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Finite and Infinite Games: Difference between revisions
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===“Historic” versus “prospective”=== | ===“Historic” versus “prospective”=== | ||
Many distinctions between finite and infinite games boil down to their historical perspective: those that look backwards, concerning themselves with what has already been established and laid down — as agreed rules, formal boundaries and limited time periods for resolution necessarily do — will tend to be finite in nature; those that are open-ended, forward looking, and indeterminate — concerned with what has yet to happen, and is necessarily unknown, are infinite. | Many distinctions between finite and infinite games boil down to their historical perspective: those that look backwards, concerning themselves with what has already been established and laid down — as agreed rules, formal boundaries and limited time periods for resolution necessarily do — will tend to be finite in nature; those that are open-ended, forward looking, and indeterminate — concerned with what has yet to happen, and is necessarily unknown, are infinite. | ||
Let me throw in some original research here: historically-focused games are fine: there is no harm and much reward to be had from a game of football as long as everyone understands the “theatricality” of what is going on; but to apply finite, backward-looking techniques to the “resolution” of ''infinite'' scenarios — necessarily forward-looking, indeterminate problems | Let me throw in some original research here: historically-focused games are ''fine'': there is no harm and much reward to be had from a game of football, as long as everyone understands the “theatricality” of what is going on; but to apply finite, backward-looking techniques to the “resolution” of ''infinite'' scenarios — necessarily forward-looking, indeterminate problems (in that you don’t even know that there is a problem, let alone what it is) is where you will get into bother. | ||
It is deceptive in that finite techniques may work perfectly well much of the time, because even infinite environments largely function by reference to established order, existing rules and what is already known — it’s just that they don’t have to, and are liable to change without notice. As long as they behave themselves, a finite approach is efficient, effective, centrally controllable and provides consistency and certainty. This is why unimaginative business leaders are so fond of sporting metaphors. | [[File:Normal vs fat-tailed distribution.png|250px|thumb|right|The ostensible similarity between normal and fat-tailed distributions, yesterday.]]It is deceptive in that finite techniques may work perfectly well much of the time, because even infinite environments largely function by reference to established order, existing rules and what is already known: they look, for the most part, like finite games — it’s just that they don’t have to, and are liable to change without notice. As long as they behave themselves, a finite approach is efficient, effective, centrally controllable and provides consistency and certainty. This is why unimaginative business leaders are so fond of sporting metaphors. | ||
This, we think, is just an other way of noting that the middle of a [[normal distribution]] resembles the middle of a “fat-tailed” distribution and the same approaches will work passably well for both, as long as the events fall within the middle, which for the most part they do. | This, we think, is just an other way of noting that the middle of a [[normal distribution]] resembles the middle of a “fat-tailed” distribution and the same approaches will work passably well for both, as long as the events fall within the middle, which for the most part they do. | ||