This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for May 1-15.
It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:
- Established a useful new habit
- Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief
- Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations
- Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior
- Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something
- Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life
- Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you
- Tried doing any of the above and failed
Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.
Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.
Previous diary: April 16-30
Next diary: May 16-31
I'm not familiar with Kim's touch game, but I did run across a different game that someone came up with to practice applying Bayes theorem, which involved touching people in the shoulder with one of two objects (in the example, it was a coat-hanger, if memory serves), and then testing their ability to update their predictions based on more information about the object they were touched with. I wish I could find that page again, but I haven't been able to find it again. It might have even been linked off of a LessWrong meetup group.
I'm less concerned with getting people to apply Bayes theorem (which would be GREAT, mind) than I am with getting people to be more comfortable with collecting information, sharing observations, and not getting fixated on personal theories. I'd especially like them to get comfortable with making the jump to making reasoned predictions about hidden properties of objects, given their theories about what an object is, but I'd like to find a way to make that process at least as fun as shaking a box to determine its contents.
The first game was just a deck of cards and a cardboard box large enough to allow the object to be flipped (though one type of flip was not possible in certain orientations). The players were all adults and I consider them to be quite astute; I expect that children could also play, and it could be a useful lesson about how to not get fixated on your own ideas, how to incorporate observations from others, and how to share observations constructively.
The idea came up in a discussion with a friend about how terrible our science classes had been as children, and how learning individual facts was not particularly useful.
Critch's Really Getting Bayes game.