In poker or MtG you can often actually figure out your outs.
Even in games with just a bit more complexity (yes, in certain ways MtG is very simple) it can be very very hard to know what your outs really are. And if one of your outs is “actually the next few turns will not be as devastating as I think they will”, then almost all versions of playing to your outs will be worse than playing for generic-looking EV.
Same with life. Don’t play to your outs until and unless you’re extremely sure you’ve modeled the world well enough to know what ALL of your outs ARE, and aren’t. And that boils down to, basically, don’t play to your outs. OP hinted at this with “find out what your outs are” but when the advice boils down to “don’t play to your outs, gain knowledge about the game state” I would say the framing should be discarded.
I agree finding your outs is very hard, but I don’t think this is actually a different challenge than increasing “dignity”. If you don’t have a map to victory, then you probably lose. I expect that in most worlds where we win, some people figured out some outs and played to them.
100% this.
In poker or MtG you can often actually figure out your outs.
Even in games with just a bit more complexity (yes, in certain ways MtG is very simple) it can be very very hard to know what your outs really are. And if one of your outs is “actually the next few turns will not be as devastating as I think they will”, then almost all versions of playing to your outs will be worse than playing for generic-looking EV.
Same with life. Don’t play to your outs until and unless you’re extremely sure you’ve modeled the world well enough to know what ALL of your outs ARE, and aren’t. And that boils down to, basically, don’t play to your outs. OP hinted at this with “find out what your outs are” but when the advice boils down to “don’t play to your outs, gain knowledge about the game state” I would say the framing should be discarded.
I agree finding your outs is very hard, but I don’t think this is actually a different challenge than increasing “dignity”. If you don’t have a map to victory, then you probably lose. I expect that in most worlds where we win, some people figured out some outs and played to them.