No, it is not. And no, there isn't.
This is exactly the sort of reductive mode of thought the article is calling out.
Evaluate your personal utility function over all possible future timelines of the universe, conditional on each of your possible moves.
The move that has the highest score is the best move.
To think you can identify a model in this situation is pure hubris. Absolutely no one who fights thinks this way. Fighting is NOT LIKE CHESS.
This fundamental faith in modeling is dangerous. It overestimates its own applicability, and ignores its predisposition to only focus on the most available data (under the incorrect assumption that if you collect more and more it will eventually "average out").
Yes your opponent can make a move and you don't know what move they'll make. Chess is like that too.
I'm not saying this is in fact a good way to win a physical fight.
I'm also not saying the optimal move is unique. If 2 moves have the same utility then they can both be optimal.
What I'm saying is that just because you don't know what is the best move doesn't mean a best move exists.
To ask that in the context of a fight (not a bounded game like chess) is already to assume the existence of a complete utility function on which to measure it. That’s:
1. Philosophically, putting the cart before the horse.
2. Computationally, asking for the function that is the entire universe. Any utility function you define, an adversary (say, God) can find edge cases it doesn’t account for, endlessly. Chess has a finite state space; a fight doesn’t. Formalizing this hits the usual incompleteness and undecidability limits.
You’re claiming a perfect map exists (Platonist position); I’m saying that if such a thing exists, it’s just the territory itself, which isn’t a map (Nominalist position).
I don't think we really disagree.
Other than that if you compare 2 possible future timelines, you can either pick a favourite in which case that one has more utility, or you can't in which case they have equal utility.
Sure, there's a predictive aspect to it. What if your opponent zigs instead of zags, etc. But this is basically a matter of forecastable probabilities and can be added to your model. The optimal move still exists, no question about it.
Any problem of bodily motion through space has an optimal solution. In athletic situations, humans often can't think fast enough to find/utilize it, or aren't coordinated enough to move in the optimal way. And a biomechanically-perfect savant may still lose to an opponent vastly physically superior.
The comparison is unintentionally funny because it's the exact same "I can ignore the experience of the people who my work impacts because my models are perfect" mentality that produces unlivable apartments in dead lifeless streets.
Since ultimately, living, and living well, is about values, how do I choose to live, according to which values, science will never be able to capture that dimension.
I feel that scientists and technologists, and designers for that matter, should study more philosophy. It will open up their eyes to the fact that not every question is solvable by science.
The tend to assume the universe is deterministic.
They tend to assume (incorrectly) that because it's deterministic a good enough model will be able to predict or explain.
They tend to ignore or not even be aware of the inherent bias towards available and measurable data, or that what we can measure must capture the essential dimensions of it.
The most naive tend to assume that given enough data, a model will get better, that the noise will "average out" (it doesn't).
I don't have a good name for this, but it has all the trappings of a good -ism otherwise.
Beyond philosophy, they should study art, music, literature, and whatever else interests. They should spend time with others who do and not only with people who work in technology. Unfortunately, increasingly college CS programs have cut out general education requirements in favor of questionably useful skills training, leaving graduates in a state where this seems daunting.
Computer scientists are building the world we all have to live in. Is it so much to ask that they be educated in the humanities before they're turned loose to do so?
Show me.
At this point, people are even modeling figures on Ancient Greek pottery to determine the biomechanical merit of their fighting stances: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4663/12/12/317
The same or similar techniques, of course, can apply to any combination of fighters (or dancers, or swimmers, etc.) at any particular moment. At the highest levels of sport, biomechanics analysts are employed, e.g.: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34402417/
In any case, I don't think that I made any extraordinary claims. There are a lot of unknowns, though, as the most valuable analyses tend to be extremely computationally demanding.
A model that shows the optimal move for a fighter at any point in time.
You don’t actually have this. It can maybe be theoretically done, but not in practice.
I'm thinking of putting together a set of general biomechanical models for foil or kendo fencing. Both forms feature a highly constrained ruleset, which simplifies things. Hobby project, though, so maybe one of these days...