[erikpukinskis]

You are comparing formal systems, like Starcraft, where the entire game world is quantized, with the real world where the games are not quantized.

Not only is the game of war not “written down” in digital form, there is far too much data to ever write down. Military strategists have been trying to model war forever. But no one can even agree on what the “game pieces” are, let alone list all of the Deus Ex Machina that might show up. An AI that is better than any human commander at tank warfare would have been just as dead as any human army when the opponent shows up with an H-bomb.

But being good at tank warfare also isn’t anything like being good at a tank game. To be good at tank warfare you need to be good at building factories. Pouring concrete in swamps. Convincing grannies to buy fewer cans of beans, and eat more squash. Figuring out when your workers really need to go home and sleep. Part of the game is just realizing thosethings are even things you might want to think strategize around.

And the nature of competition in real life is that as players gain advantages, opponents copy their skills and those advantages cease to work. Then you have to find new advantages in some aspect of the game that has never been documented before.

In a sense, high level real world competition is more like MAKING games than playing them. It’s about designing a competitive landscape where your opponent won’t be able to design their way out of it. Something AIs haven’t, to my knowledge, even begun to be able to think about.