I’m C. Thi Nguyen. I used to be a food writer, now I’m a philosophy professor at University of Utah. I write about trust, art, games, and communities. I’m interested in the ways that our social structures and technologies shape how we think and what we value.
I was named to Vox’s 2024 Future Perfect 50 – their list of “thinkers, innovators, and changemakers who are working to make the world a better place.”
My new book is The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game, with Penguin.
“[The Score is a] mind-expanding exploration of the philosophy of games . . . so exuberant and readable that the depth and seriousness of its insights almost sneak up on you.” —The New York Times
“Brilliant… and wildly original… [explains] a quintessential contemporary tragedy: the extent to which optimization has ruined our lives.” – The Washington Post
“As a long-time fan of games, I was delighted to find a philosophical look at how we make choices in life. If you love gaming, this is the best book on the topic you’ll ever find.” —Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple
The Score was featured in The New York Times and The New Yorker, and reviewed in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Bloomberg, The Telegraph, and more.
The Score was featured in over 40 podcasts. Some of my own personal favorites appearances linclude: 99% Invisible, Plain English with Derek Thompson, Pablo Torre Finds Out, Factually with Adam Conover, Vox’s Gray Area with Sean Iling, and Data Breach with CJ the X. And the podcast that probably started it all: the interview with Ezra Klein that convinced me that everything I was thinking about games and metrics should be in the same book.
My first book is Games: Agency as Art. It was awarded the American Philosophical Associations 2021 Book Prize. It’s about how games are the art form that work in the medium of agency. Here’s a summary of the book. There have also been some symposia discussing the book.
You can reach me at c.thi.nguyen@utah.edu. I am on Bluesky at @add-hawk.bsky.social
For speaking engagements, please contact Alysyn Reinhardt at the Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau at speakers@penguinrandomhouse.com
Selected Papers (and the complete list)
- Games and the Art of Agency (Philosophical Review) (2020 APA Article Prize; selected for Philosopher Annual‘s “10 Best Philosophy Articles of 2019”)
- Value Capture (JESP)
- Trust as an Unquestioning Attitude (OSE)
- Transparency is Surveillance (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research) (short summary)
- Hostile Epistemology (keynote for the 2022 NASSP.)
- Autonomy and Aesthetic Engagement (Mind) (audio)
- Art as a Shelter from Science (Aristotelian Society Supplementary)
- The Arts of Action (Philosopher’s Imprint)
- Moral Outrage Porn with Bekka Williams (Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy) (selected for Philosopher Annual‘s “10 Best Philosophy Articles of 2020”)
- How Twitter Gamifies Communication (Applied Epistemology, OUP) (And a shortened version for students, with suggested classroom exercises.)
- Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles (Episteme)
- The Seductions of Clarity (RIPS)
- Cultural Appropriation and the Intimacy of Groups, with Matt Strohl (Philosophical Studies)
Selected Popular Work (and the complete list)
- Why We Call Things ‘Porn’ (New York Times)
- Value Collapse (Royal Institute of Philosophy Cardiff Lecture)
- Twitter, the Intimacy Machine (The Raven)
- The Limits of Data (Issues in Science and Technology)
- How Much Should We Trust Technology? (The New Statesman)
- Polarization or Propaganda? (Boston Review)
- Escape the Echo Chamber (Aeon Magazine)
- Art is a Game (Forum for Philosophy)
- The Gamification of Public Discourse (Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture)
Selected Podcast Appearances
- A Life Changing Philosophy of Games (The Ezra Klein Show – and Klein notes “one of my favorite episodes of all time”).
- Games, Art, Values, and Agency (Mindscapes podcast)
- How to Win at Real Life (The Atlantic podcast)
- The Philosophy of Games (Factually with Adam Conover podcast)
