As somebody who was top ~2% in Starcraft I got heavily triggered until this part
>The key insight from Starcraft is that you need to be constantly testing and adjusting your hypothesis by scouting your opponent, all while continually executing whatever the best strategy you know of at any given point in time.
This is one of actually a good description of what is to be (in part) learned from Starcraft. However the level to which you can opt to commit to your idea without accurate information is larger than most people can suspect, and a lot of work goes into making the unwanted adjustments seem a non-issue.
I started this post with the Starcraft campaign example, and then as I kept writing, was thinking that I might have to backtrack and get rid of SC completely.
To be fair, the campaign is very contrived, but in most 1v1s, I feel like strong opinions were the way to go, with the “unwanted adjustments” you talked about, like waiting a few seconds longer to take your natural after your opponent’s scout leaves. It’s also why after many thousands of games, I sort of lost interest in Starcraft. Based on maps and matchups, besides cheese, most games played out with both players just executing their predetermined builds until one player made a mistake (the game breaks down to balancing economy, army size, tech and army positioning, so a miscalculation along any of those axes). I did enjoy some of the ICCup seasons with new maps before people figured out optimal builds where it wasn’t as repetitive. But mostly I stopped playing cuz of all the long drawn out PvTs :)
>The key insight from Starcraft is that you need to be constantly testing and adjusting your hypothesis by scouting your opponent, all while continually executing whatever the best strategy you know of at any given point in time.
This is one of actually a good description of what is to be (in part) learned from Starcraft. However the level to which you can opt to commit to your idea without accurate information is larger than most people can suspect, and a lot of work goes into making the unwanted adjustments seem a non-issue.