Re: Luck Plays No Part in Diplomacy
Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2019 11:45 pm
Let me be more precise: Over the last 30 hours, you are the only one that has used the term "luck" in here.
https://www.webdiplomacy.net/contrib/phpBB3/
https://www.webdiplomacy.net/contrib/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1795
And again, this is where we disagree. As Restitution just said:
I believe that a coin flip is not your best choice. It might be "game theory optimal", but it is not your best choice. If you want to prove that your point is not an opinion, explain how Jmo's 75% success rate is inferior to flipping a coin - and work with real people, real situations, not some game theory perfection situation. I already admitted that in a game theory perfect situation, a coin flip is as optimal as you can get.Restitution wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2019 11:05 pmAn optimal strategy is fundamentally *not* the same as the "best strategy".
RoganJosh wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2019 10:20 pmMaybe you don't play by Optimal Strategy. Maybe you have a preference for Berlin. And you are playing jmo. And he is so smart that he is gonna try to exploit this.
That means that jmo is not playing by Optimal Strategy. Which you can exploit, by playing Munich against him.
But that means that you are not playing by Optimal Strategy. Which jmo can exploit by predicting that you are gonna try to exploit him.
But that means that jmo is not playing by Optimal Strategy. Which you can exploit by predicting that he is gonna try to exploit that you are gonna try to exploit him.
The chain doesn't end. And if both you and your opponent are competent enough to see the whole chain, well... Then there really isn't any way of exploiting your opponent. And the only way you can make sure that you are not being exploited is to randomize your choice.
2 good players will never end up in this situation. Please stop making up non realistic diplomatic scenarios to prove some game theory point. It's actually harmful for any SoW students to see people arguing that flipping a damn coin is their best option in scenarios in games. I have already explained the multiple other factors in a game that can and should be contributing to order decision making. There are so many factors that nearly nobody sees the entire chain of options and factors that can influence it. Calling it a single factor determining situation is just ignorant.RoganJosh wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2019 12:49 amI'm pleased to see that you have stopped objecting to "coin flip is optimal" and now only object to "in certain situations coin flip is best." It should be said, "best" and "optimal" are almost always different.
But, again, I have to disappoint. While it is very uncommon that they are the same, there are situations in which both "optimal" and "best" is to flip a coin.
The situation I described a while ago is such a situation. This situation happens when a pure 50/50 guess between two high level players, both of which are fully aware of the situation, will determine the game. In this case, you can not do better than flipping a coin.
RoganJosh wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2019 10:20 pmMaybe you don't play by Optimal Strategy. Maybe you have a preference for Berlin. And you are playing jmo. And he is so smart that he is gonna try to exploit this.
That means that jmo is not playing by Optimal Strategy. Which you can exploit, by playing Munich against him.
But that means that you are not playing by Optimal Strategy. Which jmo can exploit by predicting that you are gonna try to exploit him.
But that means that jmo is not playing by Optimal Strategy. Which you can exploit by predicting that he is gonna try to exploit that you are gonna try to exploit him.
The chain doesn't end. And if both you and your opponent are competent enough to see the whole chain, well... Then there really isn't any way of exploiting your opponent. And the only way you can make sure that you are not being exploited is to randomize your choice.
Errr, you are aware that the entire conversation is about luck in diplomacy...per the OP and the articles? If that's not what you're discussing then maybe start a different topic?
I am well-aware of criticisms of linguistic prescription. That concept is so far-afield from our conversation that I am not sure if you are aware of what the phrase means (or if you even read the article you linked).Restitution wrote: So Pterodactyls are dinosaurs and a tomato is a vegetable and RPS is random.
[. . . ]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription
Wikipedia wrote:A frequent criticism is that prescription has a tendency to favour the language of one particular region or social class over others, and thus militates against linguistic diversity.
Wikipedia wrote:A second issue with prescriptivism is that it tends to explicitly devalue non-standard dialects.
Wikipedia wrote:Another serious issue with prescription is that prescriptive rules quickly become entrenched and it is difficult to change them when the language changes.
Wikipedia wrote:Although prescribing authorities may have clear ideas about why they make a particular choice, and their choices are seldom entirely arbitrary, there exists no linguistically sustainable metric for ascertaining which forms of language should be considered standard or otherwise preferable.
What does this have to do with the meanings of words? This article is quite clearly irrelevant to this conversation. I'm not offering style tips today...Wikipedia wrote:Finally, there is the problem of inappropriate dogmatism. [. . .] A classic example from 18th-century England is Robert Lowth's tentative suggestion that preposition stranding in relative clauses sounds colloquial.
You are asking me to read a volume of meaning into your (possibly ironic?) three word statement about pteordactyls. Your argument is left almost entirely to implication. If you become upset by my efforts to understand your cryptic, vague, misleading -- and I'll get to this -- stubbornly false statements, you only have yourself to blame.Restitution wrote:When people say "x is random" it's up to you to use your brain to figure out what they meant to say, and not try to pick apart their use of language as if that constitutes a refutation of an argument.
The National Geographic is not guilty of linguistic prescriptivism; the National Geographic is trying to inform the reader of a difficult-to-understand proposition that took decades of research, the insight of so many people, and innumerable man-hours to realize: birds are in the dinosaur clade. Incredible!The National Geographic wrote:More than 10,000 species still roam the Earth. We call them birds.
Neither have I, but I want to elementary school where I learned about dinosaurs and the concept of evolution by common descent.Restitution wrote: Nobody lives in a scientific conference and most people have never been to one.
My position is that the concept of randomness does not apply to Diplomacy (other than initial assignment of powers), and therefore luck plays no part. You can friggin' call this thing ("luck","randomness") whatever you want; I don't care!Restitution wrote:When people say "no, you are misrepresenting me, I meant X", you can't just be a snide nerd and say "But ackshually, the words you use have a formal mathematic meaning, and if I purposefully misinterpret you to be using the formal, mathematical defitiions of your words, you're wrong!"
And in your view, writing a 4,000 word essay with the introductory paragraph that reads:Restitution wrote:When people say "x is random" it's up to you to use your brain to figure out what they meant to say, and not try to pick apart their use of language as if that constitutes a refutation of an argument.
does not satisfy your requirement? Or did you forget? This is why I accuse you of not reading my essays.BrotherBored wrote:Why do so many people deploy the word “luck” to describe Diplomacy’s gameplay?
I stand by my statement that luck plays no role in Diplomacy. But I must acknowledge that there is something going on with Diplomacy that motivates players to use the word “luck” to describe what they experience.
Since Diplomacy doesn’t involve randomized gameplay (other than the assignment of the powers at the start), what are the players trying to describe when they say that “luck” happens during a match?
Lol this is incorrect. There's always a moveset that best leads you to the goal of the game which is to win. If your move set allows for that without hindering it, it's optimal. If it doesn't...then it's not. It also has to appease all of the press happening in the game...but I'm explaining this to someone who clearly doesn't care about the press aspect of the game considering you've played 1 classic press game. All your arguments so far seem entirely concocted on the notion that Diplomacy doesn't matter in a game called Diplomacy.RoganJosh wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2019 8:14 am@Swordsman, and anyone that cares.
There is no such thing as "optimal" moves. There will be a bunch of reasonable moves. You will have to compare the strengths of these moves somehow. You should assign weights to them, to the best of your ability. (Is that trivial? Not at all. But that's a different question.)
If you're going to continue making the claim that it *EVER* happens in full press games you need to back that up with at least 1 example and explain how the Diplomacy aspect of the game has no impact on it. If you want to stick to 1 vs 1 or Gunboat I'll definitely give you the point that a 50/50 coin flip scenario is far more possible.RoganJosh wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2019 2:41 am@jmo
You're just taking quotes out of context.
The situation described occurs at the end of most 1v1 games. It happens at the end of gunboat and full press games too, but not as often.
We are using "optimal" in the game theoretical sense here. Which is different from how you use it.
<33333RoganJosh wrote:Actually, my own opinion is that, while it is possible to have a situation where you best move is to flip a coin, the situation is so uncommon that if you are writing a blog with the aim to help people improve their gunboat skills, then you should ignore it.
This is, like, a suped-up verison of Russell's Teapot, but unironic. You are saying "X is possible, therefore X exists."
Jmo's criticism, which I am adopting, isn't that the situation unimaginable, it is that the situation has not occurred.RoganJosh wrote:Is it so hard to imagine a situation[...]
Yes, with all the factors that go into a press game, such as everyone being online to coordinate, everyone agreeing on the best move set for the coin flip (1 person can't be responsible for flipping a coin if 2 powers are involved), no press being leaked, no previous game play compelling any of the defenders to use a different factor to make the choice, and everyone involved who's spent months on this game deciding to toss all their press work to get reads out the window to decide days of press work with a flip of a coin, is something that I just cannot fathom. If you can show me a game where this actually happened, I'd obviously have to reconsider, but I really doubt it exists. And if it does exist, I really doubt it was the best move.RoganJosh wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2019 3:52 amIs it so hard to imagine a situation where you have one solo contender and the remaining powers are trying to form a stalemate line? There is not much diplomacy left in those situations. Coordination of moves, yes, but not much of negotiations. And, then, a last 50/50 which determines whether the solo contender snatches the 18th center or whether the defense completes the stalemate line.