Mathematics is humanity's longest running, largest-scoped, most complicated game. It also happens to be useful, and you can dive into a lot of philosophy about

Mathematics is humanity's longest running, largest-scoped, most complicated game. It also happens to be useful, and you can dive into a lot of philosophy about that which is all very interesting. The utility itself is a large thing on its own. But I think of that utility as something separate from the game itself. The game is just a game. You can do whatever you want with it. If you want to convert your cookbook to hexadecimal just for fun, you can. The fact that it is (broadly speaking) useless, that it will produce no new knowledge, and if anything negative utility in general, doesn't mean you can't do it. That's the game. You can also try to play the game to prove the Twin Prime conjecture. That's a much harder level. This game is scalable to all ages and skill levels, has the best level variety, and can be done with anything from just your personal noggin, to a pencil & paper, to the largest computing cluster in the world. Technically all other games you play are a subset of this game; that may not always be a useful way to think of it, but it is technically true. And while there are a few rules, generally, nobody can tell you how to play it. You want to color pretty pictures? The game has lots of ways of doing that. You want to smash atoms together? The game can help with that. You want to simply count to the highest number you possibly can? Go for it. It's a very popular play with the younger players, but anyone can do it.