Re: Winning Looks a Lot Like Losing...

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But if you don't do the work upfront, there's only so far you can actually go - there's an upper bound to how high you can escalate. An Iraq-style invasion is off the table for you. So you really are betting the entire thing on an assumption that your opponent won't go all the way to the mat - that you can either destroy them or get them to capitulate short of an Iraq-style invasion. Unfortunately, your opponent knows it, so they just have to outlast what you can throw at them - and if they do, they can wait until you have to capitulate.

blogs.timesofisrael.com - Why game theory fails to explain the iran war

One month into the war with Iran, the game theorists have converged. They are right but only if the strategy space remains the same. If the game being analyzed is the only game that exists. They are fundamentally wrong, because there is no such thing as a static game that never changes and they have mistaken the boundaries of their model for the boundaries of the possible. ... Every analysis I’ve read defines a fixed strategy space — escalate, negotiate, attrit, withdraw — computes equilibria over those moves, finds no stable solution, and concludes: there is no endgame. But this conclusion contains a hidden assumption that no one is stating explicitly: that the strategy space is closed. That the moves currently on the board are the only moves that can exist.

It's a cool article.

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