When I have the initiative, I am threatening in such a way that you have to respond (counter or neutralise) to what I'm doing or you will get hit. When you have the initiative, I have to respond. (and, as in chess, the equivalent of pins and forks set up situations in which even when you make a good response I've gained something without losing initiative)
If neither of us threatens the other, neither of us has initiative.
"Right of way" formalises the concept, making it easier to teach, and easier to adjudicate: unlike the subjectivity of initiative, there are clear ways to gain and lose right of way, and an outside umpire can (and does) say who has right of way at each moment.
In theory, they're the same: what one has to do to gain and keep right of way is exactly what one should "by the book" do to gain and keep initiative. In practice, they have a large overlap, but it's possible to make actions that would gain right of way but not effectively seize initiative, and vice versa, it's possible to gain initiative without first taking what would —with a conventional weapon- be right of way, or keep it without first re-acquiring right of way.
Does that make sense?
EDIT: first impressions of the paper:
Cold war? They probably mean "Napoleonic" at the latest.
33 ms video frames are too slow. 40 ms is the "lockout" (time during which hits are counted as simultaneous) in épée, in my experience, this corresponds to about 10cm worth of distance (probably greater for more competitive fencers) and until one learns how to construct a point to set up a clean score, it's astonishingly easy for phrases to end in double hits — 1 frame of the video. And sabre is a faster game than épée.
> The proper use of tactics made up for [Szatmari's] lack of ability in this area, making it difficult to find a very effective way to beat him, so he won the championship at last.
I have heard it claimed that we have much less of a doping problem than other sports, because the sorts of drugs that increase physical ability (speed, endurance) tend to blunt mental capacity (choice and deployment of tactics).
The paper gives one story of Szatmari/Gu; here's a possible other story: (compare with the alien vessel in Blindsight) in the first part of the match, Szatmari explores, sacrificing some points to Gu to (a) take the edge off Gu's energy reserves, (b) learn exactly where Gu's strongest attacks go and how to trigger them, and possibly even (c) feed Gu disinformation about Szatmari's strongest actions; and in the second half of the match, he exploits, more than making up for whatever points he lost to get that information (or, if he did so, perform that shaping). [But note this is a very épée-tinged alternative telling]
Next time I stop by my old club I'll have to ask the fencing masters what they think about the ideas in this paper — it's very much outside the prisms the french tradition uses to analyse bout performance.
> using physics as a highly reliable guide to practicing metaphysics.
Have the professional metaphysicians done any better?
[I also suggest steering well clear of any work in which I paraphrase chapters of the 道德经 as advocating partitioning one's control budget among small neighbourhoods of the inflection points on the manifold in phase space occupied by the 10'000 things.]
> Have the professional metaphysicians done any better?
In my estimation, no, like hilariously not (at least as a function of execution of relative ability). I attribute this to them thinking like children or little babies on the matter, as all people do on an absolute scale in that specific domain.
When I have the initiative, I am threatening in such a way that you have to respond (counter or neutralise) to what I'm doing or you will get hit. When you have the initiative, I have to respond. (and, as in chess, the equivalent of pins and forks set up situations in which even when you make a good response I've gained something without losing initiative)
If neither of us threatens the other, neither of us has initiative.
"Right of way" formalises the concept, making it easier to teach, and easier to adjudicate: unlike the subjectivity of initiative, there are clear ways to gain and lose right of way, and an outside umpire can (and does) say who has right of way at each moment.
In theory, they're the same: what one has to do to gain and keep right of way is exactly what one should "by the book" do to gain and keep initiative. In practice, they have a large overlap, but it's possible to make actions that would gain right of way but not effectively seize initiative, and vice versa, it's possible to gain initiative without first taking what would —with a conventional weapon- be right of way, or keep it without first re-acquiring right of way.
Does that make sense?
EDIT: first impressions of the paper:
Cold war? They probably mean "Napoleonic" at the latest.
33 ms video frames are too slow. 40 ms is the "lockout" (time during which hits are counted as simultaneous) in épée, in my experience, this corresponds to about 10cm worth of distance (probably greater for more competitive fencers) and until one learns how to construct a point to set up a clean score, it's astonishingly easy for phrases to end in double hits — 1 frame of the video. And sabre is a faster game than épée.
> The proper use of tactics made up for [Szatmari's] lack of ability in this area, making it difficult to find a very effective way to beat him, so he won the championship at last.
I have heard it claimed that we have much less of a doping problem than other sports, because the sorts of drugs that increase physical ability (speed, endurance) tend to blunt mental capacity (choice and deployment of tactics).
The paper gives one story of Szatmari/Gu; here's a possible other story: (compare with the alien vessel in Blindsight) in the first part of the match, Szatmari explores, sacrificing some points to Gu to (a) take the edge off Gu's energy reserves, (b) learn exactly where Gu's strongest attacks go and how to trigger them, and possibly even (c) feed Gu disinformation about Szatmari's strongest actions; and in the second half of the match, he exploits, more than making up for whatever points he lost to get that information (or, if he did so, perform that shaping). [But note this is a very épée-tinged alternative telling]
Next time I stop by my old club I'll have to ask the fencing masters what they think about the ideas in this paper — it's very much outside the prisms the french tradition uses to analyse bout performance.