CronoDAS comments on That Magical Click - Less Wrong

58 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 January 2010 04:35PM

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Comment author: Bo102010 21 January 2010 03:01:26AM *  1 point [-]

I liked it. The promotional material and summaries of it don't do justice to the content, I think, though. The book has many examples of how people who are experts at things can make good snap judgments in their domains of expertise, but it is not about how any normal person can make great decisions without thinking about them.

Also, Malcolm Gladwell could write a cookbook and make it the most entertaining thing you'll read all year.

Comment author: CronoDAS 21 January 2010 04:12:51AM *  3 points [-]

The book has many examples of how people who are experts at things can make good snap judgments in their domains of expertise, but it is not about how any normal person can make great decisions without thinking about them.

Jon Finkel is probably the world's best Magic player. However, he is not good at explaining how to make correct decisions when playing; to him, the right play is simply obvious, and he doesn't even notice all the wrong ones. His skill is almost entirely unconscious.

Comment author: pdf23ds 21 January 2010 10:08:01AM 1 point [-]

Reminds me of Marion Tinsley, the greatest checkers player ever. He lost 7 games out of thousands in his 45 year career of playing for the World Championship, two of them to the program that would eventually go on to solve checkers. (That excludes his early years studying the game.) He was arguably the most dominant master of any game, ever. He, too, couldn't explain his skill.

Comment author: wedrifid 21 January 2010 12:03:32PM 2 points [-]

Do they still have World Championships in checkers now the game is understood to be a somewhat more complex tic-tac-toe variant?

Comment author: gregconen 23 January 2010 12:20:16AM 3 points [-]

I believe so, though I've heard the first few moves are now randomized, as only perfect play, rather than all board positions, is solved.

Of course, every perfect-information deterministic game is "a somewhat more complex tic-tac-toe variant" from the perspective of sufficient computing power.

Comment author: pdf23ds 23 January 2010 01:01:39PM *  1 point [-]

Of course, every perfect-information deterministic game is "a somewhat more complex tic-tac-toe variant" from the perspective of sufficient computing power.

Yeah, sure. And I have a program that gives constant time random access to all primes less than 3^^^^3 from the perspective of sufficient computing power.

Comment author: wedrifid 23 January 2010 05:30:04AM *  1 point [-]

I believe so, though I've heard the first few moves are now randomized, as only perfect play, rather than all board positions, is solved.

Ahh, good idea.

Of course, every perfect-information deterministic game is "a somewhat more complex tic-tac-toe variant" from the perspective of sufficient computing power.

No, only the ones that are a tie.

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