“Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.”
James P. Carse “Finite and Infinite games”
Last week, I missed a deadline for a research funding proposal by several days. Originally, I was not planning to apply at all, but as I worked on a larger research plan, it became apparent that it would be great to add an ultra-high-speed camera to our arsenal. It also became apparent that I wouldn’t get the needed info from the supplier in time to meet the deadline. Being a good academic citizen, I asked the administration for an extension. No answer. Being in addition an optimist, I interpreted the lack of response as a go-ahead. After all, nobody said “no”. Long story short: I wrote the proposal, and it was accepted despite being late. That’s not a guarantee that we’ll get the funds, by the way, but did I mention that optimism is important?
I think that mild disregard for the rules is required for progress, generally speaking. It is very much in the spirit of Steve Jobs’ “reality distortion field”, brilliantly documented by Walter Isaacson. When told by his team that a certain goal was not possible due to various objective reasons, Jobs would still insist on pressing forward, ultimately proving everyone wrong (not always, but often). It is liberating to remind yourself that you are always free to make the rules of the game you are currently playing a mere component of a larger, encompassing game. As James Carse writes, “There are no rules that require us to obey rules.”
It is also easy to assume that the rules are there even when they are not. I am taking a painting class, where we copy a Rembrandt’s self-portrait. The other day, I was transferring a pencil sketch onto a canvas. To check the proportions, I projected the original painting on top of my sketch using a digital projector. In the end, I was quite pleased with the result and showed it to my mother (“Look mom, no hands!” kind of feeling). “Are you allowed to use that?” she asked pointing at the projector. I thought that it was ironic that we assume, by default, that using modern technology constitutes cheating when our goal is to study the work of old masters. I remember reading (also in a biography by Isaacson) that Leonardo da Vinci and his contemporaries went to great lengths to invent and build contraptions for projecting original images on their canvasses for copying. Some even went as far as making sketches of Florentine cityscapes on pieces of semi-transparent fabric stretched across a window. I am convinced that if Leonardo, Rembrandt or Van Gogh had access to an optical projector they would definitely use it.
