---
title: "Infinite Game"
description: "Agüera y Arcas's gloss on what evolved organisms are \"optimizing\": nothing."
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/infinite-game"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/infinite-game"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Infinite Game

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/infinite-game), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

Agüera y Arcas's gloss on what evolved organisms are "optimizing": nothing. In the toy chemotaxis simulation, conservative and reckless strategies both survive because no score is being maximized — "the only prize is that you get to keep playing." Life is an infinite game (the term is Carse's, unattributed in the talk) whose sole criterion is continued participation, which is why dynamic stability, not fitness-as-number, is the right frame, and why the speaker later rejects utilitarian optimization as a model of value. It also underwrites the "personalities" point: selection leaves the interior of viable behavior underdetermined.

## Appears in

- [What Is Intelligence?](https://antikythera.wiki/work/book/what-is-intelligence) (2025-09-23)
- [What is Intelligence? (Lecture)](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/wii-film) (2025-05-10)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._