(This is my first curation notice since becoming an admin.)
What can I do except gaze into the horizon and drawl “Hogwarts… needs more… plotting”
I think games, simulations, practice, exercises, and so forth are really valuable. They help us build a culture of rationality as a craft, as an ongoing practice, that is grounded in real feedback loops.
One fear with rationality is to end up in a “hall of mirrors”: an endless chasing of your own thoughts and feelings that never actually bottom out in the real world. For example, it is said that a PhD student in literary theory can go through an entire education without ever being conclusively proven wrong.
How much of LessWrong can you go through without ever being conclusively proven wrong? That is, how much of the Sequences can you delude yourself into understanding? How many teacher’s passwords can you guess?
I’m not sure. But having institutions like the Darwin game offers a valuable opportunity for people to have reality punch them in the face.
Now exercises can vary along the degree to which they test your rationality. Climbing an obstacle course is also a way to end up getting a log smashed in your face… but it seems to have less relevance for rationality. However, the Darwin Game combined important elements of economics, game theory (open-source and programmatic, LessWrong style!), computer science, thinking outside the box and more.
Finally, I want to encourage and reward the large amounts of thinking that were spent on this by both Isusr and the participants, which impressed me a fair bit. Professor Quirrell thinks you… Exceeded Expectations.
Curated—as a celebration of the entire sequence.
(This is my first curation notice since becoming an admin.)
What can I do except gaze into the horizon and drawl “Hogwarts… needs more… plotting”
I think games, simulations, practice, exercises, and so forth are really valuable. They help us build a culture of rationality as a craft, as an ongoing practice, that is grounded in real feedback loops.
One fear with rationality is to end up in a “hall of mirrors”: an endless chasing of your own thoughts and feelings that never actually bottom out in the real world. For example, it is said that a PhD student in literary theory can go through an entire education without ever being conclusively proven wrong.
How much of LessWrong can you go through without ever being conclusively proven wrong? That is, how much of the Sequences can you delude yourself into understanding? How many teacher’s passwords can you guess?
I’m not sure. But having institutions like the Darwin game offers a valuable opportunity for people to have reality punch them in the face.
Now exercises can vary along the degree to which they test your rationality. Climbing an obstacle course is also a way to end up getting a log smashed in your face… but it seems to have less relevance for rationality. However, the Darwin Game combined important elements of economics, game theory (open-source and programmatic, LessWrong style!), computer science, thinking outside the box and more.
Finally, I want to encourage and reward the large amounts of thinking that were spent on this by both Isusr and the participants, which impressed me a fair bit. Professor Quirrell thinks you… Exceeded Expectations.
No, but I await the day when they produce something which does. Otherwise, Britain is doomed.