Simulating the Evolution of Rock, Paper, Scissors

key takeaway from this video: the best strategy in life is to do random stuff and hope it works

as a geologist, you see these ternary plots literally everywhere in literature

5:33 "Let's actually skip drawing the blobs" Me: 🥺 5:36 "Okay, still some blobs" Me:

For the last part the saying "A jack of all trades is a master of none, but still often better than a master of one." rings very true

When are we getting the sequel with Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock?

"Okay, maybe some blobs" and then there's 3 blobs (the blobs are really cute by the way) just kind of sitting there, relaxing.

When I learned about side-blotched lizards, one of my first thoughts was "this sounds more like a Primer video than a real organism."

the brown blob waving at the end was so cute my heart melted

Today I learned normal type pokemons can be useful

Fun fact, the "brown" strategy is actually an evolutionarily stable strategy specifically because it is a Generalist one that can take control of all the niches when they pop up! Abundance of Scissors? Generalists have the tools to exploit them by going Rock. Abundance of Paper? Generalists can hit them with Scissors pretty much immediately. Abundance of Rock? Paper usage wallops them back down from the Generalists. They win out because they are prepared for any situation, and as a result, can win in any situation.

Something about the phrase "If you want to use fancy words, which I do" just felt so relatable to me

"0:04 If you're unfamiliar with Rock, paper, scissors" What are the things that people who don't know rock, paper, scissors have been living under??? It's certainly not rocks.

I've been waiting for this moment for years... a new Primer video on Rock Paper Scissors of all things! Love it! One thing I'm especially interested in is if more gestures were added. Imagine Lizard or Spock in blob form!

I think the blobs would make perfect stress balls, can that be a thing?

0:09 Not for some reason! paper beats rock because it used to be cloth. the same cloth which flung stones from slings, stayed stones as embroidery, and dragged heavy stones in a process called heaving.

The reason why "paper beats rock" is usually, "because it envelops it and rock can't move".

4:35 Rather than skewing the graph, realize that it's already an equilateral triangle, just in 3 dimensional. It's the plane that goes thru (1,0,0), (0,1,0), and (0,0,1), with every position containing any negative values cut away.

See you guy's again in a year.

If you want to play with the system yourself. Here's a desmos calculator that does the pure-strategy simulation and puts it on a ternary plot. It's a little different because it assumes an infinite population, and so you will see some subtle differences in the results. www.desmos.com/calculator/lmx7hy2dai

Great video! Cannot wait for the plushies to be restocked. I need all of them!