Math Games with Bad Drawings

First annotation on Feb 13th, 2023. Last on Jun 29th, 2023.

6 quotes

“All good thinking is play,” writes Mason Hartman. She means that our best thoughts explore ideas the way a baby chimp explores the forest, with a kind of freedom and abandon. It’s not a game of Parcheesi, with every move geared toward victory; rather, it’s a game of make-believe, a game of “yes, and…,” a game passed from generation to generation, a torch that never goes dark. “A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,” wrote James Carse, “an infinite game for the purpose of continuing to play.”Feb 13 2023 4:21AM

Humans are not, by nature, abstract thinkers. Quite the opposite. We are creatures of the concrete: animals who experience appetites, daydreams, and dizzy spells—sometimes all at once, if the Food Network is on. We think in particulars. That’s why isomorphisms matter: They transport us from one set of particulars to another. An isomorphism is an abstract bridge between islands of experience.Jun 29 2023 3:09AM
James Ernest created this matchmaking game at the request of “a middle school teacher who was looking for a good interactive classroom game on the subject of love and marriage.” It requires at least players, and is suitable for a nerdy party or partying classroom.Jun 29 2023 3:12AM
All at once, you want to marry fast, marry close, and marry up. These impulses pull against each other, raising tricky questions.Jun 29 2023 3:13AM

There is a spooky connection between combinatorial complexity and our instinctive sense of fun. With eerie, unconscious consistency, we seek a special middle ground: puzzles whose solutions are hard to find, yet easy to appreciate once found.Jun 29 2023 3:14AM
Game What You’re Combining The , the Better Poker Cards More Aces Scrabble Letters More Plausibly a Word Jenga Blocks More Stable Twister Limbs Fewer Displaced Internal Organs Dominos Dominos More Dominos Cards Against Humanity Offensive Tropes Less You Play This GameJun 29 2023 3:15AM

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