Gung znxrf frafr, npghnyyl. Fubhyq V or unccl gung gur npghny yvr jnf gur bar gung V gubhtug jnf gur frpbaq zbfg yvxryl gb or gur yvr?

There has been some calling for applications of rationality; how can this help me win? This combined with the popularity and discussion surrounding "Stuck in the middle with Bruce" gave me an idea for a potential series of posts relating to LWers pastimes of choice. I have a feeling most people here have a pastime, and if rationalists should win there should be some way to map the game to rational choices.

Perhaps articles discussing "how rational play can help you win at x" and "how x can help you think more rationally" would be worthwhile. I'm sure there are games or hobbies that multiple people share (as was discovered relating to Magic) and even if no one has played a certain game the knowledge gained from it should be generalizable and used elsewhere (as was the concept of a Bruce).

I might be able to do a piece on Counter-Strike (perhaps generalized to FPS style games) although I haven't played in several years.

I know I would be interested in more discussion of how Magic and rationality work together. In fact I almost went out an picked up a deck to try it out again (haven't played since Ice Age when I was but a child) but remembered I don't know anyone I could play with right now anyway, which is probably why I don't.

I'm not sure that's something worth studying here - it's kinda sneaky and unethical.

Given the stakes, it seems to me the most rational thing to do here is to try to convince the other person that you should both cooperate, and then defect.

The difference between this dilemma and Newcomb is that Newcomb's Omega predicts perfectly which box you'll take, whereas the Creationist cannot predict whether you'll defect or not.

The only way you can lose is if you screw up so badly at trying to convincing him to cooperate (i.e. you're a terrible liar or bad at communicating in general and confuse him), that instead he's convinced he should defect now. So the biggest factor when deciding whether to cooperate or defect should be your ability to convince.

I'm going with number 3, battletoads was hard! :(

My five:

1) I have the complete Feynman Lecture Series

2) I have beaten professional Counter-Strike players while never having played in any tournaments or leagues.

3) I am a smoker (cigarettes).

4) I never finished Half-Life.

5) My watch has Mickey Mouse on it (his hands point to the time!).

I assume that #2 refers to beating them at Counter-Strike...

I think it's (2). To win a 7/SS+top 8 tournament, you would definitely need at least 4 and probably 5 wins in the main tournament, plus three wins in elimination. The rules of the Swiss system don't allow any player to receive more than one bye, so you would need to have had 4 wins, 1 bye, and at least 2 but probably 3 forfeits. Online tournaments may be different, but of all the Swiss tournaments I've played in, I have only ever seen one forfeit, so the same player getting multiple forfeits is highly unlikely.

I'm going with number 3, battletoads was hard! :(

My five:

1) I have the complete Feynman Lecture Series

2) I have beaten professional Counter-Strike players while never having played in any tournaments or leagues.

3) I am a smoker (cigarettes).

4) I never finished Half-Life.

5) My watch has Mickey Mouse on it (his hands point to the time!).

Much more than finding out who voted what way, I'd like to see the total upvotes and downvotes on a comment. It would be very useful to know if I got 5 upvotes and 5 downvotes or if the comment just sat there getting nothing. I'd much rather know how many people found it interesting or useful than who didn't like it. The original comment also wasn't thought through - if the "community as a whole to be united against them" occurred they'd get trashed, not a few down votes.

Off-thread: I recently up voted a comment with -7 votes, because I thought it was worth reading even though probably wrong.

Thanks for the suggestions. I added a separate question asking if respondants are currently in school. I added a happiness option per your suggestion (which means the first 45 responses will be to a different questionnaire, but we can keep that in mind). Your other suggestions make sense, but I'm refraining to avoid changing questions midstream.