(2021-07-06) Chapin A Brief Practical Guide To Being An Infinite Player

Sasha Chapin: A Brief Practical Guide to Being an Infinite Player. I was riveted, moved, and completely annoyed (by Finite And Infinite Games)... what an irritating style of writing!

It’s just weird to spend a whole book advocating for an infinite existence without furnishing a simple example of the material attributes of such a life. It’s also weird that a book about being playful doesn’t have a single joke in it.

come up with practical implementations of his principles

Encourage Your Friends

sometimes a little bit of affirmation can push someone to take a first step. Make a point of occasionally asking people what they want out of life, then asking them how that’s going.

Create Generative Social Activities

create social events that spark new friendships and possibilities. Host a party with people you know well and don’t, invite a shy person, make them comfortable. Share your weird hobbies. Explore new parts of a city with people you know

you don’t even need to be there to be prosocial. Introduce people to each other who are cool

Do Mentorship, Either Formally or Informally

Bloom’s 2 Sigma Problem, it basically boils down to this: individual, one-on-one education makes classroom education look silly. It’s just so, so much better

Two hours of personalized coaching can have dramatic effects—if someone is trying to do something you’ve done, they might be facing a simple bottleneck they’re unaware of, or making some sort of easily connected systemic error.

Make Reality More Beautiful and Complex for the Sake of It

Send people weird postcards. Restore old objects. Be sillier. Write haunting poetry and heartbreaking memoir. Start your own subculture. Recreate your dreams. When someone gets mad at you on the internet, send them a playlist of Brahms intermezzos. When you get mad at someone, draw a caricature of your madness.

Open-Source Your Transformations

By sharing these resources with others, you can partially export whatever good fortunate you’ve experienced.

*Here are a bunch of things that were transformative for me.

• Meeting other weirdos after being bullied and alone, through indiscriminate extroversion
• Failing at a series of artistic endeavors, accumulating interesting experiences therein, before succeeding in one
• Lamictal, cardio, sleep, psilocybin, ketamine
• Embracing my masculinity through combat sports and lifting
• Reading weird spiritual self-help books
• Reading non-weird self-help books
• Committing to a great relationship immediately upon meeting someone great