Zugzwang
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Stockfish's heuristic for "risk of zugzwang" is basically "only kings and pawns left over", alongside logic for "is null-move pruning even useful right now" [1]:
// Step 9. Null move search with verification search
if (cutNode && ss->staticEval >= beta - 16 * depth - 53 * improving + 378 && !excludedMove
&& pos.non_pawn_material(us) && ss->ply >= nmpMinPly && !is_loss(beta))
{
[1]: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/1a882ef...
More relevant to a business site, this is the situation many large corporations find themselves in. Say you're Google and you own an immensely profitable monopoly. The very best thing you can do is nothing; anything you do risks upsetting the delicate competitive equilibrium that you're winning. If you're an executive, how do you do nothing? You can't very well hire thousands of employees to do nothing and pay them to do it. But if you don't have thousands of employees, and your job is doing nothing, how do you justify the millions that they're paying you?
The strategy many executives use is to set different parts of their organization at odds with each other, so that they each create busywork that other employees must do. Everybody is fully utilized, and yet in the big picture nothing changes. Oftentimes they will create big strategic initiatives that are tangential to the golden goose, spending billions on boondoggles that don't actually do anything, because the whole point is to do nothing while seeming like you need thousands of people to do it. And the whole reason for that is because most people are very bad at sitting still, and so if you didn't pay them a whole lot to do nothing useful, the useful stuff they'd be doing would be trying to compete with and unseat you. (You can also see this in the billion dollar paydays that entrepreneurs get when they mount a credible threat of unseating the giant incumbent.)
Just the other day Iran offered to open the straight of hormuz, keeping the USA in a state of „they have to respond“ because its expected by their population. In this situation there might be no good choice, so you could call it a zugzwang. But as usual in the states, the administration can just tell some bullshit and get off with it haha
There is no such safeguard among publicly run, financed, incented, funded, etc companies or organizations. Their outputs can remain less valuable than their inputs over an indefinite period of time.
Detect and counter black hat SEO, build or acquire a new product you can spread ads to (Maps, YouTube), create a chatbot that can eventually get ads if search is supplanted. These things support or maintain that monopoly/equilibrium you’re talking about.
This isn't the case at all.
Obama HAD a deal with Iran that Trump tanked in his first term. Israel did not have to respond to a terrorist attack with genocide. Trump could have said No to Netanyahu who clearly threatened to attack Iran with or without us, it turns out we could indeed put pressure on them not to attack, but TACO.
Everything that's happening in the middle east is a series of blunders by fools.
The nuclear reactors can provide free electricity out of 2-5% enriched uranium, the naval propulsion (like for ... nuclear icebreakers for the Straits of Hormuz, I dunno?) needs 8-10% enriched.
It doesn't matter what they say, or what their leaders say -- there is only one use for 60%+ enriched uranium known to the science, and it's military (the atomic bomb).
The US and Russia in slightly better days were burning off their excessive amounts of stockpiled enriched uranium and plutonium in fast neutron reactors just to get rid of it as part of a mutual drawdown of stockpiles – not at all necessary but can definitely be used.
Small amounts for research reactors, medical isotope production and the like is an argument.
Those are the possible uses but it's just thinly veiled BS when a country like Iran has 60% enriched uranium for civilian power projects. The only actual reason to stockpile it like that is so you can spout nonsense about its purpose while only being a short distance away from enriching it to weapons grade.
> being a short distance away from enriching it to weapons grade
Nuclear blackmail is still military in my book.
Having almost-a-bomb like an IKEA Billy shelf still unassembled in its box in the garage is what they wanted. The threat of being able to have a bomb. There have been several instances over the decades of the west finding and blowing up their prepared materials and facilities in order to try to make the runway longer.
By the way this is also most likely where Japan is.
Japan is also a NPT signatory and they also very likely have an almost-bomb. That is in secret they very likely have the research, the designs, the industrial capacity for the final enrichment, and almost weapons grade enriched stockpiles. They don't want to have to cross the line into the territory of actually constructing a bomb or announcing it publicly, but they want the potential and for their adversaries to know that they could do it in short order without giving them enough of a provocation to actually be called out.
In other words "I'm not touching you!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgXDYiHhp5Y
This is even more true as the former Supreme Leader of Iran had issued a religious fatwa against the development of a nuclear weapon. And then the US decided to assassinate him. His successor, his son, is much more hardline. That's either some serious 5d chess, or we just have idiots for leaders and allies alike. And we both know which it is.
Because MAD is the only way to scare away the world's bully.
I'm a bit older than a lot of y'all and I grew up reading stories on the founding of Israel, the true stories of the holocaust written by those who witnessed and experienced the horrors first-hand, etc. All of these books that I read were written from the Israeli perspective for an American or western audience in order to inform people who had no concept of the depths of depravity that a modern industrialized society could allow themselves to be dragged into.
The information and the stories related steered my own opinions and feelings towards supporting Israel in the wars and other significant events that have happened during my own lifetime - 1967 Six Day War, 1973 Yom Kippur War, 1978 Camp David Accords, 1982 Israeli intervention in Lebanon, 1983 US Marine Barracks bombing and the fallout from that, and all the bullshit conflicts since.
I was able to follow these things as a kid and later a teen into adulthood because my parents maintained a book club subscription that was regularly improved by addition of new, current books on many subjects. As kids we were encouraged to select books for the collection and to read them when they were delivered.
Knowledge is power. By ignoring the historical context you are effectively censoring events that did happen and whose repercussions still resonate in the region.
You should not cherry-pick your own version of history. That is effectively propaganda, a tool used by authoritarians to indoctrinate. The original books that I read were written from the Israeli perspective in order to gain international influence. There were no novels or historical biographies of Arab leaders or of the region that were written in the context of providing historical background information that would help someone in the west understand the situation from the Arab perspective. To get that you needed to read newspapers and magazines, which I also did. Over time I began to understand just how complex everything is in the region and how constant support, especially from the United States, paid for the Israeli side of every conflict and situation.
For anyone to support Israel's current leadership in what can only be described as a genocide on the same level employed against Jews by the Nazis or the US Cavalry against Native American tribes is wrong.
Perhaps you should read a book about genocide and the origin of the term. I recommend the excellent book:
Samantha Power: A Problem from Hell - America and the Age of Genocide[0]
Sadat and Begin showed a path forward if other players had the courage to follow. Too bad that it took thousands of deaths on all sides and nearly 50 years and huge financial incentives and arms deals to bring others into agreement that living as neighbors in the same region requires some level of cooperation in order to guarantee mutual survival. Unfortunately the current players simply picked a common enemy and focused their efforts on destroying that enemy so that they could control the resources of the region.
I hope you agree that this comment has added something useful to the conversation.
[0]https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/368731._A_Problem_from_H...
In the past, whenever someone posts some geopolitical data there is always someone else to come around to offer readers additional context from the other side of the coin or from a qualified observer with a different perspective.
This is how fruitful discussions are made. Get all the players to the table and have them discuss the situation as it has affected them and then, working together in good faith with all facts on the table and grievances aired, they can outline, then agree on, and then implement changes that ultimately benefit them all.
No. It's a distraction. If every time the middle east is discussed people have to argue about the last century or two millennia of conflict, nothing at all will actually be discussed. If every time someone uses the term genocide, there has to be a whole thread about "well actually" and some wildly expanded context, nothing will ever be discussed. People, in their attempts to be more morally correct going around nitpicking somebody's language are not assisting in understanding.
Your context adds nothing to what was being discussed. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with it, I'm just saying it's not helpful to expand every mention to the entire damn history of a thing.
Sure, people should know more history, but every thread devolving into a group of people insisting this point or that can't be made without mentioning a whole pile of history... nothing at all will ever get discussed.
[1] In chess, unlike say go, you can’t pass your move. You have to do something.
That's more like stalemate, not zugzwang.
Edit: Pardon my idiocy. Stalemate is obviously not a loss in chess. So I guess that no-pass go is like neither of these things.
In zugzwang you have legal moves - just none are good for you and all lead to a loss given perfect play.
That's exactly what it means to be in a lost position; all moves lose. A lost position is only Zugzwang though if the same position with the opponent to move is not lost.
"There are three types of chess positions: either none, one, or both of the players would be at a disadvantage if it were their turn to move. The great majority of positions are of the first type. In chess literature, most writers call positions of the second type zugzwang, and the third type reciprocal zugzwang or mutual zugzwang. "
You're talking about mutual zugzwang
A great article with some really beautiful examples of zugzwang is: https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/zugzwang.html. There's a very nice discussion at the end as well of a disagreement along just these lines as to what truly constitutes zugzwang, between Hooper and Myers.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit
Differences being Zugzwang explicitly doesn’t allow a non-move, and I guess assumes a zero sum game? Whereas a Xanatos Gabmit is flexible enough to accommodate both non-moves, and a non-zero-sum setting.
Either way, for your opponent, all roads lead to ruin.
i feel like Musk does it on a daily basis with all the heavy artillery he has on the board
I've led the horse to water.
"Fear of missing out"
And that’s the generalized meaning in German, being forced to act with respect to a specific thing, where you’d normally prefer to keep it in its current state.
But if you were allowed to pass your turn, and both players see the draw coming because of a forced repetition, they'll just call it a draw before it even plays out. So the game would play out differently from the same position, if that rule existed. Essentially changing the way you would evaluate any given position.
"No complete solution for chess in either of the two senses is known, nor is it expected that chess will be solved in the near future (if ever)".
[edit: Edited to make it clearer that there are cases where only one player is in zugzwang]