kwh@bentley.UUCP (KW Heuer) (03/03/86)
In article <12080@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> brahms!desj (David desJardins) writes: >In article <683@oliveb.UUCP> jerry@oliveb.UUCP (Jerry Aguirre) writes: >>The reason it was believable was in the nature of the game. Unlike >>standard chess where all positions are visible this was more like >>"battleship" or poker in that the "position" of many of the opponents >>pieces were UNKNOWN. Thus a major portion of the game was in trying to >>outguess an apponents stratigy. >> >>McCoy explained that he used information gleened from Spock's >>(confidential) psychological medical records and exploited a weekness in >>Spock's personality. >> >>This was entirely consistent with previous stories in which Kirk has >>pointed out that, in a game like poker, logic isn't enough. It is also >>consistent with McCoy's constant poking at Spock's psychology. > >... In *all* games ... there is an "optimal" strategy. This includes >battleship and poker, the examples given above.... This strategy ... >is optimal in the sense that no strategy is statistically superior >in a long run of games. And in particular, since all decisions in the >optimal strategy are made randomly, no knowledge of the opponent's >psychology can be helpful against a player who plays the optimal strategy. True, but in most games which are actually played by intelligent people the optimal strategy is so complex that it can't be computed efficiently, so each player must create his own approximation to optimality (and possibly revise it as the game progresses). And without a true optimal strategy, psychology can play an important role, even in modern chess. Btw, it is interesting to note that it is sometimes better *not* to play "optimally". If you are convinced that your opponent isn't using his optimal strategy, there is often a counter-strategy which will give you a higher payoff -- until he catches on and plays the counter-counter- strategy, which is a good time to switch back to the optimum. Anyway, it seems to me that the incident from Star Trek was scientifically sound, which is nice for a change. :-) Karl W. Z. Heuer (ihnp4!bentley!kwh), The Walking Lint