I warn those of you with a Netflix account that Redbelt is one awful mess of a movie. Yes, the Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructor refuses to compete against the evil Brazilians, but it's not because prize fights are inherently different from grappling matches. It's for some sort of dedication to an ideal of honoring a Japanese-looking master that even he can't coherently articulate. Brazilian jiu-jitsu is built upon wrestling others - in class, in tournaments, in MMA fights and in real life.

It's one thing to have an arbitrary restriction; it's another to have one that's simultaneously a contradiction of the core principles of your profession and so unclear even the person following it can't tell you what it is. And it's yet another thing to reward the instructor with a redbelt - the supposed highest honor in jiu-jitsu - solely for getting angry, beating up security guards and brawling in the hallways of an arena to protest the stealing of his stupid idea.

Mamet tried to do about eleven different things with his script and only Eijofor's performance gave that movie its sole redeeming feature.

That being said, this "do not hit a girl" thing has always annoyed me. There are biological difference between genders, but if someone deserves to be punched, they deserve to be punched.

Word of warning: I have had a couple glasses of Firefly vodka mixed with lemonade. The everloving devil's brew, I tell you.

Yvain is most likely smarter than me and has the additional bonus of caring intensely about subjects I dabble in. However, he always delivers on the entertainment. That eardrop thing was ludicrously fun.

it seems to me that "a general strategy for approaching this sort of problem" has the same pitfalls as always trusting conventional wisdom over contrarian wisdom.

I don't think I'm insane. But then, I would say that, wouldn't I?

You've misread me to suit your preconceptions. I never said that there was no epistemic viciousness in professional team sports. What I said was that the particular problems that Russell describes aren't problems in pro sports. It's possible to learn from the pro sports model without adopting it in every particular.

Of course not all football coaches rationally choose strategies; not all football coaches are competent, period. But unlike the dojos Russell describes, in pro sports that behavior in is understood as biased and unreasonable, not praised as respect for tradition.

I agree that "pro sports" are a way of life for many people--this was phrased poorly in my original post. I should have said that membership in a team isn't a way of life for professional athletes. Fans generally stick with one team or another, but when you move from Chicago to Los Angeles, it's not a big deal if you stop following the Bulls and start following the Lakers. Anyway, the analogy breaks down here--what would a "rationality fan" who didn't actually practice rationality look like?

You say the breadth of martial arts knowledge of your BJJ/MMA community is "unusual." I assume you meant relative to the rest of the martial arts community rather than the general population, which would be trivially obvious. Either way we agree that "continual testing against others" is the common denominator that keeps a dojo or a professional sports team effective.

I don't know much about American professional sports--even less about pro sports in other countries--for that matter, I don't know much about martial arts. But as far as I do know, pro sports have none of these problems. Athletes do all sorts of outrageous things; coaches, athletes, and strategies are chosen on merit; absurdly detailed statistics are collected. Baseball players admire Babe Ruth but they don't idolize him. The analogy between pro sports and martial arts isn't perfect, but neither is the analogy between martial arts and rationality.

So, what do pro sports have to "keep them honest", that martial arts don't?

• Teams of athletes compete in tournaments that directly demonstrate their skills at their sport. In theory, the sport of martial artists is hand-to-hand combat, but martial arts tournaments never allow eye-gouging, biting, and so on. The further the distance between the tournament rules and reality, the less useful the tournament will be. Fortunately, I don't think there's a rationalist equivalent of eye-gouging, so setting up tournament rules should be relatively easy.

• An athlete or coach who gives up a pet technique for one that works better will be rewarded with status and money. The culture of pro sports permits athletes to train in entirely different ways from one season to the next, and coaches to change their playbooks whenever they like. Martial arts schools are stagnant by comparison. The money in pro sports comes from fans (directly through sales or indirectly through advertising) and it would take a lot of effort to raise awareness for rationality. But if rationality masters were really so awesome they'd have no trouble getting the money, right?

• Pro sports aren't considered a "way of life" the way martial arts are. Athletes move from one team to another and it's not a big deal, but if Bruce Lee had given up Jeet Kune Do during his life, and taken up Shotokan Karate instead, the martial arts world would still be talking about it. It would be like the Pope converting to Wicca. Readers of OB will probably agree with me that rationality should be a way of life; but I hope they'll also agree that no particular school of rationality should be.

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