June 7, 2026
Game theory, but make it dramatic
Games Between Programs: The Ruliology of Competition
A brainy showdown about how to win games has readers dusting off old Wolfram books
TLDR: The article explores whether repeated competition rewards simple winning tricks or more complex behavior by testing rule-based strategies against each other. Readers mostly reacted with amused intimidation, with one standout comment joking that it’s time to reopen an old Wolfram tome just to keep up.
A new deep-dive into repeated two-player games is asking a deceptively simple question: when two sides keep competing, does the winner usually come from a cleverly complicated plan or a simple trick that just works? The article walks through a stripped-down setup where two players repeatedly pick between two moves, score points based on whether they match, and follow fixed decision rules based on what happened earlier. From there, it zooms out into a much bigger idea: if you test all possible rule-following strategies, what kinds of behavior rise to the top? In plain English, it’s a grand theory-of-competition experiment dressed up as a game.
And the community reaction? So far it’s less all-out war and more nostalgic intellectual panic. The standout comment came from reader ac50hz, who basically summed up the vibe of everyone staring at this and realizing they may need to reopen a famously dense old book before they can even enter the chat. That turned the mood into a mini meme: this isn’t casual reading, this is “clear your weekend and find your highlighter” territory. The strongest feeling in the thread is a mix of awe, intimidation, and nerdy excitement—like people know something big is being attempted here, but also know they might need a refresher course just to keep up. In tabloid terms: the article asks who wins, simple schemers or chaos wizards—and the comments are already admitting they need homework before picking a side.
Key Points
- •The article models repeated competition between two agents whose actions are determined by fixed strategies based on past play.
- •It focuses on a two-action repeated game using the classic match-or-not, or matching pennies, payoff structure.
- •Strategies are treated as programs so that all possible strategies can be studied systematically using ruliological methods.
- •Possible action sequences are represented with a multiway graph, and specific strategy pairs define paths with cumulative payoffs through that graph.
- •The article investigates whether successful competitive strategies tend to be simpler or more complex, linking that question to prior work on evolution and machine learning.