The Path of Play: a philosophy of life

Game Philosophy · Piece 1

The Game Reality

Life is fundamentally game-like. All living things exist within structures of possibility. They try to reach the possibilities that define success in the particular life games they play — the possibilities in which they and their progeny are likely to survive and flourish.

Illustration · 4:3

Same image as this piece’s hub panel
Pure philosophy family

The three elements of game

Play happens whenever there is:

  1. A space of possibilities where the system can evolve along many possible paths.
  2. An agent whose actions help determine the outcome that is reached.
  3. A preference within the agent for some outcomes over others.

The game dynamic

The three elements work together to create a dynamic in which the player orchestrates their actions around arriving at a desirable future.

There are always possibilities branching out ahead of the player, like corridors that they could travel down. The skilled player will identify, then enter the most promising of corridors.

We can represent this with a ‘tree diagram’.

t = 0t = 1t = 2t = 3Take the direct lineTake the traverseHolds are solid · 60%A hold breaks · 40%Push for the topRest and recoverLunge for the ledgeClimb back downWeather holds · 80%Rain comes in · 20%Try the cruxFind a way roundKeep goingRetreatAt the foot of the route: 68%. Your choice.68At the foot of the routeOn the steep wall: 68%. Events decide.68On the steep wallHigh on the wall: 90%. Your choice.90High on the wallTop in sight: 90%. End of the tree.90Top in sightPumped but safe: 70%. End of the tree.70Pumped but safeHanging on: 35%. Your choice.35Hanging onCommitted lunge: 35%. End of the tree.35Committed lungeBack on the ledge: 20%. End of the tree.20Back on the ledgeOn the easy ledge: 51%. Events decide.51On the easy ledgeBelow the crux: 60%. Your choice.60Below the cruxOn the crux: 60%. End of the tree.60On the cruxThe long way round: 55%. End of the tree.55The long way roundWet rock: 15%. Your choice.15Wet rockSlippery climbing: 15%. End of the tree.15Slippery climbingOff the route: 0%. End of the tree.0Off the route

Each state is coloured by your chance of reaching the top. Click a state to trace the path to it.

0% worse for you50better 100%Your choiceEvents decideEnd of tree

Life

Life is profoundly game-like.

Natural selection prunes away poor players, leaving only the organisms that are able to maintain a flow of play through the generations.

The telos of life — the end for which a thing is done1 — is the continuation of the stream of life itself.

Embracing the given

We’re just tiny players within the vast game of life on Earth.

It’s only when we embrace life as it is that we can find courses of action worth following.

To play skilfully, we don’t need to look beyond the reality of the game that we’re playing at the time. The current reality, in all its complexity, is the starting point of all play.

Notes

  1. Telos was a word in ancient Greece that had two related meanings. It meant ‘end’, as in a cut-off point such as the edge of a table or the close of a working day, and ‘end’, as in “that for the sake of which a thing is done”. [Aristotle, Physics, Book II, 194b33.] It was this second meaning — the desirable end-points that motivate action — that was adopted by philosophers. For Aristotle, telos was the fourth way to explain how a thing came to be like it was, after the material cause (the parts that make up the whole), the formal cause (the pattern of the whole), and the efficient cause (the way physical events bring a thing into being). This fourth, or final cause, explained, for example, why someone was exercising, or purging, or taking drugs by saying that they are “means towards health”. [195a1]
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