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Sideways comments on Epistemic Viciousness - Less Wrong
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I don't know much about American professional sports--even less about pro sports in other countries--for that matter, I don't know much about martial arts. But as far as I do know, pro sports have none of these problems. Athletes do all sorts of outrageous things; coaches, athletes, and strategies are chosen on merit; absurdly detailed statistics are collected. Baseball players admire Babe Ruth but they don't idolize him. The analogy between pro sports and martial arts isn't perfect, but neither is the analogy between martial arts and rationality.
So, what do pro sports have to "keep them honest", that martial arts don't?
Teams of athletes compete in tournaments that directly demonstrate their skills at their sport. In theory, the sport of martial artists is hand-to-hand combat, but martial arts tournaments never allow eye-gouging, biting, and so on. The further the distance between the tournament rules and reality, the less useful the tournament will be. Fortunately, I don't think there's a rationalist equivalent of eye-gouging, so setting up tournament rules should be relatively easy.
An athlete or coach who gives up a pet technique for one that works better will be rewarded with status and money. The culture of pro sports permits athletes to train in entirely different ways from one season to the next, and coaches to change their playbooks whenever they like. Martial arts schools are stagnant by comparison. The money in pro sports comes from fans (directly through sales or indirectly through advertising) and it would take a lot of effort to raise awareness for rationality. But if rationality masters were really so awesome they'd have no trouble getting the money, right?
Pro sports aren't considered a "way of life" the way martial arts are. Athletes move from one team to another and it's not a big deal, but if Bruce Lee had given up Jeet Kune Do during his life, and taken up Shotokan Karate instead, the martial arts world would still be talking about it. It would be like the Pope converting to Wicca. Readers of OB will probably agree with me that rationality should be a way of life; but I hope they'll also agree that no particular school of rationality should be.
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Well, then again, I don't think there's a rationalist equivalent of a tournament just yet, either.
Well... there is the stock market, but that's generally too much of a challenge; any edge you get disappears very quickly, so the best thing to do is "free ride" off of other people's attempts to value stocks and just buy index funds (or the equivalent).
Other domains in which rationality can be tested are "intellectual sports" such as poker, chess, or Magic: The Gathering... it's hard to test "rationality" in a way that doesn't simply test intelligence or learned skills, though.
This is a great deal of how rationality wins in the real world in general: just being less wrong than other people.
(The epistemic hazard is how to avoid getting full of yourself on a win and considering yourself ridiculously more brilliant than anyone who hasn't had your particular revelation, rather than considering yourself someone who was less wrong in a particular area this time and who aims to be less wrong next time.)
I'd put real-time strategy games such as starcraft in as a decision-making sport. It does cross-evaluate hand-eye coordination and preparation to a large extent, however.
Are you insane? Professional team sports are a bastion of epistemic viciousness. A surprising amount of professional athletes and coaches do not have a coherent grasp of why they are able to do what they do, are awful at evaluating themselves and recognize, yet dismiss, what they should do to get better. Case in point: Shaquille O'Neal, with his free throws and rejuvenation once he encountered the Phoenix medical staff.
Or any number of idiotic football coaches who refuse to implement strategies that Madden video games and real life show as valid, winning strategies. On the other hand, there's Don Nelson - who appears to be playing a demented brand of basketball in a bizarro dimension.
Disclosure: I have done Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for eight months and dabble in mixed martial arts. I have watched more than a few hundred hours of videos of all kinds of martial arts, been active in individual and team sports and did taekwondo a long time ago.
My experiences in BJJ and MMA have shown me a population of people unusually aware of the strengths and limitations of almost every martial art out there. There's a strong institutional emphasis (from the instructor) to do techniques shown in class specifically as shown; however, there's also a strong unofficial emphasis on watching YouTube videos, grappling with other people and coming up with stuff on your own time. Both pathways are tested in grappling. The OODA loop works so much better within the BJJ/MMA groups than it does in people outside.
I have no idea why this is, but I suspect it is primarily because of the UFC and other MMA organizations showing the continual development of individual combat (within rules). The personal fighting has also borne this out, but isn't nearly as capable of influencing other people.
By continual testing against others, the chinks are eventually shown and either patched up or styles reconfigured. A variety of styles and strategies have been shown to work - swarming (old Shogun, old Wanderlei), counterfighting (Evans, Rampage), Muay Thai (Anderson Silva), submissions from the top (Maia), submissions from the bottom (Minotauro), wrestling (St. Pierre) etc. [Note: almost all of the previously mentioned are world-class experts in multiple disciplines]
Bruce Lee sorta gave up Kung Fu. Pro sports are a way of life for many, many millions.
Rationality dojo: isn't this place one?
I don't think I'm insane. But then, I would say that, wouldn't I?
You've misread me to suit your preconceptions. I never said that there was no epistemic viciousness in professional team sports. What I said was that the particular problems that Russell describes aren't problems in pro sports. It's possible to learn from the pro sports model without adopting it in every particular.
Of course not all football coaches rationally choose strategies; not all football coaches are competent, period. But unlike the dojos Russell describes, in pro sports that behavior in is understood as biased and unreasonable, not praised as respect for tradition.
I agree that "pro sports" are a way of life for many people--this was phrased poorly in my original post. I should have said that membership in a team isn't a way of life for professional athletes. Fans generally stick with one team or another, but when you move from Chicago to Los Angeles, it's not a big deal if you stop following the Bulls and start following the Lakers. Anyway, the analogy breaks down here--what would a "rationality fan" who didn't actually practice rationality look like?
You say the breadth of martial arts knowledge of your BJJ/MMA community is "unusual." I assume you meant relative to the rest of the martial arts community rather than the general population, which would be trivially obvious. Either way we agree that "continual testing against others" is the common denominator that keeps a dojo or a professional sports team effective.
Yes, I mean relative to the rest of the martial arts community.
"What would a rationality fan who didn't actually practice rationality look like?" Jim Cramer on the Daily Show? (I refer not to the verbal destruction, but Cramer's stated appreciation of Stewart's points without any subsequent change in his behavior.)
Well, the Cornhuskers had a big thing for the Option I offense for a very long time, and recruited talent specifically for it - despite the growing utility of more "modern" offenses. There was a huge hullabaloo about the switch to the West Coast under Callahan. A significant portion of Husker fans still grumble about it, and mostly do so with the "tradition" criticism.
I can't wait until a college or pro team does the A-11 offense: http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=825031
Repeat after Tarski:
If I am insane,
I desire to believe that I am insane;
If I'm not insane,
I desire to believe that I'm not insane;
Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.
FTFY:
Nope, maybe funny but incorrect. Even if I'm insane, I don't desire being insane.
Note that the timestamp was about 3 AM on New Year's for me; I'm glad I didn't post anything sillier given the circumstances.
Also, the hypothetical lunatic doesn't desire to believe ze's insane, just that marble tomato cheese brain. Ze isn't capable of making that further inference.
Maybe actually not, but ze should, hence the litany.
The reason the litany helps people in general is that we really do want, upon reflection, to believe true things rather than false ones. I'm not sure that holds for lunatics.
I'm also tapping out, unless this conversation takes a more comical turn again.
He doesn't desire being insane, but he does desire to believe that marble tomato cheese brain.
The tomato was a verb and cheese was a preposition, btw.
I love the fact that my brain is perfectly happy to treat "marble tomato cheese brain" as falling into the "subject-verb-preposition-object" pattern, but insists that it should be either "marbles" or "tomatoes".
In the most obvious ways to test rationality, which is by debate, the various Dark Arts are something similar.
Wait, what?
I can't quite tell if this is meant ironically.
Debate is far from the most obvious way to test rationality.
The most obvious way to test which of a group of people has more correct beliefs is by convincing others to adopt your more-correct beliefs.
OK, I'm now pretty sure you're serious.
So, let me make sure I understand your position. If you believe A, and I believe NOT-A, then on your account all of the following is true:
- The most obvious way to test whether A or NOT-A is by having us debate.
- If you convince me that A, then you have the more correct belief, and are therefore more rational.
- Thus, debate is the most obvious way to test rationality.
Have I understood your position correctly?
These parts are wrong. Debate is not for testing whether A or NOT-A is true, it is for testing what the most accurate posterior for Pr(A) is, given the evidence available, and who had better-assigned priors.
The reason debate is the most obvious test of rationality is Aumann's Agreement Theorem. If we debate beliefs, and we are both perfectly rational, we will agree on all beliefs debated by the end of the debate. The person whose beliefs pre-debate most closely match the beliefs post-debate, if the debate was strictly rational (rather than using Dark Arts), was the more rational on those issues, and can be presumed to still be more rational on other issues.
OK, thanks for clarifying your position.
So... if you and I debate issue X, and at the end of that debate your beliefs are completely unchanged, whereas mine have changed slightly, then we've determined that you are more rational than I with respect to X, and therefore probably more rational than I with respect to other issues... provided that the debate itself is "strictly rational."
Yes?
If so, two questions:
If the debate was not strictly rational, does the debate tell us anything about which of us is more rational?
Can you point me at an actual example of a strictly rational debate?
As previously mentioned, there are many other things which are better for being convincing but not rational, so an actual rational debate is pretty much an idealized thing. Some of the early Socratic dialogues probably count (I'm thinking specifically of the Euthyphro). I haven't read the Yudkowsky/Hanson AI FOOM debate, it might as well.
Ah, gotcha. Now that I understand what you meant by "debate", your position is clearer. Thanks.