Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on "Stuck In The Middle With Bruce" - Less Wrong

54 Post author: CronoDAS 09 April 2009 12:24AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (93)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 April 2009 12:39:28PM 2 points [-]

Which card game thus far encountered is the best rationality training mechanism, in your opinion?

Comment author: MendelSchmiedekamp 09 April 2009 08:37:21PM 2 points [-]

Well, we do call Call of Cthulhu the thinking man's CCG (even though it's no longer collectable). The resourcing decisions, the combat math, and the overall slower pacing, now that some of the "quick" combos are gone, are all positive qualities. While the decisions are more textured than in magic - and in play decisions are at least as critical as deck design decisions, it's not too difficult to trace back out where important decisions occurred.

Although sometimes it's "I shouldn't have resourced that support destruction card when my odds of drawing another one were too low." Which then teaches you to evaluate your decision within the local information you have available. All in all a decent help, I'd say.

I am of course biased. I play the game weekly with the 2007 world champ. Which will be happening in about an hour, actually...

Comment author: steven0461 09 April 2009 04:43:27PM 7 points [-]

I don't think "card games" are a natural kind -- consider that in poker, the only thing that cards actually do, is provide a mechanism to incrementally give players private and public information on the binary variable of whether or not they get whatever ends up in the pot.

Comment author: Lawliet 09 April 2009 12:59:58PM 2 points [-]

Echoing this, but dont limit your reply to solely card-games, if you have anything else to add.