Re: [Swarm-modeling] american football vs other handball sports

[glen ep ropellaa]

Update! We had a chance to argue a bit about this. So, by "poetic", my friend 
actually means "amenable to high order expression" ... my words, not his. The 
idea being that zero intelligence agents with relatively high diversity compose 
in ways prevented by high intelligence agents with low diversity. That, of 
course, should have been followed by a discussion of whether stacking orders of 
expression leads to more or fewer degrees of freedom. But it didn't. Instead we 
pivoted to the idea of a game theoretic assessment of various team sports, 
their objectives (both explicit - e.g. scoring, and implicit - e.g. 
athleticism), and complexity.

Off-list, a swarm-modeling subscriber suggested that the progressive nature of 
sports like American football is the primary appeal. But I think this, too, can 
be reduced to amenability to higher order operators. The 0th order might lie in 
the exercises and physiology of the players (kickers train differently from 
those on the line, etc.) and their bodies will exhibit different repertoires 
based on that training. 1st order might be the brains of the players and how 
they use their bodies. 2nd order might be positions and players' fit-to-purpose 
for those positions. 3rd order would be tactical assembly of the positions to 
suit given ends (not all reducible to yards gained or scoring). Etc.

Anyway, I kindasorta buy his argument at this point. By analogy with, say, 
chess, one could add another row and column to the board, invent a new piece 
with a new move set, and calculate the number of games that addition produces. 
Then compare that number to the number the original game produces. It might be 
less or more ... but probably not the same.

But I completely reject the use of the word "poetic" because poetry relies on 
ambiguity, the ability of any given symbol to hold more than 1 meaning. Another 
person in the discussion suggested "elegance" instead, which I think is 
slightly better than "poetic" because elegant theories are more 
compressed/compressible than inelegant theories. And compressibility can be 
correlated with amenability to higher order operators.

As always, swats with the clue stick are welcome.

On 8/13/21 9:22 AM, glen ep ropellaa wrote:
> 
> So a friend of mine made the statement that American football is "the most 
> poetic sport". I objected strongly because my sense is that it's too 
> explosive, not only in the individual players, but in the plays ... too 
> discretized ... "punctuated". 
> 
> I think his argument is that because players are so specialized (defense, 
> offense, qb, kicker, backs, etc.), game strategy is more orchestrated than 
> sports like rugby where individuals are more general. But he made the 
> argument by talking about the athletic prowess. And because players are 
> specialized, my sense is they *should* be able to set records and do any 
> small set of things better than anyone else on the planet. The olympics are 
> similar. We wouldn't expect a shot putter to be good at the balance beam. 
> This raises the old problem of where the "logic" lies, in the individual or 
> the collective, and orchestration by a composer/conductor/coach or via some 
> sort of emergent structure. Which is the better *team athlete*? The one who 
> tightly specializes and knows her place? Or the one who smears her 
> capabilities across a large repertoire of tasks?
> 
> A brief duckduckgo search shows some hints that research on tactic complexity 
> and such happens in these sports. But, so far, it seems to lack the research 
> bloom we see in games like chess, go, or poker. Rather than argue in this 
> qualitative way, I'd like to discover some quantitative results, if they're 
> out there. There's bound to be such things, especially with all the 
> simulations we build for various video games.
> 
> Any ideas would be appreciated.
> 

-- 
glen ep ropella 971-599-3737