This seems like a great time to write up some of my stray thoughts concerning play and adaptation.
First, let's review the etymological roots of the words "game" and "play":
GAME:
From Middle English game, gamen, gammen, from Old English gamen (“sport, joy, mirth, pastime, game, amusement, pleasure”), from Proto-West Germanic *gaman, from Proto-Germanic *gamaną (“amusement, pleasure, game", literally "participation, communion, people together”), from *ga- (collective prefix) + *mann- (“man”); or alternatively from *ga- + a root from Proto-Indo-European *men- (“to think, have in mind”).
Cognate with Old Frisian game, gome (“joy, amusement, entertainment”), Middle High German gamen (“joy, amusement, fun, pleasure”), Swedish gamman (“mirth, rejoicing, merriment”), Icelandic gaman (“fun”). Related to gammon, gamble.
PLAY:
From Middle English pleyen, playen, pleȝen, plæien, also Middle English plaȝen, plawen (compare English plaw), from Old English pleġan, pleoġan, plæġan, and Old English plegian, pleagian, plagian (“to play, exercise, etc.”), from Proto-West Germanic *plehan (“to care about, be concerned with”) and Proto-West Germanic *plegōn (“to engage, move”); both perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *blek- (“to move, move about”), from Proto-Indo-European *bal- (compare Ancient Greek βλύω (blúō), βλύζω (blúzō, “I gush out, spring”), Sanskrit बल्बलीति (balbalīti, “it whirls, twirls”)).
The theory and practice of games diverges with the expansion of culture. These branches of activity maintain rich communications; indeed, the dialogue between the two itself expands and evolves. The same can be said for the syntax and semantics of games; how we represent games is differentiated from how we reflect upon them. The era of video games brings with it tremendous diversity in WHY people play, WHAT they play, HOW they play, WHERE they play, with WHOM they play, and even WHEN they play. That's crazy, that's all of the big ones! Wow!
Game theorists conceptualize games in terms of a broader theory of decisions. Game theory as we know it was cemented into our cultural edifice by mathematical economists, perhaps triangulated back to the book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern. Were it not for that book, we may be hazardous nuclear material today! Yikes! Thank you economists!
When players agree to play a game, they engage in a heuristic protocol to establish mutual trust and understanding. Really, this is a metagame. It is a game about games, a protocol for regulating and maintaining other protocols. If people could just make up their own rules, they would be able to make their own games, and they wouldn't want to play your game. It's very important to guard and encrypt your game code so this never happens. You may never financially recover from such losses!
Engaging a match of a game, or "matching", is also a kind of "bisimulation". Both players share a desire to understand one another sufficiently to condition their own decisions favorably. Without rules, a game would feel more like a battle of wits and resources. How can you even be sure the other player will spare your life, given the chance?
We actually descend from games. We move from one game to another according to various decision paradigms. Some people are devious pattern-matchers and will project the idea of a "game" onto just about anything. They will even keep this information secret; information asymmetry differentiates one player from another, after all. If my opponents don't even know they are playing a game, my decisions access a sharper edge. Perhaps the mightiest gamer is the one who plays games nobody else knows they are playing. Absolute chad. Conquer them, king!
Some theorists have even recognized Theory itself as a game. I'm not sure I believe them; they say the real game is game development. They think that "being a dev" makes them "better than everyone else" because they "know a game when they see one" and they "know how to program computers". Yeah okay buddy, keep telling yourself that...
Anyways. I think this whole "AI risk" business is just another social game. It's a stage for signalling about ourselves and our relationship to the clear future of our species. It's like a name space cash grab. Who can have their name attached to the most mythical and terrifying cosmic contingency? And who the fuck is this "Roko" creature people talking about? I still think it's some fancy designer chemical getting passed around the UK rave scene. idk, any help would be great, tnx
