The “purpose” of most martial arts is to defeat other martial artists of roughly the same skill level, within the rules of the given martial art.
Optimizing for that is not the same as optimizing for general fighting. If you spent your time on the latter, you’d be less good at the former.
“Beginner’s luck” is a thing in almost all games. It’s usually what happens when someone tries a strategy so weird that the better player doesn’t immediately understand what’s going on.
The other day a low-rated chess player did something so weird in his opening that I didn’t see the threat, and he managed to take one of my rooks.
That particular trap won’t work on me again, and might not have worked the first time if I’d been playing someone I was more wary of.
I did eventually manage to recover and win, but it was very close, very fun, and I shook his hand wholeheartedly afterwards.
Every other game we’ve played I’ve just crushed him without effort.
About a year ago I lost in five moves to someone who tried the “Patzer Attack”. Which wouldn’t work on most beginners. The first time I’d ever seen it. It worked once. It will never work on me again.
The “purpose” of most martial arts is to defeat other martial artists of roughly the same skill level, within the rules of the given martial art.
Not only skill level, but usually physical capability level (as proxied by weight and sex) as well. As an aside, although I’m not at all knowledgeable about martial arts or MMA, it always seemed like an interesting thing to do might to use some sort of an ELO system for fighting as well: a really good lightweight might end up fighting a mediocre heavyweight, and the overall winner for a year might be the person in a given <skill, weight, sex> class that had the highest ELO. The only real reason to limit the ELO gap between contestants would be if there were a higher risk of injury, or the resulting fight were consistently just boring. But if GGP is right that a big upset isn’t unheard of, it might be worth 9 boring fights for 1 exciting upset.
The “purpose” of most martial arts is to defeat other martial artists of roughly the same skill level, within the rules of the given martial art.
This is false—the reason they were created was self-defense. That you can have people of similar weight and belt color spar/fight each other in contests is only a side effect of that.
“Beginner’s luck” is a thing in almost all games. It’s usually what happens when someone tries a strategy so weird that the better player doesn’t immediately understand what’s going on.
That doesn’t work in chess if the difference in skill is large enough—if it did, anyone could simply make up n strategies weird enough, and without any skill, win any title or even the World Chess Championship (where n is the number of victories needed).
If you’re saying it works as a matter of random fluctuations—i.e. a player without skill could win, let’s say, 0.5% games against Magnus Carlsen, because these strategies (supposedly) usually almost never work but sometimes they do, that wouldn’t be useful against an AI, because it would still almost certainly win (or, more realistically, I think, simply model us well enough to know when we’d try the weird strategy).
The “purpose” of most martial arts is to defeat other martial artists of roughly the same skill level, within the rules of the given martial art.
Optimizing for that is not the same as optimizing for general fighting. If you spent your time on the latter, you’d be less good at the former.
“Beginner’s luck” is a thing in almost all games. It’s usually what happens when someone tries a strategy so weird that the better player doesn’t immediately understand what’s going on.
The other day a low-rated chess player did something so weird in his opening that I didn’t see the threat, and he managed to take one of my rooks.
That particular trap won’t work on me again, and might not have worked the first time if I’d been playing someone I was more wary of.
I did eventually manage to recover and win, but it was very close, very fun, and I shook his hand wholeheartedly afterwards.
Every other game we’ve played I’ve just crushed him without effort.
About a year ago I lost in five moves to someone who tried the “Patzer Attack”. Which wouldn’t work on most beginners. The first time I’d ever seen it. It worked once. It will never work on me again.
Not only skill level, but usually physical capability level (as proxied by weight and sex) as well. As an aside, although I’m not at all knowledgeable about martial arts or MMA, it always seemed like an interesting thing to do might to use some sort of an ELO system for fighting as well: a really good lightweight might end up fighting a mediocre heavyweight, and the overall winner for a year might be the person in a given <skill, weight, sex> class that had the highest ELO. The only real reason to limit the ELO gap between contestants would be if there were a higher risk of injury, or the resulting fight were consistently just boring. But if GGP is right that a big upset isn’t unheard of, it might be worth 9 boring fights for 1 exciting upset.
This is false—the reason they were created was self-defense. That you can have people of similar weight and belt color spar/fight each other in contests is only a side effect of that.
That doesn’t work in chess if the difference in skill is large enough—if it did, anyone could simply make up n strategies weird enough, and without any skill, win any title or even the World Chess Championship (where n is the number of victories needed).
If you’re saying it works as a matter of random fluctuations—i.e. a player without skill could win, let’s say, 0.5% games against Magnus Carlsen, because these strategies (supposedly) usually almost never work but sometimes they do, that wouldn’t be useful against an AI, because it would still almost certainly win (or, more realistically, I think, simply model us well enough to know when we’d try the weird strategy).