C. Thi Nguyen

theguardian.comThe Score by C Thi Nguyen review – a brilliant warning about the gamification of everyday lifeFrom Duolingo to GDP, how an obsession with keeping score can subtly undermine human flourishing

12 Jan

You sweat in your basement for years writing a book, working that nobody will ever read it - or that they will think you are a complete raving idiot, but then you read an astonishing, soul-warming, got-everything review like this and suddenly you feel like your whole life is not actually a waste.

Tim Clare@timclare.bsky.social

I have a new review in @theguardian.com today, & contrived to write it in such a way they illustrated it with Mario Odyssey. Very happy. It's of C Thi Nguyen's new nonfiction The Score - an excellent game-related book that... well, just read the review: www.theguardian.com/books/2026/j...

C. Thi Nguyen reposted

Caro Flores

@floresophize.bsky.social

Social media doesn't just feed you bad information. It trains you in how to treat information: who to trust, how much evidence is enough, what counts as a good explanation. And it trains you for a world that doesn't exist. New @PPR (yay!) and free here: philpapers.org/rec/FLOBMS

doi.orgBeyond Misinformation: Social Media and the Sculpting of Epistemic AgencyThe dominant account of social media's epistemic harms focuses on the spread of misinformation and the production of false beliefs at scale. This paper argues that the misinformation narrative, whate...

C. Thi Nguyen reposted

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)

@dialhforhagai.bsky.social

25 July

Wile E. Coyote, despaired, takes a bucket of paint and a brush and paints a beautiful two-bedroom house on a mountainside. He paints a beautiful coyote wife in the window, and two adorable coyote kids running around in the yard. He tries to enter this new coyote life, but it is inaccessible to him

C. Thi Nguyen reposted

Chris Plante

@plante.bsky.social

16 Mar

If you read one book about games this year, make it The Score. Here’s my interview with its author, the brilliant philosopher @add-hawk.bsky.social

postgame.substack.comGames Can Save Us from the Hell of Silicon Valley OptimizationGamification culture was a mistake.

11 Mar

Mel sez: “The nice thing about daylight savings time now is that everything clicks over automatically and you don’t even need to think about it. Only the oven remembers.” ONLY THE OVEN REMEMBERS

thescorebooktalk.splashthat.comthescorebooktalk.splashthat.com

11 Mar

The final live book launch event for THE SCORE is tomorrow, in NYC: a New School/NYU. I'll be in conversation with Sam Anderson, author of Boomtown - which was one of my soul-inspirations for my book. Free, but you need to register. thescorebooktalk.splashthat.com

11 Mar

I got to chat with Sam Anderson while I was writing, and he gave me the most important advice I got: which was to trust your reader, because they're smart, they're generous, and they want to be there.

26 Feb

My buddy, who loved boxing, explains his new love of tango: “It’s like cooperative boxing.”

Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out. As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class. Here's what happened:

At least, it was better than anything else I've thought of and tried on my own.

Anyway: here's to my students. They took it seriously, they argued it out, and they came up with something that I doubted at first, but ended admiring more than any system I've designed on my own.

In general the class vibe was: that they knew they were going into a work environment in which AI would be a tempting tool, and that some of them would want to use it in various ways, but that they also wanted to have systems to keep them honest about actually developing real thinking skills.

And I think... it mostly worked? I mean, I'm sure the system is cheatable to somebody who was trying to break it. But for a system designed to mostly get students actually engaged in the critical act of thinking, without a punitive ChatGPT detection system... it was... really good?

(PS, we also stole a thing I've been doing for other reasons as protection for my soul. I have traditionally said I will default give students medium-intensity comments, but students can request lighter commenting or heavier commenting.

We decided I should do a default light-commenting, and hopefully anybody that AI-wrote the final paper wouldn't request heavier commenting, and it would save me from heavily commenting on an AI paper.)

And it was... amazing? Like, the quality of discussion was extremely high, students ended up doing a ton of live thinking and live tweaking and pushing on each other. It wasn't the same as writing, but it most of the students were seriously thinking, and pushing, and applying.

Their idea and goal was to keep each other honest about actually understanding the material by demanding repeated presentations to each other in class.... and it mostly worked?

The second workshop was one in which they wanted me to break them into working groups based around similar topics, where they would continue to workshop, refine, and throw ideas at each other.

And the third workshop was going to be a presentation of their ideas in outline, and the fourth workshop was a simple draft reading workshop.

I often run, in the past, a kind of traditional workshop structure. They come in with an outline of their paper, and workshop it. Then a draft, then workshop it. Etc.

They hammered out a much more complicated set of group workshops, participation in which would constitute the majority of their final project grade. The first workshop was a "brainstorming" workshop, where they mixed up cases they were interested with theories, and helped each other design papers.

By the midpoint of the class, I was pretty bitter. It actually started looking like a counterexample to the ideal of inclusive democracy. That maybe I should go back to being the authoritarian technocrat, that my teaching experience was much more important.

And then we did their assignment structure they built, and it was fantastic. Like, way better than anything I've designed on my own.

A majority of the groups came up with some kind of process that emphasized live, in-class interactions, and non-AI-usable live interaction. Since I gave them the constraint that I didn't have time to orally examine each one separately, they came up with various group in-class exercises.

Then they presented - and the miserable compromises came. A lot of them hated each others' suggestions and they ended up cobbling together what looked to me like a terrible, misshapen assignment structure of what looked to me like BS-filled group participation assignments, at cross-purposes.

Two general themes they agreed on immediately: 1. If they used AI for everything, they would learn nothing, and come out of college with no valuable skills, and be replaceable by an AI. 2. All available AI detection software was unreliable and unjust. (I agree with this.)

The discussion process was amazing. It created some of the best and most engaged conversations in class I've had. My theory is that I *staked* the conversation - I made it important, and put my money where my mouth was by giving them real power, and real consequences.

I told them they needed to give me a ChatGPT policy, and if there was a ban, they needed to give me a method of detection and enforcement. I also told them if this ended up with me carefully commenting on mostly AI-written papers, I would probably quit the profession.

Students seemed to take it super seriously. A few wanted to abuse the power to design an easy class, but the vast majority seemed invested in thinking about what they wanted out of education, what skills they needed in the new era, and what assignments were *for*.

And as I was doing all this, I started to think: why haven't I done this before? Isn't it a form of hypocrisy to have a class where I worry about authoritarian systems - and then to impose my own assignment structure without any input from those it rules?

Qualification: 60% of the class evaluation was based around semi-traditional in-class exams. I was letting them design the "final project" assignment which was about 30% of the class. So: not a complete democracy. Sorry.

This was crucial - it really primed students to be concerned about what parts of their skill - and what parts of their humanity - might erode if they unthinkingly used automation. It set the tone in I think a crucial way.

We also did a bunch of work on democratic inclusiveness, and various theories that the point of democracy is that no single authority can account for all the important reasons. That every single participant in a society has a different angle, a different form of relevant knowledge.

Background: this is for a cross-listed class, that was both Tech and Design Ethics, and Political Philosophy. As part of the run-up, we read a bunch of stuff about the impact of technology and automation on human skill and learning. In particular, we read @shannonvallor.bsky.social on deskilling.

Vallor's paper really hit the students hard - it was about up-skilling cases where automation replaces a useless skill and gives us more time, vs. cases where automation replaces a crucial skill and de-skills us, makes us fall out of practice. Her core cases are about AI-based moral judgment.

My proposal: as the first project, students groups would propose different policies for ChatGPT use in their final project, including radically restructuring the final project. Because things might have to change, deeply. And then they would argue, and vote, and I would do whatever they said.

C. Thi Nguyen reposted

Jen Jennings

@jenjennings.bsky.social

nytimes.comWhy Keeping Score Isn’t Fun Anymore

If your students need a reading on purpose - especially purpose beyond the metrics school rewards - I'd highly recommend C. Thi Nguyen's, The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game. @add-hawk.bsky.social, thank you for this gift of a book. Radiant and animated by joy.

C. Thi Nguyen reposted

Chris Bertram

@crookedfootball.bsky.social

20 Jan

Always a good sign when you find yourself interrupting your reading to share a nugget with those around you. A rare thing when the author @add-hawk.bsky.social is a philosopher! Thanks to @dsquareddigest.bsky.social for alerting me. Great book!

C. Thi Nguyen reposted

Embrace the Void

@etvpod.bsky.social

voidpod.comThe Score with C. Thi Nguyen — Embrace The VoidMy returning guest this week is C. Thi Nguyen, a professor of philosophy at the University of Utah, and author of the new book The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game .  We discuss t...

New ETV is out for everyone! I'm joined by @add-hawk.bsky.social to discuss his new book The Score. Really fun chat on the nature of games, the challenges of society at scale, and whether the problem is bigger than just capitalism. Enjoy!

C. Thi Nguyen reposted

Natalie Alana Ashton

@natalan.bsky.social

14 Jan

just had the idea "richard scarry tarot deck" and im utterly sick that it doesn't appear to already be a thing

It’s book release day! I’m back on social media! I feel slightly awkward about it because part of the book is about how social media transforms your motivations for communication! But honestly writing a book is lonely, weird basement-work, and now I want to talk to people about this weird jank.

nytimes.comWhy Keeping Score Isn’t Fun Anymore

Never, in a million kabillion years, when I decided to say "screw it" to mainstream philosophy and started writing about the philosophy of games, could I have imagined that this road would take me down to having the goddamn NY Times profile me and my new book. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/b...