I’m not sure your argument of the benefits of this actually works.
Taking myself as an example: I play a lot of card and board games; I am very good at learning new games; I have been that annoying person who picks up a game after a quick five minute explanation and beats everyone else who’s played it multiple times. But I don’t feel like it’s given me any extra insight into situations beyond board games. It could be that the problem is too much compartmentalisation, but my instincts tell me that the problem is that board games are just too tidy compared to real life. In real life there are just too many variables and the rules are often implicit or outright wrong, and without understanding how all the variables interact I have trouble working out how to improve my position.
I will say, however, that your plan sounds like a lot of fun. Just not necessarily that useful
I concur. As a member of my school’s board game club, I have learned over two dozen games within the past year, and am frequently competitive during the first game.
The core of most games is fundamentally the same: You have a position; your actions bring the game to a different position. Once you understand what moves you can make and begin to understand the benefits of various positions, you can begin to strategize using a human version of the simple Minimax algorithm.
There are other reasons why having an experienced player teach the game can be better for meta-strategizing skills: They will give examples of correct play and are more likely to enforce the rules correctly, enabling faster learning.
Additionally, a quite common scenario is to have a game with someone who’s played three times, someone who’s played once, and two newcomers (or thereabouts). In that case, it isn’t hard for the first-timers to be competitive.
The core of most games is fundamentally the same: You have a position; your actions bring the game to a different position. Once you understand what moves you can make and begin to understand the benefits of various positions, you can begin to strategize using a human version of the simple Minimax algorithm.
Are you trying to argue against generalizability here? This sounds like it could describe any situation in life (except that usually you don’t want to use minimax).
I think the difference between board games and life situations is how much more tractable games are to this attack. You have excellent information on how the state can evolve (perfect information, once you know the “event card” deck or whatnot if there is one), and can quickly get a rough estimate of the probabilities of each. While even a DnD beginner can figure out what actions to take to maximize his expected damage output, his actual character, who has seconds to do what the player has an eternity to think about, could not.
And many games have limited interaction between players, in which case strategizing is quite simple.
Come to board game club sometime, and I’ll show you games where you find yourself able to think significantly ahead (in a quite similar style to how you calculate ahead in chess) within a few turns of playing. Except many of them have low-enough long term consequences for most moves that you often only need to calculate ahead by one.
Except many of them have low-enough long term consequences for most moves that you often only need to calculate ahead by one.
This is generally true of chess as well. Thinking ahead is definitely useful, but just caching a whole bunch of tactics, strategies, mating themes, and opening moves is enough to make you an advanced amateur without ever having to do much actual calculation.
I’m not sure your argument of the benefits of this actually works.
Taking myself as an example: I play a lot of card and board games; I am very good at learning new games; I have been that annoying person who picks up a game after a quick five minute explanation and beats everyone else who’s played it multiple times. But I don’t feel like it’s given me any extra insight into situations beyond board games. It could be that the problem is too much compartmentalisation, but my instincts tell me that the problem is that board games are just too tidy compared to real life. In real life there are just too many variables and the rules are often implicit or outright wrong, and without understanding how all the variables interact I have trouble working out how to improve my position.
I will say, however, that your plan sounds like a lot of fun. Just not necessarily that useful
I concur. As a member of my school’s board game club, I have learned over two dozen games within the past year, and am frequently competitive during the first game.
The core of most games is fundamentally the same: You have a position; your actions bring the game to a different position. Once you understand what moves you can make and begin to understand the benefits of various positions, you can begin to strategize using a human version of the simple Minimax algorithm.
There are other reasons why having an experienced player teach the game can be better for meta-strategizing skills: They will give examples of correct play and are more likely to enforce the rules correctly, enabling faster learning.
Additionally, a quite common scenario is to have a game with someone who’s played three times, someone who’s played once, and two newcomers (or thereabouts). In that case, it isn’t hard for the first-timers to be competitive.
Are you trying to argue against generalizability here? This sounds like it could describe any situation in life (except that usually you don’t want to use minimax).
I think the difference between board games and life situations is how much more tractable games are to this attack. You have excellent information on how the state can evolve (perfect information, once you know the “event card” deck or whatnot if there is one), and can quickly get a rough estimate of the probabilities of each. While even a DnD beginner can figure out what actions to take to maximize his expected damage output, his actual character, who has seconds to do what the player has an eternity to think about, could not.
And many games have limited interaction between players, in which case strategizing is quite simple.
Come to board game club sometime, and I’ll show you games where you find yourself able to think significantly ahead (in a quite similar style to how you calculate ahead in chess) within a few turns of playing. Except many of them have low-enough long term consequences for most moves that you often only need to calculate ahead by one.
This is generally true of chess as well. Thinking ahead is definitely useful, but just caching a whole bunch of tactics, strategies, mating themes, and opening moves is enough to make you an advanced amateur without ever having to do much actual calculation.