Meetup : Chicago games at Harold Washington Library (Sun 6/17)

Instead of our typical Saturday Corner Bakery meetup, we'll be meeting this Sunday (6/17) from 2-4pm at the Harold Washington Library.

We've reserved a group study room in the fifth floor. Meet at the fifth floor desk at 1:55 and we will go to the room from there. (getting up there is slightly convoluted. You'll need to take one set of escalators/elevators to the third floor, then go into the third floor and take another set of elevators/escalators to the fifth floor)

What: various rationality games. See below for descriptions.

How (to get there): The library entrance is on State St. between Van Buren and Congress. The red, blue, green, brown, orange, and pink L lines all stop at the library. For those coming from outside the city, it's a 15 minute walk from union station.

Games: Zendo and the Calibration Game

rules from here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/crs/how_to_run_a_successful_less_wrong_meetup/

Zendo

Zendo, also known as “Science, the game,” involves one player picking rules and creating structures that follow that rule. The other players try to discover the rule by building their own structures and asking whether those structures follow the rule. See Wikipedia for the exact rules.

Calibration Game

The Calibration Game requires a large number of numerical trivia questions and their answers. A couple of examples might be “how many lakes are there in Canada” or “which percentage of the world’s countries are landlocked”. The game Wits & Wagers comes with a large number of such trivia questions and answers.

There are several possible variants of the Calibration game:

Personal Calibration. One person reads the question aloud, and everyone writes down their 50% and 90% confidence intervals. For example, if you’re 50% sure that 20% - 40% of the world’s countries are landlocked, write that down as your 50% confidence interval. After ten questions, the correct answers are revealed. People can now check whether half of their guesses in the 50% confidence interval really were right, and whether they really only got one question out of ten in their 90% confi- dence interval wrong. Alternatively, the correct answer may be revealed as soon as everyone has made their guess, rather than waiting until all ten questions are asked.

Single-Round Aumann. Same as Personal Calibration, but after everyone has writ- ten down their initial confidence intervals, they state them aloud. People then have one chance to alter their guesses based on what the others guessed.

Multiple-Round Aumann. Same as Single- Round Aumann, but repeat the “state your guess aloud” part until nobody changes their opinions.

Aumann with Discussion. Same as Multiple- Round Aumann, but people are also allowed to discuss the reasons for their estimates in- stead of just stating them.

Paranoid Debating. Same as Aumann with discussion, but one person is secretly desig- nated as the traitor. The traitor tries to make the group’s guess to be as off-mark as possible. For variants and accounts of this game, see the LW Wiki on Paranoid Debating.