I think that “playing games or not” is not a binary choice, but rather a position on a continuous scale—I like conversations that operate on multiple levels simultaneously with a certain level of ambiguity.
Partially playing games is basically just playing games, for the same reason that a barrel that is half full of wine and half full of sewage is basically full of sewage.
So you can’t imagine someone being other than (a) completely, 100% dead serious; or (2) obviously joking and not trying to communicate anything but ha-ha funny? No intermediate stages at all?
If someone is half serious and half joking, and it isn’t very obvious which parts are jokes and which are not, that leaves him in a position where he can act as though something is serious up until he gets called on it, at which point he can switch to saying “of course that was bad logic/bad sources/ad hominem/etc., it was just a joke?” So you’re better off acting as though it’s jokes all the time.
Partially playing games is basically just playing games, for the same reason that a barrel that is half full of wine and half full of sewage is basically full of sewage.
So you can’t imagine someone being other than (a) completely, 100% dead serious; or (2) obviously joking and not trying to communicate anything but ha-ha funny? No intermediate stages at all?
If someone is half serious and half joking, and it isn’t very obvious which parts are jokes and which are not, that leaves him in a position where he can act as though something is serious up until he gets called on it, at which point he can switch to saying “of course that was bad logic/bad sources/ad hominem/etc., it was just a joke?” So you’re better off acting as though it’s jokes all the time.