The core of most games is fundamentally the same: You have a position; your actions bring the game to a different position. Once you understand what moves you can make and begin to understand the benefits of various positions, you can begin to strategize using a human version of the simple Minimax algorithm.
Are you trying to argue against generalizability here? This sounds like it could describe any situation in life (except that usually you don’t want to use minimax).
I think the difference between board games and life situations is how much more tractable games are to this attack. You have excellent information on how the state can evolve (perfect information, once you know the “event card” deck or whatnot if there is one), and can quickly get a rough estimate of the probabilities of each. While even a DnD beginner can figure out what actions to take to maximize his expected damage output, his actual character, who has seconds to do what the player has an eternity to think about, could not.
And many games have limited interaction between players, in which case strategizing is quite simple.
Come to board game club sometime, and I’ll show you games where you find yourself able to think significantly ahead (in a quite similar style to how you calculate ahead in chess) within a few turns of playing. Except many of them have low-enough long term consequences for most moves that you often only need to calculate ahead by one.
Except many of them have low-enough long term consequences for most moves that you often only need to calculate ahead by one.
This is generally true of chess as well. Thinking ahead is definitely useful, but just caching a whole bunch of tactics, strategies, mating themes, and opening moves is enough to make you an advanced amateur without ever having to do much actual calculation.
Are you trying to argue against generalizability here? This sounds like it could describe any situation in life (except that usually you don’t want to use minimax).
I think the difference between board games and life situations is how much more tractable games are to this attack. You have excellent information on how the state can evolve (perfect information, once you know the “event card” deck or whatnot if there is one), and can quickly get a rough estimate of the probabilities of each. While even a DnD beginner can figure out what actions to take to maximize his expected damage output, his actual character, who has seconds to do what the player has an eternity to think about, could not.
And many games have limited interaction between players, in which case strategizing is quite simple.
Come to board game club sometime, and I’ll show you games where you find yourself able to think significantly ahead (in a quite similar style to how you calculate ahead in chess) within a few turns of playing. Except many of them have low-enough long term consequences for most moves that you often only need to calculate ahead by one.
This is generally true of chess as well. Thinking ahead is definitely useful, but just caching a whole bunch of tactics, strategies, mating themes, and opening moves is enough to make you an advanced amateur without ever having to do much actual calculation.