Derek Thompson

You sound like, it's funny.

Another like maybe hallmark of games is how stupid fights about those games might sound outside of the context of the game.

I wonder whether you accept this framing that there are games that we elect to play and there are games that we find ourselves playing by accident.

You told a story about rock climbing and philosophy.

you entered into one activity, one thing in the magic circle, I suppose, which was a sport, but then you found yourself playing a different game, which is to maximize the difficulty of the rock climbing route rather than to have fun inside of your body, which might have been your initial instinct, which might have been the game, I suppose, that you wanted to play, that you set out to play.

You found yourself pulled toward the game you didn't want to play.

And it reminds me of this idea, I don't remember if it's like an Andrew Yang quote or whether it's just something that people say among lawyers who hate their own careers, that for people who get into the legal profession, it's a cake or pie eating contest, and the reward for winning the contest is the ability or the necessity to eat more pie.

That you work and work and work and work and work, and then you become partner, and guess what?

We're here to reward you with 10 times more work.

That seems to me to be an example of, and maybe you wouldn't characterize the legal profession as a game, but an example of a game that someone finds themselves playing even when they didn't necessarily set out to play it.

So I wonder how you...

frame this distinction between the games that we set out to play, the settlers of Catan board that we help to lay down and then we sell the wheat, versus the games that we find ourselves almost fallen into and then participate in, find ourselves ruled by a set of rules that we didn't even know we were enforcing on ourselves.

No, I love your edit.

No, please keep going.

Don't apologize for a half second.

I love the way that you're pushing this.

We talked a little bit about how there are games that we choose to play and there are games that we find ourselves playing even if we didn't necessarily sign up for those rules.

What to you makes for a bad game?

Or maybe even a better way to put it is what are the kind of games that we should avoid?

Fantastic.