what the rock?

January 21, 2006

World Rock paper Scissors Championships

It's joke, I know it's a joke. God help me it has to be a joke, I might piss myself laughing it's so funny whether or not it's joke.

I would love to end up on a plane with a bunch of contenders on their way to the big game..

{ imaginary radio voice }

"Twelve RPS finalists were arrested for misconduct on board air -america flight 300 to new haven saturday afternoon. Members of the "Knuckles Brute Squad" tried unsuccessfully to 'pants' a 5 year old when the child beat four time world champion Mark "the paperboy" Sterling at a fair fight. "

Which is better? Darts or Rock Paper Scissors as a leisure activity misrepresented as a sport. I am at a total loss.

check out the page on gambits. I had no idea what lack of finesse I display as a casual player of RPS..I didn't even realize there were gambits.. I thought it was chance...


Continued from main page..
Posted by Miriam at January 21, 2006 9:12 PM | TrackBack Posted to indelible stupidity

Comments

it's totally not a joke, dude. I know someone who competed last year...

Posted by: MK at January 21, 2006 9:56 PM

eric shinn?

Posted by: ned at January 22, 2006 3:36 AM

how did you know.....

Posted by: MK at January 22, 2006 12:19 PM

Gambits, yeah, gambits. My brothers are SOOOO predictable, always three rocks in a row, and then a quick scissors once they figure they have messed up lil sis ... anyway, not a totally fair means of settling disuptes, but a hilarious family power game!

Posted by: alison at January 23, 2006 10:05 AM

apparantly, the last winner, when questioned on his "strategy" (excuse me while i suppress a giggle) claimed to have read his opponent's mind.

believe it or not, the rps championship actually came up at an academic lecture i went to recently about randomness and probabilities. the idea was that if you were mathematically random about your rps game, you had a better chance of beating the mind-reading winner (or at least an even chance). the reasoning went like this: people try to act random but there is a kind of pattern that they subconsciously employ (for example, nobody is likely to play paper five times in a row ever, although it would come up in a random pattern at some point).

and what is really interesting about this is that if you carried dice around in your pocket and were truly random about meaningless decisions, you prevent anyone from manipulating you based on how they think you are going to behave.

sorry for the long post, but it was a really interesting lecture. (info about the prof and his book can be found here)

by the way, mir, it was excellent to run into you over the holidays. really am going to make it up to montreal sometime soon.

Posted by: mgg at January 23, 2006 10:40 AM

I never know what's going to get people talking on this blog.

last night over dinner we talked about the rps and it turned out the dinner guest had play "rock scissors dynamite"?

dynamite blows up rock, scissors cuts dynamite, rock breaks scissors.

which led to all sorts of speculation about how one could contemporize the game.
terror beats state power, war beats terror, state power can end war.

.. and again there is all this random-ness involved.

ps mgg it was great to see you too - and sometimes I think i am such a naif I should just carry dice around. I would make better decisions for sure.

Posted by: mir at January 23, 2006 11:15 AM