Wednesday, June 21, 2006

A game of my own

There's two actually. And how's this reading someone elses blog about game theory I actually got inspired, or influenced, or am writing about it in an abstract way with only vague references
Anyhoo hopefully my links work.
As you may know or for you Johnny come lately's may not know, Shinmen no Mushashi Miyamoto's treatise 'Go Rin No Sho' or the book of five rings has been a huge influenza on me as the italians would say.
And apon discovering a pdf file in italian of Camillo Agrippa's 'Trattato Di Scienzia d’Armes’ or scientific treatise on arms a revolutionary in fencing who used geometric principles to make swordplay more efficient.
Swordplay is of course a metaphore for everything else. Now Musashi and Yagyu Munenori both have treatises were they have Identified invincible strategies.
And I thought with some little sketches I had determined which srategy wins: Musashi's. SImply because Musashi's is more invincible.
It came down to a numbers game and I'd like to think of it as like my attempt to define an 'opposite of zero'
That is to try and be revolutionary in year 12 I thought whilst excited by the reality of doing imaginary homework for imaginary numbers I would concieve of a new concept that is: If numbers arent arranged in a straightline but a continuos circle and zero represents the point where numbers become positively so small as to become negatively small in value and vice versa then there must be a point corresponding on the circle of values where infinitely large positive numbers become so large as to become indistinguishable from infanitely large negative numbers' but in my excitement I never bothered to imagine a premis or even logical explanation as to why this is so. A theory thoroughly crushed by learning about number theory and Goedel's incompleteness theory neither of which I really understand at all.
But to put the case of mushashi's more invincible strategy it was simple. It can be illustrated by the exercise we probably all have engaged in in childhood or watched in a portrayel of childhood that we now assume ours must have reflected.
That IS: 'did not, did too, did not 100, did not 1000, did not infinity, did not infinity plus 1...did not infinity times infinity' and how infuriating it became when you could not concieve of a larger way to express the same number.
So Yagyu's strategy works on a concept of judging the distance an opponent needs to attack you and then maintianing the minimum distance needed to be not attackable and then select a time to broach this distance where you will 'cut down the evil'
Musashi's strategy in short is simply having a counterattack to any attack. Making Yagyu's strategy a subset of Musashi's. Therefore if the Yagyu attack = 1 then musashis attack = 1 + 1
unless of course Yagyu's attack = 2
Then Musashi's must be = 2 + 1
unless of course Yagyu's = n
Then Musashi's attack must = n + 1
or even = n + n
or even = n.n
or really even = n + n!
The point is musashi's game contains yagyu's and musashi's wins.
I'd draw it but i really can't. I promise I will some day.
Moral of the story: never ever bet against batman.

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