Rationalist Sport

MathiasZaman

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:

I remember my sociology textbook explaining that sports often show what a group values. Bowling was popular with machinists and factory workers who valued repeated precision, while American football was watched and played by a culture that valued extreme specialization of individuals, but able to work as a team.

So I've been thinking about what we would value in a sport, and what sport we could create that exemplifies those values (not interested in picking an existing sport).

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.

On to the meat of this post:

I got this idea from a reddit post on /r/LessWrong.

To quote:

I remember my sociology textbook explaining that sports often show what a group values. Bowling was popular with machinists and factory workers who valued repeated precision, while American football was watched and played by a culture that valued extreme specialization of individuals, but able to work as a team.

So I've been thinking about what we would value in a sport, and what sport we could create that exemplifies those values (not interested in picking an existing sport).

So have at it.

Edit: The 24-hour window has closed and solutions and suggestions can now be given.

Certain kinds of war games might also qualify as a rationalist sport if they were modified a bit. If military war games were made less fake, airsoft and paintball made less dangerous, and laser tag made more realistic they would each meet all of these desiderata.

Them being fake doesn't seem like a huge hindrance for a sport. They'd still be a way of stretching both the intellectual and physical muscles, especially if you don't arbitrarily handicap one team.

Airsoft is actually something I play occasionally, and the article you linked only mentions getting hit in the eye for which there are already safety measures in place (goggles). Mitigating the eye-damage, I don't think airsoft is more dangerous than other popular sports.

Both of these are excellent points. Regarding military war games, what I had in mind is that the rules should be realistic (to maximize the number of possible strategies) while still being difficult or impossible to game; neither of which seems to be the case for military war games as they are currently played. This might entail (as in HPMoR!Quirrell's war games) that there should be no formal rules at all but a judge to decide who had won by practical real-world standards, but this would probably severely limit the popularity of the sport.

I have not playe... (read more)

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