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gjm comments on Help me test out my Bayes Academy game - Less Wrong Discussion

8 [deleted] 22 September 2015 08:02PM

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Comment author: gjm 27 September 2015 04:07:43PM 0 points [-]

I'm finding the game ... not fun. Here are some reasons.

  • The notation for "Bayes nodes" is confusing and figuring out what it's saying requires more conscious thought than I really want to be putting into a game like this.
  • There's this menu where I have to choose "go to lectures", "study in the library", or "hang out with friends" all the time -- except that only one choice is actually ever available (so far, at least).
  • There's too much now-press-space, somehow.
  • In the actual node-guessing game that's the main activity, you usually get to inspect about one node per lecture on average. That's not enough to make it very interesting. (Also: if the idea is to teach people about separation, so that they can figure out when knowing the state of one node means that learning X doesn't tell you anything about Y, wouldn't it be better if that situation were to arise more often?)
  • It doesn't feel to me as if any sort of highbrow analysis of the networks provides a substantial advantage, which is a shame if the idea is to make people learn to do it. On the other hand ...
  • So far I've played three or four games and been rejected by the academy about halfway through every time. So maybe there are strategic lessons I haven't learned yet. Or maybe it's just that success is too dependent on luck?
Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 29 September 2015 03:55:58PM 0 points [-]

Thanks for the feedback, I agree with a lot of your criticisms.

Re: the difficulty: just played the game and thrice and failed on each attempt. Huh, I remember that when I was trying to get the difficulty right before releasing it, I managed to get pretty reliably to the last stages, if not beat it. Looks like I notched the difficulty too up, when it used to be too easy at first.

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