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MBlume 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.