Games also represent a very stylized domain within which we can practice >optimizing—rationalists should reliably win more on average or we’re doing >something wrong.
At my college I am games-referee of the General Students’ Committee, and we game on average once in a week., 4-5 hours. Although I do not count my wins/losses, I get credited as being able to quickly crack the game-mechanic and win overtly often. This could, of course, be because of possibly higher intelligence.
This could, of course, be because of possibly higher intelligence.
It probably is. I don’t think learning formal Bayesian reasoning and real-life rationality skills would help much for games, but IQ can be a huge factor.
I’ve found poker to be one game in which rationality matters, probably more than raw IQ. Specifically, I’ve found it useful to be able to do the following, all of which would seem to be exercises of rationality skills also applicable in other domains:
Notice when I’m chasing my losses—that is, when at some level I know very well I’m not going to win the hand, and my real motive for being tempted to bet further is flinching away from having to write off an existing investment.
Objectively understand my strengths and weaknesses. I’m crap at reading people’s faces, so I don’t waste time trying, but I can sometimes read their logic.
Understand just what my intuition is doing and why. In principle, calculation would be better, but in practice I can’t typically calculate the exact odds (at least not without investing more resources than a casual player like myself is willing to spend), so trust my intuition—except where superseded by hard numbers.
A low-level report:
from http://lesswrong.com/lw/4ul/less_wrong_nyc_case_study_of_a_successful/
At my college I am games-referee of the General Students’ Committee, and we game on average once in a week., 4-5 hours. Although I do not count my wins/losses, I get credited as being able to quickly crack the game-mechanic and win overtly often. This could, of course, be because of possibly higher intelligence.
It probably is. I don’t think learning formal Bayesian reasoning and real-life rationality skills would help much for games, but IQ can be a huge factor.
I’ve found poker to be one game in which rationality matters, probably more than raw IQ. Specifically, I’ve found it useful to be able to do the following, all of which would seem to be exercises of rationality skills also applicable in other domains:
Notice when I’m chasing my losses—that is, when at some level I know very well I’m not going to win the hand, and my real motive for being tempted to bet further is flinching away from having to write off an existing investment.
Objectively understand my strengths and weaknesses. I’m crap at reading people’s faces, so I don’t waste time trying, but I can sometimes read their logic.
Understand just what my intuition is doing and why. In principle, calculation would be better, but in practice I can’t typically calculate the exact odds (at least not without investing more resources than a casual player like myself is willing to spend), so trust my intuition—except where superseded by hard numbers.