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Sable comments on Open thread, June 27 - July 3, 2016 - Less Wrong
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Rationality lessons from Overwatch, a multiplayer first-person shooter:
1) Learning when you're wrong: The killcam, which shows how I died from the viewpoint of the person who killed me, often corrects my misconception of how I died. Real life needs a killcam that shows you the actual causes of your mistakes. Too bad that telling someone why they are wrong is usually considered impolite.
2) You get what you measure: Overwatch's post-game scoring gives metals for teamwork activities such as healing and shots blocked and this contributes to players' willingness to help their teammates.
3) Living in someone else's shoes: The game has several different classes of characters that have different strengths and weaknesses. Even if you rarely play a certain class, you get a lot from occasionally playing it to gain insight into how to cooperate with and defeat members of this class.
Addressing 1) "Learning when you're wrong" (in a more general sense):
Absolutely a good thing to do, but the problem is that you're still losing time making the mistakes. We're rationalists; we can do better.
I can't remember what book I read it in, but I read about a practice used in projects called a "pre-mortem." In contrast to a post-mortem, in which the cause of death is found after the death, a pre-mortem assumes that the project/effort/whatever has already failed, and forces the people involved to think about why.
Taking it as a given that the project has failed forces people to be realistic about the possible causes of failures. I think.
In any case, this struck me as a really good idea.
Overwatch example: If you know the enemy team is running a Mcree, stay away from him to begin with. That flashbang is dangerous.
Real life example: Assume that you haven't met your goal of writing x pages or amassing y wealth or reaching z people with your message. Why didn't you?
I read about pre-mortem-like questions in a book called Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.
That's probably it; I read it recently. Thanks!