Here's an idea for a game to train awareness of/resistance to confirmation bias:
The game would consist of three phases, that could then be repeated for however many iterations (levels!) were desired.
1) Presenting and habituating the "theory." Basically, give a set of rules for making some kind of decision/prediction, and then have the player apply those rules to a series of scenarios that clearly illustrate the supposed predictive (or score-increasing, if you will) properties of the Theory.
2) "In the wild" - Now present a series of scenarios that each either offer evidence that the Theory from phase 1 is useful (+), evidence that the Theory is incorrect(-), or no clear evidence in either direction (null).
3) "Assessment" - Have the player estimate the relative frequencies of (+), (-), and (null) evidence given in phase 2. Player receives an iteration score based on the accuracy of these estimates, and a cumulative score over all iterations completed.
Later iterations (higher levels) could perhaps re-use multiple Theories for the same round, and then in phase 3 ask for evidence estimates for all the Theories at once, possibly even throwing in Theories for which no evidence was presented in the second phase. Higher levels of complexity bring higher stakes (larger increases for accuracy and larger decreases for inaccuracy), so a player who could continue to improve the cumulative score with increases in difficulty would be doing very well indeed.
I've spoken of the Theories and Evidence in the purely abstract here, but I'm picturing either color/shape patterns and movements, or plausibly realistic word problem-type scenarios. The former would be preferable since it would not involve importing the player's biases about situations that might be found in the real world... or actually, come to think of it, it might be interesting and/or useful to make use of realistic-seeming examples precisely for that reason. Huh.
Anyway. The scoring algorithm would reward players who most aggressively sought out (-) evidence for the active Theory or Theories.
We need some ideas for serious games. Games that will help us be better. Games that reward us for improving ourselves (even if just by the satisfaction of seeing our scores improve). Games that will help us in our quest of Tsoyoku Naritai
We've got an upcoming hackday in London - where we'll have a (small) bunch of people able to code up any good ideas into something usable... but we need **you** to help us come up with a whole bunch of good ideas.
To start with, they should be simple ideas - not as complex as Rationalist Clue (which is an awesome idea... but we all have dayjobs too). I've got in mind something like the kinds of games you see at luminosity
The ideas should address individual biases - a way of training us to: a) recognise when we've accidentally engaged a bias b) reward us when we find a way to get the "right answer" in an unbiased manner.
We can do the programming (more help would of course be welcome), we can even come up with some ideas of our own...
but we are few, and you are many... and the more ideas we get, the better we can choose between them... so let's roll.