#5 Randomness feels least like a single coherent thing out of these 5. I’d break it into:
5a Maximin. Do things that work out best in the worst case scenario. This often involves a mixed strategy where you randomize across multiple possible actions (assuming you have a hidden source of randomness).
5b Erraticness. Thwart their expectations. Don’t do the thing that they’re expecting you to do, or do something that they wouldn’t have expected.
Though #5b Erraticness seems like an actively bad idea if you have been fully diagonalized, since in case you won’t actually succeed at thwarting their expectations and your erratic action will instead be just what they wanted you to do. It is instead a strategy for cat-and-mouse games where they can partially model you but you can still hope to outsmart them.
I found this section quite helpful and think splitting that into these two parts is probably the right call (including the caveat that this backfires if your opponent has actually diagonalized you).
I am working on a post trying to find a set of more common-language abstractions for reasoning about this stuff, where I think the eraticness fits a bit better into.
I found this section quite helpful and think splitting that into these two parts is probably the right call (including the caveat that this backfires if your opponent has actually diagonalized you).
I am working on a post trying to find a set of more common-language abstractions for reasoning about this stuff, where I think the eraticness fits a bit better into.