[w_alloy]

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everyone playing casts about for an overall strategy that works. some can cast farther than others. some cast farther and faster and can test more strategies. the entire group of strategy seekers, however, all bumble around the same area of strategy space because they're all constrained by the same computational deficiencies. stupid people, small circle. smart people, somewhat larger circle enveloping the smaller. smartest, larger still. area relative to total area? still totally insignificant. there is thus a ceiling to how much progress can be made.

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This is completely irrelevant. To suggest that modern strategies are limited by their complexity is ludicrous. Players don't do all the required math and game theory at the table, nor should they. Players are capable of implementing much more intricate strategies than are currently in use, and these strats can be come up with using limitless resources away from the table. Did you watch Boosted and Jman 8 table heads up? How would this speed of play be possible if people were stretching their capacities on each decision?

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no one is capable of even sampling the overwhelming majority of 'strategy space', even by chance.

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In practical terms, I think this statement ranges somewhere from very misleading to untrue. We have limitless time, and human abilities are a pretty insignificant limiter.

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no, it will not converge towards game-theoretic optimal play because the selection pressure acting on the population do not favor those who deviate the least from theoretical optima. the onus is on you to demonstrate otherwise. strategies are selected for their efficacy at exploiting imperfect, irrational, and heuristically-inclined humans with decision-making biases out the ass.

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All these factors you list are being decreased over time, and are mostly close to zero sum anyways (for example, some people are too tight, some too loose, and these cancel eachother out to a degree). Even so, flawed strategies exploiting flawed strategies are more likely to lead toward unexploitable strategies than away. I don’t see how you can argue against this statement.

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the devil is in the details. most of the real 'game-theoretic' progress (avoiding errors that are salient enough to be reliably exploited) that's going to be made is already done.


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The 1st sentence doesn't mean anything, and the second goes more to my point then yours. If some of the "real 'game-theoretic' progress" is still left to be made, then won't we move towards unexploitable ground as progress is made?

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this post is a lot like my first one. i don't think you read it!

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I read it carefully. I think you are misunderstanding some key parts about the nature of unexploitability and evolutionary processes.

Play has improved towards unexploitable consistently over time since the begininning of NL. I'm sure there have been many hitches and backwards movements, but on whole play is worlds less exploitable than it used to be. The proof is on you to show that this overwhelming trend is cooincidence or fad, and that it won't continue.