In a physical fight, it’s typically harmful to consider your chances of losing. The usefulness of that information is screened off by the salience of threats and opportunities. It would be almost-right to say that you pretty much just ought to condition on winning, in a sort of predictive-processing sense.
In a chess game, I think it can be useful to assess your chances. Perhaps this is because state evaluation is a core part of performing well. Also, in a losing position you play differently (take more risks, try to complicate instead of simplifying). The difference probably comes from the fact that you need to plan more moves ahead.
Thank you for this. The analogies are quite helpful in forcing me to consider if my argument is valid. (Admittedly, this post was written in haste, and probably errs somehow. But realistically, I wouldn’t have polished this rant any further. So publishing as is, it is.) It feels like the “good/bad for alignment”, “p doom changed” discussions are not useful in the way that analyzing winning probabilities in a chess game is useful. I’m not sure what it is, exactly.
Perhaps thinking through an analogy to go, with which I’ve got more experience, would help. When I play go, I rarely think about updating my “probability of victory” directly. Usually, I look at the strength of my groups, their solidity etc. and that of my enemy. And, of course, if they move as I wish. Usually, I wish them to move in such a way that I can accomplish some tactical objective, say killing a group in the top right so I can form a solid band of territory there and make some immortal groups. When my opponent moves, I update my plans/estimates regarding my local objectives, which propagates to my “chances of victory”.
“Wait, the opponent moved there!? Crap, now my group is under threat. Are they trying to threaten me? Oh, wait, this bugger wants to surround me? I see. Can I circumvent that? Hmm… Yep, if I place this stone at C 4, it will push the field of battle to the lower left, where I’m stronger and can threaten more pieces than right now, and connect to the middle left.”
In other words, most of my time is spent focused on robust bottlenecks to victory, as they mostly determine my victory. My thoughts are not shaped like “ah, my odds of victory went down because my enemy place a stone at H 12 ”. The thoughts of victory come after the details. The updates to P(victory), likewise, are computed after computing P(details).
In a physical fight, it’s typically harmful to consider your chances of losing. The usefulness of that information is screened off by the salience of threats and opportunities. It would be almost-right to say that you pretty much just ought to condition on winning, in a sort of predictive-processing sense.
In a chess game, I think it can be useful to assess your chances. Perhaps this is because state evaluation is a core part of performing well. Also, in a losing position you play differently (take more risks, try to complicate instead of simplifying). The difference probably comes from the fact that you need to plan more moves ahead.
Thank you for this. The analogies are quite helpful in forcing me to consider if my argument is valid. (Admittedly, this post was written in haste, and probably errs somehow. But realistically, I wouldn’t have polished this rant any further. So publishing as is, it is.) It feels like the “good/bad for alignment”, “p doom changed” discussions are not useful in the way that analyzing winning probabilities in a chess game is useful. I’m not sure what it is, exactly.
Perhaps thinking through an analogy to go, with which I’ve got more experience, would help. When I play go, I rarely think about updating my “probability of victory” directly. Usually, I look at the strength of my groups, their solidity etc. and that of my enemy. And, of course, if they move as I wish. Usually, I wish them to move in such a way that I can accomplish some tactical objective, say killing a group in the top right so I can form a solid band of territory there and make some immortal groups. When my opponent moves, I update my plans/estimates regarding my local objectives, which propagates to my “chances of victory”.
“Wait, the opponent moved there!? Crap, now my group is under threat. Are they trying to threaten me? Oh, wait, this bugger wants to surround me? I see. Can I circumvent that? Hmm… Yep, if I place this stone at C 4, it will push the field of battle to the lower left, where I’m stronger and can threaten more pieces than right now, and connect to the middle left.”
In other words, most of my time is spent focused on robust bottlenecks to victory, as they mostly determine my victory. My thoughts are not shaped like “ah, my odds of victory went down because my enemy place a stone at H 12 ”. The thoughts of victory come after the details. The updates to P(victory), likewise, are computed after computing P(details).