Oh. This discussion got me to go back and review some messages written in the aftermath of this, when I was trying to explain things to A… and I noticed a key thing I’d misremembered. (I should have reviewed those messages before posting this, but I thought that they only contained the same things that I already covered here.)
It wasn’t that A was making a different play that was getting the game into a better state; it was that he was doing a slightly different sequence of moves that nevertheless brought the game into exactly the same state as the originally agreed upon moves would have. That was what the “it doesn’t matter” was referring to.
Well that explains much better why this felt so confusing for the rest of us. I’ll rewrite this to make it more accurate shortly. Thanks for the comments on this version for making me look that up!
Oh. This discussion got me to go back and review some messages written in the aftermath of this, when I was trying to explain things to A… and I noticed a key thing I’d misremembered. (I should have reviewed those messages before posting this, but I thought that they only contained the same things that I already covered here.)
It wasn’t that A was making a different play that was getting the game into a better state; it was that he was doing a slightly different sequence of moves that nevertheless brought the game into exactly the same state as the originally agreed upon moves would have. That was what the “it doesn’t matter” was referring to.
Well that explains much better why this felt so confusing for the rest of us. I’ll rewrite this to make it more accurate shortly. Thanks for the comments on this version for making me look that up!