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

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

Games are everywhere, but why exactly do we play them? It seems counterintuitive, to artificially invent goals and obstacles just so we can struggle to achieve them. (And in some games, like Twister, the fun is in losing, even though you're supposed to try to win.) C. Thi Nguyen is a philosopher who has developed a theory of games as an art form whose medium is agency. Within each game, we have defined goals, powers, and choices, and by playing different games we can experiment with different forms of agency. A dark side of this idea is to be found in "gamification" — turning ordinary-life activities into a game. Games give us clarity of values, and that clarity can be seductive but misleading, leading people to turn to conspiracy theories about the real world.

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C. Thi Nguyen received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is currently associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah. He has written public philosophy for venues such as Aeon and The New York Times, and is an editor of the aesthetics blog Aesthetics for Birds. He was the recipient of the 2020 Article Prize from the American Philosophical Association. His recent book is Games: Agency as Art.


Jaksot(416)

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AMA | December 2024

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297 | Emily Wilson on Homer, Poetry, and Translation

297 | Emily Wilson on Homer, Poetry, and Translation

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296 | Brandon Ogbunu on Fitness Seascapes and the Course of Evolution

296 | Brandon Ogbunu on Fitness Seascapes and the Course of Evolution

Biological evolution via natural selection is a simple idea that becomes enormously complicated in its realization. Populations of organisms are driven toward increased "fitness," a measure of how suc...

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295 | Solo: Emergence and Layers of Reality

295 | Solo: Emergence and Layers of Reality

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AMA | November 2024

AMA | November 2024

Welcome to the November 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Pa...

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294 | Addy Pross on Dynamics, Stability, and Life

294 | Addy Pross on Dynamics, Stability, and Life

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293 | Doyne Farmer on Chaos, Crashes, and Economic Complexity

293 | Doyne Farmer on Chaos, Crashes, and Economic Complexity

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292 | Jonathan Birch on Animal Sentience

292 | Jonathan Birch on Animal Sentience

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