JoshuaZ comments on Zendo-like Induction Game for Playing Online - Less Wrong

8 Post author: Normal_Anomaly 03 January 2011 05:16PM

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Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 03 January 2011 05:18:36PM 0 points [-]

Meta stuff goes here.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 04 January 2011 01:16:17AM *  3 points [-]

One issue with Zendo that doesn't necessarily make it a great game for actually improving rationality is that the rules are made by humans, so you can use psychology to get information. For example, I was playing with my family a few nights ago and my mother guessed a certain rule, my little brother immediately said "That's not Josh's rule. it isn't elegant." And sneakier players can do even worse stuff using sidechannel attacks. In particular, how long it takes for the Master to judge whether different configurations fit the rule can give a lot of information about the rule form.

Comment author: anonym 05 January 2011 04:19:17PM 1 point [-]

Aren't those all just additional aspects of the game, additional constraints in the optimization process?

If people will make inferences from how long the Master takes to judge whether different configurations fit the rule, then the Master should either systematically manipulate his times to give the wrong impression or introduce some random waits. And if you are known for only using elegant rules, then you're using a sub-optimal strategy for choosing the patterns, because you're giving away more information than necessary.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 04 January 2011 02:11:29AM 1 point [-]

Upvoted for truth. Hopefully this game will avoid those pitfalls because: 1) We've never met 2) The time it takes me to judge a rule is swamped by the time it takes me to notice somebody posted Also, using psychology to get information and improving your performance that way still requires rationality.

Comment author: endoself 04 January 2011 03:07:20AM *  -1 points [-]

Humans are the only things capable of reliably generating things that seem non-obvious to humans. The only reason the universe seems so good at it is because we pay less attention to the obvious things. I don't think we can improve on this issue easily enough for it to be useful for the purposes of the game.