lavalamp comments on Rationality Lessons in the Game of Go - Less Wrong

40 Post author: GreenRoot 21 August 2010 02:33PM

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Comment author: Apprentice 23 August 2010 01:18:27PM 9 points [-]

I don't doubt that there are lots of rationality lessons in deterministic games like Go. But I think in some ways they crucially misrepresent life. When you've lost a game in Go you can always think:

"I lost because I didn't play well enough."

In games with a random element, like poker, you have to think:

"I lost because I didn't play well enough AND/OR because I was unlucky."

To become good at poker it's crucial to be able to distinguish between bad luck and play mistakes. You have to keep your cool when your opponent makes bad moves and wins anyway. You have to be able to think thoughts like this:

"That the card on top of the deck should have happened to be the only one that would let my opponent win the game is not evidence I should update on. It tells me nothing I didn't already know. It's just that Nature felt like slapping me in the face right now and there's nothing I can do about it. She'll wipe the grin off my opponent soon enough if he keeps playing like that."

In life, we are very often faced with situations where we have to analyze to what extent something is the result of our own actions and to what extent it is the result of factors outside our control.

Comment author: lavalamp 23 August 2010 06:00:02PM 3 points [-]

Go has luck/chance/randomness too, unless you can read out the entire game tree.

Part of go strategy is to simplify the board when you're ahead, and to try and throw the board into chaos when you're behind.

And there is a sense in which you cannot win a game of go, your opponent must lose it-- and when my opponents do so, I feel lucky, especially if their mistake is something which is obvious to me.