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You all knew this was coming

If you want some butthurtness about tau battlesuits, some random argument and a few anecdotes about rules disputes, and just a smidgen of what I was looking for, Read this.

Here's the actual Article

Thanks to Kain and MIKEtheMERCILESS, as well as Aliaros and and everyone else for their help in this topic.

Enjoy!

Interesting stuff. People should definitely know the difference between a fluke and a pattern when using anecdotes to make decisions.

I like the article, but wow is it hard to read dark red text on a dark gray background. Only by mousing over your hyperlinks could I read their content.

So, a few things I'd note.

The first is that mathhammer never happens in a vacuum. It's never "context free". The difference between mathhammer and anecdotes is that in mathhammer, you get to control the circumstances, while with an anecdote, you're stuck with a particular set of circumstances.

Mathhammer says "Given that X, Y, and Z are true, then you can expect A". Anecdotes say "Given a single specific matchups of armylists, with the terrain and on the mission we played, and with these die rolls, we can expect A".

It's not that anecdotes are bad, per se, it's just that they are incredibly specific in the range of where conclusions drawn from them are relevant. In a way, that something happened only actually proves that it could happen, nothing more.

And that's usually why they're bad. They're subjective to the point of being tautological.

But, as you say, there are times when that is useful enough. For example, if someone says "X never happens" and you provide a single example, no matter how strange the circumstances are, then the anecdote is still useful, because a single positive instance is all you need to disprove a "never" thesis. Same for proving "is possible" theses, but, of course, they have the nasty tendency to become specious very, very quickly. Which is why we have mathhammer, so that we can change our environment to broaden "can happen" to "is or isn't likely to happen".

The other time I've found them to be useful is in illustrating a point. One can make a deconstructive argument for why you can ignore fliers as your way to handle AA, and you can also back it up with a few examples of it working correctly, so people can see more concretely how it works.

In which case anecdotes work like parables. Not because they are objective data points, but because they explain ideas more easily.

In any case, using anecdotes isn't actually a fallacy. It's just really narrow reasoning, and produces bad arguments.

Unless you then go on to make a fallacy "it happened once therefore it happens all the time", for examaple, but that's not the anecdote's fault.

How to use anecdotes: Don't

Mathhammer completely ignores the human element, which can lead to drawing erroneous conclusions. If you're just looking strictly at the numbers, without regard for the mindset of the players involved, the general trends of terrain setting, the meta of the overall game, and the meta of your local community, you are looking at the numbers without context. And I rarely, if ever, see context (or Heaven forbid, psychology) applied alongside mathhammer. In that regard, anecdotes can certainly be taken as a group in order to get more data, specifically the kind that isn't measured in numbers.

Anecdotes are useless as ever because this one time I won a game against tau with my dark angels.

Matherhammer while an interesting endeavor for determining sound tactics generally fails when you consider most people use terrible dice.

Jimsolo wrote:Mathhammer completely ignores the human element.

It only does if you want it to.

For example, if someone were to run math for small blast templates assuming that you'd get 9 models per hit, then you would be assuming that your opponent doesn't know how to displace their infantry. Other elements are often brought into play, but aren't explicitly stated because they're usually implied. For example, unless someone says otherwise, it assumes a vague "standard" meta (A TAC list must be able to handle necron fliers and riptides, for example), and that people are playing book missions, etc. etc.

Really, it's when an assumption going into a calculation isn't normal that you have to go out of your way to spell out your assumptions. Otherwise, the "human element" is rolled in with the rest.

The one thing I do purposely leave out, though, is the psychology stuff. If your plan requires your opponent to be dumb to have it work, then I'm not going to think it valid, as I don't think one should plan on an opponent's stupidity. Furthermore, it clears out the riffraff. It's easy to shroud some mystical romantic voodoo about psyching an opponent out and tricking them into doing stuff, but such ideas never have any clarity, quantifiability, demonstrability, empirical backing, or any other way to project them objectively.

Put another way, it doesn't exist. Assuming that you can trick your opponent into making a mistake that will win you the game is like assuming that it's more likely that you'll win a game because you believe in Jesus. Specious at absolute best, unreasonable nonsense at worst.

Not to deny that it is possible for people to make mistakes, nor is it to say that it is, in theory at least, possible for you to make it easier to make said mistakes. I've seen said interchanges that can be explained using psychological terminology. The problem is that it is super subjective (hugely dependent not only on your particular opponent, but also on a huge pile of other things, like how your opponent feels that day, if they've seen the trick before, etc.), so much so that it is completely useless to an objective conversation.

 Ailaros wrote:

The one thing I do purposely leave out, though, is the psychology stuff. If your plan requires your opponent to be dumb to have it work, then I'm not going to think it valid, as I don't think one should plan on an opponent's stupidity. Furthermore, it clears out the riffraff. It's easy to shroud some mystical romantic voodoo about psyching an opponent out and tricking them into doing stuff, but such ideas never have any clarity, quantifiability, demonstrability, empirical backing, or any other way to project them objectively.

I don't ever use this in tactics argument, but I have used trickery before playing tau. I like recieving charges, because I know I can win them, for example.

Sure. Not only is it super subjective, though, but it's also easy to over-rate. Someone reads Sun Tsu and magically believes that all war is deception... and then plays a game with no fog of war with complete disclosure of lists and dispositions in a balanced game with a UgoIgo mechanic.

It's not like you're going to do something that your opponent couldn't see coming several turns in advance. That means that your opponent didn't see it coming, despite being plain as day. Which means, on the one hand, that it's player error, not mysterious psychology, and on the other hand that it assumes that your opponent is bad, or likely a very new player. I generally don't give tactics advice for how to hammer noobs, for lots of reasons.

Not to say it can't be fun to use something obscure, but if your opponent doesn't figure it out after you do it once to them, well...

In any case, to bring it back to your article, it's pretty easy for psychology to fall into the anecdote trap. Just because it worked once on your friend doesn't mean it's always going to work against everybody, or is even guaranteed to work once against any particular person.

You even list a few examples of this in your article, and how easy it is to dismiss them.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Mathhammer completely ignores the human element, which can lead to drawing erroneous conclusions. If you're just looking strictly at the numbers, without regard for the mindset of the players involved, the general trends of terrain setting, the meta of the overall game, and the meta of your local community, you are looking at the numbers without context. And I rarely, if ever, see context (or Heaven forbid, psychology) applied alongside mathhammer. In that regard, anecdotes can certainly be taken as a group in order to get more data, specifically the kind that isn't measured in numbers.

Of course it does, because it does not serve to analyse the human element, only the probabilistic elements, if you want a discussion on how to use those elements to give yourself a psychological edge, then perhaps start a discussion on it?

 Ailaros wrote:
It's not like you're going to do something that your opponent couldn't see coming several turns in advance. That means that your opponent didn't see it coming, despite being plain as day. Which means, on the one hand, that it's player error, not mysterious psychology, and on the other hand that it assumes that your opponent is bad, or likely a very new player. I generally don't give tactics advice for how to hammer noobs, for lots of reasons.

Oh, no. We're usually talking about things my opponent wants to do. He wants to throw 25 khymerae in the face of a farsight bomb. I just know from personal experience, I usually win that fight quite badly.

What I was trying to say is, knowing that, and knowing that that is their tactic, I'll bait an opponent to charge a pack of dogs into my bomb, win combat then charge them, repeating the process if there is a second pack I need to beat. It doesn't always work, you're right, but if I don't get charged, what is the beast pack going to do all game?

Ailaros wrote:
The one thing I do purposely leave out, though, is the psychology stuff. If your plan requires your opponent to be dumb to have it work, then I'm not going to think it valid, as I don't think one should plan on an opponent's stupidity. Furthermore, it clears out the riffraff. It's easy to shroud some mystical romantic voodoo about psyching an opponent out and tricking them into doing stuff, but such ideas never have any clarity, quantifiability, demonstrability, empirical backing, or any other way to project them objectively.

Put another way, it doesn't exist. Assuming that you can trick your opponent into making a mistake that will win you the game is like assuming that it's more likely that you'll win a game because you believe in Jesus. Specious at absolute best, unreasonable nonsense at worst.

Do you also think that bluffing in poker "doesn't exist?" 40k isn't a computer game, and it isn't WoW. There's more than one right way to do things, and surely no one is arrogant enough to think they ALWAYS know what an opponent is going to do. In any system with a human opponent, the human factor is a vitally important part of the equation. In fact, it's potentially the weakest part of the chain. Do you not position your forces to try and make their true target difficult to determine?

I understand your anti-religious hyperbole is meant to be humorous, but I think you're dismissing the fragile nature of the human cognitive machine a little too easily.

Ailaros wrote:
In any case, to bring it back to your article, it's pretty easy for psychology to fall into the anecdote trap. Just because it worked once on your friend doesn't mean it's always going to work against everybody, or is even guaranteed to work once against any particular person.

Of course not. Saying that a particular tactic worked once, so it will always work again, in any situation, is as ludicrous as saying that just because you had a single Raider blow a Stormraven out of the sky, Raiders will always defeat Stormravens.

To paraphrase Straczynski, playing the math and playing the player are like the shoes on your feet. You'll get farther with both than you can with just one.

Sometimes, I wish I was psychic playing 40k.

One time I used an anecdote on the internet and it convinced my opponent that I was right.