[Music] in the mid-1980s a philosopher by the name of dr james carse wrote a little book called finite and infinite games and in it he defined these two kinds of games a finite game is defined as known players fixed rules and an agreed upon objective football baseball there's always a beginning middle and an end then if there's a winner there has to be a loser then there are infinite games infinite games are defined as known and unknown players which means new players can join the game at any time the rules are changeable which means every
player can play however they want and the objective is to perpetuate the game to stay in the game as long as possible we are players in infinite games every day of our lives there's no such thing as being number one in your marriage no one ever wins career there's no winning global politics you can come in first in the time you're in school but you can't win education and there's definitely no such thing as winning business but if we listen to the language of so many leaders it becomes abundantly clear that they have no idea
the game they're playing in they talk about being number one being the best and beating their competition based on what based upon what agreed upon objectives time frames or metrics and this is a problem because when we play with a finite mindset in an infinite game when we play to win in a game that has no finish line there's a few very predictable and consistent outcomes the big ones include the decline of trust the decline of innovation and the decline of cooperation i'm enamored by the concept of the infinite game so much so that it
profoundly changed the course of my life and i ended up building upon dr kars's work and writing my own book about how to actually build and maintain an infinite mindset dr kars sadly passed away in september of 2020 but i had a chance to talk to him over the summer and i wanted to share that conversation with you for a couple of reasons one because he's absolutely wonderful and remarkable and fun and two because i think his work is really valuable in this day and age this is a bit of optimism [Music] dr jim carson
yes is so damn exciting for me you are what the kids say these days the o.g you are the original [Laughter] you know i read your book finite infinite games many many years ago and it so profoundly influenced my view and change my view of the world and i remember i wrote you an email in 2014 just to thank you and say how much i was a fan you resplended two weeks later and said thanks [Laughter] all those years later i i then wrote the infinite game based on your what i think of as a
truth you know there are a lot of people in the world who have theories about what the world looks like and how does it they're just that they're theories but there are very few people maybe once in a lifetime that come across and put something out there that is a truth like biology or physics and your understanding of finite infinite games it's a truth it's just fundamentally true how did you come up with this idea of the concept of the into the game for one thing i i had a very kind of competitive athletic type
childhood my dad was a professional athlete he was a boxer and so you know the family life was full of kind of it wasn't violent but it was it was act very active very competitive and i was more or less confu comfortable with it not completely and then went to college and realized that i was not cut out for some kind of acute competitive uh profession uh once i got into completely into the academic world and i found myself really very comfortable in that world i didn't realize i you know growing up i never thought
of being a teacher or a professor professor but once i got there i thought oh man i'm home and uh and so i i loved it and so immediately playing with ideas well i realized we sat around once a week uh you know 12 or 15 of us from different disciplines in the faculty talking about game theory and i realized uh after a while they were what they were talking about was winning or losing a game uh or maximizing their their their winning and minimizing their losses if they weren't playing they weren't talking about playing
the game which i thought was interesting so i mean the idea of play itself suddenly appeared to me to be a very complicated notion uh nothing simple at all so i i wrote a paper i did my part in the seminar making a distinction between the finite and for the uh type of play uh they didn't like it it is such a profound idea you know when i first tripped over the idea i was somebody gave me a copy of your book that's how i learned about it and at the time i was doing some
work with some folks in the military and we we found that to be unbelievably useful in discussing long-term strategy um yeah because because so much of of a foreign policy strategy and military strategy is finite finite finite but there is a an infinite component to all of this and the problem is was we were as a nation developing all of our infrastructure based on one mindset which is a finite mindset and ignoring the incident and it was so it was so profound for everyone i shared this with because it as you said it completely changes
the way you not only do your work but how you live your life slash forward many many years later i'm telling my sister about this as i'm writing my book and we started talking about how in an infinite game there's no such thing as winning or losing there's only a head and behind everything is that's right it's not going to last and if you're behind it's not going to last yeah yeah right and she tried it on her son she so i have a little nine-year-old nephew oh very very competitive little kid he gets very
very angry when he loses and she my sister went to watch one of his football games and he he scored a losing touchdown and uh was very angry and they lost the game the team lost the game and any other parent would have dispensed with the standard parenting advice you know it doesn't matter who wins or loses but my sister didn't give that advice she said to him it's okay you had a behind day today and another time you're having a head day which was the advice you gave to him so he he realized that
his loss was temporary yeah good good no that wasn't though that worked well you know i noticed that with my own children i you know three kids and i noticed a lot of difference in their play when they were playing something like you just talked about a softball game or ping pong or anything you know no one was quite happy at the end you know everyone was a little bit unhappy even the winners they thought they could have done better you know but then when they got into the games where they made it up as
they went along they could play something all day long people you know kids would come over sometimes i'd go play with them or my wife would or whatever you could go in and out of the game and keep going and it was just a very very different kind of environment different climate of a different way that they related to each other and i thought wait a minute this is this is worth writing down it plays to the idea of ethics as well doesn't it because when you're playing in an infinite mindset like if you're doing
lego or you're building something or you're drawing as you said some creative pursuit that your kids were doing it necessarily generates creativity with the finite generates strategies only to win which can which can sometimes lead to some rather unethical uh choices there's no really unethical choices when you're making lego you know yeah yeah right that's true well you know that's an important point in a way because when you're in in a finite game the ideal of you know when you're doing your best it's because you've already figured out what to do in other words your
big decisions are behind you not ahead of you so you know this is going to be your strategy this is what you're going to do when that person does this and so on so all of your all of your moves are thought out first but when you're an infinite game you you wait to see what the thoughts are as you move into the into the situation so it's you're always you're always dealing with the kind of in in other words your eyes operating with a certain degree of novelty that you you will not necessarily use
in a finite game i need to say that again that is so good in a finite game all your best thinking is behind you and now it's simply the the muscle memory or the application of all of that thinking that's right whereas in the infinite game all the best thinking has yet to come and you have no choice but to step into the unknown right and that's unnerving for a lot of people the yeah i think a lot of people are finite not because it's better but because it's it's either easier or at least it's
more tangible see that's what i saw with these guys in that discussion that faculty group they didn't like they were sort of allergic i the ways that i felt about it allergic to play because once you're in if it's really play you you what's lying ahead of you is still unformed yeah but so so the ideal of a of a finite player that what every finite player tries to do is in effect win the game before you start it know exactly what you're gonna do every move you're gonna make and and the game is just
an illustration of what you've just a kind of demonstration of what you've already figured out so that uh it's like playing in the past you you have uh you're like you're playing something you've already made up and decided to do rather than playing inventively creatively imaginatively and so on i need you to unpack something for me so i understand that the infinite game is not the absence of finite games it's the context within which finite games might exist that's right you can absolutely have wins and losses within uh the pursuit of something greater for sure
but but the thing that i'm that i i need you to help me understand because i don't is when it's the reverse so for example the a marine once told me a u.s marine once told me that no plan ever succeeds contact with the enemy right in a finite game in a in a battle where there is a winner and a loser and there's a there's a beginning middle and end it is it's finite explain that to me where the creativity lies in front of them because as soon as you have contact with the enemy
who's got very different plans everything goes sideways or is that just like chess which is you you should prepare for all of the different variations just riddle me back just walk me through okay let's go through that again you see now now no a warrior trains for is to have a perfect response to every move the enemy makes yeah so you you you are planning not to be surprised you want to know everything the enemy can possibly do now of course intelligent military planners know that the enemy is also human and they're going to they're
going to have their own imagination and they're going to do something that will surprise you so you you the whole goal is to minimize the degree of surprise and so that's what that's what the military terry trains you to do uh to uh to reduce that that margin you know that surprise yeah uh in there and and uh that's why there's so much training that's why when you go in the military that's all there is but you could say that for everything right every finite an athlete yeah yeah it's all to minimize the surprises yeah
right yeah i remember you know i i spent hundreds of hours on a football field trying trying to to uh get myself not to be surprised by what some other guy did yeah or i mean but it seems i'm just as you're talking i'm running all the finite games through my mind school you know where there's a beginning middle and end to the school year you get a grade it's yeah it's the same thing you wanna you study to minimize the surprises on the test exactly exactly yeah right right oh this is so good yeah
how did you learn an infinite mindset was it innate or is it something that you have to train for well the way i see it is that an infinite player infinite players prepare themselves to be surprised yeah so you expect surprise yeah uh and and uh rather than find you know trying to keep it from happening so so you set up a situation that's bound to to develop in a way you you can't anticipate that's what in a way that's the way a poem a poet a poet starts a poem as a as a great
first line or i'll bet you start you've started books that way yeah you have you have a chapter you really like an idea you really like you you put it down the next thing you know this comes that comes that goes are you still susceptible to to finite to slipping into the finite oh hell yes yeah i know i actually i i'm i'm pretty competitive you know you can't you can't go through a life as i have without being you know a whole bunch of degrees and honors and uh appointments and you know advancements and
so on without being competitive so uh you know i'm happy to admit that and enjoy doing it along the way i'm hugely exclusive you know it's very important to keep that distinction in mind that that what's important about a finite game is that it's it it occurs within a larger context within the everything in the game yeah and i i'm i'm a great promoter of finite gains i mean i think they're they're important there are a lot of reasons why you'd play a finite game but how to how did i get there i'm not sure
i think it was yeah i would describe the process as more osmotic than i would uh kind of step by step you know it kind of poked in and the more i looked around the more i well what happened uh simon i would say it this way once the idea got sort of clear in my head i saw it everywhere yeah as the master of the infinite mindset what is your take on on this current situation with the pandemic with a pandemic well what i think is that we are now in a position where we
can do some really good long-distance thinking and and and step back and look at all these things we're doing sort of abstract ourselves from them for a while uh do we do we really want to spend our lives doing what we've been doing do we want really want the kind of government the kind of society the kind of technology the kind of this the kind of math that we have it's a good time to look at it it's a good time to to do a little infinite thinking yourself you know where how far are we
going with it and as a matter of fact i i think i mentioned to you i've already written a book about that yes sir which i'm keen to read well i i've got i've got a first draft i'm hesitating to show it to anyone yet but it'll get there and and and uh but that's but that's what i'm trying to say that that now this gives us a marvelous opportunity as i put it to find a new way through the approaching the one thing we know about this this this pandemic is there's only a mild
version of what's going to happen when the environment crashes yeah i mean it's going to be horrible really there's there's no way of getting around it you know it's so funny you talk about the environment which is even it's well intentioned but even the messaging for climate change has been very finite oriented oh very very people you know people talk about we're killing the planet no we're not no planet the planet will be fine the planet life is infinite it will find a way through all we're doing is killing ourselves as i don't have to
tell you in the in the finite game it's the game that ends but the player continues to live in the infinite game it's it's the player that ends that drops out of the game is the game climate change is destruction of our own species the planet's fine oh yeah there that gives a damn right yeah right you said something that i want to read back to you that is because i you obviously you you're you've had a long and storied career you you've done much more work than just the infinite game out of curiosity which
is your favorite book that you've written whoa whoa uh you know i i i have a hard time with that one uh i'm not sure i think probably the book on belief this is the the religious case against the case against belief yeah a religious case against belief which you know i've made a career out of talking about the importance of belief how do you define belief well what what interests me is that characteristic of belief you know the kind of it's the true believer i'm targeting the person says this is the way i see
it this is it this is the end of the discussion and so on but um of course i always have to go back to the greeks now the greeks had made a distinction between knowledge which you know which is true and you uh the gnosis that that you know it's like you're saying it is a truth and it's obvious uh truth you don't have to believe it you know it it's in your head it's already working there you don't have to defend it it's it stands by itself and that they they oppose that to doksa
which is opinion yeah we use that we use that word and the phrase orthodox orthodoxy meaning right opinion you know having an opinion and for the most part when people talk about their beliefs i think the way you're talking about it it's more like an opinion this is the way i see it if you have an argument against that i'll entertain the argument but so far this is my opinion about that subject well that's one thing but but when people say i believe in this person or that thing or that movement that idea uh then
i i i'd see it as the point where you've turned your thinking off now the one thing about about serious believers usually they come in a system there's a system of thinking that goes with it that uh in addition to the the mere idea or the belief itself or the opinion itself uh so they come in systems but what a what a a critical thinker would do is question the system itself rather than then a belief in it you know belief based on it so you you begin to look at all the assumptions that led
you to that belief and so on but believing for me has a negative that's why there's i make a religious case against it because it is it's where your thinking stops it's where wonder stops aristotle said at one point philosophy begins in wonder it's a great phrase i like to think of religion as something that ends in wonder not in belief so uh you know that's my my sort of my grand definition of religion if i have one i do so love this idea that belief is where thinking ends and that if we have beliefs
it is okay to have beliefs but to be closed to challenging our own beliefs or to your to your point of system is important and if we still cling on to those beliefs we should we should know the reasons why that's right right we should know the reasons why and it could be something it could be nostalgic it could be because that's how it was with my parents and i want to continue that legacy but i think to be able to explain why i hold on to a belief without a criticism of someone who holds
a different belief yeah and that's i think that's very hard to do it's much easier to it's much easier to define what we believe in by saying what we believe against well as a matter of fact most believers are they have a whole i mean everything on their side is matched by something negative on the other yeah so so it's like uh two systems these are beliefs these are unbeliefs you know and and they they and so that's why i i consider myself neither a believer nor unbeliever um you know being an academic that's not
too hard you know it's it because for example just take any any big intellectual category uh theory of uh evolution now if you're if you're a certain kind of christian you would say i don't believe in that theory but if you were a scientist a theory is not a belief it's it's a testing of it's an example it comes from you know the word theory comes from the greek word for seeing so to have a theory is to have a vision a sight of something to see for yourself the way something is so that's different
than having a belief what is your thought as to what happened to our society why we became so dogmatic in our beliefs whether it's left or right you know they're both equally as bad where i'm right and you're wrong right how did we get to the point or has it always been this way how do we get to the point where it seems so exaggerated where both sides of the aisle you know our country's so divided where the belief has become the kind of truth to people yeah i i'm just fascinated by how your thoughts
is how we got here you know if i think in great big terms it would be something like we we are now entering a new age of anxiety in a way and there's a lot of uncertainty out there and so the uncertainty of a number of kinds number one a lot of traditional institutions are losing their their grip so that you you have less guidance less you feel that like the ground is shifting more under you there's not a solid place to stand so so people are tempted to find positions where they can just stay
there and let the world swirl around them you know and they don't have to question themselves and i i think uh self-criticism is is uh absolutely crucial to being human to begin with but but this is what's disappearing this is really profound so in times of uncertainty or when there's a when there's a feeling of anxiety our desire to hold on to the finite or our desire to hold on to belief goes up because inherent in the infinite game i have to be open to the uncertain but if i'm feeling anxious the uncertainty is the
thing i do not want exactly yeah and so and so i'm going to ground myself in belief because it gives me comfort right so it seems the way forwards is it's environmental right it's for our leaders to offer a sense of vision and to offer a sense of to offer some sense of certainty or some sense of hope or something that we can lock onto which will then inherently make us all mo more open-minded to each other but absent that right absent something outside us inside us we become more more dogmatic and more fixed in
our beliefs and we believe even more strongly that i am right and you are wrong yeah that's right that's the way it works yeah exactly that way and uh you know you know one thing one feature about an infinite game that about the whole theory in a way is that it's neither left nor right right it's not religious or irreligious it's not there not here it's not big it's not little it doesn't it doesn't belong into the usual categories that people put stuff into i mean you couldn't tell from reading my book what my political
views are for example in fact i don't even have political views i i would put it this way it's one thing to have it's one thing to have a politics it's another to be political i'm political but i have no politics explain the difference well i'm concerned about the way a whole society apollos operates now there are all kinds of views about how it should operate point is to be political is to have a sense of the palace now that was that's that's what's interesting about aristotle he thought a philosopher is a person who had
by definition a social conscience that is you were concerned about what the society you lived in now he aristotle uh lived in a terrifically wild crazy uh society uh athens but he he also had a real respect for what he called the demos you know d-e-m-o-s and from democracy a people actually you can translate a lot different ways a neighborhood or a gathering or a uh institution even a a country but a demos has its own identity and all the people in it are of it and and think in its terms and aristotle thought to
be a really reflective person or as he called them contemplative he used that word you have to be a good citizen to be political you said something that i think sums up the magic that is jim cars and why i adore you so much and and i think it sums up this conversation as well which is in the sense that i am endlessly fascinated with the unknowability of what it means to be human it's it's it's it's paradoxical it is yeah paradox is the word that's the word yeah it is apparently our desire for certainty
to understand and for explanation is we yield to the the joy of finding explanation in that which is unexplainable and the joy of finding certainty and that which is uncertain yeah it's just the most magically human experience in the world because human beings are almost all aspects of our lives paradoxical yeah that's right yeah and well yeah i mean i can go on for a while please do somehow you got me hooked on aristotle here but but uh of course i love the guy aristotle but the first sentence of his metaphysics which is kind of
the big work of aristotle uh the first sentence goes every one every human being by nature has a desire to learn that's that's his thing now i i looked at that for a while i thought i mean i looked at it in greek which is it reads a little differently in greek and it it like every everyone everyone born human has a desire a longing to see for one's self that's really the way i would translate that line it's conceivable oneself yeah you want to see it you don't want somebody to tell you you want
to see it yourself and that's what aristotle thought is is what makes us what makes us human and and and i thought wow that's that's a terrific insight but what that implies is you're never satisfied i mean one that's why that desire doesn't die it lives with you your whole life it's there because you know there's still more you haven't seen you want you want to see it and so you keep going at it and that's what in the end he he calls it as i said before he calls it uh contemplation it's filled with
what what he also called energea energy which is in some definitions of aristotle is life itself so it's like a living living contemplatively contemplatively uh and uh that seems to me to be a hot the highest expression of our humanity jim i adore you i adore you i adore you you you have the most wonderful manner you just you're open you know i i hold myself to the high standard of wanting to be a more infinite minded person and live my life with an infinite mindset every day and and you know i've often referred to
not just your work but to you as the gold standard for me and so it's an honor it's a joy to sit down with you and talk to you thank you for taking the time um yeah simon this is my my pleasure as well i'm very happy i have you as a matter of fact because i i i had a long long desire to see some of these ideas go to work and you put it to work and i i very very much appreciate it i think you've done it brilliantly thank you uh i i
thank you that means everything to me yeah all the best uh okay thank you give yourself to cave those where are you absolutely all right i'm really glad i got to know jim cars and have him in my life for a little bit i'm definitely going to miss him but in the spirit of the infinite game i'm also proud to carry his torch and spread his work so that may live on way way beyond his own lifetime until next time take care of yourself take care of each other
