I would be surprised if common games would transfer into real life strategic action. To be stategic in real life, a person has to think about how to achieve goals that they set for themselves over longer periods of time. Games don’t teach thinking in longer timeframes then the few hours that the game lasts.
Ever needed to figure out what cards someone is holding and what they’re planning to do with them? There’s a good reason that metaphor is literally pulled from card games.
That has little to do with strategy. It doesn’t do anything to help the person who thinks that they will learn to become a good comedian by watching Garfield and Friends.
For example, if I am investing for the long term then my short term goal is to do nothing, especially in the face of signals to the contrary.
Strategy is about chosing the short-term goals based on the long-term goals. If you are playing a game you don’t have that.
You consume it to keep your mind from thinking thoughts you don’t want, and feeling emotions you don’t want to feel. Slapping a fake label saying comedy on it is a deliberate contribution to that end.
That misses the point. If you don’t think Garfield and Friends is comedy you can exchange it for any comedy and the point would still stand.
Strategy is about how you’re going to get what you want, especially in the face of opposition, period.
There are many tactical moves that help you to achieve what you want. Tactical moves are not strategy in the sense most people who write about strategy use the term. More importantly they are not strategy in the sense AnnaSalamon defines the term in the linked post. AnnaSalamon’s post also isn’t about competetive dynamics.
I only need to open my steam library to find games I’ve played for longer than many other activities I’ve done. My biggest time sink has 245 days of playtime (because it’s easy to play, but hard to win). Plenty of my regulars have 250 hours or more.
If I play a game of Go, I can focus on playing to maximize my chance of winning in that game. I can also play with a focus on maximizing my learning from the game.
If my end goal is to become a good player the strategic thing to do is to focus on maximizing my learning from the game even when it means that I will win an individual game less likely.
Not focusing on winning individual game (winning individual battles) is the thing that’s hard about strategy and where most people fail.
I believe that you can learn from observing others, and from critically analysing their work.
Also, as someone that watched the same movie nineteen times in a row in the theatre (this was before DVDs were a thing, it was on the same day of the week, week after week) I can tell you that you cannot help but see the structure after that many viewings. When you go deep and really study something then you will learn that which others are blind to.
Yes, you can learn something but it’s a bad strategy for becoming a comedic. Being a good commedian is a lot of audience interaction. It’s a lot about having deliberte practice as a comedian in front of an audience.
It’s not obvious from outside that focusing on getting stagetime is better then spending your time alone watching footage but it happens to be the better strategy.
Without already knowing something about what it takes to become a comedian, to get a good strategy for becoming one, it might be required to go out and ask a few people with subject matter expertise about what kind of training is needed.
I would say that not identifying the most manipulatable element in a situation is the thing that most people fail at.
It’s possible for a person to spend effort into thinking what the most manipulatable element in a situation is and still fail at coming up with the correct answer.
I think most people already fail at putting in the time to seriously think about it, so the first level is to actually spend the time.
The second level is to think about how to actually get good at identifying the manipulative element.
Then the third level is to actually stop putting your effort on other elements and focusing on the most manipulative element. (that usually learns being able to say no)
Yes, you can learn something but it’s a bad strategy for becoming a comedic.
Where are all the comedians in the club when they’re not on stage? They’re not in the green room, they’re all standing up the back watching everyone else perform.
A single strategy alone is a typically a sub optimal strategy. IRL you don’t typically act out LW thought experiments with the expectation they’ll work out.
It’s a lot about having deliberte practice as a comedian in front of an audience.
There’s no substitute for practicing at whatever activity it is you’re trying to master, but it isn’t the only thing to it. People study all the time. We call that education and find it so useful that we’ve made it compulsory for minors.
It’s not obvious from outside that focusing on getting stagetime is better then spending your time alone watching footage but it happens to be the better strategy.
I would argue that “do the same thing that many others did to achieve their success” is a blatantly obvious strategy.
It’s possible for a person to spend effort into thinking what the most manipulatable element in a situation is and still fail at coming up with the correct answer.
The only way to guarantee that you don’t get an answer to a question is to never ask the question.
Then the third level is to actually stop putting your effort on other elements and focusing on the most manipulative element. (that usually learns being able to say no)
Saying no may be your weak point, that is not the case for others. The most obvious strategy in that general situation is “no, but what can you offer me to change that to a yes?”. That alters the dynamic of the negotiation in a way that can be useful. Besides, IME a hard no is never a negotiation.
The most obvious strategy in that general situation is “no, but what can you offer me to change that to a yes?”.
That’s about saying no to other people. I was more focusing on saying no to things that violate the general strategy but seem to be satisfying in the short-term.
It’s easy to have decide that eating no cake is a high leverage intervention when you want to lose weight. It’s harder to say no in any individual instance.
I think that generally, skills (including metacognitive skills) don’t transfer that well between different domains and it’s best to practice directly. However, games also give one better feedback loops and easier access to mentoring, so the room for improvement might be larger.
A meta-analysis on transfer from video games to cognitive abilities saw small or null gains:
The lack of skill generalization from one domain to different ones—that is, far transfer—has been documented in various fields of research such as working memory training, music, brain training, and chess. Video game training is another activity that has been claimed by many researchers to foster a broad range of cognitive abilities such as visual processing, attention, spatial ability, and cognitive control. We tested these claims with three random-effects meta-analytic models. The first meta-analysis (k = 310) examined the correlation between video game skill and cognitive ability. The second meta-analysis (k = 315) dealt with the differences between video game players and nonplayers in cognitive ability. The third meta-analysis (k = 359) investigated the effects of video game training on participants’ cognitive ability. Small or null overall effect sizes were found in all three models. These outcomes show that overall cognitive ability and video game skill are only weakly related. Importantly, we found no evidence of a causal relationship between playing video games and enhanced cognitive ability. Video game training thus represents no exception to the general difficulty of obtaining far transfer.
However, A review on study of chess does see some gains, and gains that seem to improve with more time of instruction, but it’s a smaller survey of inadequately designed studies.
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I would be surprised if common games would transfer into real life strategic action. To be stategic in real life, a person has to think about how to achieve goals that they set for themselves over longer periods of time. Games don’t teach thinking in longer timeframes then the few hours that the game lasts.
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That has little to do with strategy. It doesn’t do anything to help the person who thinks that they will learn to become a good comedian by watching Garfield and Friends.
Strategy is about chosing the short-term goals based on the long-term goals. If you are playing a game you don’t have that.
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That misses the point. If you don’t think Garfield and Friends is comedy you can exchange it for any comedy and the point would still stand.
There are many tactical moves that help you to achieve what you want. Tactical moves are not strategy in the sense most people who write about strategy use the term. More importantly they are not strategy in the sense AnnaSalamon defines the term in the linked post. AnnaSalamon’s post also isn’t about competetive dynamics.
If I play a game of Go, I can focus on playing to maximize my chance of winning in that game. I can also play with a focus on maximizing my learning from the game.
If my end goal is to become a good player the strategic thing to do is to focus on maximizing my learning from the game even when it means that I will win an individual game less likely.
Not focusing on winning individual game (winning individual battles) is the thing that’s hard about strategy and where most people fail.
Yes, you can learn something but it’s a bad strategy for becoming a comedic. Being a good commedian is a lot of audience interaction. It’s a lot about having deliberte practice as a comedian in front of an audience.
It’s not obvious from outside that focusing on getting stagetime is better then spending your time alone watching footage but it happens to be the better strategy.
Without already knowing something about what it takes to become a comedian, to get a good strategy for becoming one, it might be required to go out and ask a few people with subject matter expertise about what kind of training is needed.
It’s possible for a person to spend effort into thinking what the most manipulatable element in a situation is and still fail at coming up with the correct answer.
I think most people already fail at putting in the time to seriously think about it, so the first level is to actually spend the time.
The second level is to think about how to actually get good at identifying the manipulative element.
Then the third level is to actually stop putting your effort on other elements and focusing on the most manipulative element. (that usually learns being able to say no)
Where are all the comedians in the club when they’re not on stage? They’re not in the green room, they’re all standing up the back watching everyone else perform.
A single strategy alone is a typically a sub optimal strategy. IRL you don’t typically act out LW thought experiments with the expectation they’ll work out.
There’s no substitute for practicing at whatever activity it is you’re trying to master, but it isn’t the only thing to it. People study all the time. We call that education and find it so useful that we’ve made it compulsory for minors.
I would argue that “do the same thing that many others did to achieve their success” is a blatantly obvious strategy.
The only way to guarantee that you don’t get an answer to a question is to never ask the question.
Saying no may be your weak point, that is not the case for others. The most obvious strategy in that general situation is “no, but what can you offer me to change that to a yes?”. That alters the dynamic of the negotiation in a way that can be useful. Besides, IME a hard no is never a negotiation.
That’s about saying no to other people. I was more focusing on saying no to things that violate the general strategy but seem to be satisfying in the short-term.
It’s easy to have decide that eating no cake is a high leverage intervention when you want to lose weight. It’s harder to say no in any individual instance.
I think that generally, skills (including metacognitive skills) don’t transfer that well between different domains and it’s best to practice directly. However, games also give one better feedback loops and easier access to mentoring, so the room for improvement might be larger.
A meta-analysis on transfer from video games to cognitive abilities saw small or null gains:
However, A review on study of chess does see some gains, and gains that seem to improve with more time of instruction, but it’s a smaller survey of inadequately designed studies.
-