Publishers Weekly
04/15/2024
Neuroscientist Clancy debuts with a sweeping investigation of the roles games have played in human history. Examining why humans are drawn to games, Clancy contends that the process of mastering them by learning rules and the possible outcomes of various moves satisfies humanity’s evolutionary drive to understand cause-and-effect relationships. Tracing the influence of games from the earliest known dice (found in a 7,000-year-old Iranian settlement) through SimCity, Clancy notes that probability theory grew out of Italian scholar Gerolamo Cardano’s and French mathematician Blaise Pascal’s Renaissance-era writings about dice. Elsewhere, she suggests that Kaiser Wilhelm owed his battlefield success to playing Kriegsspiel (a chesslike war game with scoring based on the historical efficacy of various military tactics) as a child, and describes how chess has been used by AI researchers to measure the intelligence of software. The history fascinates, and Clancy’s sophisticated analysis highlights the dangers of overgeneralizing from games to reality. For instance, she argues that game theory, which stemmed from Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann’s early 20th-century musings about strategy in two-player zero-sum games, has been misapplied to real-life situations by economists who fail to recognize that the premises of von Neumann’s hypothetical game (players have fixed goals and “all value can be objectively measured”) don’t transfer neatly to the real world. Readers won’t want to put this down. Agent: Will Francis, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (June)
From the Publisher
Praise for Playing with Reality:
“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
“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
Kirkus Reviews
2024-03-20
An intriguing book that shows how games are much more than just diverting fun.
Clancy is a neuroscientist and physicist whose research focuses on the mechanics of human intelligence, and she has worked with the AI lab DeepMind. Consequently, she brings an interesting perspective to this study on games, game theory, and the meaning of games. People have played games for millennia (“Games are older than written language. Games like Go, chess, backgammon, and mancala are living artifacts”), but Clancy is most interested in games designed to simulate reality, even if in symbolic form. Chess was the classic example, used to teach and refine war strategy. The idea of simulations evolved toward attempts to forecast battle outcomes, using scale models of actual terrain and opposing teams of officers. Sometimes, this was spectacularly successful, but on other occasions, it failed due to unpredictable events. In any case, the idea of using games to simulate reality and predict outcomes became embedded in the culture, and the subsequent development of game theory gave it the patina of scientific certainty. It spread into virtually every aspect of modern life, including economics and politics. However, Clancy notes that these systems are bound by the creators’ rules, which assume rational self-interest from the players. The key issue is that human decision-making is not often rational, although it might be better to say that it entails a higher level of rationality than a game can incorporate. “Game theory is not a very good model of people,” writes Clancy, “but it’s good enough to be trouble.” While this is absorbing material, the nature of the subject means that parts of the book require close attention. For diligent readers, it’s well worth the effort.
A revealing look at the hidden role that games have played in human development for centuries.
