Ceasar's Mind

To those of you who don’t know me so well, I used to mod WarCraft 3 during my free in high school. While I can say I’ve made a variety of games, of particular interest to me were strategy games since as I had understood it, a good strategy game required no skill or luck- only experience and the ability to synthesize information. Today I am still fascinated with discovering what makes a good strategy games, and from time to time write many of my thoughts on my other blog.

Anyway, I recently was talking with an old friend of mine who goes by the name Boreal, and I threw out the (now obviously mistaken) idea of how all games must play out: I claimed that a game was either solvable, and therefore devolved into perfect play (like Tic-Tac-Toe, Checkers, and someday, Chess) or that perfect involved chance, and thus the game kind of devolved into a form of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Thus, I claimed that Real Time Strategy games felt into either of the two categories, though with Fog of War, most would fall into the latter.

Boreal wisely pointed out however that it actually was not so simple- that is, while Chess and the like are games of perfect information and Rock-Paper-Scissors is a game of imperfect information, it’s not binary- Half of the RTS game is actually about gathering information!

In the case of Dr. Strangelove, a lack of information was everything.

That resonated perfectly with other ideas I had recently realized on my own, notably that it’s impossible to price a unit “fairly” in any strategy games. So long as no two units fill the same game space, their prices can be arbitrarily different- players simply buy units when the value of a unit exceeds the cost. (“Balance” therefore, is arbritrary as well, although the concept typically refers to simply making the various decisions a player has interesting.) Furthermore, I noticed that when specialized units were combined, they could cover each other weaknesses, and thus develop an extremely powerful synergy.

The key here is to realize that without information, a player has to be prepared to tackle any threat. Thus, he cannot specialize his units, and therefore his units cannot benefit from any kind of synergy, and are therefore somewhat weak. Therefore, gathering information becomes extremely important- better information leads to better decisions which lead quantitatively, to a stronger army. Knowing truly is half the battle.

This is a pretty cool idea, because it doesn’t apply just to strategy games. For one, it actually applies to real war, but more practically for the rest of us, it applies to pretty much anything where uncertainty plays a role.

Consider my recent post on the importance of specialization in education. Given this new idea, it’s clear that really, the true value of breadth in a curriculum is to prepare us generally for the problems we can’t foresee. An emerging or otherwise volatile field would by necessity require students who plan to tackle the field to be prepared to solve a wide variety of problems. Likewise, a liberal arts education attempts to do much the same- for students who aren’t particularly sure what they want to do, the optimal decision is to learn how to do everything.

However, I believe that at the moment, the curriculum doesn’t make that clear, nor does it even offer courses that we really ought to be taking. For engineers and college students, a lot of the breadth requirements pretty much present you with the option to “pick one of these humanities classes that all pretty much appear useless”.

Perhaps, I will find myself proved wrong.

Despite being able to major in Computer Science and Math while being enrolled in the College and SEAS, one of the reasons I plan to drop out of the College is because it mandates taking a lot of courses to provide a wide breadth of knowledge. This is understandable, particularly for those who are seeking a liberal arts education, except in a lot of ways, it really isn’t so much.

I recently attended a talk by Norm Finkelstein here at Penn and listened to him discuss the conflict between Palestine and Israel, and in particular, the atrocities that Israel committed in the Gaza “War”. Finkelstein has spent the last 30 years of his life studying the conflict, and while he has his critics, he is generally a very well respected man. What’s important here though, is why he’s so respected, and that’s because he’s one of the world’s premiere experts on the conflict between Israel and Palestine. More importantly, he is NOT particularly well educated on other issues or other areas of academic interest. (Not to say he’s dumb, just to say that is not his specialty.) Contrasted with a person who is not specialized, I personally see Finkelstein as far superior, for his knowledge has real value, as opposed to someone who knows a little of everything.

Now, to a degree, breadth is important. Many of the world’s greatest discoveries and innovations were only possible through an extensive understanding of mixed disciplines. But too much leads to a complete waste of time.

This is interesting to me because of a recent book I read called Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi. Ferrazzi suggests that while being a part of many things is important to be able to make connections with people, it’s much more important to become an expert on some thing so that people will have a reason to keep you around. Personally, I find this is why I find I have so much trouble connecting with people- though I know a lot about certain subjects, many people simply aren’t interested, and subsequently no connection can be made. (The problem is compounded by the lack of niches for people with my interests. On that note, I probably ought to set to work to really make one for myself.)

In Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, Ferrazzi’s point is embellished. Shirky points out that in online communities, the most interesting conversations are those discussed over very specific interests. Thus there is a kind of paradox- the more narrow your interests, the less likely you are to connect, but the better your connections will be if you do.

Anyway, regarding education, I would much rather see the University promote more specialization, and simply remove the requirements of minimal breadth since I, and presumably the rest of the world, would much much more value in somebody who can speak about something they are passionate about and an expert on rather than be engaged with somebody who has nothing to say at all.