Derek Thompson

The religion scholar James Carse once wrote that there are two kinds of games in life, finite and infinite.

A finite game is played to win.

There are clear victors and losers.

An infinite game is played to keep playing.

The goal is to maximize winning across all participants.

Debate is a finite game.

Marriage is an infinite game.

Midterm elections are finite games.

American democracy is an infinite game.

In the last few decades, I think modern society has become very good at winning finite games, often at the cost of the infinite ones.

The analytics revolution, which caught fire in baseball under the nickname Moneyball, led to a series of offensive and defensive adjustments that I once called catastrophically successful.

Seeking more strikeouts, managers increased the number of pitchers per game and average velocity and spin rate per pitch.

Hitters answered by increasing the launch angles of their swings, raising the odds of both a home run and a strikeout.

These decisions, I think, were all correct from a mathematical standpoint, but they made baseball dull.

Singles plunged to record lows, strikeouts soared, hits per game fell to levels not seen since the 1910s.

Similar analytics revolutions have come for the NBA with its flurry of three-point shots or 2010's big-budget Hollywood with its devotion to comic book franchise installments.

In all cases, the math got smarter and the products got worse.

The finite games were won and the infinite games were lost.

Lately, I've been thinking about how this idea applies to our day-to-day lives, to my own life.

We are surrounded by metrics, work metrics, fitness metrics, health metrics.