Playing with Reality

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

A sweeping intellectual history of games and their importance to human progress.

We play games to learn about the world, to understand our minds and the minds of others, and to make predictions about the future. They're also a lot of fun. But what happens when we mistake games for reality?

WIN OR LOSE explores the riveting history of games since the Enlightenment, weaving an unexpected path through military theory, biology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and the future of democracy. As neuroscientist and physicist Kelly Clancy shows us, games have been deeply intertwined 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. 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.

Lucid, thought-provoking, and masterfully told, WIN OR LOSE makes the bold argument that the human fascination with games is the key to understanding our nature.

©2024 Kelly Clancy (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

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, neuroscientist at Stanford, NYT bestselling author INCOGNITO and LIVEWIRED
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
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
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.
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
A wide-ranging examination of how games have shaped the world... Clancy weaves a cautionary tale about what happens when human fascination with games translates into a belief in the power of simplified world models that are often untethered from reality... 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
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: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann
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… contextualizes and clarifies the upshot of losing perspective
Scientific American
A history of how games and game theory have changed the world… by turns philosophical and polemical, this is a provocative and fascinating book
Economist
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
Publisher's Weekly

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