Games that Help Us Reconnect with Nature & Our Sense and Wonder & Play with C. THI NGUYEN

About this episode

C. Thi Nguyen discusses the impact of metrics on human values and the importance of reclaiming joy in life.

We live in a world obsessed with tracking. From our sleep scores to our social media engagement, invisible systems constantly quantify our worth. But when we replace our deepest values with these thin, easily measurable numbers, we lose a part of our humanity. It is time to step outside the magic circle of optimization and reclaim the unstructured joy of being alive.  C. Thi Nguyen  is a philosopher whose work gets to the heart of the invisible structures that define modern life. He first established himself as a food writer, exploring the sensory world, before turning his intellectual gaze toward the philosophy of games and agency. He’s the author of  Games: Agency As Art .   His new book is  The  Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game .   He argues that when we simplify our values for the sake of a leaderboard, something inside the human spirit begins to die. In it, he explores a concept called "value capture"—the moment we stop caring about the experience and start obsessing over the metric. He joins me now to discuss how we can lead a playful, spontaneous life without getting lost in the scoring systems of the 21st century…

People in this episode

Guest: C. Thi Nguyen

Topics covered

• philosophy
• games
• human values
• optimization
• playfulness

Keywords

• value capture
• metrics
• optimization
• human spirit
• playful life

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Games: Agency As Art, The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game

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