ABSTRACT
The theory of games is the product of a superb mathematical virtuosity. The player of a game, of a kind to whom the Theory of Games can be applied, is one who can take into his reckoning every possibility, and does the assumption that his opponent will do the same. Business, and the General Human Affair, may be a game with rules. The game may have its rules which enforce themselves without appeal. If business is a contest instead of a universal coordination of action, its supreme secret is epistemic, the gaining and use, the denial and disguise, of knowledge. Knowledge, novelty, surprise, are correlative terms. Novelty must engender surprise. In a world where novelty is inexhaustible, such a set of rules would be logically impossible. The most dramatic and spectacular secret of success is novelty, and novelty is that which an infallible algorithm must, by definition, exclude.
