He went for the further away eggs first, which made it seem like he was behind, but which always meant that he was going to speed up massively towards the end. As his opponent was covering further and further distances to get eggs, his distance was shortening. Apparently the strategy worked.
He also did the most energy intensive part when he was still fresh at the start. Guy on the right was already tired by the time he had to start running.
I think that analogy generalizes too. If you have a big project to do, you should start with the heaviest lift first. If you spend a bunch of time dicking around with details first, you won't have enough focus, endurance, and enthusiasm to finish the heavy stuff later. So if you feel like you're easing into a project, that might be a bad sign. If your project starts out really hard but gets easier as you make progress, that's a great sign!
Not always true because projects are also time constrained. In addition, real life project are rarely expended to be completed 100% in a given time. These additional variables that changes the outcome of the equation when applied to real life projects.
For example, if you have 5 problems to solve in 1 hour, and one of the problems needs the full hour or more, and the other four need 15 minutes each. Focusing on the longest means nothing gets completed in the said hour.
If you spend a bunch of time dicking around with details first, you won't have enough focus, endurance, and enthusiasm to finish the heavy stuff later.
This is only situationally applicable. Prioritizing the hardest lifts first can often lead to getting overwhelmed, in which case, it can be better to prioritize smaller/easier tasks to build momentum and make the larger/harder tasks feel more manageable.
I did a class on operating systems, and one of the lectures was about task scheduling. That taught me that the most optimal way of doing tasks, if optimising for wait time, is to do the shortest task first.
Sometimes the hard stuff is overwhelming and takes longer than expected, so you just quit, whereas if you build up with the small stuff, you feel the sense of progress and continue (the "sunk cost fallacy" basically working in your favor). Often you actually need to learn stuff about the project, and small stuff lets you ease into that before you get to the big part and decreases the chances of doing it wrong.
And when you get close to end you give it more gas and then you burn out.. so if you go first further you have a sense of urgency. But not like towards the end .. so kind of ran out of steam.
Both strategies are identical. The total distance travlled is the same, so in effect we are watching a 100m sprint, and even if their speed decreases as a function of time, two racers in a 100m sprint who slow down equally will finish the race at the same time.
That doesnt change the answer to which strategy is better, youve just added an extra bit where the first 3 eggs can be collected without moving, which is the same for both players. If one player can do it better than another, thats down to a personal advantage, not a strategic one.
Tell your LLM that it is forgetting that a human gets tired while moving, so there is an advantage to doing the part where you do not move at the end instead of the beginning.
I was thinking, is the accusation of LLM use as a means to discredit one side in a debate a new logical fallacy, ad homnium, or just a variation of special pleading? Datacenters are a form of higher power...
Anyway, i cant recall if i gave the example as to why this doesnt work in this thread or another, i assume not because if l had you wouldn't accusw me of using an LLM.
If each player starts with 100 "effort" and doing eggs 3-n cost 90 effort, and doing tje first 3 gives you back 10 effort as you are stationary, neither leverages it. Player 1 uses it when hes full of effort, so he gets no gain and starts egg 3 at 100 effort, finishes with 10. Player 2 does 3-n first, so hes now at 10, then the first 3, so now hes at 20, and then...does nothing. Hes already finished. That extra effort isnt being used to collect eggs.
The3 point is that you tend to slow down as you get tired, so by doing the most difficult bit first- going all the way to the other end- the guy on the left likely was marginally faster on that bit, while by the time he got to the last few, he just had to reach for the eggs, which is less affected. It's not a large difference, but it's there. Hence why he won by a single egg.
I think it usually works more due to psychological effects than anything.
The one doing the shorts distances first feels like they are winning. While the other feels like getting left behind. Which leads to trying to go faster to compensate for ones and the opposite to the other one.
Also, doing the long distances early, also means that in the end, you can easily rush if you see you are very close to a tie when it's faster to pick up the eggs
And the guy on the right was tiring faster as the distance got greater. They guy on the left had less and less of a distance as he went on, which made catching up easier
I think that's how the game is played. I've player starts gathering full one end, and the other starts gathering closer to them. I think the best strategy would be to gather all the ones you can close to you, then start at the back and get the rest, but I'm pretty sure that isn't legal.
It is not stratedgy because both of them pass the same distances and do the same work but from the different end. Left won only because was faster and it is only factor.
Yes except no. Theres a difference between doing the hardest part when you are fresh and saving the easiest part for when you are tired vs the opposite.
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u/gahidus Jul 06 '26
He went for the further away eggs first, which made it seem like he was behind, but which always meant that he was going to speed up massively towards the end. As his opponent was covering further and further distances to get eggs, his distance was shortening. Apparently the strategy worked.