and the narrative of moment crystallizes the idea and the emotion at the same time. And there aren't many models for this, but I was like >> I was working on it and it was so I mean I I think I pulled off something that I'm proud of. And then I realized the thing about the Kill the Internet show that we did yesterday is for the book I got to do that for one side of me which is the side of me that works quietly in a cave perfecting >> stable words, >> but there's another side of me that loves >> the live weird conversation.
>> Yeah. Right. And like the part of this where I mean I feel like one way to put it is that in the score in the book I got to fuse the part of me that loved writing fiction and narrative writing it with the part that likes writing philosophy. And last night I got to fuse the part of me that loves a hard philosophy Q&A with a part of me that loves improv comedy.
>> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
>> And there's an epiphany just like there's an epiphany in emotional story.
There's an epiphany in laughter. Yeah.
And last night, I think like we got to work on >> the form of finding a moment where you had a punchline that was an insight >> and when people laughed, it was like laughter that was also seeing and like I don't know what's more holy than that.
>> Yeah, it's beautiful. I think that's the I should just I just leave it there.
>> That was gorgeous. Yeah. Okay.
>> Yeah. Thank you so much, T. Thanks for being on the show. I guess I guess it's a show.
>> Thanks for the lights and a plan.
>> Thanks. Thanks for I don't know.
>> I don't know what I should everything.
Thanks for >> here. Do it's a pleasure, honestly.
>> Thank you.
>> That's it.
>> That's it.
>> Yeah.
>> Beautiful.
Then you just type in this stuff your mortal illness.
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