Selecting Rationalist Groups

So far there've only been LW/OB meetups in the Bay area -- is there any way we could plot the geographic distribution of LW members and determine whether there are other spots where we could get a good meetup going?

The trouble with the scoring as described is that it is not zero sum, and, as far as I can tell, constitutes a prisoner's dilemma. That is, if you would cooperate on the one-shot PD, you should also completely ignore a red card handed you. This can be remedied by giving the red card -3 times the score of the group.

ETA: I suppose this PD-equivalence collapses if one player believes themself to be significantly more effective than the other three (or if anyone believes anyone believes this etc. etc.)

I like the concept of the Paranoid Debating game, but would propose one modification. Rather than always having a player assigned to deceive, have one with 50% probability, but don't reveal to anyone (except the deceiver) whether there is a deceiver in the group. To implement this with a group of n players, first choose a spokesman and give him a spade, then deal each other player one card from a deck containing 2n-3 black cards and one red card.

As another possible variant, introduce a small (say, 1/52) chance that everyone except the spokesman is red, and everyone except the spokesman knows it. To implement this, first choose a spokesman at random, then choose a dealer from the remaining players. The dealer looks at one card at random. If it's the ace of diamonds, he prepares a deck containing only diamonds; otherwise, he prepares a deck containing 2n-3 black cards and one heart, shuffles it and then deals from it. Getting a diamond means that everyone else has a diamond; getting a heart means that everyone else has black cards.

Paranoid Debating suggestion: after uncovering the red menace, spend a few minutes trying to figure out what effect the disinformation had on your estimate, then make a new one.

Repeat with the reformed Red joining in.

"[...] collectively thought up in a series of suggestions by [...] Black Belt Bayesian [...] and steven0461."

Aren't these the same person?

As someone who is largely not likely to ever attend a LW/OB meetup, is there any chance of organizing a net-based variant of this game? It sounds reasonably fun and useful.

we were scored according to the log of our probability density on the true answer, except for the red-card drawer, who got the negative of this number.

This part still needs to be improved by someone. Log probability densities are only defined up to an additive constant log of a scaling factor. A player could get a high score by drawing the red card for a question with an answer in small units.

To normalize the scores, you could subtract the average of the log probability densities across groups.

When we tried Paranoid Debating at the Boston meetup a few years back, we often had the problem that the deceiver didn't know enough about the question to know which direction to mislead in. I think the game would work better if the deceiver were simply trying to bias the group in a particular direction rather than make the group wrong. I think that's also a closer approximation to real life - plenty of people want to sell you their product and don't know or care which option is best. Not many just want you to buy the wrong product.

I feel I ought to say that I really appreciated this post.

I have been struggling for some time, as I read through the archives, with the degree to which isolated intellectual problem-solving is presented as the heart of Fun. This very much does not describe "my Way" and I have been feeling increasingly alienated by it.

Consequently, it is a great relief to me to see you acknowledge that your essays are "skewed toward individual application."

It's not that I'm opposed to it, and it's not that I expect you to change your style (not least because you're reading this, if you are, 18 months "in the future").

I just appreciate the acknowledgment, however transient, that it is one Way among many.

Thanks.

The game that Paranoid Debating most reminds me of is Mafia (or Werewolf).) Most of the players are cooperating to achieve a common goal, but there is a minority of secret saboteurs who are trying to achieve the opposite goal. I didn't think it was an interesting game until I played it with a group of skilled players, and then I had a lot of fun.

Other games might be enjoyable in a Paranoid Debating-like format. For instance, Paranoid Go could involve teams that decide collectively which move to play, and each team includes one saboteur who is trying to make the team lose.

Regarding chicken breeding: individual selection would do better with a larger breeding population. In a population of size N, destroying a rival's egg reduces the average per-chicken egg output by 1/N, but laying an egg increases your own output by 1. Sabotaging rivals becomes less important as population size increases.

Group selection probably still produces better outcomes, because then chickens will actually cooperate instead of being (at best) indifferent to each other.

You can notice this same effect in all sorts of zero-sum games. If there are only two players, then sabotaging your opponent is exactly as important as helping yourself, but if there are many players, then sabotaging your opponents becomes less attractive.

There is a reason selective breeding in business tends to focus on behavior, rather than personnel, in the very least the turn around is much faster and your replacement population will be more strongly influences by the positive selection.

It seems a good lens to view various management trends and ideas, to see what effects they could be predicted to have on both the people-space and behavior-space populations.

On the other hand, games as selectors can serve a dual role, both as a calibrated test and as a means to learn, especially because of the potential influence of play on reinforcing the less conscious techniques used in rationality. Unfortunately, there is a risk of diminishing returns if the game is used too much for either purpose.

This seems like a key missing ingredient in a lot of the "rationality dojo" suggestions I'm seeing - there's a heavy focus on competition and individual selection, and not a lot of focus on rationalist groups.

This post is really about 2 issues, both interesting. The 'game' thread is interesting and fun.

However, the 'group vs individuals issue' deserves attention as well! I believe it is entirely true, and this simple observation may sky-rocket efficiency in many areas. At the same time, this isn't very apealing on a personal level. There doesn't seem place for our ego's anymore. That may be rational, but not fun. Also, as individualists will collectively agree, groups just. suck. I can't be creative 'in a group'. And I suspect I am not alone in that...

I'm puzzled about why people preferred the spokesman version of paranoid debating to the initial version where the median number was the team's answer. Designating a spokesman publicly as a non-deceiver provides information about who the deceiver is. In one case, we determined who the deceiver was by two of us telling the spokesman that we were sufficiently ignorant about the subject relative to him that he should decide based only on his knowledge. That gave our team a big advantage that had little relation to our rationality. I expect the median approach can be extended to confidence intervals by taking the median of the lows and the median of the highs, but I'm not fully confident that there are no problems with that.

I have more comments about Sunday's game here.

This game sounds a lot like Mafia).

Thumbs-up; nice to see collective rationality advocated here.