Idea: Learning How To Move Towards The Metagame

post by Algon · 2023-01-10T00:58:35.685Z · LW · GW · 3 comments

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I have just finished watching someone play a variant of Brick Breaker. A variant I became intimately familiar with, indeed, obsessed, as I strove to hit the top 40 all time score which scrolled past me each time I failed, mocking me. 

And this reminded me of an interesting post I read: To Get Good, Go After The Metagame. The title, however, doesn't say it all, so I'll quote the relevant section

"I’ve noticed that the ‘feel’ of improving in pursuit of a meta is strangely similar across skill trees. I noticed this after climbing high enough in the Judo skill tree to see the meta for the first time. Later, when I moved to university, learning the craft of programming became slightly easier. Ditto for content marketing, and email marketing, and so on."

This was interesting to me, as I am currently reviewing rationality techniques which generalize, and I don't think I have noticed this one mentioned elsewhere. In fact, I thought "I have never reached a meta in my life, and it sounds like so very much effort to even see the meta in anything, I guess I just have to take this on faith". But my memory is poor, and I forgot I have reached the meta a couple of times in my life by playing video games. And that when I pursue a video game to mastery, there is a clear difference in the kinds of learning that help me. I suspect, however, that this is not the skill that the post is talking about. So why mention this at all?

Because I think that you might be able to check if this ability exists pretty easily. First, find a video game with a high skill ceiling, ideally one that is new. Then, check if it has a competitive scene where people share their performances. If so, proceed. Else, find another game or consider trying to set up such a scene yourself. Then, play the game until you hit the current meta by analysing what the best players do.

This experiment seems cheap, and has some very high value. So I think I'll pursue it after my current literature review ends, gain this skill, then use it to write an addendum to whatever post I write on Ambitious Methods in Education.

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