It’s indeed a mystery to me why anyone bothered to post and discuss “solutions” different from Rayhawk’s in the swords and armor thread. This stuff is like arithmetic: one right answer, nothing to argue about.
In some sense, I agree with you. The problem as posed had a clear answer that was calculable by a known method (if one had done the requisite reading in game theory). The thing I particularly liked about Rayhawk’s post was the link to the a library of game theory software and tools for the construction and analysis of finite extensive and strategic games: gambit. That link was the kind of novel and useful pointer that is one of the many reasons I have for reading LW :-)
On the other hand, I find that the world frequently fails to present situations to me that are intelligible to the point that I can build a payoff matrix and run the numbers. So, as a simple exercise standing in for a more complex world there was potentially much more to say about the puzzle. In that vein I particularly liked Nominull’s fast and frugal answer:
My general heuristic for these sorts of games is to play the option that beats the option that beats the option that looks best to me at first blush. In this case that means I play green sword, yellow armor. It’s a reasonably fast heuristic that does reasonably well.
I expect that I would find it very difficult to mimic Rayhawk’s application of gambit in the bulk of real life circumstances. Nominull’s heuristic (which incidentally produced one of the options from the optimal mixed strategy) seems more generally applicable. I can imagine using Nominull’s heuristic in much fuzzier contexts for much lower data gathering costs and getting pretty good results thereby. Not that I’ve tested it or anything… but it’s the sort of thing I’ll be looking for an opportunity to try out in the real world someday, and see if it helps :-)
In some sense, I agree with you. The problem as posed had a clear answer that was calculable by a known method (if one had done the requisite reading in game theory). The thing I particularly liked about Rayhawk’s post was the link to the a library of game theory software and tools for the construction and analysis of finite extensive and strategic games: gambit. That link was the kind of novel and useful pointer that is one of the many reasons I have for reading LW :-)
On the other hand, I find that the world frequently fails to present situations to me that are intelligible to the point that I can build a payoff matrix and run the numbers. So, as a simple exercise standing in for a more complex world there was potentially much more to say about the puzzle. In that vein I particularly liked Nominull’s fast and frugal answer:
I expect that I would find it very difficult to mimic Rayhawk’s application of gambit in the bulk of real life circumstances. Nominull’s heuristic (which incidentally produced one of the options from the optimal mixed strategy) seems more generally applicable. I can imagine using Nominull’s heuristic in much fuzzier contexts for much lower data gathering costs and getting pretty good results thereby. Not that I’ve tested it or anything… but it’s the sort of thing I’ll be looking for an opportunity to try out in the real world someday, and see if it helps :-)