I hate to sound machiavelian here, but i think an important criterion for a good sport missing from this discussion is "gain friends, respect, and a conversational topic with people who don't identify as rationalists".
A lot of us are going to be short on opportunities to achieve these goals. So the most instrumentally rational sport may be the one which happens to be popular in your immediate social environment.
I think the skill of holding a conversation is much more important than having conversational topics.
If I wanted to optimize for that goal I would do Improv Comedy as a hobby.
So the most instrumentally rational sport may be the one which happens to be popular in your immediate social environment.
A lot of sports give you a new social environment when you practice them. You don't have to optimize for your existing social environment.
This post is a bit of an experiment; Most of the time, Discussion post lay out an idea and this idea then get commented upon. This post, on the other hand, will be purely about discussion on a topic. If this works out well, I'll might post more of these in the future.
On to the meat of this post:
I got this idea from a reddit post on /r/LessWrong.
To quote:
So have at it.
I only ask for one thing and that is to hold off on proposing solutions for 24 hours before giving suggestions for actual sports. In the first 24 hours, please discuss what makes current sports unappealing to rationalists and what aspects a sports designed for aspiring rationalists should have.
Edit: The 24-hour window has closed and solutions and suggestions can now be given.