Kelly Clancy, Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World, Riverhead Books, 2024.

Deion

A wide-ranging intellectual history that reveals how important games have been to human progress, and what’s at stake when we forget what games we’re really playing.

We play games to learn about the world, to understand our minds and the minds of others, and to make predictions about the future. Games are an essential aspect of humanity and a powerful tool for modeling reality. They’re also a lot of fun. But games can be dangerous, especially when we mistake the model worlds of games for reality itself and let gamification co-opt human decision making.

This book explores the riveting history of games since the Enlightenment, weaving an unexpected path through military theory, political science, evolutionary biology, the development of computers and AI, cutting-edge neuroscience, and cognitive psychology. Neuroscientist and physicist Kelly Clancy shows how intertwined games have been with the arc of history. War games shaped the outcomes of real wars in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe. Game theory warped our understanding of human behavior and brought us to the brink of annihilation—yet still underlies basic assumptions in economics, politics, and technology design. We used games to teach computers how to learn for themselves, and now we are designing games that will determine the shape of society and future of democracy.

In this revelatory work, Clancy makes the bold argument that the human fascination with games is the key to understanding our nature and our actions.

简介

这是一部广博的思想史著作，揭示了游戏对人类进步的重要性，以及当我们忘记自己在玩什么游戏时所面临的风险。

我们通过游戏来了解世界，理解我们自己和他人的思维，并对未来进行预测。游戏是人性的本质特征，也是模拟现实的有力工具。游戏当然很有趣，但也可能带来危险，特别是当我们把游戏中的模型世界误认为现实本身，让游戏化劫持人类决策时。

本书探讨了从启蒙运动以来游戏的引人入胜的历史，在军事理论、政治科学、进化生物学、计算机和人工智能的发展、前沿神经科学和认知心理学之间编织出一条出人意料的路径。神经科学家和物理学家凯利·克兰西展示了游戏与历史进程是如何紧密交织的。战争游戏塑造了 19世纪和 20世纪欧洲真实战争的结果。博弈论扭曲了我们对人类行为的理解，将我们带到毁灭的边缘——然而它仍然是经济学、政治学和技术设计中的基本假设。我们用游戏教会计算机自主学习，现在我们正在设计将决定社会形态和民主未来的游戏。

在这部具有启示性的著作中，克兰西大胆地论证： 人类对游戏的着迷是理解我们本性和行为的关键。

Reviews

By turns philosophical and polemical, this is a provocative and fascinating book.

—The Economist

Absorbing. . . . A revealing look at the hidden role that games have played in human development for centuries.

—Kirkus

Playing With Reality is a foreboding prehistory of AI. Clancy conveys how we became so in thrall to gaming that we forgot where the field of play stops and the real world begins—who gets to be a player and who is merely being played.

—The Washington Post

Comprehensive. . . . Clancy warns of the societal risks of allowing mathematical models to govern political decisions.

—The New Yorker

A sweeping investigation. . . . The history fascinates, and Clancy’s sophisticated analysis highlights the dangers of overgeneralizing from games to reality. . . . Readers won’t want to put this down.

—Publishers Weekly

Clancy weaves a clear-eyed account of games from ancient history—they predate written language, she tells us—to the modern world of computers and the Internet. . . . Clancy carefully puts these historical moments and developments in context. This approach is particularly pleasurable when it takes the form of deep dives into specific games.

—Carmen Maria Machado, Scientific American

A rewarding read that raises important questions about who defines the rules of the game-inspired systems that dominate modern life—and whether we should automatically accept those rules.

—New Scientist

Playing With Reality is as surprising, and as delightful, as the many games it analyzes. From ancient games of chance to the latest advances in AI, Kelly Clancy has written the definitive account of how we—as individuals and as a society—learn through play.

—Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good for You and Wonderland

With the blazing mind of a scientist and the keen eye of a poet, Clancy emerges as one of the most important new writers of her generation.

—David Eagleman, Stanford neuroscientist and author of Incognito and Livewired

A gripping narrative that reveals why games matter and just how powerful they can be. It should be required reading for anyone who develops games and everyone who plays them.

—Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, Inc.

A book to get the neurons firing. As a passionate game player I loved reading a neuroscientist’s perspective on the role games have played in humanity’s attempts to navigate the game of life. A dopamine hit on every page.

—Marcus du Sautoy, author of Around the World in 80 Games

Playing with Reality is the critical history of games I've been waiting for. Fast-paced and enjoyable, you'll never look at a pair of dice—or your smartphone—the same again.

—Malcolm Harris, author of Palo Alto

Life is full of games but if we don't know we're playing, there's every chance games are playing us. Whether they are the games hidden in politics, war, business—or in everyday work and play—Clancy will have you asking who set the rules—and who stands to benefit. Playing with Reality is as addictive and engrossing as the games Clancy lucidly describes.

—Ananyo Bhattacharya, author of The Man from the Future

评论

这是一本既富有哲理又颇具争议性的引人深思的著作。

——《经济学人》

引人入胜 ... 揭示了游戏在几个世纪的人类发展历程中所扮演的隐秘角色。

——《柯克斯评论》

《与现实游戏》是人工智能的一部发人深省的前史。克兰西向我们展示了我们是如何沉迷于游戏，以至于忘记了游戏场地的边界在哪里，现实世界从何处开始——谁能成为玩家，谁又只是被玩弄的对象。

——《华盛顿邮报》

全面深入 ... 克兰西警告我们让数学模型主导政治决策的社会风险。

——《纽约客》

一项浩瀚的研究 ... 历史叙述引人入胜，克兰西对游戏与现实之间过度类比的危险进行了深刻的分析 ... 读者会爱不释手。

——《出版人周刊》

克兰西巧妙地将游戏的历史脉络梳理清晰，从远古时代——她告诉我们，游戏甚至早于文字的出现——直至现代计算机和互联网世界 ... 克兰西细致地将这些历史时刻和发展置于具体语境中。当叙述深入探讨具体游戏时，这种方法特别令人愉悦。

——卡门·玛利亚·马查多，《科学美国人》

这是一本值得一读的书，它提出了重要问题：谁在为主导现代生活的游戏启发系统制定规则？我们是否应该不假思索地接受这些规则？

——《新科学人》

《与现实游戏》与其所分析的众多游戏一样令人惊喜和愉悦。从古老的机遇游戏到最新的人工智能进展，凯利·克兰西为我们写就了一部权威著作，讲述我们——作为个人和社会——如何通过游戏来学习。

——史蒂文·约翰逊，《坏事都是好事》和《仙境》作者

克兰西以科学家的敏锐思维和诗人的洞察力，展现出她是这一代最重要的新锐作家之一。

——大卫·伊格曼，斯坦福大学神经科学家，《潜意识》和《活线》作者

一部引人入胜的叙事，揭示了游戏为何重要以及它们可以多么强大。这应该成为每个游戏开发者和玩家的必读之作。

——诺兰·布什内尔，雅达利公司创始人

一本能让神经元兴奋的书。作为一个狂热的游戏玩家，我很享受阅读一位神经科学家对游戏在人类应对人生游戏中所扮演角色的见解。每一页都让人感受到多巴胺的愉悦。

——马库斯·杜索托伊，《环游世界 80个游戏》作者

《与现实游戏》是我一直期待的游戏批判史。节奏明快，令人愉悦，读完之后，你再也不会用同样的眼光看待骰子——或是你的智能手机。

——马尔科姆·哈里斯，《帕洛阿尔托》作者

生活充满游戏，但如果我们不知道自己在玩游戏，很可能是游戏在玩弄我们。无论是隐藏在政治、战争、商业中的游戏，还是日常工作和娱乐中的游戏，克兰西都会让你思考：是谁制定了规则？谁从中受益？《与现实游戏》与克兰西所清晰描述的游戏一样令人着迷，欲罢不能。

——阿南约·巴塔查里亚，《来自未来的人》作者

About the Author

Kelly Clancy is a neuroscientist and physicist who has held research positions at MIT, Berkeley, University College London and the AI company DeepMind. Her research focuses on uncovering the principles of intelligence, and she has invented novel brain-computer interfaces to investigate the biological underpinnings of agency. Her essays on neuroscience and AI have appeared in Wired, Harper's and The New Yorker. She spent her childhood stuck on the first level of the video game Myst, and being repeatedly murdered by her younger sister in GoldenEye 007.

作者简介

凯利·克兰西是一位神经科学家和物理学家，曾在麻省理工学院、伯克利、伦敦大学学院和人工智能公司 DeepMind担任研究职位。她的研究重点是揭示智能的原理，并发明了新型脑机接口来研究主体性的生物学基础。她撰写的关于神经科学和人工智能的文章曾发表在《连线》、《哈泼斯》和《纽约客》等刊物上。在童年时期，她曾在电子游戏《神秘岛》的第一关卡上停滞不前，并在《黄金眼 007》中反复被妹妹击败。

Contents

Part I How to Know The Unknown

1. The Play of Creation

2. How Heaven Works

3. Dice Playing God

Part II Naming The Game

4. Kriegsspiel, The Science of War

5. Rational Fools

6. The Clothes Have No Emperor

7. A Map That Warps The Territory

Part III Building Better Players

8. Chess, The Drosophila of Intelligence

9. The End of Evolution

10. Nous Ex Machina

11. Cogito Ergo Zero Sum

Part IV Building Better Games

12. Simplicity

13. Moral Geometry: Playing Utopia

14. Mechanism Design: Building Games Where Everyone Wins

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Notes

Bibliography

Index

目录

第一部分 如何认识未知

1. 创造的游戏

2. 天堂如何运作

3. 骰子扮演上帝

第二部分 命名游戏

4. 战争科学

5. 理性的傻瓜

6. 没有皇帝的衣服

7. 扭曲领土的地图

第三部分 培养更好的玩家

8. 国际象棋，智慧的果蝇

9. 进化的终结

10. 机器之神

11. 逻辑零和

第四部分 构建更好的游戏

12. 化繁为简

13. 道德几何 玩转乌托邦

14. 机制设计：打造人人都能赢的游戏

后记

致谢

注释

参考书目

索引