One interesting pattern in there, that the article doesn’t draw into a conclusion—the two main examples presented, Eurisko and the basketball team, both were faced down by unofficial officials who tried to get them to conform and lose—and they backed down.
I would have gone for the kill. Let them cancel the tournament, let the ref foul the game. Ultimately, being too conciliatory cost them the war.
Taking the broader view, I wonder how much complaining about cheats is really an attempt by Goliath to have slings declared unfair. And how much of the desire to be nice and conform is evolution telling David to fall in line.
Taking the broader view, I wonder how much complaining about cheats is really an attempt by Goliath to have slings declared unfair. And how much of the desire to be nice and conform is evolution telling David to fall in line.
When debating the rules of a game, the “unfairness” defense always seemed daft to me. The rules are almost assuredly fair in that they don’t favor anyone explicitly and are almost assuredly unfair in that they favor someone implicitly. It’s better to argue about what makes the game the most interesting.
Take basketball. Adding the 3-point line was certainly unfair to the Goliaths in favor of the Davids (or centers in favor of the guards), yet it opened up the game and made it more interesting. From my own experience in a fledgling sport, paintball has had issues with rate of fire (ROF) caps and guns that ramp (i.e., shoot semi at low ROF, but shoot faster than semi as long as a higher ROF is maintained). The big debate was ramping vs. semi. Ramping leveled the playing field in one sense because everyone could shoot the same speed, however, it helped back guys in favor of front guys initially because the ROF caps were set at 15 balls per second (bps) initially. This shut down movement and made the games far less interesting. Apparently these caps were brought down to 10-13 bps, depending on the league, which is much closer to what the average person can shoot in semi. I bet this has opened up the game and made movement easier, making it more fun to play and, for the sake of TV dollars, interesting to watch(1). I say I bet because I’ve been out of the sport for a while, so I don’t really know.
(1)There’s also the safety issue, which is really just a red herring. Look up the insurance stats, paintball is safer than golf and bowling (E.R. visits per 1000 participants).
Look up the insurance stats, paintball is safer than golf and bowling (E.R. visits per 1000 participants).
My first reaction is ‘well, yeah, just look at who plays paintball versus who plays golf or bowling’. Unless those stats have taken into account the differing ER visit rates of teens & senior citizens, I don’t think that says very much about how safe paintball is; teens playing bowling or golf probably have even lower ER visit rates...
teens playing bowling or golf probably have even lower ER visit rates...
I’m not so sure… I’ve been a teenager playing golf and I… didn’t quite treat the game and the safety rituals with quite the respect unconscious respect that the older players did.
Good point. All three sports (paintball, golf, and bowling) are significantly safer than basketball, baseball, football, hockey, and just about any other sport you can name according to the same stats.
Paintball, golf and bowling have under 1 injury per 1000 participants (paintball was lowest with .24) while the other four sports named are in the double digits.
Taking the broader view, I wonder how much complaining about cheats is really an attempt by Goliath to have slings declared unfair.
Reminds me of the Playing to Win essay linked here a few weeks ago.
And how much of the desire to be nice and conform is evolution telling David to fall in line.
That doesn’t make sense, though. If playing “cheap” in this way benefits David against Goliath, then evolution would favor a whole lot of Davids playing “cheap”.
““Eurisko was exposing the fact that any finite set of rules is going to be a very incomplete approximation of reality,” Lenat explained. “What the other entrants were doing was filling in the holes in the rules with real-world, realistic answers. But Eurisko didn’t have that kind of preconception, partly because it didn’t know enough about the world.” So it found solutions that were, as Lenat freely admits, “socially horrifying”: send a thousand defenseless and immobile ships into battle; sink your own ships the moment they get damaged. ”.
Lenat, Lawrence, David, and the basketball girls all ‘played’ in a way that emphasized their own strengths and took advantage of the limits of the situation; they refused to accept the conventions everyone else held, and so they were able to beat them.
“Cheap” is a term used in the Playing to Win essays. It generally refers to a tactic that is uninteresting or repetitive but successful.
The example used in the essays is repeating the same move over and over in Street Fighter.
(Edit) The example from Eurisko is that making ships that sink themselves is “cheap” because ships in a real war wouldn’t do that. It is a valid strategy according to the rules of the game but invalid according to extraneous rules that have no bearing on the game.
One interesting pattern in there, that the article doesn’t draw into a conclusion—the two main examples presented, Eurisko and the basketball team, both were faced down by unofficial officials who tried to get them to conform and lose—and they backed down.
I would have gone for the kill. Let them cancel the tournament, let the ref foul the game. Ultimately, being too conciliatory cost them the war.
Taking the broader view, I wonder how much complaining about cheats is really an attempt by Goliath to have slings declared unfair. And how much of the desire to be nice and conform is evolution telling David to fall in line.
When debating the rules of a game, the “unfairness” defense always seemed daft to me. The rules are almost assuredly fair in that they don’t favor anyone explicitly and are almost assuredly unfair in that they favor someone implicitly. It’s better to argue about what makes the game the most interesting.
Take basketball. Adding the 3-point line was certainly unfair to the Goliaths in favor of the Davids (or centers in favor of the guards), yet it opened up the game and made it more interesting. From my own experience in a fledgling sport, paintball has had issues with rate of fire (ROF) caps and guns that ramp (i.e., shoot semi at low ROF, but shoot faster than semi as long as a higher ROF is maintained). The big debate was ramping vs. semi. Ramping leveled the playing field in one sense because everyone could shoot the same speed, however, it helped back guys in favor of front guys initially because the ROF caps were set at 15 balls per second (bps) initially. This shut down movement and made the games far less interesting. Apparently these caps were brought down to 10-13 bps, depending on the league, which is much closer to what the average person can shoot in semi. I bet this has opened up the game and made movement easier, making it more fun to play and, for the sake of TV dollars, interesting to watch(1). I say I bet because I’ve been out of the sport for a while, so I don’t really know.
(1)There’s also the safety issue, which is really just a red herring. Look up the insurance stats, paintball is safer than golf and bowling (E.R. visits per 1000 participants).
My first reaction is ‘well, yeah, just look at who plays paintball versus who plays golf or bowling’. Unless those stats have taken into account the differing ER visit rates of teens & senior citizens, I don’t think that says very much about how safe paintball is; teens playing bowling or golf probably have even lower ER visit rates...
I’m not so sure… I’ve been a teenager playing golf and I… didn’t quite treat the game and the safety rituals with quite the respect unconscious respect that the older players did.
I suppose the relevant safety measures are to prevent people from getting struck by golf balls?
Oh no. The safety measures are there for the same reason they are in croquet. If you follow me.
Good point. All three sports (paintball, golf, and bowling) are significantly safer than basketball, baseball, football, hockey, and just about any other sport you can name according to the same stats.
A quick google search brought this up, which is consistent with stats I’ve seen in the past: http://www.americanpaintballcoliseum.com/new/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=53
Paintball, golf and bowling have under 1 injury per 1000 participants (paintball was lowest with .24) while the other four sports named are in the double digits.
Reminds me of the Playing to Win essay linked here a few weeks ago.
That doesn’t make sense, though. If playing “cheap” in this way benefits David against Goliath, then evolution would favor a whole lot of Davids playing “cheap”.
The most important part of the article, I think:
““Eurisko was exposing the fact that any finite set of rules is going to be a very incomplete approximation of reality,” Lenat explained. “What the other entrants were doing was filling in the holes in the rules with real-world, realistic answers. But Eurisko didn’t have that kind of preconception, partly because it didn’t know enough about the world.” So it found solutions that were, as Lenat freely admits, “socially horrifying”: send a thousand defenseless and immobile ships into battle; sink your own ships the moment they get damaged. ”.
Lenat, Lawrence, David, and the basketball girls all ‘played’ in a way that emphasized their own strengths and took advantage of the limits of the situation; they refused to accept the conventions everyone else held, and so they were able to beat them.
This was my first thought, as well. These “Goliaths” sounds like scrubs who complained loud enough to get favors from the people in charge.
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Not sure what you mean by “cheap”.
“Cheap” is a term used in the Playing to Win essays. It generally refers to a tactic that is uninteresting or repetitive but successful.
The example used in the essays is repeating the same move over and over in Street Fighter.
(Edit) The example from Eurisko is that making ships that sink themselves is “cheap” because ships in a real war wouldn’t do that. It is a valid strategy according to the rules of the game but invalid according to extraneous rules that have no bearing on the game.