Episode 207: The perfectly rational fencer? With Martin Höppner
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Dr Martin Höppner has been involved in historical martial arts since joining a local reenactment club, “Berliner Rittergilde” in 2008 before getting into historical fencing in 2015 studying classical sabre and rapier at the University of Berlin club. He then moved into sword and buckler, inspired by Roland Warzecha’s work (you can hear from Roland here) and Fiore’s Art of Arms, before being seduced by Manciolino and Marozzo. In 2017 he co-founded Schildwache Potsdam as a collaboration between the Berliner Rittergilde and the University of Potsdam’s Academic Sports Centre. In 2020 and 2021 he was on the DDHF national longsword first squad. And since 2022 he was on the Rapier national squad, where he is now head coach. He runs the Schildwache Potsdam YouTube channel, and is one of the organizers of one of my favourite events, Swords of the Renaissance. He is a research associate at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg and has a PhD in economics and social sciences.
Economics is very relevant to this episode, because Martin and I discuss how Game Theory relates to fencing. What is it rational to do when sparring and what do people actually do? What is the most rational way to react to an opponent who hits you increasingly hard or fast? Should you match them, or walk away?
We also talk about rule sets in tournaments, and Martin’s thoughts on how to devise them to stop people gaming the rules, and make the fencing cleaner and scoring fairer.
Links of interest:
Schildwache Potsdam (Martin’s club) and info on Swords of the Renaissance event: https://schildwache-potsdam.de/
The Schildwache Potsdam Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/SchildwachePotsdam
Schildwache Potsdam YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/schildwache-potsdam
Transcript
Guy Windsor
I'm here today with Dr Martin Höppner, who has been involved in historical martial arts since joining a local reenactment club, “Berliner Rittergilde” in 2008 (and isn't my German accent amazingly good?) before getting into historical fencing in 2015 studying classical sabre and rapier at the University of Berlin club. He then moved into sword and buckler, inspired by Roland Warzecha’s work (and of course, regular listeners will know all about Roland) and Fiore’s Art of Arms, before being seduced by Manciolino and Marozzo, because those Italians, right? In 2017 he co-founded Schildwache Potsdam as a collaboration between the Berliner Rittergilde and the University of Potsdam’s Academic Sports Centre. In 2020 and 2021, this is a very long intro, he was on the DDHF national longsword first squad. And since 2022 he was on the Rapier national squad, where he is now head coach. He runs the Schildwache Potsdam YouTube channel, and is one of the organizers of one of my favourite events, Swords of the Renaissance. He is a research associate at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, I can't say that, and has a PhD in economics and social sciences, which is actually relevant to today's conversation. So yes, PhD in economics and social sciences, and my eldest daughter has just started an undergraduate degree in economics, so who knows where that will lead. All right, now, without further ado and digression, Martin, welcome to the show.
Martin Höppner
Hello Guy. Great to be here. Good talking to you again.
Guy Windsor
Yes, it's nice to see you, and just to orient everybody, whereabouts in the world are you?
Martin Höppner
I'm currently in Falkensee, actually, and that is north of Potsdam and to the west of Berlin.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so sort of in the middle of Germany,
Martin Höppner
Fairly close to Berlin, fairly close, like half an hour drive. It's like right around the corner.
Guy Windsor
So in the intro, we did sort of cover some of how you got started doing this. But how did you actually get into historical martial arts? What made you decide to show up and start swinging swords around?
Martin Höppner
So I think I was actually going out with a friend to medieval fair. And there I saw a group, the Berliner Rittergilde, performing show fights. And these show fights were unchoreographed, but they followed a fairly strict rule system, since they wore open masked helmets, hitting to the head wasn't allowed, but it looked quite nice and also really fun. And basically it went from there, then I got into the reenactment club, and soon enough, I was in a coaching position there as well, and I wanted to do it right. And actually, I already got a book from you in 2009 from my sister for Christmas. Maybe we could already say I was practicing historical martial arts even then, but not really. You actually signed it for me last, last year or the year before that. It was a book that you don't like very much.
Guy Windsor
Oh, god, oh no, it's the German translation of The Swordsman's Companion.
Martin Höppner
Yeah. It's Fechtbuch Schwertkampf.
Guy Windsor
That's a translation that was done without my knowledge or consent.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, I heard that episode as well. So by now, I have mixed feelings about this book, but it actually pointed me to the way of Fiore alongside of 1.33.
Guy Windsor
Honestly, anything that sends anybody to Fiore I can't regret it, so I'm feeling better about that book existing in the world now. So okay, yeah, thank you.
Martin Höppner
And Fiore also had these really nice illustrations, and I think it was Matt Easton who published a translation for free around that time. So I got hooked into this, so that was really nice. And soon after, I participated in some courses at the University of Berlin for rapier and sabre, like you said, and I wanted to build something on my own, because I was already teaching sports in Potsdam at the Academic Sports Centre, but that was water sports, actually. So I taught canoe, kayak, I taught the Eskimo roll. So if you ever want to do learn something like this.
Guy Windsor
Martin, I've known you for like, four or five years now, and this is the first time I've ever heard that you've been teaching canoeing.
Martin Höppner
Oh yeah, it's basically my father-in-law really liked doing it in the wild waters. And I came with one year. And after this, we wanted to really learn the Eskimo roll, because if in the cold water, you turn around and you can't turn around on your own again you have to exit the boat, and you have to dry it. And it's getting really cold, to be honest.
Guy Windsor
So the Eskimo roll is when you're in the canoe and you capsize so your head is under the water, but you just try to keep going and come back the other side.
Martin Höppner
Yes. And you can use a paddle to do this, or you can even just use your hands.
Guy Windsor
So you could do either?
Martin Höppner
Yeah. And in Potsdam, there are obviously no wild waters. So we did canoe polo, which is a team sport of five against five, with a ball and a goal that is hanging up in the air, around two metres up. And you can only defend it with the with the paddle, the goal. But other than that, you're allowed to throw the ball.
Guy Windsor
So you're paddling a canoe and you're throwing the ball, and you can only defend the goal with a paddle?
Martin Höppner
And you're allowed to push over anyone who is actually holding on to the ball, if they are not endangered by falling onto another boat or something like this. That’s really important.
Guy Windsor
So you can make them roll over? Oh, I like that. It's closer to rugby because if they're holding the ball, you can be tackled.
Martin Höppner
And you are tackled, and you turn around. You're under the water. You have only one free arm, no paddle, obviously. And then you turn around using a free arm coming out of the water, and you throw, for example, that's really fun.
Guy Windsor
So yes, you must be pretty good at the Eskimo roll to be able to do that. If you could do it one armed, and then as you're coming out of the water, throw the ball and ideally score even. That would be even better.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, that would be great. And from there, I already knew the persons in charge for the individual sports program in Potsdam, and basically I convinced them to set up a program for historical fencing there. We started with sword and buckler and quickly progressed also to longsword, and then to the sidesword material, as we teach it nowadays.
Guy Windsor
And so that's how the club that I think of as your club in Potsdam.
Martin Höppner
That’s how the Schildwache Potsdam
Guy Windsor
What does Schildwache mean?
Martin Höppner
The Schildwache is like a shield guard, it was just a name for a subgroup in the bigger construct of my reenactment club, basically. So it's like a town's militia, or something like this, you could imagine.
Guy Windsor
Ah, okay, so like the town watch or something, huh, okay.
Martin Höppner
Since we use bucklers, we wanted to have the shield in there.
Guy Windsor
fair enough, huh. Learn something new every day. Okay, now I'm going to hit my first kind of proper question, which it's going to require quite a bit of sort of like discussion and explanation, because this is, like a very, very specific historical martial arts topic, and also for any kind of martial arts training or fencing or whatever. So how can science explain why sparring usually escalates? So firstly, if you could define what you mean by escalates, and then answer the question.
Martin Höppner
So let's first define what escalates means. Usually, when we spar, we want to cooperate to some kind of degree, and that could be as easy as we pull our punches or we pull the sword blows so we don't hit each other harder than we need to. Just one example. And what we usually find in sparring is that even when people, especially at events or bigger events where they have a one time sparring with another person, they start slow and nice and easy, and soon enough, someone, maybe by accident, hits the other person a bit a little bit harder than they intended. And then from there, it quickly escalates. And basically that degree of cooperation just dissolves. So we have, like, this mutual defection, or mutually going harder and harder and harder until a point where both people, if they just could take a step back and evaluate from the outside, would say, well, that's way too dangerous what we're doing right now, we should just stop or get back to a more civil level of sparring or fencing.
Guy Windsor
I think everyone who's fenced in those sorts of situations, which is probably most of the listeners, has experienced that, and I've experienced it less in the sense of hitting harder, but more like going faster, because you start out kind of slow and cooperative and friendly and whatever. But then if you just increase your speed by a little bit, then you can just get that hit in, which really you don't have a tempo for if you're both going at the same slower speed. But if you speed up a little bit, then you can get that hit. And then, of course, they speed up a little bit to handle that, and so you get this sort of speed escalation as well. So I guess that's basically the same thing.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, and that's actually the reason why I thought about this concept the first time, because, like you said, I was inspired by Roland Warzecha’s work with shield and buckler and in the Berliner Buckler Bouts, so his two time per year event on training with a buckler. It usually starts with slow sparring, like really going slow to facilitate learning. And, like you said, this needs a degree of cooperation. And there's always that incentive if the other one is about to get you that you speed up a bit to defend, for example. And here you clearly see those incentives at work and why it usually gets faster and faster and faster in this case. And since they wear little to no protection, this also gets really dangerous,
Guy Windsor
Sure, yeah, and you just use the economist buzzword, ‘incentive’ there.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, because, of course, I am an economist, and the theory I wanted to talk about today is actually game theory, which is just a strategic interaction theory of two or more players interacting with each other, where we usually assume that both individuals are rational, meaning that they somehow can form an expectation about all their different options, and then they choose the option that will make them expectedly the best off. That's rationality in a nutshell. And the scenario here is the prisoner’s dilemma, which is usually a fun story I tell my students. It's about two prisoners who get convicted for a crime, but there's limited evidence against them, so if we would just judge them on the evidence that is apparent, it's just a one year sentence for both prisoners. But now both prisoners get questions, get questions alone, and they have the option to either stay silent to cooperate, and then basically this one year sentence for both stays if they both stay silent, but they also have the option to betray each other, so basically giving evidence against their partner in crime. And if just one person does this and the other one stays silent, the person that betrayed the other goes free, and the other one gets high punishment, let's say five years. But here's the clue, if they both betray each other, then there's enough evidence to convict them both for, let's say, three years, or something like this. And the incentives, once again, in this game are structured that betraying the other person is always the better option. It doesn't depend on what the other person does, because if they stay silent, you could go free instead of getting a one year sentence, or if they betray you in return, you at least only get three years instead of five years.
Guy Windsor
Oh, I see. So if they betray you, but you don't betray them, you get five years.
Martin Höppner
For sparring, now, let's wrap this back up to sparring. If we go faster or harder, we basically have an advantage, non-dependent on the actions our opponent does. So if they go fast, it's better for us to go fast as well, because we will get we will get hit less often. And if they go slow, we also hit them more and can feel some kind of psychological reward for being better or whatnot.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so, so basically, what's going on when two fencers are ramping up when they shouldn't, can be explained by the prisoner's dilemma. Okay, so how do you persuade the prisoners to not betray each other and both go free?
Martin Höppner
And that's the really nice thing in the one shot prisoner dilemma. So if you would just do this game one time, and then you don't see each other ever again, there is only this fixed solution of mutual defection, or the prisoners betraying each other, basically. There will be no cooperation, even if cooperating would make them both better off, because the incentives are just structured that way, and that is why the prisoner’s dilemma is truly a dilemma, a social dilemma, where the social outcome, socially best outcome, can't be achieved due to individual rationality. And this also holds if we have a limited amount of interactions, and we know this will be, for example, we spar five bouts against each other, and the fifth one will be the last one. Then it's basically the one shot prisoner dilemma. But then we already know in the fourth repetition that next round, the opponent will very, very likely betray me. So basically, cooperation in the fourth round also will collapse. And if they're rational and can anticipate this, this goes all the way through. So in any limited time frame, the prisoner’s dilemma for rationality only has that mutual defection equilibrium. That's really depressing.
Guy Windsor
That is very depressing. So what you going to do about it?
Martin Höppner
So we extend the time horizon. So basically, we try to make it an infinitely repeated prisoner dilemma, and then we, out of a sudden have an incentive to weigh our different options, so we can play some long term strategy. And there are two really famous ones. Maybe let's talk about the easier one at first, and that's the grim trigger.
Guy Windsor
Grim trigger? Okay, that's a great name for a scientific thing.
Martin Höppner
And it basically goes, you cooperate, or you start cooperating until the opponent defects or betrays you, and then for the rest of time, into all of infinity, you will also play defection or non cooperation. So basically, you have that threat, if you betray me once, I will never cooperate with you again. And then all of a sudden, the opponent has to make it, or the partner, however you want to frame it, has to make a choice. Do they want to keep that that reward from cooperating long term, or do they choose that one time benefit, that temptation, how it's called in economics, that going free of the prisoner’s dilemma, or is scoring a quick point, or something like this, versus then mutually higher injury risk or what else. So you all of a sudden have to make a choice, and there, depending on the payouts, how they value the mutual cooperation, how bad it is for them to mutually defect, how likely it is to get an injury and stuff. Then, out of those terms, we could basically model a mutual cooperation equilibrium.
Guy Windsor
Okay, how on earth would you apply that in friendly fencing?
Martin Höppner
So the first thing I would say is, don't announce your last three bouts. That would be really easy, because I tried it deliberately for the last couple of months since I thought about this topic once again. And this is, of course, not scientifically accurate, but just from my personal observation, those last three bouts, then get way more concentrated.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, everybody wants the last hit. I've seen it a million times. Everybody wants the last hit.
Martin Höppner
And if you just stop in between, nothing happens. Just going another round, could be that infinitely horizon.
Guy Windsor
Okay, but here's the thing, somebody has to make the decision that that was the last hit. And if I make the decision in my head, this is the last hit, I can escalate. You don't know it's the last hit, and then I say that was the last hit, and then we're done. So what stops me being a dick? My wife will say, not much, Guy, not much. But you may have a better idea.
Martin Höppner
But it really is not much. Hopefully, and that is where really, clubs come in. Hopefully we have a culture where we see each other week after week again, and basically our last hit for today might have been not our last bout for all of eternity. Maybe we will spar another time, even in this training session or maybe next week. So there you get that infinite horizon once again. And if people have a memory, well, then you can also build a reputation, if you are a person that always goes really hard on the last part and then says, “That's it”. And then probably the other person will just either if you go too hard not spar with you altogether. So you basically just say, I will announce, or I will say this was the last round before that. So they will just goes fewer rounds with you.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. Club culture is the thing that will stop escalation. Generally speaking, that's true for any kind of safety concern. It's the club culture that keeps everybody safe. If there's a general culture of we don't hurt each other, then people tend not to get hurt. So that by itself, might work nicely within a club. But how do you solve the problem? Well, here's the thing, at events like Swords of the Renaissance, there's tons and tons and tons of fencing, and it is almost invariably very kind of friendly and constructive, which is the culture that is fostered at the event, so people understand that there is a way to behave in this environment. So how do you get that club culture to sort of spill over into a one off event where, you know, I may not be able to come next year, so I may never see you again, because this is the only event we're ever in the same country at the same time at so, what's to stop me just being a dick today and then just flying off? Because that doesn't tend to happen, because I've seen a lot of the fencing at your event and events like that and that sort of escalation, I mean, it happens a bit, because it always happens a bit, but it's not characteristic. It's one of those things that happens to a moderate degree, occasionally, as opposed to inevitably, quite a lot.
Martin Höppner
Yeah. So I would agree. I think it still happens quite a bit at Swords of the Renaissance as well. But there are a few things that we can do to mitigate basically those incentives. And one of the first ones would be to frame the event or the sparring in a different kind of light. Okay, if we say it is about learning and it should be light, and people are encouraged to also enforce this, then that has basically an influence on or an effect on this payoff matrix. That temptation now for getting a quick hit in gets maybe cancelled out by the social norm that you have been a dick, and now people will talk shit about you. So even rational individuals, they we don't assume that they just maximize some kind of monetary value or something like this, but social norms, status and everything else can also have a major influence, basically. This is how we can get to work.
Guy Windsor
But one of the big problems of classical economics is it sort of supposes a rational actor. Homer Economicus, I think he's called, who makes rational decisions based on all of the evidence and comes up with a predictable solution because it's obviously the best solution. And the same that you know people from some cultures, particularly like, I don't know criminal subcultures in the UK, for example, they simply won't talk to the police, just on principle. And if you rat me out, fine, I go to jail for five years and you end up with your legs broken in a ditch somewhere, because the culture from which I come from values my silence over this rational agreement of who talks to the police, who doesn't. And so how do you how do you factor in the irrationality of most people, most of the time?
Martin Höppner
Yeah, but first, what you told about the prisoner or the snitch basically getting punished later, that's also just trying to manipulate the overall incentives. Basically, you might get the temptation payout now, not going to jail, but you face huge punishment later. So basically, the whole game shifts away from being a prisoner’s dilemma in the first place. And yeah, talking about rationality, well, we already have an economics, that beautiful branch of behavioural economics, which actually assumes bounded rationality. So we acknowledge that there is limited time for us to make decisions.
Guy Windsor
We don't just use a term of art from economics, which I happen to be familiar with, because I like reading kind of popular economics books, but the average listener may not be familiar with bounded rationality. Could you just define that for us?
Martin Höppner
Yeah, so bounded rationally basically assumes that decisions have to be made in a limited time frame with limited cognitive ability, so we can't calculate everything in our head, and even with top notch computers, some calculations are just impossible for us, but especially under time constraint, those get really, really hard, and therefore we need to make choices based on rules of thumb that are way quicker, or intuition. In Behavioural Economics, we usually call those heuristics or solving algorithms, basically, and truly, it's just a quick rule of thumb that that guides us through our everyday decisions, which hopefully yield results that are good enough. But certainly, since we are not engaging in that whole arguing over every possible advantage and disadvantage, they sometimes fail.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so how are you going to use that to create the sort of fencing outcomes that you want, given that everyone is operating with bounded rationality and responding to this prisoner’s dilemma type situation. Can you be specific about what?
Martin Höppner
Yeah, right. So, first off, we need to acknowledge some of the basic heuristics and biases that are usually at work in those kind of situations. So for example, one very prominent one would be the present bias, which just tells you that people tend to overweight results that are immediate instead of long term, which would explain why politicians always favour those myopic policies over long term growth and stuff like this. And the same goes for a sparring situation as well. So we need to be aware of this. Or, for example, the negativity bias that in our brain, negative experiences stay way longer than positive. So if we had a negative experience with one person that tends to stick with us way longer and tends to overshadow all the positive experience we had with them in before, for example, and there are other ones as well, which we might not want to dive into deeply, but the first thing would be to, for example, to acknowledge those heuristics and actively trying to counter them. So for example, for the negativity bias, we could as an external bystander when we when we talk for to a person, and they had a negative sparring experience with one person, and they stopped the bout for example, and they're now kind of complaining about them. We could remember about all the good sessions that they had with this person before, and basically try to frame a way of forgiveness, so to speak, to lead those two people back to those mutual cooperation equilibrium. So we need to actively address this. And also sometimes we need to address that basically, those hard hits, they don't just happen out of intent, but sometimes also just out of pure bad luck.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, and honestly, an apology goes a very long way. If you lunge and I lunge, and we both think we have the line, and I don't know, I end up punching you in the arm with my rapier harder than I intended to. As can happen. If I say, oh, I'm so sorry, are you okay? That is a totally different thing to I think I got you on the arm, but I don't think you hit me properly. You'll come away from that experience with two entirely different ideas of what it's like to fence me and how likely you're going to be to fence me again.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, definitely. And it basically tries to lift this, this noise, this try to communicate the intent instead of just the result. Basically, if you say, I'm sorry that wasn't meant that way, to basically allow cooperation to continue, even if mistakes happen. And this is really important, because, like we said earlier in the grim trigger strategy, now mutual defection would be for all eternity for both people. So the grim trigger is actually really bad, because it lacks this key feature of a good long term strategy, which is forgiveness.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, you have to have some way of getting back. I mean, okay, as long as the person hasn't done something completely egregious, and there are definitely people who ought to get a lifetime ban from historical martial arts, but there's no structure in place to give them that. I mean, I'm thinking of one student in one of my branches many years ago. Very nice guy, not a terribly decent bloke. He was going through some stuff, and he just flipped out during sparring. And he didn't injure somebody seriously, but he definitely created a very dangerous situation that shouldn't have happened. I wasn't there. It was in one of my branches and but the way the branch handled it was terribly sorry, but banned for life, and he's been banned for life because that was the only reasonable thing to do to make the club culture absolutely clear on what is and is not acceptable behaviour. So it's one of those awkward things where, you know, if I saw him in the street, I'd be delighted to see him, and we'd go and have a coffee and have a chat or whatever, but because of what happened, we can't let him back in the salle.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, well, especially in a leading position, you always have to make choices.
Guy Windsor
And to his credit, he apologized profusely, completely accepted that the ban was entirely reasonable, and didn't put up any kind of objection to it, and was just very apologetic. And like, I should never have done that, and I'm very sorry. And of course, this is the right thing to do, what a shame. But outside those extreme cases, you have to have a way back in for people, because people can, like, learn from experiences and actually change. Doesn't happen that often, but it can be done.
Martin Höppner
Definitely. And, and there's actually another strategy, aside from grim trigger, which has proven to be really, really robust and kind of representing of a really old philosophy, and that is the tit for tat strategy. So tit for tat, and by that you start cooperating as well. But then if the opponent defects in any round, the next round, you also defect. But if they then start cooperating again, you basically cooperate again. So you mirror the opponent’s action of the last round. And so you get hit hard. And the other one is, isn't saying anything about intent or anything you speed up for one round as well. And maybe then you'd say, let's go slow once again. And then you start cooperating.
Guy Windsor
Do you know I've done that 100 times when fencing students. They just really want to hit me for some reason. I mean, let's face it, I deserve it, but they just really want to. So maybe they do something a little bit out of order, and they thunk me with something, and the next thing that will happen is I'll hit them back, usually in the same place, usually with the same degree of force. It's like two can play at this game. And then we go back to fencing nicely, right? So, yeah, I've not consciously done it as a tit for tat strategy to solve the prisoner's dilemma, but I've certainly done it 100 times in fencing.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, truly. And like I said, it's like a stand in for really old philosophy, like an eye for an eye, for example would be also an example for tit for tat strategy and but then, especially if we talk about noise again, then we have to acknowledge that an eye for an eye, this leaves everyone blind. So if mistakes happen, we need to be extra for forgiving, actually. And that the science figured out as well. Which, which, I think, is another philosophy, which is turning the other cheek, but you only have two cheeks.
Guy Windsor
So it's like, you transgress, tit for tat once, and then cheek is turned.
Martin Höppner
Or maybe the other one, the other person hits you at once. Or maybe, maybe this is just one mistake, right? If they cooperate next time, you just keep cooperating all the way. But if they do it two times in a row, you’re fairly sure that they're trying to speed up, taking advantage of you. And then you show them, well, this could go another way.
Guy Windsor
And the thing is, like one thing that I find really useful for this situation is if one of you is conscious of what's happening, you can just stop and say, look, we seem to be speeding up, and it's all getting a bit aggressive. We can either stop now, or should we just go back to fencing how we were? Or sometimes I'll say, you know what? If it's appropriate in the situation, say, well, okay, let's just go full on and see what happens, right? Because, then you've both consented to it, and you both know it's happening. And you're not using the extra speed and power to kind of catch somebody who's playing nice. It's you're both competing at the same sort of level of intensity,
Martin Höppner
Yeah, and that's actually an important catch on this whole analogy, trying to apply that prisoner's dilemma to sparring, because especially if people are preparing for tournament, they sometimes need those high intensity bouts to prepare themselves properly. So in that case, there would be no prisoner's dilemma. Because they, if they agree to it, and they both need it.
Guy Windsor
They're cooperating and going hard, it might be perfectly cooperative.
Martin Höppner
But usually, in most martial arts, we don't see this kind of behaviour all the time, like if we watch most of MMA, but usually also Muay Thai sparring, they go really, really light, really just touch sparring.
Guy Windsor
In training, yeah.
Martin Höppner
Because if you're having competitions regularly, you don't need this kind of sparring anymore. You're already accustomed to that kind of intensity, so you can focus your training on getting better.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. And if you do that level of intensity in training, the risk of injury goes way up, but there's no reward. You get injured in training, you're out of the tournament. Get injured in the final of a tournament, you might still win.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, and there's a reason most accidents actually happen in training. It's not per se, because training is more dangerous, inherently, but we do it way more often, so even a low probability, just do it in enough times and accidents happen.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, it's like most car accidents happen within like two kilometres of your house, because every time you go anywhere, you have to pass through that radius.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, or most accidents happen within your house, actually. So that's same logic.
Guy Windsor
Tell us something about reputation and exit strategy.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, so, like I said, those strategies, grim trigger, tit for tat, those I would usually apply in a setting where you can't go away, just walk away. Okay, because let's first talk about this exit strategy. It gives you a long term alternative to those strategies, because if the opponent defects, you could just stop sparring with them, and then in a group, you could just find another individual who is willing to cooperate with you, and then they are basically sitting this one out on the bench, because in the long term, if they defect over and over again, they build a reputation of not being a nice training partner, so they have less opportunity to fence with people, and basically they don't benefit from that kind of training in the long run. While you get as a good training partner, you build a reputation for being going nice, easy and technical, you have lots and lots of opportunities, basically, to spar. And so I actually think most of our sparring sessions should be structured in a way that you can actually just stop at any point in time, so you don't have to sit this one out, or you don't have to quickly escalate just to show the other person that punishment is on the line, but just communicating clearly and then walking away. I think it's actually the best strategy overall, also to just being a good role model. So especially for me as a coach, I don't want to have people seeing me going hard. That's basically as is, because I acknowledge that for at least for some people, I might be a role model, and that I set the tone of the training just as much as they do, even with probably a higher one.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, and that's one of the things you just have to accept when you're the person running the club, like in the same way that when people ask me, what martial arts should they get their kids to do? I say, take them to whatever classes are handy. It's not the art. It's look at the senior students, because your kid will turn into one of those. And if you want your child to be like that, that's the club to send them. And also, if you're looking for a club yourself, how do the senior students behave? And if that's who you want to be, join the club, because that's the behaviour that's clearly rewarded, and that's where you'll end up.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, definitely. And would always tell people to look for a martial arts club, because you have so many opportunities for this kind of inherent prisoner’s dilemma that you build those strategies, like you said, the tit for tat strategy, or just walking away all on your own and basically having, like a mindset that facilitates cooperation much easier because we're really good adapting to environments.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. And of course, in any sort of fencing or tournament setting, the rule set is a huge part of the environment. So let's talk for a minute about rule sets. I know you've expressed an opinion that one uniform rule set would be the death of historical martial arts, and I agree completely, because the notion that there's only one correct rule set is simply absurd, given the breadth of what we're trying to accomplish. But justify that position, if you would.
Martin Höppner
All right. So there could be made many arguments for certain, but the one I wanted to emphasize here is that, like I said, people are really good at adapting to environments, and they're basically really good as well on in gaming a system. So if you have a fixed set of rules, they might be the greatest rule set ever. They will be gamed. There will always be possibilities to basically turn the rules, a rule set upside down. It happened in sport and make the actual fencing really ugly.
Guy Windsor
It happened in sport fencing, and all that bouncy, bouncy shit. Like, have you read Epee 2.0 by Johan Harmenburg It's a brilliant book. Johan Harmenburg, in 1970s wasn't a particularly good fencer to start with, and he just decided to have a look at the rules, as they were in epee at the time, and figure out how he, with his particular strengths and weaknesses, could win. And he took this entirely rational, entirely sensible viewpoint, and absolutely everybody hated it because doing stuff that didn't look anything like classical fencing, he just won everything to the point that he won the world championships, and he won Olympic gold in the men's team epee and Olympic gold in the men's individual epee, and in the final, he was fencing one of his teammates, and he had figured that he would probably end up in the final with this teammate, and so yeah, for his for all of their training together for the previous four years leading up to the Olympics. Whenever he fenced this guy in practice, he used a completely different strategy to the one he was intending to use in the final. And so this guy comes out of it with his silver medal going he never fenced like that in practice, to which he replied, that wasn't practice. So he is like the poster child for have a look at the rule set, figure out how you can win according to these rules, and then do what you need to do to win according to those rules. And incidentally, he quit serious competitive fencing after he got his two Olympic gold medals because he knew he wasn't particularly talented, and now that he's shown everybody what actually worked with the rule set, they were either going to change the rule set again, or, more likely, better athletes would come up using his own methods against him, and he would be hammered. So he quit at the top of his game. It's a brilliant book.
Martin Höppner
And that's just beautiful. And it just shows even if you might maybe have a rule set that works quite well in your current environment, and you think you might want to extend this to a broader environment, then it only needs a couple of basically rational people that try actively to abuse this rule set, and they will have a competitive advantage so they will be more likely to compete around the top ranks. Those top matches are way more visible than the ones below, so people copy their strategy because they want to win as well, and out of a sudden you have that whole system changing. And basically everything digresses after this. So, it's one static rule set is a really, really bad idea, but even a dynamic rule set is still a bad idea, because people can still adapt. And usually rule makers try to, not try to abolish old rules, but they just build on top. They try to solve this by adding additional layers of complexity.
Guy Windsor
I can see what they're trying to do. Like, you know, I fenced some tournaments where head or body is three points, arm or legs is one point, for example, because they're trying to encourage people to not just snipe at the hands. And do you allow the after blow? Do you not allow the after blow? I mean, there's all sorts of things you can do to modify a rule set to get what you want. And the thing is, if you're running a tournament, you have to have a rule set. You can't really run a tournament without one, because otherwise people don't know what they're allowed to do. And it's chaos. So given that you're basically against fixed rule sets? How would you solve the problem of running a tournament?
Martin Höppner
So I actually design rule sets.
Guy Windsor
So fixed rule sets are okay, then?
Martin Höppner
No, I am a heavy advocate to leave all the other rule sets as they are and encourage people to adopt and modify my rule set as they see fit. But the main problem I saw in most fencing rule sets was the direct comparison that you directly want to compare two fencers in one match. And usually, since we don't want to let randomness play such big of a role, we let them compete repeatedly against each other. And that might be either constrained by time or number of exchanges, you tell me, but it doesn't really make a difference, because once one competitor has a point advantage over the other person, incentives shift, basically, from I don't need to score a clean hit anymore, to I just need to stay ahead. And that makes a fundamental difference, because in most rule sets, for example, double hits just get scratched, and it's way easier to force a double fence properly than to cleanly hit.
Guy Windsor
And it's this is true in epee too, and a lot of Olympic level epee fences will go, because double hits score, if they're fencing to like five – four, whatever, what they'll do when they're one hit up, they just double, double, double, until they get to five - four, because they can do that reliably, because it's a game.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, and you can either run out of time or out of remaining bouts. Doesn't matter. You just basically keep your advantage. And so we could make an argument, well, then randomness plays a role once again, after all, because that first clean exchange was determining the rest of the match, basically.
Guy Windsor
So what do you do about it?
Martin Höppner
So we could just stay with that one clean bout.
Guy Windsor
One of the my favourite tournaments I've ever been It was sudden death. You get hit once it was first to three points, and that was a hit to the face, hit to the head, or hit to the body, or three hits to the arms or legs, right?
Martin Höppner
And that makes fencing already cleaner, because the incentives are just structured in a different way. It has quite a bit of randomness.
Guy Windsor
So does real sword fighting.
Martin Höppner
And to try to mitigate this, I came up with the idea that we need indirect comparison as well, so you have a limited number of bouts against one person, but then you're also competing against a pool of other people that are also having a limited number of bouts against each other. So for example, we have a pool of 10 people, and it's a round robin pool. So everyone fights everyone. So you have nine fights, and maybe you have three bouts per fight, so you have 27 bouts in total. And now, for the scoring, for your rank in the pool, your total number of clean exchanges is the first and most important factor to rank. So even if against a bad person, you're up one, you want to score two more of those, because direct comparison is actually out of the window.
Guy Windsor
Ah, okay. So if, out of those 27 bouts I get, I don't know, 18 clean hits and you get 16 clean hits, I come first and you come second. And, I could actually get 18 clean hits and lose every fight. Almost, not quite. Depending on how scruffy all gets, you might have won more fights than me. But when I'm scoring, it's always clean, and if I get no doubles at all, I am actually ahead of the game.
Martin Höppner
And that actually takes tit for tat once again, because tit for tat will also never win in the direct comparison, if you think about it deeply, because you start cooperating, and if the opponent defects, they are ahead. Okay, now you defect, and maybe they cooperate and you get again, then you're basically on same terms. But if they defect one more time than you do, they win the direct comparison. So tit for tat can never win in direct comparison, but it can win in the social construct, because basically fencing beautifully and cleanly is also some kind of cooperating.
Guy Windsor
Have you actually run a tournament with this indirect comparison pools? How'd it go?
Martin Höppner
Yeah, sure, many by now. The pool phases go really great. I think it definitely changes the kind of fencing that we can observe. And I think it's also really robust to the skill level of the fencers. Of course, it always also depends on the judges. Because they need to apply your rule set, and they need to, basically we, it's called the Bolognese rule set because we took a text snippet from Manciolino and the Anonimo, which basically defines the after blow, that after you get hit, you have one more tempo with maximum of one step to hit the other person in response. And they argue in the Anonimo, for example, that sometimes the opponent drops dead instantly, and sometimes nothing happens at all, and they have many more attacks against you. And to find basically a compromise, they allow in their rule set, one more tempo, one action with one step. And that's basically how we define the after blow. And then Manciolino says also something about points to the head and to the feet and stuff like this.
Guy Windsor
So if I hit you and you hit me with the after blow, that's a double.
Martin Höppner
Then, basically it get scored for both persons. So for example, now I'm back to Manciolino awards three points for hits to the head, two points for a hit to the feet, because they are difficult to achieve, and everything else is one point. So if you score to my head, in the first tempo, and I take my chance to regain my honour, so to speak, and hit you in the body, then you get three points. I get one point. And basically, our system then counts how many clean exchanges you got, so how many times the opponent scored against you? Zero points. That's the first criterion. And then if you're equal, it counts the points.
Guy Windsor
That's a very interesting way to do it. It's quite a lot of, well, it's a very economist's way to do it, because it involves, like spreadsheets and adding up numbers.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, luckily, we had a person that just programmed this into a website, and so basically, it's very easy.
Guy Windsor
So just there's a website where people go and do this? Okay, what's the URL?
Martin Höppner
Yes, sure, but at the moment it's still private, because we need to set up every tournament by hand. But still, but maybe if people are willing to contribute to a website fund we can make it public.
Guy Windsor
I'm just trying to think, what is the best way of managing that. So people listening now who are like, oh my God, that sounds really cool, and I want to get in on it. What is the best way for them to do that?
Martin Höppner
Probably to just get in touch with Stephan or myself.
Guy Windsor
You do not want to be handing out your email address on the internet, but my email address is already out there with the show, so anyone who wants to get in touch with you or Stephan about this particular thing, send me an email with the subject line, “Tournament accounting”. There we go, and I will forward it to you or Stephan.
Martin Höppner
That sounds fair.
Guy Windsor
And it's quite straightforward from my point of view, and I also it, it puts a little bit of a filter there, so that not everyone who is mildly interested will get in your face about it, but if they're interested enough to figure out to do that correctly, then they're clearly actually likely interested enough to be useful. So yeah, okay, we'll do it that way.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, let me just check.
Guy Windsor
Stephan's not busy at all the moment, is he? For those not in on the joke, his family had a baby about three, four months ago. So yes, he's not busy at all. I met the little girl at Swords of the Renaissance.
Martin Höppner
Super easy.
Guy Windsor
Yes, it's a wonderful stage of life, but it doesn't give you much free time. Okay, so you've brought up like Manciolino and the Anonimo and rule sets in there. How do you feel that fencing treatises generally tread the line between the ideal and practical?
Martin Höppner
Yeah, so this is also a really interesting topic, and I feel that there's another scientific paper in there.
Guy Windsor
Have you written a scientific paper about the rule sets? Oh, God, you should, totally.
Martin Höppner
Not yet. Yeah, you always ask for the ideas you haven’t acted upon. That's the one, yeah, but I think that there's another paper in there, because fencing treatises also have to distinguish between perfect and bounded rationality, just like we did, for example, especially in the later manuals, we see that they make the distinguishment between the art and the practice.
Guy Windsor
Capoferro, for example.
Martin Höppner
And I think, especially in the art, they are talking mainly about perfect rationality. So if you are truly a perfect fencer, so you have no reaction time you make always the right choice, for example, then feints are really bad. Because they are an unnecessary movement, and if the opponent doesn't react to it, you just get.
Guy Windsor
That’s exactly what Capoferro says. And then in the practice, every plate the next 42 or whatever, almost every plate includes a feint somewhere, because they actually work, because people are people. We are not people are not truly artistic.
Martin Höppner
We are bounded by our cognitive capacity. We are bounded by the time we have to make those choices by the training we did beforehand. We need in fencing as well to rely on heuristics, after all. And so what happens is that many fencing books talk about the art of fencing, but then they try to actually teach you the heuristics. And you actually, from a learning point of view, you should learn those heuristics, those quick rules of thumb so it's fairly broad and easy that give you a good answer to anything your opponent does, but maybe not the best one. And the choice of a fencing manual then also becomes determined if you really, truly want to do it optimal by the time you have to practice. So, for example, if you want to go Destreza, which I would say, has this.
Guy Windsor
To the nth degree. Thibault famously divided sword blade into 12 sections when everyone else is two or three max.
Martin Höppner
Then I would say you really need a lot of time to practice to make this work at all. There are still modern practitioners and maybe even secondary sources that try to distil those into principles, which are heuristics as well, basically guidelines to guide our general training. But yeah, the deeper you want to go into the rabbit hole, the more practice you need, because you have to distinguish more and more inputs from each other. So for example, if we learn in Dall'Agocchie here, the way to prepare for a duel in 30 days, he just shows you one defence with one attack. And he basically defends everything with reverso squalembrato, so a diagonal cut from your offhand side. And then he goes into the imbrocata.
Guy Windsor
So it's a descending blow. Interesting. Because Viggiani uses the right.
Martin Höppner
He uses a tondo, Dall'Agocchie himself also has the ridoppio which we would find in Fiore as well, in the one handed section, but countering everything with some kind of reverso is a really Italian thing to do.
Guy Windsor
It’s German too. It's all over the Messer treatises, you're falling under from First Ward. That's the same thing. Weapon’s coming from above and you come up from below on the left.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, we could definitely argue this way. It's a really fundamental principle, because it's really easy. If you have your sword on your non dominant side down below, then everything that comes towards you will be on your outside, and you can parry it with that one sweeping motion. So you have a really easy heuristic, and then you just need to work on your timing your distance and figure that part out and that, I think it's a really great way, because even if you then mastered basically your timing distance with this one technique, then you can build upon it with other techniques that make you more adept to deal with certain circumstances, for example, when maybe parrying with a mezzo mandritto so a downward blow from your dominant side would be more appropriate going the Zornhau or the mandritto fendente. It's basically just another option for a different kind of attack, or a different kind of situation where a sword is in a different starting position. And this way, I would always try to teach fencing in a way start with the most simple heuristics that will still serve you well in the long run, and then build from there. And actually, most fencing treatises do it in just this way.
Guy Windsor
I'm thinking Fiore, who it's like the first time the sword appears someone was defending against it with a dagger, which is not a simple thing to do, but all they have to do is distinguish between cut and thrust. And there's this distinction between cut and thrust all the way through, and thrusts are dealt with differently to cuts for various mechanical reasons, but it's just like a heuristic that goes all the way through the treatise, like, is it a cut? Is it a thrust? If it's a cut, do this, if it's a thrust, do that?
Martin Höppner
And it's actually a way that people learn way easier, like, principle-based learning is or heuristic-based learning is way easier than just learning technique after technique and not seeing like that overall picture, this is why we usually want those really skilled and experienced practitioners to teach us those overarching methods and not the specific technique.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, and it may only work against a specific kind of opponent doing a specific thing, and so you do this small thing. It's funny, you don't see a lot of actual explicit heuristics in fencing treatises now that I think of it. I mean, it's implicit in the way that they're put together, but they're not usually explicitly discussed or described. Is there a reason for that?
Martin Höppner
I think usually the way fencing manuals formulate their heuristics, is like an if/then condition. So if opponent does this, then you do this. You do not make a choice anymore. But you have a condition. You need to recognize that condition, and then you just act upon it, and you basically train this reaction into yourself so you don't need to think about it anymore, and then you just do it. And this reaction to the condition needs to be broad enough that if you have a significant different condition, that you can actually differentiate those two conditions. So for example, if the opponent attacks you from their left, or if the opponent attacks you from their right, then you might need to distinguish this to find an optimal response. But there should be some kind of way that actually reacts to both of them.
Guy Windsor
Capoferro has basically. Capoferro has his secure way to defend against any obstacle, where you wait in a low cuarta so everything is coming in above your sword arm, and you just beat it up into prima. And then you stab the person, which is Viggiani all over again.
Martin Höppner
There you go. There's yeah, one more time.
Guy Windsor
And he sticks it at the back of the book, as if to say, well, all that was all fine and dandy if you actually have any brain space for it, but if you're pressed for time do this.
Martin Höppner
I think this is also like the selection bias in what they actually wrote. They needed to show that they actually understood the art of fencing so they were knowledgeable, and then they come to condense this down, or, if you want now the condensed version.
Guy Windsor
Viggiani who is like the poster child for the condensed version of a swordsmanship system, which he just has, like the one parry and the one strike, And that's it, but it's buried inside an awful lot of text, like it has this gigantic, long conversation between these three dudes who just chat about fencing. And then then you get to the condensed bit, and it's almost like he had to justify his choice for the compressed bit by making sure that everyone understands that he's sufficiently expert that he can actually create these imaginary conversations between these fencing people.
Martin Höppner
And I actually really love Viggiani, because I think he's a great example for giving us some principles or general heuristics when he talks about the advantage of guard, the advantage of stepping and the advantage of attacking. Which I really love.
Guy Windsor
But he insisted that his book not be published for 25 years after his death. So even though he had all this extra stuff in it, and even though he completely made the case that he's an absolute fencing genius, and we all love him in the 21st Century, he still he didn't want it out, not just until I'm dead, but until I'm dead and buried and properly gone. Any idea why?
Martin Höppner
No, I think it's a shame, because he could have been way more popular than he is.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, and it's a fantastic book. Okay, now I do have a couple of questions, as you alluded to earlier, the first of which is, what is the best idea you haven't acted on yet. And am I right in thinking it is writing up your Prisoner's Dilemma theory of fencing escalation?
Martin Höppner
Yeah, that that would be one like, I have a series of papers, truly in my mind, on basically combining economics, game theory and our hobby of historical martial arts. I think at some point in time I will write those up and actually coming on this podcast gave me a really nice incentive to actually start this process.
Guy Windsor
Excellent, good. So when should we expect the first paper to be published? No pressure.
Martin Höppner
When my second child has his first birthday, I will have sent in my first paper.
Guy Windsor
In about a year. Okay, that is a bold move. Okay. I'll hold you to it, though. All right, so when the one about to be born turns one. So you're kind of hoping, okay, give me an extra few days.
Martin Höppner
I'm actually finishing up another paper that I'm about to send in. I'm already thinking, give me an extra few days.
Guy Windsor
Okay, all right. And honestly, in academic circles, a year is not a long time. All right, so we'll circle back in a year. I'll make a note in my calendar to bug you about it.
Martin Höppner
Please do. I need deadlines? I need those incentives.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so that is the best idea you haven't acted on yet? Actually writing this stuff up?
Martin Höppner
Maybe founding another club in frightening would be a great idea as well, because we have a gym really close by, and traveling to Potsdam for about an hour if I want to take public services is quite long, and this one would be just five minutes to walk. But then it's kind of a hassle.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, running a club does a lot of work.
Martin Höppner
I'm so lucky to have attracted so many talented people that basically Schildwache Potsdam by now, runs itself for the most part, and I only go there for one of the four trainings we have per week, and everything runs smoothly. It's a dream come true.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so the reason you'd start something local then is so you'd get more training yourself.
Martin Höppner
Yeah.
Guy Windsor
That's not a bad idea. I've been thinking about doing something like that in Ipswich, and it's always the well, I travel a lot, and honestly, England is not a place to start anything, because they want insurance and they want just ridiculous amounts of health and safety paperwork and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and finding a space to train in is super expensive, and I've been spoiled because, you know, my salle in Helsinki is a great big space full of swords dedicated to swords. I had my own Sal since 2001 and renting space by the hour is not the same thing at all. So I'd really want a permanent space. And to justify that, you need to run a lot of classes, and I'm not sure I have the time.
Martin Höppner
It’s a real fear to not be able to accomplish what you've once accomplished once again,
Guy Windsor
It's not that. I have no doubt that I can do it. My doubt is whether I want to put in that amount of energy to do something I've already done before.
Martin Höppner
I was talking about myself with the fear.
Guy Windsor
Okay, yeah. Well, I have no doubt you could do it either. You know, of course you can.
Martin Höppner
Like you said, it's just a function of how much time and effort you're willing to pour into this project, right? And at the moment, I soon enough have two children, and I want to pour quite a bit of time into them as well.
Guy Windsor
Absolutely. And that actually makes it more sensible to run something locally, because it takes should we say, an hour and a half out of your out of your time spent away from home in the evening. So for every two hours of training, you get two hours of training and half an hour of like, going back and forth and sorting stuff out, as opposed to it taking three and a half hours out of the evening, which will make life a lot easier on your co-parent.
Martin Höppner
Definitely. One thing as well would be to how to get my children interested into swordplay. This is, this is another challenge.
Guy Windsor
I totally failed.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, I know. That's why I'm not asking you. But I actually tried to be really subtle about it, and basically not show them a lot of what I do until now. I think with my four year old, he now sometimes asked me if we can fence. So I think that we're on a good path.
Guy Windsor
I mean, I would take my kids to the salle, and we would play with stuff in the salle, and they learned to ride their bikes in the Finnish mid-winter in the salle, because it was big enough for little children to ride bikes in and a smooth concrete floor. So, you can clean up and whatnot. So they would go to the salle and play, and sometimes they'd play with swords, and sometimes they'd play with bull whips, and sometimes they'd ride bikes and whatever. So they were used to going to the salle to play, but they never really got into the swords, and there's just no way to. I mean, I suppose it would have been possible to sort of push it and make it just like this is just what our family does. But I prefer to let them find their own thing.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, yeah. I think that goes for me as well. If they don't like it, that's totally fine as well. My older one actually does hockey at the moment, because that's just convenient around the corner. And hey, at least he swings a stick, right?
Guy Windsor
Exactly. And a lot of those skills do transfer. You're manipulating a tool that is of a certain length, and you have to get the tip of it to do the right thing. There's a lot of crossover.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, see, I'm really subtle about it. Nudging is also a big field in economics. It’s interesting.
Guy Windsor
I've read a book called Nudge.
Martin Höppner
by Cass Sunstein, yeah.
Guy Windsor
So last question, somebody gives you a million euros or similar, large chest of cash to spend improving historical martial arts worldwide. How would you spend it?
Martin Höppner
This is a really hard question, and I think actually most of the stuff I would do someone already proposed in your podcast, but I would actually just argue for a mix of different actions. So for example, one big thing would be to create, like a global Open Access archive of interpretations, basically.
Guy Windsor
Ah, okay, so we have that for sources, but you're saying for interpretations. That's a good idea.
Martin Höppner
And so new people could have a resource where they could go to check upon their own interpretations or to share their own. And basically having everything filmed at least semi-professional. Good sound quality is even more important than good video quality. At least everything needs to be in shot of course. I think that would go a long way. And that would be, I don't know, like the first €200,000 I would spend? Okay,
Guy Windsor
I have tried doing that with my interpretations. They are basically all online for free. I don't know how useful that's actually been to people, because it's very difficult to measure.
Martin Höppner
It is, and I think it's definitely less useful for the everyday practitioner and more useful to the ones that are actually trying to get into the role of teaching, coaching and doing this kind of stuff and actually reading the sources. But I think it's for 1/5 of the of the of the total sum, I think it would be still worth it to have a lot of different interpretations online.
Guy Windsor
A Wiktenauer for interpretations.
Martin Höppner
Maybe even link them together. That would be great stuff. Then the next one is actually an idea you already talked about with me on the Swords of the Renaissance, which is instructor training and scholarship program. So you talked about an event, but just in general, to set up a fund to allow instructors to travel around the world, get new experiences and different input and just exchange ideas. I think that would be also really valuable to improve our community as a whole.
Guy Windsor
These days, when instructors travel, they are usually attending tournaments, in which case they don't really learn much about teaching, or they are teaching at an event where they might pick up some stuff about teaching because they see other people teach, but none of it is engineered for the purpose of helping instructors get better at instructing and having something that's so the idea that Martin was referring to, for the listeners who were didn't happen to be in that particular beer cellar in Potsdam a few weeks ago, I have an idea for a retreat where I know maybe a dozen, maybe 20, instructors go and take over a hotel that happens to belong to a friend of mine. And we cross pollinate. I think it's probably the best way to put it, which does also sound just like a really nice way to spend a weekend. But the idea being you come out of it with ideas about how to serve your students better.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, and I think that would be really, really valuable. And to allow instructors who might not have the funds to go there, to allow them to do this, I think that would be a great thing to do. And then I have…
Guy Windsor
You've really thought about this. You got a list.
Martin Höppner
I got a list. Basic marketing just to advance the public image of our beautiful sport, getting some high quality professional material and marketed out into the world, I think, which would also go a long way to attract new protect practitioners.
Guy Windsor
What do you mean by marketing material? I'm thinking like a Netflix special would be cool.
Martin Höppner
That would really great. Yes, something like this would be like a small documentary highlighting all the aspects of historical martial arts. So we have the sports aspect, of course, but we also have the academic work, the social and the community-based stuff. I think that would be really awesome. Since we in Potsdam, have a really nice location, they should probably also go there.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, not self-interested at all. Got it, yeah. That's for the public. Got it.
Martin Höppner
And maybe the last one is also something for the scientific research to set up a grant or some academic research program in there as well to either basically dig up new sources that were referenced but maybe just lost, or for translation, or well, publicising interpretations or science on the act of historical martial arts would be really nice as well. Like Jamie MacIver’s project on safety tips, those things just need to get funded because in economic terms, they display a public good. So they benefit everyone, but not everyone has an incentive to directly contribute to those so you need basically some kind of intervention to get those things funded.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, I mean, Jamie MacIver’s stuff is, I mean, I threw money at it when he did a crowdfunding campaign, because it's obviously to the benefit of the historical martial arts community as a whole. And funny enough, I actually met him at a tournament here in the UK recently, and at the tournament, most people did not have plastic blunts on the end of their swords, even though the data is now there to say you absolutely should. I was like, ah, come on, learn from the science!
Martin Höppner
Yeah, definitely. Once again, so lucky to have Stephan in my club, who is also really talented in 3d printing. So yeah, we have basically tips for every sword you could imagine.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. This is Stephan Eickelmann, by the way, dear listener, who is actually, because Stephan is the one who, like contacts instructors and organises stuff, I think of Swords of the Renaissance as basically his event. When actually it's yours too, and but in my head is like, he's like, top organiser, and you're just like, organiser number two,
Martin Höppner
Yeah, I would definitely agree to this.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so there's quite a list.
Martin Höppner
Yeah. It's also an economist's approach to basically disperse the money on many smaller projects, because then some will stick.
Guy Windsor
And it's hard to anticipate how successful any given project would be. I mean, like, who would have thought that Wiktenauer would still be running and still being run so vigorously, somewhat 15 years after it started, something like that, and it's so useful. I mean, I don't particularly think finding new sources. It's not an urgent problem.
Martin Höppner
No, definitely. That's a decreasing marginal utility.
Guy Windsor
Because, I mean, the marginal utility of one new source in 1995 was enormous. The marginal utility of one new source now, unless it's something absolutely incredible, is, I mean, there are people who are specialising in teaching rapier from a treatise that I've never even heard of and I'm fairly well versed in my rapier research stuff, and there are treatises that are out there that I've just because, honestly, most rapier treatises are mostly the same, if we're talking about Italian rapier from, say 1600 to say 1650. Giganti and Capoferro are maybe 80% the same. And I wouldn't want to do without either of them, but you can bet just one of them is sufficient to have a rapier fencing system based on. Neither one of them is missing anything vital, I don't think. Yeah, but definitely, I think getting interpretations out there in a more organised way would be a great idea, because at the moment, it's very much who shouts loudest on YouTube tends to get heard of as, okay, this person's interpreting this. This person's interpreting that and because of the way YouTube is just this completely massive, random splodge of a billion different videos, and it's the algorithm that tells you what to watch next. And yeah, you can maybe find somebody's channel where they've interpreted, for example, Fiore, but then getting that interpretation in some kind of organised way from this splodge of videos, maybe they have 200 videos on their channel. Like, where do you even start?
Martin Höppner
We are part of that machine here as well.
Guy Windsor
So when we decided to video my interpretations in I think it was 2011 maybe one of my students built a wiki for it so that you can go to the Swordschool syllabus, and there's the sword and buckler syllabus, there’s the Fiore syllabus, and so on. And you can organise it by system. And then within that, it's all organised so that if you want a sword handling exercise with a longsword, you know where to go. And if you want a plate 17 from Capoferro, you can find it quite easily. So, yeah, something that takes that sort of structured idea and takes the utter mess that is YouTube and organises it into something that's a lot more user friendly for people who are looking to find out about interpretations. I think that’s a really good idea.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, that's really good. And I actually tried to do this on my YouTube as well, using playlists, basically. So, yeah, everything learning sidesword is one playlist. Marozzo’s two handed sword is one playlist. Dual wielding is one playlist, which is great,
Guy Windsor
Which is great, but it's not how people are trained to use YouTube. So it's kind of swimming against the tide of the platform that it's on, because when, let's say, if I go and I start one of your playlists it might play the next thing next, but it's also going to recommend a bunch of other things I could play next. I go, oh, my God, that's shiny. So I go off. And because maybe I also have an interest in woodworking, and maybe a woodworking video pops up, and I go, oh, actually, yeah, let's have a look at that. And then the thread is lost.
Martin Höppner
Which is why, by now, I see YouTube mainly as an advertisement platform as well to get new people interested in the stuff I do, maybe, but then, yeah, for more structured way, I usually point them towards my Patreon or to direct instruction.
Guy Windsor
Oh, you have a Patreon, do you?
Martin Höppner
Yeah, we do, like, once a week, or by now, not really anymore, but usually once a week, we do a live session,
Guy Windsor
Martin, I'm teasing you a little bit, because when you come on a podcast, one of the things you're supposed to do is plug shit. So, so tell us, Martin, you have a Patreon? That's very interesting. What's the name of your Patreon? It's patron.com forward slash,
Martin Höppner
It’s Schildwache Potsdam.
Guy Windsor
Schildwache Potsdam, okay, but they happen to have to spell Schildwache, it is a difficult word. It's S, C, H, I, L, D, W, A, C, H, E.
Martin Höppner
Yes. And then P O, T, S, D, A, M.
Guy Windsor
There we go. Okay, and we'll put a link in the show notes to make it easier for people to go and find your stuff and give you money.
Martin Höppner
That would be quite nice. To be sure, I make my money being a scientist, not as a fencing instructor, but it’s nice.
Guy Windsor
Sure, and the more money that’s coming in, the easier it is to produce stuff like an organised interpretation that can be presented in a nice way. It must be quite nice though, having a day job.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, I really like it. Safe income. Well, in science, especially in Germany, I think it’s probably globally as well, jobs as a scientist are always termed contracts. So you try to get an extension, and you get another extension for one year, and maybe for another one year. I have had an extension for four years so I’m quite safe by now.
Guy Windsor
You can just relax and do your research and produce those papers. Because in those academic papers where you’re talking about the prisoner’s dilemma and fencing rulesets and whatnot, those completely count to your academic career.
Martin Höppner
Yeah, sure, they should.
Guy Windsor
Your likelihood of getting the next contract goes up with every paper you produce, doesn’t it?
Martin Höppner
I’d say probably, historical martial arts in an economics paper won’t rank so much into the contribution into my next job, but they are a fun part time, so it’s OK. I can still present them in conferences for the miscellaneous part.
Guy Windsor
Yeah and it’s nice to have a bit of a breadth of interest.
Martin Höppner
It makes you way more human. You can distinguish yourself from all the AI written papers.
Guy Windsor
And who knows, somebody at one of these academic conferences might go, oh my God, there’s historical martial arts? And become the next, I don’t know, organiser of a major event or interpreter of a particular treatise or whatever. It’s the Lord’s work you’re doing there, Martin.
Martin Höppner
It’s just who I am by now. I have just accepted historical martial arts as my identity, or part of it, at least.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, there’s no getting out of it now. Just give in. Excellent, yes, the lure of the sword is just too shiny. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Martin, it’s been lovely talking to you again.
Martin Höppner
Same here, Guy, always lovely talking to you. See you next time.
