Posted ByBill Helfer on April 04, 2002 at 12:08:56:
In Reply to: Watching for the early reveal revisited posted by Simpson on April 03, 2002 at 13:50:45:
: Has anyone else noticed that the green guy in the graphic on the front page seems to be slightly ahead of the prime, possibly resulting in the early reveal? To my mind, this explains why he seems to loose to blue more often than beat him.
I noticed the same thing, Simpson (does anything escape your eagle-like attention?) I however attributed the delay on one player's part to the work of one of the more interesting theoretical factions within the sport of RPS-the Relative Speed movement.
Loosely based on the relativistic work of Einstein, the Relative Speed school first of all posited a Platonic "Optimal Priming Speed" (or OPS.) Similar to temporal physics' "Planck Constant", the OPS represents a "perfect priming speed" in that it is the fastest possible prime. The OPS number is a dynamic variable, and has never been absolutely fixed (though many, many theoretical treatises have placed it to the fifth decimal, no two treatises agree.)
The Relative Speed school further posits that the closer one is to the ideal OPS, the more subjective time appears to slow, until at greater fractions (and up to the OPS), one is actually able to observe the opponent's throw before the opponent is finished priming. The advantages to this would be obvious.
Though many RPS thinkers have dabbled with the ideas of the Relativistic School (including Dr. Roshambovsky and the late Master Roshambollah,) it mostly represents one of the sport's great theoretical dead ends. Students of this style seem to fare no better than any other. The primary shortcoming of the Relativistic Speed school is their ignorance of one of the greatest RPS-inspired philosophical theorems, the Hegelian Dialectic.
Hegel, an avid fan of RPS, created his tripartite Dialectic (thesis+antithesis=synthesis) to illustrate how opposition to an existing condition creates a combination of both factors. The RS school ignores the fact that their innovations must be combined with the game "as is", and will therefore result in a mixed bag of both.
True RPS Masters then do not buy wholesale the ideas of the Relativistic Speed school (priming quickly in order to stop time), but rather take the ideas and use them for obvious and practical results (the quicker we all prime, the sooner the after-tournament party can start.)
Still, the work of the school is interesting, even though it does represent the fruitlessness of research divorced from actual implementation. Their math is sound, and the time-stopping phenomenon must scale up into the perceivable world at some point, but the variables are so complex as to completely elude detection. As the late Master Roshambollah said on many occasions, "We can learn much from all schools and styles of RPS, but we must always be wary of their shortcomings."
Bill Helfer
Curator, Master Roshambollah Memorial Library