(2018-08-24) Rao How To Not Lose At4d Chess

Venkatesh Rao: How to Not Lose at 4d Chess: The idea of 4d chess turned into a popular meme with Donald Trump's victory in 2016 (helped along by narratives like the breathless Master Persuader one peddled by Scott Adams)....insight from theoretical computer science suggests that 4d chess ought to be simpler than 2d. I went "Doh!" because that insight (which I'll explain in a minute) was one of my favorite ideas (and go-to hacks) from grad school, and I had failed to connect the dots. Then I did a double take: wait, did that really take care of the idea?

when you add more dimensions, playing to continue the game (infinite game thinking) gets easier than playing to win (finite game thinking). (cf Law Of Requisite Variety?)

In the popular and intuitive perception, the idea of higher-dimensional games goes along with higher-dimensional strategies

this understanding of higher-dimensional games is at odds with our best theoretical understanding of higher-dimensional thinking, which suggests that higher dimensional games require lower-dimensional strategies. In other words, thinking on more levels, more moves out, isn't even theoretically the right thing to do. You have to go in the other direction: fewer levels, fewer steps ahead.

Here's the key insight from computer science: under fairly general conditions, more random strategies are cheaper to extend to higher dimensions than comparable deterministic ones.

In general, these sorts of qualitative effects in higher dimensional games suggest it is harder to achieve deterministically defined win states like checkmate. On the flip side, the downside risk to more thoughtless action is mitigated, because there are fewer ways to get fatally trapped

adding dimensions turns symmetric games into asymmetric games: people who want to win get weaker. People who just want to keep playing get stronger. Ineffective players try to "win" in some finite sense. Effective ones try to goad opponents into going for the clear win, while making sure they simply stay in the game and don't lose.

A very nice illustration of this is in an episode of Star Trek: TNG where Data faces off against Sirna Kolrami

Data could effectively keep going without getting bored or frustrated, drawing on an effectively infinite reservoir of what for him (but not for Kolrami) was a free resource: time and attention.

This should remind you of guerrilla warfare.

Over the past century, war has gotten more asymmetric as it's gotten higher dimensional

One interesting effect was that military objectives for typical pairs of adversaries diverged. As Henry Kissinger noted, "the conventional army loses if it does not win, the guerrilla wins if he does not lose". The asymmetry lies not just in the relative weakness of the guerrilla, but in the fact that the conventional army is compelled by doctrine and tradition to try and "win." The guerrilla is more powerful in being doctrinally enabled to fight for a less conventionally honorable outcome.

Chess models conventional warfare, where both sides share a win condition: checkmate

The key to note here is that guerrilla warfare is not particularly complex in a deterministic sense. It does not rely on the strategic wisdom of a long military tradition, complex officer education, or training in advanced weaponry for the regular troops. Even illiterate farmers can run guerrilla warfare playbooks

So the popular theory of Trump playing 4d chess is both right and wrong. Yes he's playing 4d chess effectively. No, it is not by employing a naively "sophisticated" 4d strategy and thinking on more levels and further out than his adversaries. He's been doing it the theoretically sound way: by trying not to lose, like Data or the Vietcong. In higher dimensions, sophisticated naïveté eats naive sophistication for lunch.

As he himself noted once, "anything that makes things more complicated, I do."

The electoral college system is not designed to allow less populous states to win; it is designed to ensure they stay in the game

Protecting against the tyranny of the majority is an important principle to follow in general

*This time, all sorts of godly multi-level, multi-move-ahead strategic thinking is being attributed to Robert Mueller.

I suspect he is following a relatively simple and randomized strategy of just probing for any available legal vulnerability, while making sure not to provide any excuse for the investigation to be shut down.*

Mueller doesn't have to win. In fact, he cannot, since he cannot indict a sitting President the way he can an ordinary citizen.

Why did Trump enjoy the advantage of asymmetry in one case and not the other?

In the election, the game was irreducibly complex for Hillary Clinton, due to the constraints of being a conventional candidate bound by conventional party norms -- she was doctrinally bound like a conventional army

But in the case of this investigation, Mueller, not being a politician with an office to lose, is free to act in ways Trump is not

Whether or not that proves to be a fatal liability for him remains to be seen.

A High-Dimensional Future

Software eating the world is the same thing as the world getting higher-dimensional. Software loosens constraints, and enables more degrees of freedom in more places, allowing more complicated, higher-dimensional drama to unfold everywhere. More variables, more movement, more confusion, more noise.

Simplify your actions, increase your randomness, complicate the game for the adversary, and try to stay alive.