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ChristianKl comments on Stupid Questions December 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

16 Post author: Gondolinian 08 December 2014 03:39PM

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Comment author: timujin 09 December 2014 11:34:27AM 1 point [-]

If nothing else, your writing is better than that of a high proportion of people on the internet.

Do you know me?

More generally, you could explore the idea of everyone being more competent than you at everything. Is there evidence for this? Evidence against it? Is it likely that you're at the bottom of ability at everything?

I find a lot of evidence for it, but I am not sure I am not being selective. For example, I am the only one in my peer group that never did any extra-curricular activities at school. While everyone had something like sports or hobbies, I seemed to only study at school an waste all my other time surfing the internet and playing the same video games over and over.

Comment author: ChristianKl 09 December 2014 12:41:31PM 5 points [-]

The idea that playing an instrument is a hobby while playing a video game isn't is completely cultural. It says something about values but little about competence.

Comment author: jaime2000 12 December 2014 05:12:32PM *  3 points [-]

One important difference is that video games are optimized to be fun while musical instruments aren't. Therefore, playing an instrument can signal discipline in a way that playing a game can't.

Comment author: ChristianKl 12 December 2014 06:43:44PM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure that's true. There's selection pressure on musical instruments to make them fun to use. Most of the corresponding training also mostly isn't optimised for learning but for fun.

Comment author: alienist 13 December 2014 04:54:22AM 6 points [-]

There's also selection pressure on instruments to make them pleasant to listen to. There's no corresponding constraint on video games.

Comment author: ChristianKl 13 December 2014 01:52:11PM 0 points [-]

There's no corresponding constraint on video games.

In an age of eSports I'm not sure that's true. Quite a lot of games are not balanced to make them fun for the average player but balanced for high level tournament play.