In a dogfight or on the athletic field, the feedback is immediate and evident. Real-world deviation from the minimax strategy mix can be due to a lack of robust feedback. Perhaps the deviation isn’t due to a flaw in the human intuition process but with the availability and relative complexity of the information needed to make optimum decisions.
In soccer penalty kicks, the feedback is very simple—either you score a goal or you don’t. In football, the feedback is very complex—a function of gain, down, distance, field position, turnovers etc. The simpler the feedback, the closer to the optimum we can expect to be. But when the utility function is excessively complex, people will (often wisely) fall back on tradition and convention. My point isn’t that chasing things and strategy mixes are identical problems, and the human brain can solve them in identical ways. My point is, given rich enough feedback, the human brain is capable of amazing feats, things we take for granted every day in sports and beyond.
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