Many people want to know how to live well. Part of living well is thinking well, because if one thinks the wrong thoughts it is hard to do the right things to get the best ends.

We think a lot about how to think well, and one of the first things we thought about was how to not think well. Bad ways of thinking repeat in ways we can see coming, because we have looked at how people think and know more now about that than we used to.

But even if we know how other people think bad thoughts, that is not enough. We need to both accept that we can have bad ways of thinking and figure out how to have good ways of thinking instead.

The first is very hard on the heart, but is why we call this place "Less Wrong." If we had called it something like more right, it could have been about how we're more right than other people instead of more right than our past selves.

The second is very hard on the head. It is not just enough to study the bad ways of thinking and turn them around. There are many ways to be wrong, but only a few ways to be right. If you turn left all the way around, it will point right, but we want it to point up.

The heart of our approach has a few parts:

1. We are okay with not knowing. Only once we know we don't know can we look. 
2. We are okay with having been wrong. If we have wrong thoughts, the only way to have right thoughts is to let the wrong ones go. 
3. We are quick to change our minds. We look at what is when we get the chance. 
4. We are okay with the truth. Instead of trying to force it to be what we thought it was, we let it be what it is. 
5. We talk with each other about the truth of everything. If one of us is wrong, we want the others to help them become less wrong. 
6. We look at the world. We look at both the time before now and the time after now, because many ideas are only true if they agree with the time after now, and we can make changes to check those ideas. 
7. We like when ideas are as simple as possible. 
8. We make plans around being wrong. We look into the dark and ask what the world would look like if we were wrong, instead of just what the world would look like if we were right. 
9. We understand that as we become less wrong, we see more things wrong. We try to fix all the wrong things, because as soon as we accept that something will always be wrong we can not move past that thing. 
10. We try to be as close to the truth as possible. 
11. We study as many things as we can. There is only one world, and to look at a part tells you a little about all the other parts. 
12. We have a reason to do what we do. We do these things only because they help us, not because they are their own reason.

In an effort to internalise the Twelve Virtues of Rationality, I created an Anki deck. It's already been done, so the reason I'm posting is to share a condensed version of the article (created as a side effect of my making the deck).

Hopefully it will make it easier to quickly refresh the concepts if you've already read the article.

If you're not using spaced repetition, you should. Don't believe me? Try reading Gwern's thorough review of the topic.

Then download the “Twelve Virtues of Rationality” deck.

The first virtue is curiosity.

The second virtue is relinquishment.

The third virtue is lightness.

The fourth virtue is evenness.

The fifth virtue is argument. 

The sixth virtue is empiricism.

The seventh virtue is simplicity. 

The eighth virtue is humility.

The ninth virtue is perfectionism.

The tenth virtue is precision.

The eleventh virtue is scholarship.

Before these eleven virtues is a virtue which is nameless.

This post is about the development of our game based on Eliezer Yudkowsky's "The Twelve Virtues of Rationality".

Are games art?

It's an interesting question, but it seems that most people who answer that question in the affirmative are--intentionally or not--subscribing to the "hybrid art" view.  That is, that games are art because they combine story-telling, music, and visual style; interaction with the system of the game is in service to the storyline, music, and visual style.

I don't like that.  Here is why:

"Art" in general is creative expression through a medium. The hybrid-art view treats gameplay as the icing on the narrative-musical-visual cake.  When it should be that gameplay is the cake, and everything else is the icing.

Gameplay, or interaction with the system of the game, is a  medium for artistic expression, just like paint is for paintings.  I don't think anyone can deny that interaction with a gun during a hostile situation reeks havoc on our emotions, or that interaction with a loved one can run the emotional gamut.  Interaction is powerful.

Games can take advantage of the power of interaction to be expressive.  The art of the storyline, music, and visuals ought to be secondary to the art of the gameplay.

Twelve Virtues

I believe that gameplay is a very powerful way to learn, and so the single most important design principle for our current project is expression through gameplay.  We want to convey the meaning of each virtue through gameplay. The player should be able examine the method by which they interact with the game to learn the meaning behind the virtue.

For example:

In our Curiosity level which is where the game starts, the player must follow a mysterious cat that appears.  Very early in the level, the player is faced with a "point of no return".  If they jump down to the ground, they can't ever go back to the starting area.  They must choose to follow the cat, or stay in their "comfort zone" so to speak.  They must embrace their curiosity, or ignore it.  If they choose to follow the cat, they will eventually discover a much larger area full of mysteries to be solved.

Hello Less Wrong, this is my first post (kind of).  I belong to a small game development company called Shiny Ogre Games.  We have a vested interest in making games that, as Johnathan Blow puts it, "speak to the human condition."  I am here to announce our next project for you.

In this announcement for Shiny Ogre's next project, There are two points to address.  Firstly:

Thought is a process like any other. The methods by which we think can be identified, specified, defined, categorized and even predicted.  One method of thinking that has been thoroughly defined is rationality.  Many would consider rationality (i.e. the careful exercise of reason), to be an essential path toward enlightenment (hence this).

Secondly: The objective, logical, and mechanical approach to reason that rationality takes, meshes nicely with game development, because any well-defined system can be turn into a game.  A game is a system composed of players making decisions while considering objectives, governed by a rule set.

Where there is no decision there can be no game.  Where decisions matter, a game can make them matter more.

Therefore, rationality is a core component of game playing.

Games are learning tools.  They are perhaps the best learning tool available to humans, because they invoke our biological tendency to play.

With that said, our announcement:

We're making a video game about rationality.

The game will explore rationality in the context of Eliezer Yudkowsky's "Twelve Virtues of Rationality" (which we have permission for).  From a narrative perspective the game takes place inside a mind on the brink of epiphany and will heavily feature themes from Plato's "Allegory of the Cave".

Yudkowsky's twelve virtues are the basis of the twelve levels in the game, and will feature each virtue in metaphorical form.  The underlying message here is that if you master all of the twelve virtues (by completing all of the twelve levels), you will achieve 'epiphany'.

The game is a 2D side-scrolling puzzle-platformer.  The player assumes the role of a figure that represents his/her own conscious mind while it constructs machines (ala "Incredible Machine") that are a metaphor for the thoughts and concepts that one would create while meditating on a complex problem.

We will update our progress and share development information on our website here, as well as with posts on Less Wrong, our twitter account, and the game's website.

You can expect discussions of design decisions for this project to be written frequently from the angle of game design theory.  We may also release a small documentary film of the development process after the release of the game.

A release date has been set (and its not too long from now), but I don't want to announce it just yet.

Here is some concept art for our Curiosity metaphor (you can view more art at our website linked above):

If you're interested, just upvote and/or comment.  If you have any specific queries related to this project or about game design in general, it would be cool if you went here.

We will be sharing our progress as we make this game over the next few months.  So pay attention to Less Wrong and/or shinyogre.com for updates.

Thanks!