Contents:

• Background
• Outline of The Grasshopper
• Chapter-by-Chapter Details (if you care)
  • ch. 1 | ch. 2 | ch. 3 | ch. 4 | ch. 5 | ch. 6 | ch. 7 | ch. 8 | ch. 9 | ch. 10 | ch. 11 | ch. 12 | ch. 13 | ch. 14 | ch. 15
• Misconceptions about The Grasshopper
  • Suits’s definition of games
  • Challenge / Difficulty
  • What it’s like to play games
  • Make-believe games
  • Future utopia
• Main Takeaways (according to me)
  • The Possibility Space of Games
  • Resource management
  • Game playing vs. economic “rationality”
  • Life in the age to come
  • The Suitsian critique of capitalism

Background

The Fable

The Grasshopper is based on Aesop’s fable about ants and a grasshopper (or ants and a cicada). In the fable, the grasshopper has spent all summer playing (music), while the ants have been working to gather food. After winter arrives, the grasshopper comes begging and the ants refuse to help.

The moral of the story is that you ought to be prudent like the ants, rather than frivolous, like the grasshopper.

The Book

In The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, the Grasshopper is a philosopher akin to Socrates, willing to sacrifice his life for his principles. It’s his disciples — who are ants — that have something to learn, and what they have to learn is this: everything we do in life might be a game without our realizing it.

That’s the ultimate conclusion for which Suits is arguing. Everything else in the book is presented as evidence for that claim.

Because the book ends there, it doesn’t explore the political implications of its argument. But those implications are intriguing. See the Main Takeaways section for more.

This Post

In what follows, I’ll first provide an outline of the book. Keep in mind, however, that Suits just divided the book into 15 chapters and left it there. I think those chapters naturally fall into larger “divisions,” but the book does not label any such divisions.

After the outline, I’ll provide a brief summary of each chapter, if you want to “go deeper.” I’ll then list a few common misconceptions about The Grasshopper, followed by what I take to be the book’s main takeaways.

Please feel free to read only bits and pieces of what follows. I hope the table of contents, above, will help you jump to the section (or sections) you would like to focus on (and also help you skip the ones you would prefer to skip).

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Outline of The Grasshopper

Part I: Present (Winter)

• Chapter 1: The Grasshopper says some strange things, and then dies. [jump to details]
• Chapter 2: Skepticus and Prudence are puzzled by the last thing the Grasshopper said. [details]

Part II: Flashback (Summer)

• A. Games seen in contrast with work
  • 1. The basic theory
    • Chapter 3: Skepticus recalls how the Grasshopper came to his definition of game playing. [details]
  • 2. Defending and clarifying that theory
    • a. Goals and means
      • Chapter 4: Skepticus objects that the Grasshopper’s definition of game playing is too narrow, because of its focus on “prelusory goals.” [details]
      • Chapter 5: Skepticus objects that the Grasshopper’s definition of game playing is too broad, because of its focus on “inefficient means” to those goals. [details]
    • b. Rules
      • Chapter 6: Skepticus objects that the Grasshopper’s definition of game playing is too narrow, because of its focus on means-limiting rules. [details]
      • Chapter 7: The Grasshopper considers the possibility that competitive games are paradoxical, and thus indefinable. [details]
      • Chapter 8: Skepticus objects that the Grasshopper’s definition of game playing is too narrow, because of its focus on means-limiting rules (again). [details]
• B: Games seen in contrast with play
  • 1. The challenge of child’s play
    • a. Introduction
      • Chapter 9: Skepticus argues the Grasshopper’s definition of game playing can’t handle make-believe games, and offers an alternative theory that defines games in terms of play. [details]
    • b. Illustrative stories
      • Chapter 10: Skepticus tries to come up with a role-playing game that fits his definition of games, but not the Grasshopper’s. [details]
      • Chapter 11: The Grasshopper argues that pretense is not what makes role-playing games games. [details]
    • c. Conclusion
      • Chapter 12: The Grasshopper argues that his definition can handle make-believe games after all. [details]
  • 2. The challenge of professional play
    • Chapter 13: The Grasshopper argues that you can play a game without playing. [details]

Part III: Present (Winter)

• Chapter 14: The Grasshopper is mysteriously resurrected and Skepticus tries to get him to clarify what he meant back in chapter 1. [details]
• Chapter 15: The Grasshopper explains and defends the strange things he said in chapter 1. [details]

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Chapter-by-Chapter Details

Chapter 1

The Grasshopper is starving because he refuses to work. His calling is to preach play, and to practice what he preaches. Work is not an intrinsic good, he says. In fact, it derives what value it has from play (that is, the point of work is to enable play) and it would lose even that value if it weren’t for scarcity.

The Grasshopper recounts a dream in everything everyone does is a game. No one realizes that are playing games, however; they think they are raising children and healing patients and planting crops, etc. When the Grasshopper tells them that all of those things are actually games, they cease to exist. He dies without explaining the meaning of his dream.

[return to outline]

Chapter 2

The Grasshopper’s disciples, Skepticus and Prudence, discuss what the Grasshopper was on about. The Grasshopper was using the words “work” and “play” to mean, “any extrinsically-valuable activity” and “any intrinsically-valuable activity,” respectively. (That is, “to work” was just the Grasshopper’s shorthand for, “to do something that you think derives its value from its relationship to something else.” And “to play” was the Grasshopper’s shorthand for, “to do something that you think has value in and of itself.”)

Skepticus and Prudence wonder why the Grasshopper’s dream should have focused on playing games specifically, rather than all sorts of play. Prudence asks Skepticus what he remembers of the Grasshopper’s theory of game playing. Skepticus agrees to read through his notes from their (his and the Grasshopper’s) conversations over the previous summer.

[return to outline]

Chapter 3

The Grasshopper starts by contrasting games with work. While workers tend to value efficiency, games seem to require inefficiency. If you are trying to get a golf ball into a hole in the ground, for example, why not just walk the ball over to the hole and drop it in by hand? And while you might accept inefficiency in a work context if you get something good in return (say, safety), the inefficient methods required by golf seem to be what attracts golfers in the first place.

The idea that playing a game always involves being inefficient — and doing so on purpose — depends on distinguishing between two sorts of goal. A game’s “prelusory” goal is a state of affairs (e.g., the golf ball’s being in a hole in the ground or the soccer ball’s being in your opponent’s net) that you can achieve in various ways. The rules of a game will always limit you to using inefficient means to that end, the Grasshopper says, and playing a game will necessarily involve accepting those limitations.

A game’s “lusory” goal, in contrast, is to achieve its prelusory goal via precisely the methods the game allows. And winning a game usually requires you to use the most efficient methods that the game allows. When you play a game, furthermore, you are typically focused on this more inclusive “lusory” goal, and thus don’t think of what you are doing as “being inefficient.”

For more details on Suits’s definition of games, see this subsection (in the Misconceptions section), and this subsection and this subsection (in the Main Takeaways section), below.

[return to outline]

Chapter 4

Skepticus objects that not all games have prelusory goals, if a game’s prelusory goal must preexist it. Some games might be built around achieving a state of affairs that exists independently of those games — that was “there first.” (Maybe before golf was invented, small balls sometimes ended up rolling into holes in the ground.) But in games like chess, the “state of affairs” you are trying to achieve (e.g., checkmate) didn’t exist before the game was invented.

The Grasshopper responds that he doesn’t think prelusory goals have to preexist their games. He simply believes that every game’s prelusory goal will be achievable in ways that wouldn’t count as playing the game. For example, I could set some chess pieces up in a “checkmate” formation without playing an entire game first.

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Chapter 5

Skepticus objects that if the Grasshopper’s theory about games and inefficiency were correct, then just doing something you find annoying — just for the sake of annoying yourself — would count as playing a game. For example, deliberately taking a roundabout path to your destination for no good reason would be a game.

The Grasshopper responds that he defines efficiency and inefficiency only in relation to limited resources. He clarifies further that the resource in question has to be limited enough that it actually affects the choices the player makes. If you have so much time on your hands that it doesn’t matter which route you take to your destination, then choosing a roundabout path just for the sake of wasting time isn’t playing a game. But if you find a way to significantly limit the time available (e.g., by trying to get to your destination before someone else does) and yet you still deliberately take the more time-consuming path, you just might be playing a game.

[return to outline]

Chapter 6

Skepticus objects that if a game always has to involve rules that limit the means available to players, then no-holds-barred death matches could not be games. And yet, it is possible to imagine two people who have grown so bored with other forms of competition that they voluntarily agree to fight to the death using whatever means they desire. Would such a rules-free contest not be a game?

The Grasshopper asks whether the death match in question would have a start time, before which the contestants would not allow themselves to attack. If so, then the event still has an efficiency-limiting rule. (And if not, the implication seems to be that the Grasshopper would conclude that the competitors were not, in fact, playing a game.)

[return to outline]

Chapter 7

This chapter doesn’t really fit the rest of the book. It’s essentially a reprint of a previous article Suits had published about whether competitive games are paradoxical. In order to play a competitive game, you both have to try to defeat your opponent and yet also cooperate with them. After all, you’re helping your opponent get what they want — the chance to participate in the sort of game you are playing.

The justification for including the chapter at this point in the book is the following: if it turned out that competitive games were fundamentally paradoxical, it might be impossible to give them a clear definition. However, “the Grasshopper” (Suits) responds that there’s nothing paradoxical about trying to help someone achieve one goal while trying to keep them from achieving another (e.g., wanting to give someone the gift of playing a game while not wanting to give them the gift of winning that game).

[return to outline]

Chapter 8

Skepticus objects that there can be non-competitive, single-player games that don’t involve means-limiting rules. For example, mountain climbing is a sport, and as such would seem to be a game. But what if there were no way of getting to the top of a given mountain except climbing it? The rules of the sport/game couldn’t limit participants to inefficient means in pursuit of the game’s prelusory goal if climbing were the only means to that goal.

The Grasshopper responds that what he means by “following efficiency-limiting rules” is a matter of disposition. Say there is no other way to get to the top of a given mountain except by climbing. Then, imagine that when a climber is halfway up the mountain, a new, more efficient method becomes available. If that climber were suddenly offered a lift to the top of the mountain, would they accept? If yes, then they are not playing the mountain climbing game. If no, then they are.

[return to outline]

Chapter 9

Skepticus objects that the Grasshopper’s theory can’t account for the sort of make-believe games we associate with children. Those games aren’t defined by a set of rules that limit the means players are allowed to use in their pursuit of some goal. What’s important in make-believe games is just the chance to play a role — to be a superhero or a knight or a princess.

If we want a theory that can handle both rule-focused and role-focused games, Skepticus says we need to start over. To play a game, he suggests, is just to “reverse” the roles of means and ends in some non-game activity. Where we normally treat an activity’s “means” as valuable only insofar as they help us achieve the activity’s “end,” a game player treats the activity’s end as valuable only insofar as it gives them a reason for employing its means.

For example, a normal person only runs if they need to get to their destination fast and they can’t catch a ride. An Olympic runner only adopts getting to some destination (the finish line) as a goal so they have a justification for running to get there.

According to Skepticus, then, to play a game is to play in the sense the Grasshopper had been using back in chapter 1. It is to engage in an activity you find intrinsically valuable. Instead of defining games in contrast with work, why not define them in terms of play?

For more details, see chapters 10, 11, and 12, and also this subsection (of the Misconceptions section), below.

[return to outline]

Chapter 10

To prove to the Grasshopper that his (Skepticus’s) theory works for games of make-believe (while the Grasshopper’s does not) Skepticus invents a character named “Sneak.” Sneak is a professional spy who eventually realizes that what he values is the chance to play roles — to pretend to be other people — not the intel that he acquires by way of playing those roles. In fact, he eventually finds a way to always be playing roles — always to be impersonating others — just for the joy of roleplaying.

And since Sneak’s life consists entirely in doing things he values intrinsically, nothing Sneak does is an “inefficient means” to his goal. His life is all goal-achievement, all the time. He is playing games, but not being inefficient, like the Grasshopper would require.

The Grasshopper responds that Sneak isn’t playing make-believe in the way we normally think of it, since his games involve deception. He would only really be playing what we think of as a make-believe game if he found himself playing multiple interacting roles at the same time. In that case, the person playing one role (Sneak) would not be deceived about the identity of the person playing the other role (also Sneak), and yet he would still be playing a game.

Skepticus admits that perhaps thinking of make-believe games as a modification of “serious” imposture isn’t correct. But he insists that make-believe games still involve pretending to be someone or something you aren’t.

[return to outline]

Chapter 11

The Grasshopper invents another character, named “Drag,” whose life also seems to consist in a series of roleplaying games. However, Drag only ever plays himself. The social (familial, business, etc.) roles that life hands to him just so happen to be things he enjoys doing. He values the experience of playing those roles more than he cares about the goals one is normally expected to accomplish by way of playing those roles.

If (1) Sneak spent his life engaged in games where all the roles were stolen from others, while (2) Drag spent his life engaged in games where all the roles were already his own, then (3) Skepticus is wrong that playing a game means “reversing” the values of the means and ends in some activity from non-gaming life. In reality, it doesn’t particularly matter where the roles in a roleplaying game come from. You could invent new roles that previously belonged to no one, and yet still be playing a roleplaying game.

[return to outline]

Chapter 12

At this point, it seems that neither the Grasshopper’s theory of games, nor Skepticus’s alternative theory, can explain what makes make-believe games games. But the Grasshopper hasn’t given up.

Make-believe games, he argues, have a prelusory goal, and you are limited to using inefficient means in pursuing that goal. It’s just that the prelusory goal of a make-believe game is an ongoing, dynamic state of affairs, not a one-time, conclusive achievement (like checkmate). A make-believer’s prelusory goal is that “dramatic action” be taking place — that fictional events be occurring, that roles be being played. However, instead of pursuing that goal in the way that stage actors do — by following a script — you employ own imagination to come up with things to do that would be consistent with your role.

Having to make up your own “moves” is less efficient, Suits says, than working from a script. There’s a greater chance that you’ll come up empty when you try to think of what to do next, and thus a greater risk that the dramatic action will end (before you are ready for it to end). But just like someone playing the sport of mountain climbing wouldn’t accept a lift to the top of the mountain, a make-believer wouldn’t accept a script even if it guaranteed they could make the roleplaying last longer. They are in it to make-believe, not to stage a play.

For more details, see chapters 9, 10, and 11, and also this subsection (of the Misconceptions section), below.

[return to outline]

Chapter 13

Professional game players treat playing their games as a means to an end. If the Grasshopper uses the term “to play” to refer to intrinsically valuable activities, professional game players are working. But the Grasshopper started off (in chapter 3) by contrasting work and games. And he said (also in chapter 3) that to play a game, you have to accept the game’s rules “just because” those rules define what it means to play the game.

So, does he think professionals aren’t playing games, since they’re not playing? Does he think professional game players aren’t playing games since they have another reason — money — for accepting the limitations imposed by the game?

The Grasshopper says “no.” A professional might be working by way of playing a game, and yet still be playing a game. Even if they accept the rules of the game because ignoring those rules would mean they weren’t playing the game, and thus weren’t doing what they were being paid to do, they would still be playing a game. After all, you can do something for multiple reasons, and they are still putting up with the game’s limitations in part because that’s what it means to play the game.

(The second half of the chapter is a critique of Games People Play, by Eric Berne.)

[return to outline]

Chapter 14

Back in the present, Prudence and Skepticus are surprised to find a resurrected Grasshopper at their door. After some time trying to figure out what is going on — they have begun to suspect that they are characters in some sort of philosophical book — they return to the question of what the Grasshopper’s dream (from back in chapter 1) had meant.

[return to outline]

Chapter 15

The Grasshopper asks what people would do in a utopian society, defined as one in which everyone’s needs can be immediately met. Even though no one would need anyone to build them a house, or discover a cure for cancer, people might still enjoy building unnecessary houses and hunting for unneeded cures. And that would mean they were playing games, as the Grasshopper has defined them.

However, the Grasshopper suspects that most people couldn’t stand living in such a utopian situation. They would find a life in which everything is effectively a game to be completely meaningless. And thus they would try to impose actual limitations on themselves and others — not just temporary limitations for the sake of playing a game. And that means Utopia would self-destruct.

For more details, see this subsection and this subsection (of the Main Takeaways section), below.

[return to outline]

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Misconceptions about The Grasshopper

Suits’s definition of games

People say that Suits defined games as “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.”

He didn’t. That’s his cheeky paraphrase of his definition (see the last page of chapter 3 of The Grasshopper; p. 43 in the 3rd ed.). When he first introduced that paraphrase, he called it “only approximately accurate” (see p. 55 of this article).

Here is Suits’s actual definition of game playing:

[T]o play a game is to engage in activity directed towards bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by rules, where the rules prohibit more efficient in favour of less efficient means, and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity. (The Grasshopper, 3rd ed., p. 36)

Or:

To play a game is to attempt to achieve a specific state of affairs [prelusory goal], using only means permitted by rules [lusory means], where the rules prohibit use of more efficient in favour of less efficient means [constitutive rules], and where the rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity [lusory attitude]. (The Grasshopper, 3rd ed., 43)

See this subsection and this subsection (in the Main Takeaways section), below, for more.

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Challenge and difficulty

Closely related to the previous point, people often say that Suits defined games in terms of challenge.

He didn’t. He defined them in terms of inefficiency. Also, he argued that everything we do in life might be a game without our realizing it. How could even the easy things in life be a game if games have to be challenging? I wrote a whole article about this.

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What it’s like to play a game

Closely related to the previous point, people often object that Suits’s description of games does not fit what it is like to play a game. Suits, so it is claimed, thinks that you have to be consciously following a set of rules, or have to be consciously choosing to overcome obstacles, or have to be consciously choosing less efficient means rather than more efficient means.

All of this is incorrect. Suits’s theory is not a theory of what it is like to play a game. He is not trying to describe the experience of game playing. (Remember: he thinks everything we do in life might be a game without our realizing it.)

Instead, Suits is trying to describe the underlying structure of means, ends, and dispositions that have to be present for someone to be playing a game. I wrote a whole article about this topic. And then I wrote another article about it. And then I wrote a third article about it.

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Make-believe games

Closely related to the previous point, people have been known to claim either that Suits’s theory of games cannot account for make-believe games — that it can only handle the sort of explicit, formalized games played by “typical” adults. In fact, there is at least one game designer out there who seems to think Suits doesn’t even have a theory of make-believe games at all.

Suits wrote four entire chapters on make-believe games. (See the outline, above.) Then I wrote an entire article about it.

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The future utopia

Not so closely related to the previous point, people often think of Suits’s philosophy of games as a weird pie-in-the-sky theory about a future utopia. It is. Sort of. But it’s actually quite pessimistic. Suits seems to believe that the utopia he describes could not last. And, in fact, he seems to believe that it has not lasted. See chapter 2 of Return of the Grasshopper, and the main takeaways, below.

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Main Takeaways from The Grasshopper

The Possibility Space of Games

The Suitsian idea that every game is structured around a “prelusory goal,” that there will be a variety of “means” by which one could achieve that goal, that the “rules” of a game consist in dividing those means into two groups (the means that count as playing the game, and the means that don’t), and that at least one of the means in the “out” group will always turn out to be more efficient than all the means in the “in” group, lead me to think of games as located in a vast possibility space.

It leads me to think about “nearby” games in that space where different means are allowed, or excluded. It leads me to think about the choices (implicit or explicit) that were made in the design of the game, in the selection or crafting of its prelusory goal, in the selection or crafting of the means to that goal. And, since means are meaningless without an environment (telling players, “You’re allowed to swim,” but then giving them no water to swim in, would be absurd), it leads me to think about the ways in which game design inherently involves the crafting of environments.

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Resource Management

Adopting the Suitsian approach to game analysis leads — in my experience — to seeing resource management at the core of every game. It leads one — or, rather, it leads me — to ask: “What (familiar, novel, creative, surprising) resources are players given in this game?” “In what (familiar, novel, creative, surprising) ways are those resources limited, or are players limited in using those resources?” “Could those limitations be adjusted in interesting ways?” “Could new resources be made available that would make the game more, or perhaps less, interesting?”

I want to reiterate that Suits is not claiming that every game is a resource management game (using that term in its typical sense), nor is he claiming that players experience themselves as managing resources. (See the Misconceptions section, above, for details.) I just mean that if you look at games through the Suitsian lens, you will end up thinking a lot about resources.

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Game Playing vs. Economic “Rationality”

According to Suits, game playing will inevitably look like an irrational activity to economists who define “rationality” in terms of efficiency. After all, he believes that playing a game will always involve limiting yourself (whether consciously or not) to using inefficient means in your pursuit of some goal.

For example, what sense does it make to try to get soccer balls into nets using only your feet? Surely there are more efficient ways of achieving that goal. What sense does it make to play a video game where you start with 0 resources, and have to wait, or click, or talk to characters, or punch trees, to get resources? Surely it would be more efficient to only play games where all the resources are available in infinite supply from the very beginning.

Unlike in the rest of life (where inefficiencies might be justified as a tradeoff for greater safety), the inefficiencies seem to be the point in games. That is, the whole point of soccer is to use your feet, rather than your hands, to get the ball into the goal. That “inefficient” means is what makes the game interesting. Inefficiencies, we might say, provide texture — in fact, I suspect that “texture” and “inefficiency” are just two different names for the same thing — and textures can be quite engaging.

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Life in the Age to Come

Suits argues that game playing would be the central activity in utopia. If everyone’s needs were met, there would be no need to work. Anyone who continued working would be doing so not because they were filling some need, but because they enjoyed the process. They would be building houses and discovering medical cures for the pure joy of building houses and discovering cures.

The same goes for artists. In a world where you could instantaneously acquire anything you desired, you wouldn’t need someone to laboriously write a symphony for you, or painstakingly paint a portrait for you. You could just snap your fingers and what you wanted would appear — perhaps because some machine would instantly generate it for you.

But people would still laboriously and painstakingly do art, just for the joy of making art, exactly like people would still build houses (that could be 3D printed much faster) and hunt for cures for diseases (that no longer exist).

In so doing, people would be like game players who decide to work out the solution to a puzzle for themselves, rather than looking it up. They would be limiting themselves to the use of inefficient means simply because those means define the very activity in which it is their goal to engage.

In utopia, all the progress and drama and adventure would come from making and playing games. (And making games would itself be a game.) I find this picture of life in utopia deeply attractive. Moreover, I think it supplies a better image of what “eternal life” in “the new heavens and new earth” would be like than we normally get from popular conceptions of heaven.

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The Suitsian Critique of Capitalism

Consider the socio-political implications of Suits’s argument that everything we do in life might be a game without our realizing it. If it is correct, then our entire social order — based as it is on work, efficiency, struggle, and profit — is a game pretending to be something it is not.

Suits believes that many — perhaps most — people would find utopia (a life in which the only thing left to do was play games) revolting. People tend to derive their meaning in life from their useful labor, from the idea that there are needs they can meet, that there is hardship (and perhaps even evil) to overcome. But what if the scarcity with which we live, and which we must strive to overcome, were an illusion? What if it were akin to the resource limitations you adopt when you play a game?

What if we had all been tricked into playing along with our world’s current economic and political systems? Instead of being inevitable, necessary, important, what if they were arbitrary, contingent, and replaceable? What if it were effectively all a game, and what if we could be playing a different game (perhaps a better game)?

This, it seems to me, is the line of thinking that follows from Suits’s ultimate argument in The Grasshopper. I don’t know what Suits’s politics were, but I think The Grasshopper makes the questions above unavoidable.

How you react to all of this, however, will depend on your answers to four questions:

1. Do you agree with Suits’s theory about what it means to play a game?
2. Do you agree with Suits’s argument that game playing would be the central activity in a utopian society?
3. Do you share Suits’s concern that humans would be unwilling to accept such a utopian life as meaningful? (Recall what Agent Smith says to Neo about the original version of the Matrix, which humanity rejected.)
4. Do you take Suits’s argument to be historical, speculative, or hypothetical?
   • That is, do you read him as arguing that our current society is one in which all scarcity is artificial — that we are living in the aftermath of a utopian state that humanity rejected by artificially re-imposing scarcity upon themselves? That would be the historical reading.
   • Or do you read him as arguing that while the scarcity with which we deal now is real, if humans ever achieved a utopian state they would artificially re-impose scarcity upon themselves in order to derive meaning from overcoming that scarcity? That would be the speculative reading.
   • Or do you read him as arguing that there would be nothing logically contradictory in claiming both that (a) everything a person did in their life had been a game and yet (b) they had never understood themselves to be playing games? This would be the hypothetical reading.

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But games are, I believe, essentially different from the ordinary activities of life, as perhaps the following exchange between Smith and Jones will illustrate. Smith knows nothing of games, but he does know that he wants to travel from A to C, and he also knows that making the trip by way of B is the most efficient means for getting to his destination. He is then told authoritatively that he may not go by way of B. ‘Why not?’ he asks. ‘Are there dragons at B?’ ‘No,’ is the reply. ‘B is perfectly safe in every respect. It is just that there is a rule against going to B if you are on your way to C.’ ‘Very well,’ grumbles Smith, ‘if you insist. But if I have to go from A to C very often I shall certainly try very hard to get that rule revoked.’ True to his word, Smith approaches Jones, who is also setting out for C from A. He asks Jones to sign a petition requesting the revocation of the rule which forbids travellers from A to C to go through B. Jones replies that he is very much opposed to revoking the rule, which very much puzzles Smith.

SMITH: But if you want to get to C, why on earth do you support a rule which prevents your taking the fastest and most convenient route?

JONES: Ah, but you see I have no particular interest in being at C. That is not my goal, except in a subordinate way. My overriding goal is more complex. It is ‘to get from A to C without going through B.’ And I can’t very well achieve that goal if I go through B, can I?

S: But why do you want to do that?

J: I want to do it before Robinson does, you see?

S: No, I don’t. That explains nothing. Why should Robinson, whoever he may be, want to do it? I presume you will tell me that he, like you, has only a subordinate interest in being at C at all.

J: That is so.

S: Well, if neither of you really wants to be at C, then what possible difference can it make which of you gets there first? And why, for God’s sake, should you avoid B?

J: Let me ask you a question. Why do you want to get to C?

S: Because there is a good concert at C, and I want to hear it.

J: Why?

S: Because I like concerts, of course. Isn’t that a good reason?

J: It’s one of the best there is. And I like, among other things, trying to get from A to C without going through B before Robinson does.

S: Well, I don’t. So why should they tell me I can’t go through B?

J: Oh, I see. They must have thought you were in the race.

S: The what?

I believe that we are now in a position to define lusory attitude: the acceptance of constitutive rules just so the activity made possible by such acceptance can occur.

Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, 3rd edition (Broadview Press, 2014)

The post Suits on the Lusory Attitude appeared first on Micah Tillman.

It’s Pride Month once again, and my denomination (Mennonite Church USA) has just repealed its “guidelines” against full inclusion of homosexual Christians in church life.

In contrast, I’m seeing people on Twitter using Romans 1 as an excuse to hate. These people evidently don’t know how to read scripture.

The Book of Romans

The problem Paul is dealing with in the Book of Romans is not sexuality, but religiously-motivated ethnocentrism.

Some Jewish members of the congregation in Rome apparently had been looking down on Gentile members of the church because God originally gave the Law to the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Romans 2:17–29). In contrast, there were apparently some Gentile members of the church at Rome who were looking down on Jewish members of the congregation because God seemed to have turned away from the Jews to focus on bringing the Gospel to Gentiles (Romans 9–11).

Paul’s letter, then, is a passionately-, extensively-, and often confusingly-argued plea for Christians to renounce ethnocentric pride and live in love and unity with each other.

Romans 1:18–32, Specifically

One of the most important principles of textual interpretation is that we have understand the genre of a piece of literature in order to properly interpret it.

Here are my thoughts.

The Genre

Romans 1:18–2:16 belongs to a sub-genre of prophetic rhetoric, used by Jewish prophets.¹

Nathan vs. David: 2 Samuel 12:1–14.
Nathan tells David story about a man who steals his neighbor’s beloved sheep, in order to get David to condemn the action. Then Nathan points out to David that he has done something even worse, so he (David) should condemn himself.

Amos vs. Israel: Amos 1–3.
Amos — speaking to the northern kingdom of Israel — spends two chapters condemning the evils committed by the nations surrounding them (including Judah, to the south), only to turn on Israel itself in chapter 3.

The Structure

Romans 1:18-32 is a(n apparent) condemnation of Gentiles, meant to “draw in” any Jewish members of the congregation who were looking down on their Gentile siblings in Christ.

Romans 2:1–16, then, is meant to turn the condemnation of those who were “drawn in” back on themselves, preparing them to take a humbler approach to their Gentile siblings.

The Point

In Romans 1:18–32, Paul isn’t making a theological point; he’s making a rhetorical move. He isn’t telling his listeners something, he’s doing something to them. He’s preparing them for a change of heart.

Specifically, he’s trying to move particular Jewish Christians in 1st Century Rome to realize that they have no right to think more highly of themselves than of their fellow church members who are Gentile. (He’ll tackle the Gentile members of the church who were out of line later in the letter.)

Some Cautions

Parallel with the Parables

It seems to me that you cannot base a theory of the afterlife on the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:19–31), because Jesus wasn’t trying to explain the afterlife; he was using talk about the afterlife to make a point about the excuses people come up with for not believing.

Similarly, it seems to me that you cannot base a theory of sexuality on Romans 1:18–32, because Paul wasn’t trying to explain sexuality; he was using talk about sexuality to do something else.

“Evil Idolaters”

Specifically, Paul is talking about idolatrous Gentiles in Romans 1:18–32, who he says have rejected God and who — as a consequence — have become involved in a whole range of things he expects his readers to find horrible  (see Romans 1:28–32).

This description simply does not fit homosexual Christians. They haven’t rejected God. Thus, whatever Paul is talking about, he isn’t talking about them.

“Unnatural”?

Paul describes an unspecified sort of sexual activity between idolatrous women as “unnatural” (para physin) in Romans 1:26.

The same term is used to describe God’s “grafting” Gentiles into the Jewish “tree” in Romans 11:24.

The same term can be used in multiple senses, of course. But it’s something to think about.

Roman Culture

Roman culture was “Hellenic”—that is, it was Greek-influenced, in much the same way that some “Non-Western” cultures have become “Westernized,” or even “Americanized.”

From what I have gathered while studying philosophy, ancient Greek culture held males to be the pinnacle of creation, and thus treated them as the ideal sexual partners — while largely excluding women from “polite company.”

There were surely as many genuinely gay and bisexual men back then as now, of course. But I suspect that “homosexuality” for at least some men in ancient Greece was situational — and that the situation they were in was created by misogyny.

Consider furthermore what sort of situation the hatred for and segregation of women would have created for the women. Would you want to be sexually involved with men in that sort of society?

In any event, it is important to remember that Paul was talking to particular people in a particular situation in a particular culture. And those people aren’t us. So, if you want to apply what Paul said to them to us, you’re going to need to work harder.

Old Testament Background

Romans 1, of course, is not the only passage in the bible that seems to deal with homosexuality. The other major principle of proper textual interpretation is that you’re supposed to read passages in context. And the context for the entire New Testament is the Old Testament.

The most famous passage in the Old Testament that is frequently taken to deal with homosexuality is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Sodom and Gomorrah

So, what was going on in Sodom? That, evidently, was what God wanted to find out.

Introduction

Genesis 18:20–21 (NRSV)

“Then the Lord said, ‘How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me; and if not, I will know.’”

I doubt there would have been a “great outcry against” them (from their neighbors, no doubt) unless they were oppressing the people who were crying out to God. And if you read Genesis 19:4–10, it seems to me that the most obvious problems in those two cities were mob violence and gang rape.

However, Ezekiel tells us more:

The Sin of Sodom

Ezekiel 16:49 (NRSV)

“This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”

The example of Sodom and Gomorrah — mob violence, gang rape, and ignoring the poor — is completely irrelevant to the question of how Christians should see homosexuality.

The Law

But what about the laws that seem to deal with homosexuality in the Old Testament? Here are two, for example.

Leviticus 18:22 (NRSV)

“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”

Leviticus 20:13 (NRSV)

“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.”

Enforcement:

As every child knows, there’s a difference between the rules as they are officially stated (by their parents) and the rules as they are actually enforced (by those same parents). So, if Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 give us the letter of the law, that does not necessarily tell us what the laws were “in practice.”

Here’s a quotation from Paul Copan:

“Walter Kaiser points out the general observation of Old Testament scholars: There were some sixteen crimes that called for the death penalty in the Old Testament. Only in the case of premeditated murder did the text say that the officials in Israel were forbidden to take a ‘ransom’ or a ‘substitute.’ This has widely been interpreted to imply that in all the other fifteen cases the judges could commute the crimes deserving of capital punishment by designating a ‘ransom’ or ‘substitute.’ In that case the death penalty served to mark the seriousness of the crime.”

(Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God, p. 95, citing Numbers 35:31–32 and Walter Kaiser, Toward an Old Testament Ethics, pp. 91–92)

Furthermore, even if the laws above were enforced in ancient Israel, we don’t live in ancient Israel.

And finally, when Jesus told us what the “law” was all about, he said, “loving God and loving your neighbor.”

Jesus’ Hermeneutic

Speaking of Jesus, the closest we can come to knowing how God thinks we should interpret scripture is to look at how Jesus did it. Here are two examples.

The Sabbath

Exodus 31:14–15 (NRSV)

“You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you; everyone who profanes it shall be put to death; whoever does any work on it shall be cut off from among the people. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord; whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death.” (also: Exodus 35:2)

Matthew 12:1–12 (NRSV)

“1 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2 When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, ‘Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.’ 

3 He said to them, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests. 5 Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and yet are guiltless? 6 I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. 7 But if you had known what this means, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice,” you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8 For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.’ 

9 He left that place and entered their synagogue; 10 a man was there with a withered hand, and they asked him, ‘Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath?’ so that they might accuse him. 11 He said to them, ‘Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? 12 How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.’”

In this instance, Jesus seems to me to be saying that you can’t let the letter of the law — which was made for the purpose of the good of human beings — get in the way of doing something that is obviously good for a human being.

Love Your Neighbor

Leviticus 19:18 (NRSV)

“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. “

Luke 10:25–37 (NRSV)

25 Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

26 He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?”

27 He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”

28 And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

29 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’

36 Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”

37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

In this case, the issue seems to be the same as with observing the Sabbath. There were laws about cleanliness (if the man had been dead, the Levite and Priest wouldn’t have been able to touch him and then fulfill their duties in the Temple until they had gone through the cleansing rites). There’s also a law about loving your neighbor, and a stranger lying in a ditch doesn’t live next door to you. But Jesus says, in essence, loving your neighbor means doing good to people when you encounter them, whoever they may be.

My Interpretation of Jesus’ Hermeneutic

I think God’s rules are there to help us recognize God’s motivations and achieve God’s goals, so God’s motivations and goals are what we are to care most about.

I think Jesus shows us that the existence of a rule against something somewhere in Scripture is no excuse for failing to recognize something good (something that conforms to God’s motivations and goals) when it is staring us in the face.

That is, I think Jesus gives us precedent for making — and expects us to make — exceptions to the “letter” of the law in order to live out its “spirit” (cf. 2 Corinthians 3:6, 1 Timothy 1:5, 8)

Conclusion

So, that’s the best I can do with the passages that seem to be most in debate. I don’t think people have historically interpreted the “problem” passages above correctly, even if I haven’t gotten them right myself. And I take the empiricist’s line that personal experience trumps abstract reasoning based on texts you might not have properly understood in the first place — especially when that personal experience seems to be backed up by things that everyone agrees the text says (e.g., “love your neighbor” and “God is love“).

My personal experience is that there are good people who are gay, lesbian, and bisexual (at least as many — proportionally — as there are straight people who are good), and romantic relationships between those good people are good for them. And my theory is that if something is good for a good person, then it’s good, period.

In summary, I am not convinced that my personal experience and Scripture are at odds on this point. So, even if I haven’t gotten everything right in this post, I hope it will help you think things through and discuss the issues more profitably with others.

___________________
1. I learned about this prophetic genre/technique from my wife, Ruth. It pays to marry someone who is (a) really smart and (b) took a lot of bible classes in college. Return to Text.

The post The Bible and Homosexuality appeared first on Micah Tillman.

Well, the activity of playing a game has that structure. Your goal in playing (the large, outer target) is to achieve some goal inside the game (the smaller, inner target) by means of the methods and tools the game makes available to you.

The inner goal is usually something like, “crossing the finish line” or “getting the puck into the net.” The methods and tools the game provides, furthermore, are always mildly challenging. “Start 26.2 miles away and then run,” the game commands players. Or “put on skates and then use this weird stick to push the puck around these large Canadians who are trying to steal it.”

How much challenge there is will vary. But there will always be at least one way of achieving the game’s internal goal that would be more efficient than the game allows. “No carrying the puck,” the rules of the game insist. “And no taking a cab to the finish line.”

But enough reminiscing! Consider what the game of baseball looks like from a Suitsian point of view. Theory is all fine and good, but if a theory doesn’t actually help us understand things better — if it doesn’t work — what’s the point?

Baseball’s “Prelusory” Goal

The basic, internal (“prelusory”) goal of baseball is to step on home plate.

Well, the goal of baseball is to touch home plate with some part of your body. It’s just usually easiest to do so by stepping on it. Home plate, after all, is way down there in the dirt. Look how far away it is. You don’t want to bend over. You’re old. Just step on it. That’s it. Just tap it with your toe, maybe.

More specifically, you want to touch home plate more times than the people on the other team do. That’s what Suits would call baseball’s “prelusory” goal — the goal that is “prior” to the game (the goal the game is built around). You don’t have to understand the rules of baseball to understand what it would mean to touch something more times than another person touches it.

But more importantly, you don’t have to know what makes something count as home plate (does it have to be a particular shape or be made of a particular substance or be in a particular spot), how the people touching it are supposed to touch it (with sticks? with their noses?), or how they are supposed to get themselves into position in order to touch it (by jumping from a great distance away? by crawling across the ground?), to understand the basic idea, “Your goal in this game is to touch home plate more often than those guys touch it.”

Unnecessary Obstacles

But that’s not all there is. If it were, every baseball team would hire a few tap dancers like Vera-Ellen and have them tap away.

But alas. For a home plate touch to count toward your team’s total, a number of conditions have to be met.

First, you have to step on (well, touch in some way) three “bases” before touching home plate will count.

Second, you have to touch those three bases in a particular order. Fortunately, they have names that tell you the order you’re supposed to go in. And if you can’t remember their names, just remember that you’re supposed to go counter-clockwise.

And if you can’t remember that, just remember you’re supposed to go the opposite direction to the way the hands on a clock go.

And if you can’t remember that, it’s probably because you’re too young to have seen that kind of clock. It’s not your fault.

If you don’t touch the bases in that order first, touching home plate won’t count.

Third, as you can tell from the image above, they put the bases super far away from both home plate and from each other.

If they put them closer together, it would be easier.

But no.

Fourth, they only let you touch home plate once per round trip. If you want touching home plate again to count, you have to first go back and touch the three bases (in the right order).

Fifth, before they will let you touch any of the bases, you have to hit a ball with a bat. That’s super difficult because hitting the ball doesn’t count unless it is first thrown by a member of the other team. And that person doesn’t want you to hit the ball. So, they’re going to throw it really, really fast. And you have to hit it while it’s still moving.

Sixth, even if you manage to hit the ball with the bat, it doesn’t count unless you hit it in a particular direction. There are 360 degrees in which you could hit the ball, but only a quarter of them count.

Seventh, if you try to hit the ball three times and miss, you have to give up your attempt to even reach the first base.

If you hit the ball but it doesn’t go in the right direction, this counts toward your three attempts (unless it’s the final attempt, in which case it’s a freebie).

And even if you don’t try to hit the ball, but your opponent threw it close enough for you to hit it, that counts as one of your three chances.

Eighth, if any of your opponents catch the ball after you hit it but before it hits the ground, you don’t get to go touch the three bases. Instead, you are “out” and have to let someone else have a go at batting.

Ninth, even if you hit the ball in the correct direction and the ball hits the ground before your opponents can catch it, your opponents can still keep you from touching the bases if they get the ball to the first base before you get there. And they’re allowed to throw it. So, you’d better run fast.

Tenth, even if you make it to the first base before your opponents can get the ball there, you still aren’t necessarily safe. If you aren’t currently touching one of the bases and one of your opponents touches you with the ball (either by holding it against you, or by holding it in their large “glove” and tapping you with the glove) you have to give up your attempt to reach home plate.

Eleventh, if you managed to make it to first base, another member of your team gets to take a turn trying to hit the ball. If they meet all the conditions described above for being allowed to run to first base, you must leave first base and run to second base. If you don’t, you will be ruled “out” and have to give up your attempt to reach home plate.

But then the whole drama you went through in trying to get to first base plays out again. If your opponents get the ball to second base before you can get there, you are “out,” and have to give up your attempt to reach home. If your opponents “tag” you with the ball while you are en route to second base, you are also “out.”

So, even when you have made it to safety, your own teammates’ attempts to reach home plate can put you back in danger.

A Brief Interlude

The dynamic we have just been discussing — needing to touch all three bases before touching home counts, the safety of being currently in contact with one of the three bases and the danger of being in between — turns the game of baseball into what we call “a series of mini-games” in video games.

Or, to use another term from video games, baseball has a clear “gameplay loop.”

Or, to use a more mathematical idea, baseball has a quasi-fractal affair.

In effect, baseball has four prelusory goals — three that are intermediate and one that is final. And yet each is essentially the same as the others: you start from somewhere safe (e.g., home plate or first base) and have to get to somewhere safe (e.g., first base or second base) while your opponents are either trying to get a ball there first or trying to tag you with that ball first.

And once you get there, you have to do the whole thing again in order to get to the next base.

To put it another way, while actually winning requires you to make it all the way to home plate, making it to each of the three bases in term is a mini-win.

Back to the Obstacles

Twelfth, if anyone on your team is forced to give up their attempt to reach home plate in any of the above ways, this counts as an “out” for your team. If your team accrues three “outs,” they have to give up trying to reach home plate and instead let the other team have a turn at bat.

While it is the other team’s turn, it doesn’t matter how many times members of your team step on home plate. None of them count. If you want touching home plate to start counting again, you have to put “out” three of the other team’s members in one of the ways described above.

Thirteenth, you’re only allowed to trade turns with the other team nine times. If, after nine rounds (called “innings”) in which each team has had a chance “at bat,” the other team has managed to hit the ball and round the bases — reaching home plate legitimately — more times than your team, your team loses.

I could go on, but I think pointing out thirteen “unnecessary obstacles” is plenty.

Obstacles Summarized

Achieving the basic goal of baseball would be easier if any one of the thirteen rules above were changed. If there were only two bases, rather than three, or one rather than two, it would be easier to run the bases.

If you were allowed to hit the ball off of a stationary tee instead of having it hurled at you by an opponent, it would be easier to meet the conditions for running the bases.

If the other team weren’t allowed to simply get the ball to a base before you got there, but had to “tag” you with it, it would be a tad easier to make it from base to base safely. (This does happen in cases where a “runner” voluntarily leaves one base and heads for another. But whenever a runner is “forced” to leave one base for another, or to leave home for first base, simply getting there slower than the other team gets the ball there counts as failure.)

If you were allowed five chances to hit the ball, rather than only three, or were allowed to hit the ball in more directions than just the 90-degree wedge, or if the other team’s catching the ball before it hit the ground didn’t count as a failure on your part, reach home plate would be easier.

And so on and so on.

Furthermore, by approaching baseball from this Suitsian angle, the basic (fractal!) structure of the game becomes clearer. And we also see the way in which baseball sets things up so that players on the same team pursuing the same goal can actually get in each other’s way.

Enablers vs. Obstacles, and Obstacles as Enablers

The rules of baseball don’t just make players’ lives harder, however. By placing restrictions and requirements on one team, they make the other team’s task easier.

For example, while a batter only gets three chances to hit the ball, the member of the other team who is throwing the ball has to throw it (a) close enough to batter that it is hit-able, but (b) not too close. If they throw it too far away, or too close, four times, the batter gets to go to first base for free.

And if, heaven forbid, the opponent throwing the ball for the batter actually hits the batter with the ball, the batter also gets to go to first base for free.

Furthermore, if a batter can hit the ball far enough that it actually leaves the field before hitting the ground — going over the “fence” at the far end of the field — then the batter gets to run the three bases and return to home for free.

The Attraction of Balance

Suits argues that a game designer needs to set up the rules of their games so that players face neither too great a challenge nor too easy a task (see The Grasshopper, ch. 3).

This may put us in mind of Mihály Csíkszentmihályi‘s theory of flow, though Suits first pointed this out a couple years before Csíkszentmihályi introduced his theory. (In other words, I don’t think Suits had Csíkszentmihályi’s concept of flow in mind when he first described the way in which game designers need to tune game difficulty.)

Furthermore, Suits doesn’t think of players as primarily limited, disempowered, and restricted. Rather, he thinks that players find the challenges posed by games engaging, that they enjoy the activity of overcoming those challenges, and that games provide players with opportunities for exercising various abilities. (I have uploaded a scan of “The Elements of Sport,” in which Suits discusses this, since that essay is now long out of print.)

In other words, the way in which baseball is set up provides players with the chance to do things they would not normally be able to do.

Don’t believe me? How nice would it be if you could get people to go away by simply throwing a ball near them three times?

How nice would it be if you could get people to get out of your way — to stand back and simply let you achieve your goals — just by hitting a ball over a wall?

How nice would it be if you could achieve safety from all threats simply by standing in a particular spot?

Try baseball and find out!

My favorite articulation and exploration of this side of game playing is C. Thi Nguyen’s Games: Agency as Art.

However, it is widely recognized on the psychological/sociological side of play studies as well. (In other words, it’s not just us philosophers who go on about this sort of thing,) See the work on “Self Determination Theory” by Andrew Przybylski, C. Scott Rigby, and Richard Ryan (e.g., “A Motivational Model of Video Game Engagement,” Review of General Psychology 14, no. 2 [2010]: 154–66).

Conclusion

Bernard Suits’s theory of game playing fits baseball remarkably well. Moreover, it illuminates aspects of the game that we might otherwise miss. In other words, it is both accurate and helpful.

But we’re not done. What I’m particularly interested in is whether we can analyze a game that is so clearly “Suitsian” from Kendall Walton’s point of view.

In so doing, I will be asking to what extent sports involves make-believe. And you can’t stop me.

The post Baseball, According to Suits appeared first on Micah Tillman.

In that volume, we find two essays by Bernard Suits that would later be incorporated into Suits’s The Grasshopper (see the Acknowledgements). Those two articles were, “The Elements of Sport” and, “The Grasshopper: A Thesis Concerning the Moral Ideal of Man.”

The Elements of Sport

“The Elements of Sport” is a continuation of the work Suits began in “What Is a Game” (Philosophy of Science 34, no. 2 (1967): 148–56) but contains the finalized version of his definition of game playing. (“What Is a Game” contained an a slightly different definition, but all the basic ideas were there.)

In the editor’s introduction (p. x), Osterhoudt reports that “The Elements of Sport” was one of the essays that were invited for the volume (all of the ones marked “a” in the table of contents are). Suits himself reports (“Tricky Triad: Games, Play, and Sport,” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 15 [1988]: 1-9; see p. 9) that the article was later “reprinted in Philosophic Inquiry in Sport, Edited by William J. Morgan and Klaus V. Meier, Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1988,” and evidently it was still contained in the 1995 edition. However, that text would seem to be out of print.

The Early Grasshopper

Osterhoudt says that “The Grasshopper: A Thesis Concerning the Moral Ideal of Man” was first presented at a “Symposium on Sport and Ethics” at “State University College at Brockport, New York, October 26-28, 1972” (p. xi). (Indeed, all those marked “d” in the table of contents were. However, it is interesting to note that a typo in the table of contents lists the article as being about “the Moral Idea of Man.”)

Osterhoudt reports that he was on the organizing committee for a similar conference at Brockport in February of the same year (p. xi), so perhaps this is where he met Suits for the first time. However, it may be that he first encountered Suits at a similar conference at the University of Windsor in Ontario in may of 1972, since the book’s contributor’s list (p. viii) says Suits was already “Chairman and Professor of Philosophy” at University of Waterloo (also in Ontario) at the time. (Evidently, Suits had moved to Waterloo back in 1966.)

The essay, “The Grasshopper,” continues work Suits began in “Is Life a Game We Are Playing?” (Ethics 77, no. 3 (1967): 209–13). It’s the earliest appearance of the Grasshopper that I have found, but I also haven’t looked very hard. (Finding information about Suits online is extremely difficult.)

The Present PDFs

“Charles C Thomas Publisher” evidently still exists. Here’s their website. However, I can find no reference to The Philosophy of Sport on their site. And like I noted above, the one text in which we have evidence that “Elements of Sport” was reprinted also seems to be out of print. None of the publishers involved seem to even be aware that they once had anything to do with the texts in question.

For scholars interested in the philosophical work of Bernard Suits, having access to early and intermediate versions of texts can be invaluable. Suits is a singular thinker and writer, furthermore, whose theories would seem to be enjoying something of a renaissance at the moment. For historically-minded scholars — those interested in Suits in particular, but also in play studies and game studies more generally — it is valuable to better understand the context in which Suits’s theories were first expounded, and the reception they received at the time.

I am uploading some scans from The Philosophy of Sport here:

• Here is dust jacket (front cover, back cover, and inside flaps thereof) of The Philosophy of Sport. Note the sort of books that Charles C Thomas seems to specialize in, listed on the back cover.
• Here is the general front matter for The Philosophy of Sport.
• Here is Robert G. Osterhoudt’s introduction to The Philosophy of Sport.
• Here is Robert G. Osterhoudt’s introduction to the “Ontological Status of Sport” section of The Philosophy of Sport, in which we find Bernard Suits’s “The Elements of Sport.”
• Here is Bernard Suits’s, “The Elements of Sport,” in its original version from The Philosophy of Sport.
• Here is Robert G. Osterhoudt’s introduction to the “Ethical Status of Sport” section of The Philosophy of Sport, in which we find Bernard Suits’s “The Grasshopper: A Thesis Concerning the Moral Ideal of Man.”
• Here is Bernard Suits’s, “The Grasshopper: A Thesis Concerning the Moral Ideal of Man,” as found in The Philosophy of Sport.

The post Bernard Suits’s Lost Articles appeared first on Micah Tillman.

Despite what Republican Senators might think, you can know what a word means without knowing its definition.

Don’t believe me? Try teaching a toddler a new word by way of its definition.

Go ahead. I dare you.

“But I’m not a toddler,” says our impatient Senator. “I frequently learn what words mean by having my staff define them for me.”

Totally. Once you know enough words, you can start to learn new ones by combining old ones. But often — and to start — no definition is required.

What, for example, is the definition of “dog”? You can tell which animals below are dogs, and which aren’t. But can you list the set of properties all the dogs in this picture have, but the non-dogs lack?

You can’t. And yet you just authored a bill banning all dog barking after 11pm, probably, as if you knew what you were talking about.

Old Dead White Guys

Approaching the same issue from a different angle, consider the famous words of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart. He was nominated by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, so perhaps Republican Senators might listen to what he has to say.

What did he have to say?

Oh, you’ll know it when you hear it.

Not authoritative enough?

Well, try a philosopher on for size. Specifically, consider the work of Cambridge philosopher and logician, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

There is at least one word that everybody uses and yet nobody can define, said Wittgenstein. Maybe a biologist could come up with a definition for “dog” (though maybe not), but Wittgenstein argues nobody can define the word “game.”

Try to define “game,” why dontcha?

Everyone understands what games are. We know what people are talking about when they speak of “games.” And we can point to examples of games if we are trying to teach a child what the word means. We know that chess and soccer and poker and Super Mario Bros. are all games, and that yogurt, work, and going grocery shopping are not.

But no one knows a precise definition of the word “game.” For any definition you come up with, you can think of things that don’t fit that definition and yet are still games.

So, we all know what the word “game” means even though none of us has a satisfactory definition of the word ready-to-hand, and none of us could find one even if we wanted to. That is Wittgenstein’s argument.

But a Definition of “Games” Would Be Handy Though

Wittgenstein is right. Well, he’s wrong about whether games can be defined, but he’s right about words in general.

The person who showed Wittgenstein is wrong about games is another philosopher, Bernard Suits. I think this is what he looked like:

If you know anything about Suits, you’ve probably heard that the following is his definition of games:

[P]laying a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.

Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia (3rd ed., Broadview Press, 2014), p. 43

I first encountered that definition in Jane McGonigal’s 2011 book, Reality Is Broken, but it’s from Suits’s much earlier (1978) book called The Grasshopper.

Upon tracking down The Grasshopper, I saw that the quotation above was just a tiny piece of an enormous iceberg. Well, The Grasshopper isn’t a long book. It’s just packed full of great ideas and great writing and will change your life.

Your life, I tell you!

Unfortunately, if you only ever hear “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles,” you may end up missing out.

Suits calls that the “portable” version of his definition in The Grasshopper (chapter 3, p. 43). The first time Suits published that definition, however — in an obscure 1973 collection of essays — he called it “only approximately accurate” (Bernard Suits, “The Elements of Sport,” The Philosophy of Sport: A Collection of Original Essays, ed. Robert G. Osterhoudt [Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 1973], 55). [Click here for a PDF scan]

So, we need to look at Suits’s full definition.

Suits’s Full Definition of Game Playing

Suits’s full definition of game playing is on the same page — in the prior sentence. But no one ever quotes it because . . . well, look at it:

To play a game is to attempt to achieve a specific state of affairs [prelusory goal], using only means permitted by rules [lusory means], where the rules prohibit use of more efficient in favour of less efficient means [constitutive rules], and where the rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity [lusory attitude].

Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia (3rd ed., Broadview Press, 2014), p. 43

“What in the heck does that mean?” you reasonably ask.

“I couldn’t even finish it,” you reasonably add.

And I equally-reasonably respond as follows.

Unpacking Suits’s Definition

Here is a pictorial representation of Suits’s full definition of game playing:

The small white target in the center of the above image is what Suits calls the game’s “prelusory goal” (ch. 3, p. 38). It is usually something simple — and boring — like getting a ball into a net, or getting a ball across a line, or getting yourself across a line, or writing three Xs (or Os) in a line.

Why “prelusory”? Its prior (“pre-“) to the game (“-lusory”).

But what does that mean? Well, you can describe it without describing how the game wants you to achieve it. (See ch. 4 for details.)

In soccer (sorry, “association football”), there are a bunch of rules you have to follow as you try to get the ball into the net. But someone just learning about the sport can understand what it means for the ball to be in the net even if they haven’t yet learned that players aren’t allowed to use their hands to get the ball there.

Means and Methods

Once you understand the rules of a game, you realize that players aren’t just trying to achieve their game’s simple, boring (“prelusory”) goal. They are trying to achieve it in a particular way.

A tic-tac-toe player isn’t just trying to get three Xs in a row. Their full goal is something more like this: to-get-three-Xs-in-a-row-by-taking-turns-with-someone-who-is-trying-to-write-three-Os-in-a-row-in-the-same-spots-they-are-trying-to-draw-three-Xs.

This more complex goal includes the game’s simpler, more boring (“prelusory”) goal. That’s why the diagram contains two targets (the larger of which contains the smaller).

This larger goal, furthermore, includes the way in which that simpler goal is to be achieved: using the tools and techniques that the rules allow.

Suits call’s the more complex goal the game’s “lusory” goal (ch. 3, pp. 38-39). But he also just calls it “winning” (p. 39). You can achieve the boring, simple goal of a game in many ways — that is why there are multiple arrows leading to the smaller target. But some of those ways will be cheating — that is why one of the arrows is X-ed out.

If you want to actually win the game — if that is your goal — then you have to get the ball into the net (or three Xs in a line) by following the rules.

Challenges

While a game’s “prelusory” goal is often simple, bland, and boring, a game’s “lusory” goal (winning; achieving-the-prelusory-goal-using-the-methods-allowed-by-the-game) is often quite interesting. But why?

Because it’s challenging. (See ch. 3, p. 34)

Sometimes the challenges imposed on players are themselves simple. In a foot race, you try to get to the finish line first. (That’s your “prelusory” goal.)

But you aren’t allowed to start by standing on the finish line, or even by standing next to it. No. You have to start at least 100 meters away, and a lot can happen in 100 meters. What’s not allowed to happen, however, is tripping your opponents (ch. 3, p. 39), or hopping on a bicycle (ch. 5, p. 58).

“Getting to the finish line by starting far enough away that other people have a chance of getting there first, but trying to run faster than them so you get there first,” is the more interesting, more challenging “lusory” goal of foot races.

Upping the Complexity

With other games, however, the challenges are more involved. In basketball, you’re trying to get a ball through a hoop. That’s your “prelusory” goal. But they put the hoop several feet above your head and they turn it parallel to the ground. Then they tell you that throwing the ball upward through the hoop doesn’t count. You have to somehow get the ball above the hoop (which is already above you), and have it drop in from the top.

To make matters worse, they then put five other people in between you and the hoop, and give them the job of stopping you. You can’t just walk over to a conveniently-placed hoop and drop the ball in. You have to first overcome all the obstacles the game has put in your way.

Inefficiency

So, games not only have goals; they have structures (set-ups, “rules”) that limit the ways in which players are allowed to pursue their goals. And the ways in which players are allowed to pursue the game’s goals are usually challenging in some way.

Suits talks about the creation of challenge in terms of restrictions and limitations (e.g., ch. 3, p. 40). There tend to be multiple ways in which you could achieve any given goal. Some of those paths to the goal will be more efficient and others will be less. And, Suits argues, you will always find the most efficient path in the group of forbidden paths. Players are restricted to inefficient means.

It would be more efficient to cross the finish line, for example, if you could start closer. It would be more efficient to get the ball through the hoop if you could do so on a court not filled with opponents. It would be more efficient to write three Xs in a row if you didn’t have to take turns with another player who writes Os in all the places you wanted to write Xs.

Or, to use a different sort of example, it would be much more efficient for Mario to get to the flagpole if he could start right next to it. And even if he couldn’t start right next to it, it would be more efficient to get there if there weren’t massive holes in the ground, giant green pipes, and dangerous enemies he had to jump over. And even if those things were there, it would be more efficient if there just wasn’t gravity and he could fly over them all.

So, in setting up their games to be interesting, game designers usually try to create challenges. But whether or not you find their creations challenging, you will always find that they require you to act inefficiently.

The Playful (“Lusory”) Attitude

A game designer can’t make their game too inefficient or pursuing the game’s goal will change from being an interesting challenge to being a frustrating chore. But the right kind of inefficiency will actually attract players (ch. 3, p. 32-33).

Why? We accept inefficiency if it is necessary for safety, or if it is required in order to act morally, Suits points out. But if it is neither of those, we call the inefficiency “bureaucratic red tape” and decry it to the heavens (ch. 3, pp. 33, 40-41).

Except in games.

The Journey, the Destination, or Both

There are three things that we might value in any goal-directed activity.

(1) The most obvious is the goal of that activity, considered separately from whatever means are used to achieve it. For example, someone might dislike writing, but like books so much that they will put up with writing in order to get a finished book. For them, it’s the destination, not the journey.

(2) The second is the means or methods for achieving that goal, considered independent of the goal toward which they aim. For example, a person might have to drive to some meeting they would rather avoid, and yet enjoy driving their fancy sports car to get there. For them, it’s the journey, not the destination.

(3) The third thing we might value in any activity is the whole thing: pursuing-some-goal-by-way-of-some-means. Instead of valuing the goal independent of (and perhaps even as opposed to) the means, and instead of valuing the means independent of (and perhaps even as opposed to) the goal, you might value the particular process of pursuing a particular goal. While valuing the journey and destinations for themselves, you might also enjoy the journey because of where it gets you and the destination because of how you got there.

Holistic Gaming

Suits insists that you will never understanding why players play games if you see games as activities primarily focused on their purported goals (ch. 3, p. 41). So, option (1) is out. But that still leaves options 2 and 3.

C. Thi Nguyen has argued convincingly — to me, at least — that you need to genuinely value the goal you are pursuing in the sort of game playing Suits describes. You don’t have to value getting the ball across the line or into a hole outside the game; but for the duration of the game, you need to care a lot about ball locations.

As independent confirmation, consider playing golf. More specifically, consider a person who just loves hitting golf balls with golf clubs. For them, clubs and balls are toys. They don’t particularly care where the balls end up; they just enjoy the experience of swinging the club, feeling and hearing the club connect with the ball, and watching the ball go zooming off into the distance

That activity would count as playing around with golf stuff, but not playing playing a round of golf. Right? RIGHT?

In contrast, consider someone who enjoys actually playing the game of golf. They’re probably a Republican Senator, or the type of person who hangs out with Republican Senators.

But let’s ignore that, for the moment. Instead, ask yourself whether they would be as happy spending their Saturdays whacking golf balls in any old direction as they are whacking golf balls in the direction of holes in the ground.

I think the fact that people play rounds of golf (rather than “just playing around” with golf equipment) is evidence that golf’s particular goal is key to what golfers value. Surely the clubs and balls are toys for them, just as much as they are for someone who is merely playing around. And surely they enjoy hitting golf balls with golf clubs as an experience just as much as someone who is just playing around.

However, a golfer must value even more the hitting of golf balls with golf clubs in an attempt to sink those balls into holes. That is, golfers must value both the whacking and the sinking, the whacking as a means to the sinking, and the sinking because it is achieved by the whacking. (Compare Suits’s discussions of golf: ch. 3, pp. 25, 26, 28, 32, 35, etc.)

𝅘𝅥𝅮 All Together Now (All Together Now!) 𝅘𝅥𝅮

So, here once again is Suits’s definition of game playing, but as an image:

This, being interpreted, is as follows:

1. Small target:
   the basic “prelusory” goal of the game (e.g., getting a ball into a net)
2. Arrows:
   ways of achieving that “prelusory” goal (e.g., kicking the ball without ever using your hands; carrying it and throwing it with your hands; cutting the net and sneaking it in by hand when nobody’s looking; firing it from a cannon; starting the game with the ball already in the net)
3. Curved or winding arrows:
   inefficient ways of achieving the “prelusory” goal (e.g., kicking without using your hands)
4. Straight, but X-ed out arrow:
   a more efficient — but disallowed — way of achieving the “prelusory” goal (e.g., carrying it by hand)
5. Large target:
   the player’s “lusory” goal (to achieve the prelusory goal in the ways allowed)

In this image, note that the outer target presents the entire activity (the means/methods/paths and their goal) as being together what the player is aiming at. They combine to make up the bull’s eye.

Furthermore, whether there is anything beyond the general goal of engaging in that activity (e.g., the additional goal of gaining prize money or prestige by winning) is left out of the diagram. This is my attempt to represent Suits’s claim that in playing a game, we accept the rules of the game at least because we are aiming to participate in the activity of playing the game and those rules define that activity. (See ch. 13.)

To decide how well or poorly this theory of games works, it would be good to try to analyze a few games from its point of view. But this post is already too long. So, maybe next time.

The post Suits on the Structure of Games appeared first on Micah Tillman.

Classical Philosophy in the West: “What Is There?”

When we focus on the first question, we are interested in what sorts of things exist. Is everything made of matter, or are there also spiritual things? Is there a 9th planet, and does Pluto count? How many sexes are there, and what determines your sex? Can all qualities (like colors) be reduced to quantities (like wavelengths)?

Asking and answering versions of the “What is there?” question is called “ontology” or “metaphysics.” In the classical Western tradition, this was called “First Philosophy.” In order to think well, you had to start by figuring out what sort of world you lived in, what sorts of things were in that world, and what sort of thing you were.

Once you had a clear answer to the “What is there?” question, classical philosophers thought it was important to move on and ask the other three questions I listed above. Classical philosophers in the West didn’t just do ontology/metaphysics. However, they did prefer to start with ontology/metaphysics.

Modern Philosophy in the West: “How Do We Know?”

In the modern era — starting with what we now call “the Renaissance” — philosophical opinion shifted in the West. Dissatisfied with the results of classical philosophy, philosophers tried to start over with the second question I listed above: “How do we know?” Ontology/metaphysics was no longer First Philosophy. First Philosophy in the Modern era was epistemology.

Epistemology is the study of how we know things — do we have to use our senses, or can we figure out some things just by thinking? Epistemology involves asking what distinguishes knowing something from merely believing it — is it a matter of how strong your belief is or the quality of your evidence? Epistemology studies what it means for a belief to be true or false, and how that truth and falsity might spread from belief to belief.

Modern philosophers didn’t stick to epistemology exclusively, of course. They did as much or more work on the other three questions I listed above. What distinguished their attempts at thinking clearly, however, was where they thought we should start. Get the question of how we know settled, and you’re in a much better position for dealing with the others.

The Classical-to-Modern Transition

What caused the modern shift from “What is there?” to “How do we know?” I think it was due — at least in part — to the fact that one question naturally follows the other. If someone tells you, “There is a god, and that god lives in the sea,” you will likely respond, “Oh really? How do you know?” And if the other person can’t provide us with a satisfactory answer, we take that as a reason to ignore their ontological/metaphysical claim.

A second reason for the shift may be the fact that when you find the result of a process dissatisfying, it is natural to ask what went wrong with the process. And if the process in question is, “Doing philosophy,” it makes sense to ask how we might do philosophy better. So, from thinking about the world, we shift to thinking about thinking. And if you’re thinking about thinking, and if thinking well involves things like “coming to true beliefs” and “distinguishing knowledge from error,” then you’re doing epistemology.

Starting the Modern-to-Postmodern Transition

Modern philosophers in the West tried to fix the status quo in philosophy by reexamining how philosophy was done, by “going meta.” If thinking wasn’t working well, we needed to examine thinking itself and work out the kinks.

Postmodern philosophers, however, were no more satisfied with the results of modern philosophy than the moderns had been with classical philosophy. Modern philosophy — and the science, technology, and politics it inspired — had done many good things for the world. And yet so much bad stuff was still present. In fact, so much bad stuff seemed to be the direct result — or perhaps even the basis — of that apparently-good stuff.

Consider, for example, that modern science and technology — backed by the epistemological focus of modern philosophy — meant both that the general quality of life in the West could be significantly increased, and that Western countries could engage in global colonialism. It meant both that many people could live healthier, happier lives, and that we could destroy each other (with atomic weapons) and the environment more effectively.

Consider, furthermore, the fact that so many of the politicians, “thought leaders,” entrepreneurs, inventors, etc. that were creating and/or enabling this new status quo would only ever acknowledge the positive sides of things. What is “good for us, here, and now” tends to be treated as “good, pure and simple” while everything negative gets ignored.

In a world full of such promise and such willful blindness, no wonder some philosophers once again found themselves wanting to reevaluate how philosophy is done.

Completing the Modern-To-Postmodern Transition

As a response to modernism — and modern philosophy’s epistemological focus — much of postmodern philosophy focuses on a description and critique of “knowledge production.” How do beliefs come to be treated as knowledge? What sorts of authority gets granted to people who claim to have knowledge? How are those claims of knowledge — and authority — used to liberate and/or oppress?

One prominent aspect of this examination of the (un)ethical uses of so-called-“knowledge” is the description and critique of “social construction.” How do we end up believing that some people are bad and dangerous, while thinking that other people are good and safe? That is, how do people come to be “set up” or “construed as” or “constructed as” good and evil?

Similarly, where do our assumptions come from that some ways of doing business, conducting foreign policy, using resources, etc. are healthy and others are not? How do some societies end up thinking government-provided healthcare is good, while others end up thinking it is actually evil? Where do the “experts” whose opinions get spread around get their epistemic (“knowledge-related”) authority, for good or ill? How do they manage to become “seen as” or “taken as” or “constructed as” authorities?

Postmodern Philosophy in the West: “What Should We Do About It?”

Postmodern philosophers, therefore, have developed a reputation of being knowledge skeptics, of being critics of truth. They have come to be “constru[ct]ed as” relativists. Wherever you find a postmodern thinker, you will find someone apparently claiming there is no “Truth with a Capital T,” or someone using the word “knowledges” (plural) as if they believed that some people could have one set of facts, while others had an equally-(il)legitimate set of alternative facts.

But once you have a reputation for being a relativist who believes that truth is a matter of perspective, that there is no reality independent of our social constructs, that claims to knowledge are always power plays, you will inevitably end up with the reputation of being anti-knowledge, anti-truth, anti-goodness, and so on.

However, I think that “construction” of postmodernists is exactly wrong. If ontology/metaphysics was First Philosophy for classical thinkers in the West, and epistemology was First Philosophy for their modern successors, ethics is First Philosophy for postmodern philosophers. Rather than, “What is there?” or “How do we know?” postmodern philosophers start with the question, “What should we do about it?”

What Postmodernists Are Really Like

Nothing could be more clear to anyone than justice and injustice are to postmodernists. No one could be more passionate about right and wrong, good and bad. And no one could be more firmly on the side of justice, right, and goodness than a postmodernist.

A firm grounding in morality is where postmodernism begins. Then everything else is examined in light of that morality. Does a philosophical school, political tradition, religious sect, or economic system oppress others? Does it harm or exploit anyone or anything? Then that school, tradition, sect, or system’s claims to authority, their claims to “knowledge,” their claims about “reality” must be wrong — and a postmodernist will expend every last drop of their mental, emotional, and creative energy in deconstructing those claims. They will painstakingly expose how those claims are developed, spread, supported, and defended.

Rather than starting with a vision of reality (ontology/metaphysics), then judging theories of knowledge (epistemology) and ethics against that more fundamental vision, postmodernists start with an ethic, then judge theories of reality and knowledge against that ethic. They agree with Plato, Aristotle, and the medieval Scholastics: the One is the True is the Good. Thus if something is not good, it can neither be real nor true. It must be fake and false.

Reality and truth do exist for postmodernists, in other words. It’s just that reality and truth are moral, first and foremost. “What should we do about it?” is the question with which they think we ought to begin. Ethics is First Philosophy in postmodernism.

Conclusion

Well, now I have gone and done it. I have offered a spirited defense of postmodernism. And I’m not even a postmodernist!

Not being a postmodernist, I can only end with the following questions: Is my understanding of postmodernism correct? Was my defense successful? I sure hope so!

Let me know in the comments.

The post What’s the Difference Between Classical, Modern, and Postmodern Philosophy? appeared first on Micah Tillman.

Some L-systems generate fractals, while others don’t. I don’t yet get the difference, but I’ve been exploring various systems in hope of understanding. Basically, what I’ve been doing is modifying the L-systems for the Dragon Curve and C Curve fractals.

Here are some of the fractals that I’ve stumbled across, using the Unity game engine. To hunt for fractals yourself, try the app I created.

Flower Dragon

• Seed: “X”
• Replacement Rules:
  • “X” becomes “XrFYFrX”
  • “Y” becomes “YlFXFlY”
• Interpretation Rules:
  • “F” means, “step forward, drawing a line”
  • “r” means, “turn right 60 degrees”
  • “l” means, “turn left 60 degrees”
  • “X” and “Y” are ignored

River Dragon

• Seed: “X”
• Replacement Rules:
  • “X” becomes “YFlXFrY”
  • “Y” becomes “YFX”
• Interpretation Rules:
  • “F” means, “step forward, drawing a line”
  • “r” means, “turn right 90 degrees”
  • “l” means, “turn left 90 degrees”
  • “X” and “Y” are ignored

Hoth Horde C Curve

• Seed: “X”Replacement Rules:
  • “F” becomes “rFlFr”
  • “X” becomes “YFX”
  • “Y” becomes “XFY”
• Interpretation Rules:
  • “F” means, “step forward, drawing a line”
  • “r” means, “turn right 45 degrees”
  • “l” means, “turn left 45 degrees”
  • “X” and “Y” are ignored

This curve reminds me of the Battle of Hoth; specifically, it looks to me like the approaching line of AT-ATs (though the curve’s “representation” of an AT-AT is too wide/squat).

Forest C Curve

• Seed: “X”
• Replacement Rules:
  • “X” becomes “FrXllXrF”
• Interpretation Rules:
  • “F” means, “step forward, drawing a line”
  • “r” means, “turn right 45 or 135 degrees”
  • “l” means, “turn left 45 or 135 degrees”
  • “X” is ignored

Architecture C Curve

• Seed: “X”
• Replacement Rules:
  • “F” becomes “lFl”
  • “G” becomes “lGl”
  • “X” becomes “XFYFX”
  • “Y” becomes “YGY”
• Interpretation Rules:
  • “F” means, “step forward, drawing a line”
  • “G” means, “step backward, drawing a line”
  • “r” means, “turn right 45 or 135 degrees”
  • “l” means, “turn left 45 or 135 degrees”
  • “X” and “Y” are ignored

At 45 degrees, the curve appears to consist of classical western columns, while at 135 degrees, the curve reminds me of pagodas, for some reason.

Thornbush Diamond Curve

• Seed: “FX” (also works with just “X”)
• Replacement Rules:
  • “F” becomes “Fl”
  • “G” becomes “Gr”
  • “X” becomes “XFrY”
  • “Y” becomes “YFlX”
• Interpretation Rules:
  • “F” means, “step forward, drawing a line”
  • “G” means, “step backward, drawing a line”
  • “r” means, “turn right 60 degrees”
  • “l” means, “turn left 60 degrees”
  • “X” and “Y” are ignored

This appears to be a version of the Levy Diamond, which you will also find among the number line fractals. One thing that is particularly interesting to me about this version, however, is that it is not symmetrical. Instead of the “left” and “right” halves of the curve “pointing” toward the center, both point left.

Norwegian Coast Curve

• Seed: “FX”
• Replacement Rules:
  • “F” becomes “Fl”
  • “X” becomes “XFrY”
  • “Y” becomes “XlFY”
• Interpretation Rules:
  • “F” means, “step forward, drawing a line”
  • “r” means, “turn right 45 degrees”
  • “l” means, “turn left 45 degrees”
  • “X” and “Y” are ignored

For some reason, this one reminds me of the southwestern coastline of Norway.

Digital Vine Curve

In case it isn’t clear (as it wasn’t to me, at first) that this is a fractal, this is what happens when you zoom in:

• Seed: “FX”
• Replacement Rules:
  • “F” becomes “FXY”
  • “G” becomes “GG”
  • “X” becomes “XrF”
  • “Y” becomes “YlG”
• Interpretation Rules:
  • “F” means, “step forward, drawing a line”
  • “G” means, “step backward, drawing a line”
  • “r” means, “turn right 90 degrees”
  • “l” means, “turn left 90 degrees”
  • “X” and “Y” are ignored

I think this may be my favorite of the lot. It’s so weird.

The post L-System Fractals appeared first on Micah Tillman.