Cause and effect - TI's weekly thoughts #3
The Thoughtful Innovator - Thoughts from me to you.
For a cause, there are 100s of potential effects. But, there is only one eventual effect.
How many times daily do we worry - trying to predict the future and map out all the unique routes life can take us.
As a chess player, I know well how computationally draining it can feel to try to think of a response to every scenario.
If a knight moves here, I do this. If the pawn moves here, then this scenario will play out.
You can try to map out layers and layers of cause-effect to infinity.
But, while some chess players succeed off of memorization of line by line, the best chess players play with a ‘feel’ (verified by small bursts of computation).
What do I mean by this? They see each position as a story, rather than a series of moves on a board.
“My bishop is really strong on this diagonal and will likely annoy my opponent into the future” “My king seems pretty safe and snug, but maybe I could move a piece over to help him out.”
They don’t try to compute every possible move - they feel for the best 3 and explore the best 3 options against that move. Some chess players call this their candidate moves.
The best chess players developed this feel for the best 3 moves from playing LOTS of chess and getting lots of experience.
But, there’s something else going on that helps them stay more focused on what matters…
Let’s say you start with 3 best moves. For one of those moves, there are 3 best responses. For each of those 3 responses, there are 3 best responses.
This forms a mini tree-like structure with only 27 outcomes!
Example 3x3x2 tree of 18 outcomes
That mini=tree is much easier to look over and understand than a massive tree like this:
So, what is my point?
First, shorten your decision tree to three candidate moves. And, realize anything past that is probably overthinking.
Second, it’s better to wait for the effect, then to try to plan ahead for every potential scenario.
You will gain new intuition and feedback after every step, and definitely some lost games and mistakes.
And, why waste your time worrying about things that have not happened. Focus your time on what you can effect now.
See you next week,
Aaron Heienickle
Creator of The Thoughtful Innovator
Game designer behind skypig
More from me:
Get chaotically creative with my original card game - view game.