Your third point about Ed Miller's book makes me think you missed the goal of our site. We're not exploring biases the way poker instruction typically does. Their method is, "Look at how biased your stupid opponents are! Hahaha! Here's how to exploit those chumps." Our point is "YOU are in every hand of poker you play -- so YOUR biases are the ones we need to focus on before we start worrying about the other players."
We fully expect to cover odds and statistics in upcoming posts. But we're writing The Sequences for Poker, not "another poker blog where we discuss our big hands from tournaments." Our feeling was that those things are covered well in other places but that the links between our own cognitive biases and poker have mostly been covered poorly or not at all... so this material is higher priority.
Also, if we follow your advice and craft our site to talk about how to grind SnGs and only discuss object level poker strategy, I agree, we would have lots of trouble differentiating ourselves. I think you're assuming that because this is how poker is presented on other sites. So your urging that we should change our style to be more like everyone else and then your follow-on concern that we will then not be able to differentiate ourselves is not just circular, but flawed logic. It ignores what our site is trying to do. We're not trying to be the most popular blog about SnG grinding instruction ever. Those sites are aimed at IQ100 frat-boys who don't care about being rational. They teach how to memorize a system (that a rational person created) and tell people to duplicate it as best as they can. It's no wonder that people who learn to play this way only have compartmentalized gains in "rational" behavior at the poker table.
We're explaining how to use poker for self-development in general. We're pointing out how poker can provide a training ground to learn about your biases in a way where you can actually notice and correct them. I think you'll enjoy the future posts as our series goes on. We will eventually incorporate more math and object-level discussion of poker into our curriculum as it continues.
Thanks for the clarification. I understand your goals better now. That said, let me suggest that there's a tension between some of what you're saying. On the one hand, you want to focus on the links between rationality/bias-overcoming and poker. That's a great plan, and it seems like you could make a great contribution there. (I'm envisioning a less-mystical Tommy Angelo here.)
But on the other hand, you seem to also be focusing on poker instruction, which I think might be a problem. Are you planning on deriving and teaching a strategy for poker based on fi...
Related to: Problem of verifying rationality
We're excited to announce the (soft) launch of RationalPoker.com! It's a new guide developed by me, Zvi, Kevin, and patrissimo detailing how to use online poker as rationality training to conquer your cognitive biases. We want our community to go from knowing a lot about cognitive biases to actually having a training method that allows us to integrate that knowledge into our habits -- truly reducing biases instead of just leaving us perpetually lamenting our flawed brain-ware. In the coming weeks, we'll be making the case that online poker is a useful rationalist pursuit along with developing introductory "How To" material that allows those who join us to play profitably.
We want to make sure we aren’t wasting our time practicing an ungrounded art with methods that don’t work. Poker gives us an objective way to test x-rationality. The difference between winning and losing in poker once you know a small amount of domain-specific knowledge is due to differing levels of rationality. Our site will be presenting the case that a strong rationalist who can act on their knowledge of cognitive biases (a defining feature of x-rationality but not traditional rationality) should have a distinct advantage. We'll be offering the connecting material between the sequences and online poker to teach you how to apply knowledge of cognitive biases to poker in a way that verifies your current level of rationality and naturally teaches you to improve your rationality over time.
Incidentally, this also presents a solution for those of us looking to earn money from anywhere with a flexible schedule that leaves time for outside interests.
We’re just getting started so please be kind! Our site is definitely not a final product yet. If you're curious about where we're going with this though, add us to your RSS feeds or check the site every few days. We hope some of you who aren't convinced yet consider playing once you feel like we’ve finally given you enough information to understand why poker is a profitable rationalist pursuit.
Also, if you sign up for one of the online poker rooms like Full Tilt using our affiliate links, the residuals get donated to Less Wrong/Singularity Institute. That way, the more poker you play after you sign up, the more money you direct towards raising the sanity waterline and creating provably friendly artificial intelligence.
We’re not counting on it, but even a very small group of us could theoretically fund SIAI in a very real and meaningful way just as a side-effect of playing a lot of online poker. I know I'm partisan, but this seems like an unreasonably exciting opportunity! So if you support SIAI and you (or your friends) want to sign up to play online poker anyway, please sign-up using our links.
Anyway, we hope some of you want to get stronger by joining us in the Rationality Dojo of online poker. You can be part of our crew of aspiring rationalists who want to increase our rationality, earn money, and help save the world -- all by playing a fun computer game with no boss, no schedule, and the potential for lots of self-development and personal growth.
So check out our site and let us know if you're interested in joining.