Marius comments on Verifying Rationality via RationalPoker.com - Less Wrong
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Comments (154)
I wish we could do this but playing without real money wouldn't work for improving rationality and I don't think it would even work for testing rationality in a meaningful way.
Also, I think this sets a good precedent. People who will bet on cards are far more likely to bet on their beliefs in general, which is a sign that they actually have beliefs as opposed to just "things they would like to be true". Not taking +EV bets that represent negligible portions of your net-worth is epistemically irrational so it seems like a rationalist community should be encouraging betting when it is done at reasonable stakes as a way to train or test beliefs.
This is an excellent idea. The ability to create a simple measure (profit/loss) for a complex subject obviously loses something in the process, but makes up for it by allowing reproducible experimentation with a robust and unforgiving metric. If we claim something is valuable, then we should be prepared to find simple metrics capable of measuring it. I think you have done so.