Welcome to another episode of Breaking Math. Today we'll be diving deep into the captivating world of games and their profound impact on culture, strategy, and learning with none other than the esteemed Professor Marcus du Sautoy. A British mathematician, Simone Professor for Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, Fellow of New College Oxford, a chair formerly held by his Eminent Sir Richard Dawkins, and an author of popular
mathematics and science books, including around the world in 80 games. He was previously a Fellow of All Souls College Oxford, Autumn College Oxford, and served as President of the Math Medical Association, an Engineering and Physical Science Research Council Senior Media Fellow, and a Royal Society University Research Fellow. Join us as we embark on a journey through the universitality and cultural significance of games, from ancient traditions to the cutting
edge of technology. In this episode, we'll explore how games differ across regions like India and China, dissect the balance between strategy and chance, and reflect on the educational importance of games that have been played or banned throughout history. Professor du Sautoy also illuminates the power and prowess of AI and modern gameplay, with an unforgettable discussion
about a groundbreaking move by AlphaGo. But that's not all. We'll touch on the expanding field of NFTs and blockchain and gaming, and how they can change the face of digital ownership and fairness. Our conversation with Professor du Sautoy will span across a variety of topics, revealing the connections between games and intellectual disciplines such as anthropology, philosophy, and psychology. It's all right here on Breaking Math.
Before we begin today's interview, I have a quick announcement. The Breaking Math podcast will be doing a giveaway of the book around the world and 88 games by Marcus du Sautoy. Just stay tuned to the end of this episode for instructions. Also follow us on all social media, that is at Breaking Math Media on Instagram, as well as at Breaking
Math Pod on X, which used to be Twitter. Soon we will be at Breaking Math Media on all platforms, but if you search for either at Breaking Math Media or at Breaking Math Pod, you should find it. Just follow the instructions on our social media posts and you should be eligible for being in a drawing for a free copy of the book. In previous conversations, we've had this really long pre-interview discussion, and it
was some of our most awesome content, and I never recorded it. As a note to self, I record everything and usually just chop it off once I do my little intro, which we haven't even done yet. Secondly, and this, I'm glad I'm recording, this book has almost changed our podcast strategy. We are a math podcast, but reading this book, I'm exploding with ideas for how to create a card game, kind of like Magic the Gathering, but instead of Magic
characters, mathematicians and physicists. I'm sorry, I'm pretty good with that. Oh, fabulous. And there's something else that I wrote in the show notes that I'll probably allude to
in our actual interview as well, or I'll just cut this section in, who knows. This book had so much information both culturally but also mathematically in the history of leisure that I wanted to like hire a couple of high performing interns to make as many visual diagrams and Excel spreadsheets where you can make all kinds of lists and maps of different games that have a primarily creative element or a primary random strategy or a primary
probabilistic strategy. Like, make as many maps as you can, go crazy and then you can make a database for Find My Game. And you know what I mean? Like, you could do that with that. I was telling, Autumn, this, and Autumn was telling me that this is my first experience in the gaming literature. So as I understand from Autumn, some stuff like that may exist already. Is that right, Autumn? There has been like some mapping and I know that there's
been a few college courses taught on this. So it like my background is, so I went to Hampshire College. I'm not sure if you're familiar with them. They are a school that has like no grades. A lot of the like the famous origami mathematician Tom Hall went there. Also, there's been like seventh generation cleaning products. Stonyfield Farm Organic Yoga, Lupita Diango. I believe Kathy Nijimi's child went there. And there's just like a lot of big
names that come through. And along with that, there's a lot of tech giants. And over like 30 or 40% of the people that go on going to like studying really niche topics and go on to their PhDs. And like they specialize in a lot of games and game theory and board games. And it's people creating this from like the ground up. And I have like the privilege of going there. Amazing. And working with some of these folks. And they have like the one
of the like libraries for all the board games. And some of them are uncharted and unmapped like board games and some of them are half created. And you can go in there and like that sounds amazing. You know, it's not that dangerous. I'm not sure you ever come out. Yep. So some people don't. So like it just kind of fascinated me just reading through the book itself. And I'm like, this is something that I can see paralleling your work and other folks work.
And I'm like, this is what they make a game about that the game like Jumanji or something. You know what I mean? Like you could do a riff on Jumanji kind of like that where you just stuck in these board games or something between Jumanji and saw where it's like a horror movie, but it's also games. I don't know. My brain is getting creative here.
We did an early podcast on game theory where we did an imitation of saw where my co-host used the Adobe version of Photoshop, but for sound and I'm blanking on the name of it. What's the name of it? I forget. It's not audacity, but. There are my gosh is embarrassing. I should know this. The Adobe version of their sound. Okay, made my voice the exact same voice as the jigsaw in the movie saw. And he had this
whole long thing that we read at the very end of it. It was a device that would like tickle your feet or something. It was hilarious, but it was fun. It was fun. Sorry. That's not math related. We don't have to keep that. That's fine. Very good. So I actually think it's entirely appropriate to start the episode just with
all of the explosive ideas that came from this. And you know, even on my ideas here, I almost have more extensions on this book, which I'll probably have to write about in an email because I'm curious, you know, your other interviews about this book have other people approached you about extensions to do based on this book. Well, the interesting thing is that so many people come with new games that I've not encountered before. I mean, this was never meant to be an encyclopedic kind of book on
game. So it was always meant to be my favorite games and the ones that I encountered. And I realized that I can probably go around the world in 160 games now because of all the new things. I mean, you know, for example, there are interesting books which have games at their heart. So I put two in the as the games in my 80 games, one being the glass speed game, the by Herman Hess. But since then, you know, people have come back with really
interesting books that I didn't know about which have games at their heart. So that I'd love to put in another version of the book. So I think the extension will be, let me go around the world again and drop off in, you know, various different places that people said, you're, why didn't you go here? And I said, well, I can't be everywhere. So if you ever thought about maybe, I don't know if this would interest you or not,
depends on your, on your desires, making a wiki of it. So all the game enthusiasts can like insert a thing onto your landing page or some, you know, I mean, like that would grow it like a fractal. Yeah. There's a lot of that already out there, actually. And it was, you know, good resources actually out there for me helping to write this book. And it's one of the things that I always said, look, you're not going to
learn the rules of the game from reading this book. That's not the point of this book. And there are so many wonderful sites out there for board game geek kind of websites. Also, just fantastic YouTube channels. I mean, that's my go to place for when I'm learning a game for the first time is to go to these people who are wonderful, just condensing the game into 10 minutes on a YouTube video. I watch that and then I'm ready to share the
rules with my family because they kind of really distilled the essence. So it's great resources out there. And this is meant to me, you know, the thing about a wiki is that it's very non narrative based. And I wanted this, and that was one of the challenges of writing this book in a way, because it could have been very listy, it could have been very just like, and I really wanted to try and find some way to, to motivate people to
read it in a kind of narrative way. And so that's why I use kind of like Phillyus Fox journey around the world. And it sort of follows roughly the journey. But of course, I had a few kind of distractions on. I mean, Phillyus Fox never had to go to Australia or New Zealand. And I felt well, I need to at least spend a little bit of time there. And also just, you know, it follows quite a historical narrative. So it starts in the Middle East
in kind of ancient times and board games back to 5,000 years. So there's a kind of historical narrative and a geographical narrative. And so I think that was quite important to me. So I would love it for somebody else to then take what's happened there as the beginning to it like a wiki if they wanted to. But for me, the in a way, the challenge is going the other way, you know, to take this huge swath of people that have written about games,
wonderful things on about games and then choosing a pathway through that. And that's sort of what an author, the challenge of being an author is is how do I take you on a journey through something that you could probably anybody could go on just get lost on the internet some reading about games. But the point is I look, I'm going to curate for you my journey through this in a way that I think tells you a story.
Wow, very cool. And that's one element that I love with this. So one of the focuses of the breaking math podcast specifically is bringing together mathematics as well as arts and humanities and the challenge of doing that and explaining how those two, let's just say for lack of a better term, human activities work together and compliment each other. And I think that the historical elements were fascinating. The Buddha, the story
of the Buddha in this book, surprised me. I have a very limited, very western centric version of the Buddha that I've learned about. And when I read about all of the, the games that he banned, well, first of all, I was very sad about that. But then I thought about why, you know, like, is there an answer?
No, I agree. I was quite surprised why he banned games, especially because actually, as I talk about in the book, something like snakes and ladders had actually, you know, a very educational role in helping people to understand the impact of good and bad karma on their lives. So that game is actually about the challenge of reaching Navanna, Moxha, Paradise, and what you can help to make this version of your life, because interestingly,
snakes and ladders, you get reborn in the Indian version. So you don't wait trying to throw the score to get to the winning square. You go back to the beginning if you missed the winning square. So you go around and around sort of being reborn. So I was quite intrigued that why that's clearly a game which has kind of the idea of reaching Navanna at its heart. Yet the Buddha really didn't want it. Games as part of the journey to the list
followers would take part in. So yeah, I was a bit disappointed because, you know, I'm also quite keen on Buddhism as a religion. And there he is saying, no, you can't play any of these games. Yeah, let me, if I may, I want to, I want to read some of the list of games. Yeah, I'll ban them. Okay, okay. Summer salts, no doing summer salts. Any games with dice, you can't, sorry, games with dice, you can't play those. Any games with imaginary
rows or games played on boards with eight or ten rows. So, so you can't imagine playing chess. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I know. Don't even think about it. Okay. And I am going to take the liberty of doing a very quick aside, I want to do, I want to consult with my friends who are studying cognitive religion and anthropology because I'm interested in band things across culture. I am aware that there are schools of thought in Islam, for example, that ban
all stringed instruments, for example. And, you know, my question would be from an evolutionary standpoint, the utility and not only the utility, but the perception of things being somehow bad. How does that vary from culture to culture? And is there some explanation of not only the initial idea of the rules, but how they evolved and how context matters? Like, this is a whole, a whole area that I want to come back to because, you know, I love the, I
love my idea of the Buddha and the fact that, okay, okay, here we go, here we go. You can't play anything where you have, where you make pictures of things with red dye on your hand. So something like, Pictionary, you can't do any games where you guess your opponent's
thoughts. But children naturally, that's 21 questions out. You know, 21 questions. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, just 20 questions then or no, I'm just kidding, you know, I mean, like, like, and I guess I think, you know, just developmentally, I feel like out of just boredom and trying to exercise our brain, like, games are natural, like, games are as natural as scratching an
itch. I don't know. That's what I think. What was interesting about that list was it gave me some insight actually to some of the games that were around during that period. For example, one of the games I talk about is for example, one of the games I talk about is hopscotch. And hopscotch is a game that, you know, has Christian kind of resonances because they used to lay it out in kind of like a cross shape.
And the squares would be labeled a bit like the snakes and ladders, you know, the last one would be heaven and the other. You're not allowed to play if I remember something with, you know, stacks of blocks where you pull blocks out and they are. Yeah, that is about the one game on that list that I approve of. Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree. It's pretty interesting. I think a lot of the kind of goal of your podcast, because I think it's something that is so resonating
with which is the idea that mathematics is part of culture and humanities. And, you know, in a way that was I love this writing this book because you know many people love playing games and many people have a very Negative reaction to mathematics and to be able to use the games as a way to To show people no hold on actually what you're doing is playing some mathematics
You may not realize it, but that is at the heart. You're exploring the consequences of rules And there is lovely maths to make these games so wonderfully playable So you know the the hope is that people buy this because they think it's a book about games But actually then they realize oh no, this is a maths book, but it's actually much more fun than I thought it was gonna be so And I suppose I do that with a lot of my projects, you know, I do a lot of
In fact, I'm writing a new book at the moment. It's just called blueprints And it's about the way that creative artists use mathematical structures Sometimes knowingly sometimes intuitively sometimes discovering mathematical structures that perhaps we know about already
But they're making those discoveries within their artwork for the first time So you know that finding those resonances and showing people that maths isn't a siloed subject All on its own that it is just the language of the universe of nature Of humanity that that's sort of one of my kind of missions in life I've been like Exploring that essentially since but on a personal level since starting my journey with mathematics
I like to before like being a mathematician and engineer. I like to say that I'm an artist first So I've done a lot of work in Origami I've done origami dresses Incorporating a lot of those things and elements of the design into high level engineering
Yes, absolutely. And there's I do some work with an art college here in London St Martins School for art and design and they have a course which is mathematics for artists and it's the course Which is signed up for fastest by students there because they they suddenly realized by the time they're coming to Into university to college that these are skills they need and that the tragedy is why aren't we actually taking this back to
School level and making people realize earlier on because they suddenly realize no no these skills are gonna help me make things that I Can conceive of in my mind, but or even open up new structures that will Lead to new artwork. So yeah like What for example what I was working with some of my students on one of their Designs I'm like wait what's what's going to actually work Not only for optimization, but you also have to look at things from an aesthetic point of view
Do you want it to be structurally sound? Do you want it to be ugly? But it works and it's really what is going to take that Tat like you take that time and think about those things and And as engineers were not classically trained to think about that you think about usually the UX UI design of something But it's really where does that fine line of being an artist come in and saying I am in love with this piece and where do we narrate that right?
so I'll tell you one of the things that made me fall in love with mathematics and actually made me want to be a mathematician was reading a book when which my teacher recommended for me at school Which you may know called a mathematicians apology by GH Hardy
Yeah, and this is a book written by fantastic mathematician number theorist in Cambridge in the well, he rated it about 1940s But it's about he's writing about what it's like to be a mathematician and he describes it You know being a mathematician is is like being a painter or a poet And you are a maker of patterns and and he really stressed the creative side of being a mathematician You know a lot of people think mathematics is just the language to be able to do engineering for example
But he said no, no, that's the kind of boring bit of mathematics and actually there's a hugely creative part of mathematics And you know, I think that's why I decided To become a mathematician maybe rather than say a physicist or another scientist because I think there is More freedom within mathematics to create Imaginary worlds which are not describing the universe around us. You see in physics
You're sort of bound by the physical universe. You're trying to describe that and if your theory does not fit the physical universe Might be a beautiful theory But really it's not interesting. So it's thrown out and but for a mathematician that would have value as a self-consistent Universe in its own right and so we have many different sorts of geometry Euclidean of course, but non-uclidean spherical elliptical hyperbolic
One of these will be the geometry of the universe But all of them are interesting as geometries for a mathematician We have finite geometries one of them is important in making one of the games in my book Spot it or double as we call it in the UK That is you're actually playing a game which is based on an amazing bit of of geometry So for me, I think I loved mathematics because it was this bridge Between the world of science certainly is you know, it's the language of science and science
Really couldn't do many of the things without the mathematics But it's also a very creative side and that's what the book I'm writing in the moment is showing how It's in the creative arts, but but me it has a bit more of a freedom about it which perhaps you don't have so much in the sciences
Which is why I was drawn to it and this book in particular and if listeners haven't read this book I really recommend it for just giving you an insight into what is like to be a mathematician It includes two proofs One of there being infinitely many prime numbers and one of the irrationality of the square root of two and when I read those as student I also fell in love with a power of mathematics to give you that kind of certainty
About your subject. I mean, you know science again. It's a very evolutionary process. The science of the ancient Greeks got overturned We don't teach that now the mathematics of the ancient Greeks. We're still teaching that so there's something I found very Appealing about the security that proof gives you to know when you've got something right and Which in the sciences you don't have that you have a lot of evidence
But you can never be sure that your theory is going to survive in 200 years time. It might be a you know quantum physics beautiful But that may just be wrong and there may be a very good approximation to
Things but actually you know it isn't a random role of the dice. It's actually Determine a second maybe we'll understand what the machinery is behind quantum physics I have a quick thought on that real quick I've heard that that I've heard a very very similar description of not only quantum mechanics But also the no ability of things but I've heard an extension to it Somebody was talking about how confident they are or how scientists are in thermodynamics especially post-Boltzmann
And they said their comment was I believe that the whole of quantum mechanics would be overturned before Thermodynamics would be overturned. So do you have anything to say about how no and I know this is a tangent I just had to ask do you have any comments on how confident we are in thermodynamics as a science and you know What's your reaction to that comment if I may?
Yeah, well it's relates actually to one of my previous books Which in England was called what we cannot know in America was the great unknown because what is fascinating is you know What questions are there out there that by their very nature are unknowable? I mean things like You know thermodynamics is sort of trying to Give you a language to tackle Something which is quite unnerble which is you know knowing the precise location of every single atom is impossible
But so you you produce something called temperature which is you know a very good approximation of Information about that system But I think you know thermodynamics throws up something which I think Actually it comes up in in the round the world in 80 games, which is the idea of entropy so you know
The measure of the disorder of a system and that's one of the big mysteries the second law of thermodynamics You know why are we tending towards a state of disorder and sometimes local systems are actually reversing that and So so I think you know, there's there's so much fascinating
Physics which I think will be challenged in the future quantum physics the idea of the second or thermodynamics You know, maybe that is on the way to a theory But for me what was interesting in writing that previous book was yeah, okay But what questions by their very nature maybe unknowable for example is the universe infinite?
Well, if it is infinite, how could we ever know that we have a bubble around us which you know an event horizon beyond which we can't see anything We don't have any knowledge because the it can't reach us because the speed of light is this kind of ultimate Speed limit for information reaching us so That might be a question the universe may be infinite, but we may never be able to know that sort of thing So those are really interesting philosophical questions
Okay, and I don't mean to interrupt. I know I've been hogging the full lot out of my but I try to say two things number one I want to gamify this episode I want a challenger of viewers to help us turn this episode into a game like maybe do a quiz I don't know something I'll think of a creative way of gamifying this episode But further you mentioned your old books and I just real quickly you oh my gosh. How many do I count? How many do I count like 12?
No, you have to be careful because in America in England they called books different so Many people think I've written more books than I have because it's actually the same book for example
My second book was about symmetry in England. It was called finding moonshine in America It was called symmetry and many people wrote to me complaining that they thought this was the follow-up and they found it was exactly the same book So one of the problems about you know our global world is you can get access to American books on English Amazon For example
So I think my games book is my eighth book which still isn't bad going you know? No, no not bad at all And it actually I would love it if you wouldn't mind if you could tell us just a quick preview about some of your former books
We would oh yeah, oh, I'd lovely. Yeah, so my first book was about prime numbers It's called the music of the prime is both in America and in England about our greatest unsolved problem the Reeman hypothesis That was actually a bit of a response to Fermat's last theorem being proved and I wanted to put something back in the public imagination as you know maths isn't finished yet still lots we don't know including and that actually that book had its 20th anniversary
Last year so I did a new 20th anniversary edition with a new chapter about what had happened over the last 20 years And then I did a book about symmetry which is my own area of mathematics Which is something called group theory then I did a book which is actually based on a set of lectures I gave for children at Christmas So something called the Christmas lectures that we do which was started by Michael Faraday back in 1825 or something
So I wrote a book based on those lectures which is called the number mysteries That's all about unsolved problems in mathematics as well Then I wrote so what we cannot know which is all about unsolved problems I wrote a book about AI and creativity Which is called the creativity code
Then a book called thinking better which is all about the way mathematics is the art of the shortcuts something my teacher sort of told us when we were at school and I really fell in love with that as a lazy teenager Oh, yeah, well, I'm gonna do this subject if it's all about shortcuts And then my games book and then I did a little short book called how to count to infinity Which was great because it was a short book
Nice, nice, very cool. There you are. I think that's a guided tour around My back catalog I'm gonna I'm gonna refrink I want to I want to give the floor to autumn I always have like six questions to ask but I'll give you the floor for a second here autumn Absolutely like I know that as you've been taking off this journey between the art and the mathematics and All of the various topics. I believe you said something in the book of where you know tell me the game that you like
And I can tell you all about yourself. Yes So expand a little more on that for me because I find that to be very interesting especially like I've Delved into a few specific niches in here, and I'm curious. I'm like Yeah, I think you see I that was almost one of the motivations for the book because you know the reason That I wrote this book is for years. I've been collecting games wherever I go in the world because I think games are
In some sense universal but also very particular to a culture. Yeah So I would always love to find out well, you know if I'm in India or in China or South America What sort of games do you play and I did start to feel I was getting a kind of little window into their culture? So India is interesting because they often like to give themselves up to fate and the role of the dice is a very important part and I think you know So those people who enjoy
Losing you know letting go of control some people do not like that. They do not like a dice Involved in a game because they feel that's they don't have agency. They don't have control. They want complete control of And they but some people really enjoy the role of a dice is disrupting the rhythm of something and so I saw that in India and very strikingly chess for example is a
Game which has its origins in India and Persia But originally that game was played with a dice Because it they would roll the dice to decide which piece you were allowed to move next in the game Now we think of chess as a pure strategy game and to think that you were restricted in what you could do By the role of the dice that forces games in a very different direction But when the gambling was bound in India
They weren't allowed to use dice and then somebody said well, why don't we just choose which piece? You know still quite a good game So even the games that we think were pure strategy games Originally they had a dice involved so Whilst if you go to China, I found China was a place where they were less interested in using a dice still Chance was involved because something like Marjon which tiles you get given at the beginning is an element of chance
But then it's what you do with those you from that moment on you have quite a lot of control on Well, I suppose you're still picking things from the wall and so there's a chance of which tile you'll get and But I still felt there was a less a sense of giving yourself up to the fate of the role of the dice for example And a big difference again between China and India Which I thought was quite striking is that India they're quite aggressive the sort of games they're playing chess
You know you're whacking this piece off the board. It's real hand-to-hand combat Going on in chess whilst go for example is a much more territorial Sort of war game where you're placing these black and white stones down on this 19 by 19 grid And the aim is to gradually Control sues of land and then again if you look at card games What's the card game that came out of India?
It's it's a version of Wist which is capturing people's cards in tricks And you you hold their cards, you know because you won them whilst if you look at the card games are played in China My strongest a kind of card game but played with tiles You're collecting things. It's more like Rummy It's you know, you're trying to get runs of things. You're trying to get all the the dragons or all the foes of bamboo or
And and so they're again. It's a more cumulative game. You're gradually building up your hand Which you then lay down to win the game. So I thought that was quite striking difference So again, you know what sort of games you like playing do you like playing a pure strategy game? Do you like a game which
Like I like backgammon because it has strategy and chance. I don't want just chance. I mean snakes and ladders is a fun game when you're a kid But but you want to express yourself through a game you want agents So you want to assert whether you're an aggressive player or a risky player or a defensive player And something like backgammon I quite like because there's strategy Yet I also quite like a bit of chance in a game because I I want
The person who may be a little bit weaker still to have a chance of winning the game and and that was I wrote these kind of six qualities that I think make a good game And one of them is I don't want the game to finish before it starts where if you're playing somebody who's really good at chess and
Your average it's the game's finished, you know Gary Kasparov against Donald Trump is never ever going to be an interesting chess match But it might be an interesting backgammon game, you know So I think that's quite important that you know some games have a Handicap system so that if you are really good they will take a number of points or few so go for example
There's a handicap system. So if you're a really good go player You have to win by a certain number of more points than if you are just equally matched and so that's quite good If a game has that flexibility to introduce a handicap so that a weak player still can win the game
Yeah, I find that to be just as interesting because I saw that you took it into a twist with Everything from as you narrated from tarot all the way to Pokemon to magic the gathering and Even NFTs most people don't usually talk about that stuff I've been big in the crypto space and web three space for a while and I just found that to be Fascinating for the parallel as I do play magic the gathering competitively
Oh great. Yeah, that that like Parallels with that and I'm like you're at one of the first people to actually talk about this Right. Yeah, like I'm curious on like how you see Like those applications not only in like the NFT side of things But how does that parallel like for long term for gameplay? Yes, yeah, I mean I quite I was quite struck to discover the role and of NFTs in in games Which where basically you can cache your NFTs in or you can combine
FT NFTs to make kind of new cards as it were so that seemed to really interesting technology. I'm quite interested in I guess having written that book about artificial intelligence and my son worked for some a couple of years for a startup which was Well, basically they were using the blockchain to authenticate art and then they realized after a while Oh, we are an NFT minting
Company it was before NFTs or a thing. What is quite curious is How NFTs suddenly went hugely toxic and so now you can't really talk about NFTs because everyone goes oh they're terrible things So you know now we talk about a digital typical to something But I still think that thing exactly the same thing is of course, so what I think there's You know, I'm quite interested in the role that something like blockchain will play in for example the gaming space because you know it
And one of the issues with gaming online is trust and being able to play you know has somebody genuinely got those cards they say they have in poker or in so the role of technology and things like the blockchain and You know cryptographic systems to be able to play games in a fair way and to play games You know in a mass online way I mean My mother is quite interesting because she plays a lot of online games She's part of quite a lot of tribes across the world
And you know the the idea of your I think she spent most of our inheritance actually on digital swords and Shields But you know being able to own those and transfer ownership of those you know, I probably will receive ownership of these incredible digital armory But the power of you have the keys
Exactly. Well exactly that's the way that yes exactly So there's passwords I'm going to have to but that's what you know interesting digital technology can allow for Ownership of these digital assets and to be able to play
Collectively online in a fair way. I find really really interesting So you know, that was the interesting trajectory of the book to start in the ancient world with early racing games You know, there's this 5,000 year old game in the British Museum here in London, which is you know the early four-run or a backgammon But through right through to the modern day where you're playing games using blockchain technology
You know, that's the beauty of this whole story is how it's been there in part of our culture in different ways Reflecting our culture in different ways just exactly tell me the game that of that period and you can understand something about that period in history Absolutely She bring that up. I'm just thinking I'm thinking about this book and I wish there was a way to tell Where this book or books like this?
Like who read it? I wish that information was available because I I want about anthropologists and this book specifically Just because the cultural relevance of games both for sharing culture and for leisure and for building trust and communities I mean gosh, I think about like every single corporation and their efforts to do team building activities using silly games
They're trying to play on the psychology of games. So like I don't know I think that this book like if if there are to be blogs based on your book hint hint Like for us as well if there were to be blogs reflective on this I would love to explicitly tag certain anthropologists that would be
Most effective for for expanding upon it more that's something you definitely could do by the way with the breaking math effort That's what we're trying to do is we're trying to build bridges to mathematics and everything else like a really cool spider web
At some point I'll have to tell you about our Math tree that builds on the map of maths that another creator made Remind me to go to that topic before this episode is out, but um cool Yeah, I just had to do a quick little note that will show up in the transcript to make some blogs
And tag all of your anthropologists and culture friends who want to talk about games in different cultures and the role they play and how Like if you're visiting cultures I don't know how how you might use a game to build trusts like they say never you know Never beat your boss at poker, you know what I mean things like that. So so I was very interesting how many different
Sort of intellectual areas were touched by this topic. I mean, so you know the anthropologists have been talking about games Of course, there are an amazing insights into a culture and so you know I quote heisinger for example who wrote homo ludens And he talks about our species being the the playing species in philosophy
Games are very important a bit constrained. He used The idea of the word game actually in his description of what he thought was How we learnt language the word games language games that we only understand what a word means by I actually playing with it
We can't define a game in a dictionary. We can't define a word in a dictionary manner that that will never You know, that's a perhaps a helpful way of getting towards it But the only way we know what a word means is by using it and is the you the word that he
Thought best exemplified this whole thing was the word game So and then in psychology as well the role that games have played in psychology and and you know We've seen that the idea of gamification making everything into a game to incentivize people So a lot of industry is is realizing people love playing games and if you can change it into Something we would not like doing into a game, you know like Duelingo for example I think Duelingo fails because actually it becomes too much of a game
So you know I learned Spanish for a year and a half the game Well, you know, it was a really high level in this game Now I went to Mexico and realized I'd learned no Spanish and that all I'd done was to learn how to gamify the game So you know, I think you need to be careful Making sure people are having fun, but they're actually achieving what they What the the game of occasion is meant to achieve. Oh, man Okay, and so so as you just mentioned that
An hour before the senior viewers reading over the show notes. That's where all my ideas came for expansions on it And one of the things I wanted to do is see what efforts exist already in game of flying
Legitimate huge fields of knowledge. I mentioned not only mathematics, but You know the field of medicine the field of law The fields of engineering and I just thought what way like yeah You're not going to become an engineer the same as if you had gone through a formal program But you could even like just thematically like like the wallpaper make some kind of a game that is inspired by people that have made it through
You know like a school of law. You know what I mean like yeah, I think this you know, we I talk about in the book One of the games is a digital platform that I developed called manga high dot com which was Which I did with a colleague who'd he'd done a startup about casual gaming online playing yatsy Pay little money and whoever wins collect some money And what he saw was people just getting so good at the games being incentivized by game playing and he came out of that
Startup saying well, yeah, but what wouldn't it be wonderful if actually people learning something that will be useful? And so he came to me and said look mathematical education It's really suffering. Can we game a buy and maths is quite nice because there's a correct answer So you really you know in the humanities. It's a little harder to gameify writing an essay But mathematics, you know, it is very
You know you're building this pyramid things are getting harder levels. It was sort of perfect So we had a lot of fun for example changing Well, we have what's called GCSE so it's it's the level for a 16 year old the exam that 16 year olds have to take here in the UK We just gamified the whole thing such that people when they were doing homework They just had to do you know reach level 10 on this game which actually when you've done it, you know Have sort of a quadratic equation
Okay, okay, can we ring a gong at this point in the in the episode because this is where the Buddha would be very proud Because we realized why he wasn't allowing the games And sorry, I just have to laugh because yeah, but but I still disagree with the Buddha because games children do naturally and And games like anything can have a wonderful component and then the opponent where you become addicted to it and then you lose the original
Means of it. I just think it'd be cool to in our actual podcast to add a gong here. So you know I Okay, and I don't I don't want to say a thing more I have like five questions in the barrel. I want to defer to you autumn Please but feel free. Okay, okay sure sure. Oh gosh. Where to even begin here?
Okay, so you had mentioned earlier that Another book of yours that I want to read I wish I had time for it Can you like make the this isn't the question, but it is a question can you make like the book available like a can
You can just like slam because I don't have time to read all the books. There's an app for that isn't there Insert sponsorship here for an app that does that I'm just kidding So you had mentioned your book on artificial intelligence the breaking math podcast did a super deep dive and actually
I got a little bit of pushback saying hey, I thought you were a math podcast. I'm like I am I am I am you know trust me Yeah, but with AI I It serves as a function approximator in science and engineering which I love and it's also really weird But I'm wondering what what have you been really impressed with or what questions do you have about the use of machine learning specifically in the role of games?
Yeah, well very interesting is games are often The thing where we realize that something new is emerging because there are I think that's a point about the game It's a very beautiful closed safe Environment to start exploring, you know, maybe your personality or your Your psychology, but also for AI it's a very nice environment for just testing How good is machine learning at learning how to do something learning to play the game of go?
So that book the creativity code the spark for that book was exactly the way that Machine learning was able to Create a piece of code that could play the game of go at such a high level to beat the world's best lease at all because
Traditionally go was considered a very hard game to write code for because a lot of it is quite Visual the decisions you're making are about to the visual patterns building up on the board and that was very hard to crystallize into kind of top-down code about why you should make particular moves
the and visions recognition software was always terrible before machine learning so it's interesting that both vision recognition software and the ability to play this game Which is hugely patterns in the way that you make your decisions?
So but for me the really exciting thing which and which spots the whole journey of that book about could a This new a i b creative is that not only did it win a game Against the world's best we've seen that before that's not so surprising We saw Gary Kasparov being beaten by deep blue, but it actually Tought us to play the game in a new way. It made a move and it's now this famous move move 37 in game two
Of alpha go against lease at all. It is a move that was so So new that and I call it the first creative act of an AI because it was new It was surprising everyone thought it was a very bad move when alpha go and made that move And everyone said oh well, we said oh should win the game from this point on but then Ray late on it showed actually this Surprising move had a lot of value because it helped alpha go to win that game So and it's taught us now to play go in a new way
There have been three revolutions in the in the history of go one in about the 16th century One at the beginning of the 20th century and now this is a third revolution which is transformed the game So that's really exciting because the learning process of the code and it was the code itself that came up with that move and not a human who put that line of code in because
I think if a human had seen that line of code which was basically very early on in the game alpha go played quite deep into the center of the board and Traditionally, that's a very weak move that early on A human would have deleted that line of code and said no, that's bad
Bad play. I mean your go master would say no, no, that's a bad move But alpha go through its learning process the machine learning was seeing that this actually could be used There's a very powerful move later on in the game So so that really emerged out of the learning process and I think deserved to be called the creativity of the code rather than the creativity of a human who started writing the code from which it then learns so I think games and AI are really
Fascinating kind of place to see how powerful AI is before it starts being unleashed on on the real world Wow, oh man, that's that's create sorry every time I hear the story of AI playing go and Beating somebody as you said earlier having a real creative things I just get a shiver down my spine just because to be perfectly honest as you know evolved creatures There's just certain thing there's certain experiences that are just new to us and being out done at something that we thought was
Unique for we were unique yet. We just get a shiver down our spine But then I just the other part of me thinks okay Well, is there just going to be a part where we evolve further even at the micro level to To just be used to that and not be so shocked every time it happens, you know what I mean? But it's just something about our our cognition and our mental picture of ourselves that gets just a little bit
Throwing cold water on just a little bit just a little bit or or or or a lot it. Whoo. It's just it's interesting Wow, if you don't mind I wanted to just share a little bit of my thoughts on machine learning with with a variety of games I like to look at things like large language models and what it has been able to do in terms of Simulating somebody having a conversation and I've often thought of if you have a game that has a large user base something like
Oh, what's any massive multiplayer online RPG anything like the final fantasy 14s or World of Warcraft or anything like that I wonder that there's sufficient data sets where you can have machine learning take over any any given part of that whether it is Building its own character, which you can build on the data set basically so my question is how many data sets exist?
That go into those games and machine learning thrives where you have massive data sets You could have machine learning assist with making a litany of similar characters I wonder how easy it would be to make a litany of plots that drive missions or or use machine learning to create new New new new environments, you know what I mean like?
It's different from your world or I have this idea that I have not seen worked out I'm sure it's been done every single idea I've had it's only a matter of time until I realize that somebody did it like Yeah, yeah, but I've got this Crockpots low I don't know in Britain if the term crockpot is still used for a slow cooker I have these ideas for a very slow cooker machine learning model where where like Oh gosh, how much I'm trying to explain this
It studies one player or one group of players and it learns their mannerisms and then from that it designs Environments that we would define through a reward function as interesting based on the organic mannerisms Developed a small group these are ideas that I want to see implemented in large-ling in in massive multiplayer online gaming if I was in charge over it I don't know a square software blizzard or I know blizzard is Has seen I think there's a very interesting
You know attempts to create video games which which don't have such a limited narrative that everyone's following the same path and I think you know Zelda the recent Zelda has been very interesting because they've allowed code loud players to explore combining components which you know they never planned What would be the result of mixing two things that you've collected in the game and And people that you know to create some code which can Deal with that challenge of you know, okay?
Somebody's gonna put these things together what will be the results? You know they haven't print they haven't had to write the code to say yeah if you put these three things together It will make a flying machine which cooks pancakes or something. I don't know But the they created code which has been very flexible in just Being able to cope with players different
Weird and wonderful combinations of things that they've collected. So I think it's a really exciting time You know that what you want is code that can produce unexpected results So you don't have to programming everything in and in the past of course our top-down coding meant we had to know
Sort of what everything was gonna do now with machine learning. We don't and that opens up You know if it's done well such exciting possibilities and I mean I haven't played this elder that's just come out with this Possibility to fuse but people I've talked to just said it's amazing because you can be so creative within the game Oh my gosh as you say that it just don't on me. I've been watching there's a professor here in the United States at the University of Washington on YouTube
Professor Steve Brunton has how whole series. It's a really great intro to machine learning and he describes the process It just don't on me from what you were saying if there were to be a game that involved machine learning the reward function would be
Users using like like are your users continuing to use it or are they not and have a direct reward function that was tied with the Optimizing function directly to the changes you recently made like that could be really cool and scary addictive too I know it would be scary addictive, but you know
Yeah, the other thing I thought that Where machine learning will be really useful is in creating the music behind a particular video game because you Everyone's playing the game in a different way and the moment is quite clunky So you might move from one area to another and the music will change
But what you really want is music that is starting to respond to gameplay your particular personality and just the way you're navigating the game and And you know we're having a human do that is almost impossible, but but that's perfect for you know So you have a human which puts in the kind of early material for the game, but then the machine learning actually Melds the soundtrack to your gameplay
That seems a no-brainer in just a wonderful fusion of the human and the machine. I think that I have dreams Go ahead on please Like that would be something perfect for if you're doing a RPG like Baldur's date three and that would take it in through each scene in each emotion because I know that Depending on how you interact Come again like bottom up really changes the outcome of how you're going to play and you can even play as the cat Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a I think just
The the power of this technology to open up the creativity of the the player. It is really exciting and it Makes me wonder like how does that also change bringing in AI and machine learning for how we interact as humans, right? so a lot of the card games in board games you're interacting in person with people and a lot of the times you're gaming with your friends online But you don't have those same interactions. How does that how does the AI?
Change our perception of reality in which you know your best friend can be some 18 year old Yeah, wait, yes, see that on the other end or 80 year old because this is one of the thing my mum loves You know my mum loves just the the mask that Online gaming provides so she can be involved in a tribe be a really big Fighter within that tribe and yet Nobody realizes it's actually an 80 year old granny down in Cornwall Plaint she was actually I discovered I think I put the story in the book actually
That she'd been playing with this whole group of people as part of a tribe in some online game and then one of the People rode on the chat. Oh, I'm afraid man well can't come next week to the fight and my mum said oh, why?
Zed well, I'm fortunate. He's got to go to prison and he went out access to his Games consoles and and as she learned more she realized the the whole tribe was basically a Mexican drug cartel Operating out of Chicago and they were using the game as a kind of use or sort of downtime
Or I don't know maybe even communicating and basically my mum was like the the leader of this tribe The all the right you know there's 80 year old granny and Mexicans running a drug cartel in Chicago So it is interesting the world to get access through through gaming
Oh my gosh, do you look at activity? Oh my gosh. Oh wow But it's interesting because you know a lot of the games I talk about in the book actually are about Physical games games you hold on your hands, you know hand rather than digit Um the the digital is all about your finger not your hand and I quite like uh The the physicality of a game is quite important and that includes actually Sitting around a table with people physically and I think that's why
Board games have maintained their popularity even in the digital ages that we still crave that Contact with our fellow human across the table and I think that's one reason I think games developed in the first place is Creating an environment for us to share our in a world our consciousness our our
Our family our friends and and so although I talk about video games and digital games in the book It's it's not a major part of the book My wife said I should have put loads more in because then the kids will buy the book But actually I still think kids, you know my sons Uh
Being playing board games even you know, he loves playing his Uh PS45 whatever but he also loves the physicality of sitting round with bits of cardboard pushed out of a Uh and and put on the board, you know, it really does make the difference because I think the generational
Difference for where you you are versus where I am probably at a closer age Uh like to your to your start like I enjoy playing video games online but also um I do enjoy going to the conventions and meeting my friends and sometimes they're 20 hours away Or there's six hours away across the country. I have friends coming up this weekend. They're like we're going to the The convention that's close to you They're like you're coming right and I went what
I didn't even know this one. They're like yeah, so we're going Friday through Sunday. Let's go and it's just seeing them instead of just Texting being online. It's the physicality of being on like in person playing Pokemon more kind of magic Yeah, yeah exactly and also just the physicality of those cards. I think um it is something magical
Uh, you know, that's why cards have always had a potency about them. Why You know, of course tarot as I explained in the book was originally an Italian card game You know the tarot the major arcana were Trump cards in that but you know the power of them then to go on and become this fortune telling uh
Side of of of the cards, which is you know later thing tarot cards. I think most people thought were invented because of fortune telling but actually that grew out of a game so um, you know I think the physicality of these things have them a charm and a magic around them in particularly see cards
I was very fascinated to discover Have their origin origins in India probably and they have these wonderful things called ganjifa cards which are circular cards And they're beautifully painted like little Indian miniatures Uh, they're very expensive to make because every card is hand painted and essentially they were wiped out as a species by the French European cards which came in or so easy to print the cards that
We used to play with but I'm seeing when I've gone back to India. I found a few studios which are reintroducing these Uh, beautiful cards and whenever I go to the museums in India I found just examples of the they're so beautiful. You just Want to hold them and you know, I think we still love the physicality Of of a game is an important aesthetic part of it I know that games and cards are being you know, they're often associated with the children
But I wonder I wonder how successful Anyone could be if they tried hard to make like just collecting silly cards that are literally just Pokemon cards But for grownups like I'll bet you could do it in the automotive industry, you know like sports cars Well, but then I got to think like like a sorry
I have this litany of really really silly media productions in in my head like I have a I used to watch the channel College humor and they had a whole video about a breakfast cereal mascot for grownups where it was this boring uh Old Reverend who was philosophical and and and you know The cereal was for like steel cut oatmeal and he showed up in this gong played and and he oh he was always like Perhaps I can win your
cereal in a game of cards no very well. I have poor games of chance then I'll ask you in a straightaway manner It's a very funny video, but I say all this because I'm serious if somebody if somebody just took upon the challenge to make an addictive Game like Pokemon, but make it for grownups. What would what thing what symbolic thing would you put on the cards?
So I don't know just a thought just just putting it out there. So Well, I think magic the gathering in a way was a game that was you know That was a game that came before Pokemon and and then you see an interesting thing you know to have a game where The actual cards collecting the cards in their own right is beautiful, but also actually Uh, right Yes, I'll bring out my desk in a moment is on the back of the bookshelf and the behind me
Um, but I think that that's I think magic the gathering is a game that was more appealing to adults and it was to children I mean, it was Yeah, oh and you'll excuse me. I realized time wise we are over an hour. I have more question We could go forever My issue is that I actually am do at my job my boss gave me until my time 11 o'clock a.m
Which means that I have to wrap up soon. I wish I could pass this on to you autumn and you guys could go until you feel it was appropriate But I did want to mention real quickly the topic the math map I wanted to mention real quickly as one of our initiatives
When I was talking with autumn so autumn joined this team recently because you may or may not be aware The first person that your purpose was corresponded with was the beloved late Sophia Baca Sophia and I were the co-founders of the breaking math podcast and tragically we lost Sophia this last year
She passed away. Yeah, so I was very sorry to hear that. Yeah. Thank you I appreciate that I've been in great contact with Sophia's parents and and Sophia's parents greatly approve of the podcast going forward And there's been lots of conversations about how to outreach to various communities
That Sophia was very close to and and how to bring enjoyment of math to them through this podcast And I've talked to them at great length about autumn and I I hired autumn because I need help I'm a data five kids and my time to do the podcast is like He's like
Tiny you know what I mean? And I'm constantly interrupted with like oh no a glass broke Oh the dog got into the kids toy oh the kids you know poured the cereal all over the ground It's all kinds of fun here I hired autumn because I needed so much help and then it turns out autumn is not only a social media manager But has her undergrad undergrad and in industrial engineering all this to say We had a powwow about where the podcast is going and in the powwow I found a
A map of mathematics that somebody had made and I thought it was number one brilliant if you go to YouTube I think it's oh gosh
I always forget the channel there exists a math map of mathematics. I want to Expand extend that sorry Extend the idea of the map of both pure and applied math and all the connections I want to make a version of it that is clickable I want to make it more like a tree that has a time element that has all of the podcasts that we've done already And where we haven't even gone yet because in every RPG every video game the excitement is looking at a map and thinking oh I haven't gone there yet
And I think that it would be helpful if I took we've got what Between 90 to 110 episodes if you count the mini episodes and I I could do every topic that we've done And make it clickable and then when you hover your mouse over it the intention is to make it so that You know the terms are defined these episode is summarized But then connections are made to other branches of either mathematics or non-math topics such as I don't know medicine or
Politics and I only share this idea because this idea I think you could take any form by any creator by anybody who has a history and Math publishing and since I am already borrowing the idea from map of mathematics I just bring it up like shoot if anyone else has more time than this busy dad and wants to go crazy with it You know, I'm I'm sharing this idea hoping that it land there either I get around to making it or or somebody shares it
So yeah, I just want to share that sounds very exciting. Yes. I will look forward to clicking on it Ah, yeah, cool cool awesome And then the other thing I say as we're wrapping up so I have to wrap up unfortunately and I wish if you were logged in as an admin autumn And I apologize. I didn't think about this you guys could carry on
I also have a cool. I got a mate to India in a in a few minutes time So this will probably be a good time for wrapping up as well Okay, is there any any remaining plugs for anything at all future books past books other topics Causes anything that you would like to plug on the show as we are wrapping up Um, well, I'm hoping everyone will be excited to buy the games book now
I'm as I mentioned. I've also got this book and I'm currently writing which my deadline is in a few months time for my editor So I probably shouldn't be talking to you but I should be writing which is called new prints Um, and I also have a play that I've written
Which is about one of my mathematical heroes Andre V And the play is a kind of exploration of Well, it's actually an exploration of free will through his biography about why he made a particular choice in his life And whether we really have free will or not But also about his mathematics because he proved what I regard as one of the great theorems of the 20th century Which he proved whilst he was in prison
So the play starts with him in prison. So so that I'm taking on tour in India in The autumn of this year and and I would love to bring it to America because I think American audiences will be very interested So if there's anyone out there who'd like to sponsor a tour of this And wonderful new play called the axiom of choice around America then I would love to hear from you. Oh my gosh Let me I have some connections. I don't know that I have one to the bite. You know how you know how it goes
Everybody knows somebody but yeah, yeah, yeah for what it for what what it's worth. That's awesome the axiom of choice Free will is trending right now. I'm sure you've seen what's his name Robert. What's his last name? I apologize Sapowski or I would google it but I'm talking to you on my phone right now He wrote a book called the term and he's a biologist and he believes yes no free will and I I find myself that all
Okay, just two full cards on the table. Oh the pun get it full cards on the table but do mj okay Sorry full cards on the table the more I study it I'm finding that all roads lead to Rome being his conclusion that there is no free will I hope there is but I that's where everything that I'm reading. I think that's the easy option And I think the real challenges can you with all that we know prove that there is free will so I think that's
That's so actually this this book here which I've got on my desk right in front of me is called why free will is real By Christian list is the best is basically a philosopher um and he he does a really good job of even in a deterministic universe why Yeah, why we have free will and it's not a lie
I'm sorry, I'm American. I don't have a fancy glass of like a really nice cognac. I I will do my best as an American I told you what I was drinking right now Oh my gosh That's crazy can we get a sponsorship deal with certain ever drinks? I'm just got a bicycle oil I raise a glass to anybody defending free will I do I hope they win may they win It's just that I find myself on the other you know the materialist CB in hose and the feather side um
Oh, yeah, so yes sir. I hope that anything may come of what you've mentioned I think that your book is a garden That is ripe for blooming in many topics and I hope to be part of that we're literally um Autom and I are talking about what interns can we hire and put on a product a project of just dissecting your book and similar books and making like I don't I gotta see what already exists out there, but like We'll talk about I'm very I'm very I'm very excited by the inspiration is giving you
Thank you, and I do need to mention this. I saw that the chair that you currently occupy or did occupy I don't know what the current status is is the same one that sir Richard Dawkins held before you that correct He did yes, I'm the second holder of this chair It's the Simone chair for the public understanding of science and Richard was the first holder of the chair and when he retired I was the one who got it next So there's a wonderful chair wonderful nice
Instead of talking about the gold delusion we talk about games. It's a little more than dining room table So the difference here is you can talk to your grandma about it. So I'm gonna get in trouble on this podcast Okay, I better go drive off to work sir. It has been beyond a pleasure I would like to follow up with what we intend to do with this There's been about a month long turnaround on editing and getting this stuff out We might get this one out faster depending on various things
But please look forward to hearing us In the future and I don't know in before we end today's episode Don't forget that we are doing a social media giveaway of a free copy of the book Around the world in 88 games by professor Marcus do so to white in order to be in the drawing for the giveaway
Be sure to check out our social media and follow the instructions on the post labeled book giveaway Again, you'll find a post on both the x which used to be Twitter If you follow us at breaking math pod on x you'll find a post with uh with the title book giveaway
And also you'll find a similar post on Instagram our Instagram handle is at breaking math media And there are specific instructions for what you have to do it includes tagging a few friends Sharing liking and following a few things including the book publisher as well as the book author And when you follow the instructions exactly you'll be in the drawing for a free copy of the book Thank you for joining us and I hope you enjoyed this this episode