Playing with Reality

Playing with Reality: How Games Shape Our World by Kelly Clancy (Penguin, 2024)

This is a well-written book examining the rise of game theory and how it has been used across different fields. The central argument is that what started as narrow mathematical models of game strategy have been widely applied in often unsuitable contexts. Reality is not a game, but we have created systems where, for example, war, economic markets, or even social interactions can be gamified and ’explained’ by reductive winner-takes-all theorizing. As she concludes:

Any consequences too subtle to measure–environmental costs, civic discord, troubled diplomatic relations–are simply omitted from the score.

If our systems are built around assumptions that we are all rational (“greedy” would be Clancy’s preferred term) agents seeking only to win, then we should not be surprised when people begin to act that way. I hope she is correct when she writes the “average person is more empathetic than Machiavellian” and would like to think that co-operation, not conflict, is humanity’s optimal strategy. ★★★★☆