Do you agree with this quote?

[FishyMcFish]

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.

[KipBond]

Yes

[PantsOnFire]

[ QUOTE ]
One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.

[/ QUOTE ]
This part would only be true if all cards were played face up or, if the cards were face down, then your opponent played so straighforwardly that each and every one of his actions could be assigned a specific probablility.

Also, if that statement is true, one could design a poker bot that could not be beaten. Given the difficulty of designing a bot to play chess (i.e. Big Blue) and be successful against Gary Kasparov in a game of complete information, I would suspect that designing a successful bot to beat the best poker players in a game of incomplete information would be next to impossible.

[emerson]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.

[/ QUOTE ]
This part would only be true if all cards were played face up or, if the cards were face down, then your opponent played so straighforwardly that each and every one of his actions could be assigned a specific probablility.

Also, if that statement is true, one could design a poker bot that could not be beaten. Given the difficulty of designing a bot to play chess (i.e. Big Blue) and be successful against Gary Kasparov in a game of complete information, I would suspect that designing a successful bot to beat the best poker players in a game of incomplete information would be next to impossible.

[/ QUOTE ]

They will probably be able to make bots that do well against the best players. But it is hard to think that they would be able to beat weaker players at the same clip that an expert player could. Optimal strategies are probably simpler than exploitative strategies which vary with the wide make up of opponents.

[Phone Booth]

No because the first sentence has nothing to do with the second.

[luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
They will probably be able to make bots that do well against the best players. But it is hard to think that they would be able to beat weaker players at the same clip that an expert player could. Optimal strategies are probably simpler than exploitative strategies which vary with the wide make up of opponents.


[/ QUOTE ]

If we gave the same input to them?
Live bots are usually deprived of all the personal observational clues that a person has available.
On-line, chat disabled, would a bot that is using a super version of PT to build it's strategies on the go be that much inferior to a human? It'd know to call/raise Hi $VIP more often than a low $VIP, etc. In areas like reading blind stealing and continuation bet and bluff styles it may be better than a human ??

The OP quote seems fine in it's comment on science, but the poker analogy is very poor. Even the very human part of poker, the "I'll rile him up and then he'll call my huge bet to try and punish me" stuff, is a probability based action.

I suspect it was this need for some human intuition or leaps of connection that he was implying in the 1st sentence, but poker is too simple to serve as a good comparison.

luckyme

[johnnyrocket]

sure

[Siegmund]

No.

The first and second sentences both underestimate, by similar amounts, the usefulness of the analysis methods in question.

[KipBond]

Key word: "entirely".

[soon2bepro]

Not at all. And you can grasp poker like that. It's totally possible. A computer could be programmed to do it. Any empyrical knowledge can be expressed in mathematical/statistical terms.

[Kaj]

[ QUOTE ]
If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nothing wrong with this quote.

Some are saying you can play poker merely by assigning probabilities to every action. But if you made all your plays using a look-up table of probabilities, and simply had a bot or calculator make the +EV play, then you wouldn't really grasp the game of poker entirely, now would you? I think that's the essence of the quote -- science is more than just stamp collecting or data recording and mathematical analysis.

[jogger08152]

Yes.

[Piers]

Arithmetic is a useful tool in some forms of scientific analysis. Poker can in principle be reduced entirely to the mathematics of probability, but the details would be beyond us.

/images/graemlins/confused.gif
So I guess that’s a no?

[Duke]

Here's the thing... the imagination is a strong thing. It allows us to hypothesize about the world around us, and come up with explanations that may seem to be illogical. Math doesn't really give us that. It doesn't do much in the way of striking forth bravely into the unknown, since it's just a model that is constantly modified as that unknown becomes known.

And I think that's what you're saying, or at least something akin to that. I'll agree with that much.

Math isn't always terrific about bringing brand new ideas to the table, but it IS terrific when it comes to showing which ideas are wrong. While we'd be nowhere without our imagination, we'd be sacrificing babies to the sun without math.

[KipBond]

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." ~Albert Einstein, Sidelights on Relativity

[ConstantineX]

If by arithmetic you mean digital computation the answer is no.