Gunnar_Zarncke comments on Wits and Wagers - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Johnicholas 04 August 2009 04:39PM

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Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 30 September 2013 09:31:59PM 1 point [-]

I tried it out and it is much easier to play than my game (see http://lesswrong.com/lw/ilw/games_for_rationalists/ ) and thus is somewhat more fun. But it also has less insights.

My experience is as follows:

  • The trivia questions are not difficult enough. It is very seldom that values lie outside a times 2-range. And 'surprises' are rare.
  • The questions have an american cultural bias (no wonder)
  • The 'going over' rule is simple but totally skews the betting and guessing.
  • The simple payout-rules cause gaming for higher payouts thus mixing confidence and probability in non-trivial ways.
  • The two-phase setup where you can look where the 'experts' bet is interesting but doesn't help with confidence calibration.

It really is optimized for playability. I think it does some calibration of (over)confidence and it builds intuition for probability and risk-trade-offs.

But - and that is my main point - it doesn't have clear concepts. The concepts are all mingled up, skewed, hidden. You may gain intuition but it will not help you toward overcoming e.g. overconfidence bias or egocentric bias.

I still think for that the concept must be sufficiently present to be able to reflect and consciously use it.