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All of ErasmusPrior's Comments + Replies

Rationalist Sport
ErasmusPrior00

Both of these are excellent points. Regarding military war games, what I had in mind is that the rules should be realistic (to maximize the number of possible strategies) while still being difficult or impossible to game; neither of which seems to be the case for military war games as they are currently played. This might entail (as in HPMoR!Quirrell's war games) that there should be no formal rules at all but a judge to decide who had won by practical real-world standards, but this would probably severely limit the popularity of the sport.

I have not playe... (read more)

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1MathiasZaman
Without going into a "definition war", I think not having a clear objective for winning makes it more into a game than a sport. Wiping out 90% of the enemy team could be a decent victory condition, but that's just the first thing that comes to mind and other ideas are likely better. They seem to be about similar to other sports that have similar movement-types. You run, jump, slide... just like in other sports and those actions have the same risks. I haven't done a lot of large-group games, but with decent precautions (eye protections and regular-powered guns) it seems like you just get sprained ankles and little cuts.
Rationalist Sport
ErasmusPrior60

Although the games themselves do not involve much physical activity compared to other sports, a lot of professional RTS players (Starcraft, League of Legends, etc.) end up on surprisingly strenuous exercise regiments to improve their reflexes and hand-eye coordination and gain the physical benefits mentioned (Cardiovascular benefits, muscle development, coordination and control over muscles) as a side-effect of preparing to compete at a professional level.

Certain kinds of war games might also qualify as a rationalist sport if they were modified a bit. If m... (read more)

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3MathiasZaman
Them being fake doesn't seem like a huge hindrance for a sport. They'd still be a way of stretching both the intellectual and physical muscles, especially if you don't arbitrarily handicap one team. Airsoft is actually something I play occasionally, and the article you linked only mentions getting hit in the eye for which there are already safety measures in place (goggles). Mitigating the eye-damage, I don't think airsoft is more dangerous than other popular sports.
Open thread, 16-22 June 2014
ErasmusPrior80

Does anyone have advice for effective learning in distracting/suboptimal environments? I know LW recommends textbooks and learning by accumulation instead of random walks, but I have at most 1-2 hours of uninterrupted time per day I can spend learning optimally vs. 8+ hours per day I could potentially use to learn sub-optimally (e.g. frequent distractions, sudden interruptions, hours between learning sessions) during downtime at work that is currently going to waste. Are there better formats than textbooks for these environments or would it be more effecti... (read more)

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0satt
Reading textbooks in little pieces might work anyway; it does for me. I can read textbooks nearly as well during a 20- or 30-minute train ride as I can in more stable situations. (Obviously I read less during a half-hour ride than in an hour spent reading at home, but my rate & retention seem similar in both situations.) There are textbooks I can't just read straight through on a bus, like maths & physics textbooks, but I can't just read straight through them anywhere else, either, because I need a pen & paper for the exercises. But a textbook I can read at home, like an oncology or sociology textbook, is usually a textbook I can read almost anywhere else. If you've tried this already and found it not to work, ignore this comment! But if you haven't tried it, it's worth a go.
6Viliam_Bur
Make notes. Otherwise you risk spending a large part of the 1 hour repeating the stuff you learned during the 1 hour yesterday. If you have little time for learning, only learn one thing, not two in parallel, because that would make it even worse.
4Emile
Anki works pretty well in short sessions, and distractions don't cause much problems, though you won't get 8 hours out of it.