Play poker for significant amounts of money. While it only tests limited and specific areas of rationality, and of course requires some significant domain-specific knowledge, poker is an excellent rationality test. The main difficulty of playing the game well, once one understands the basic strategy, is in how amazingly well it evokes and then punishes our irrational natures. Difficulties updating (believing the improbable when new information comes in), loss aversion, takeover by the limbic system (anger / jealousy / revenge / etc), lots of aspects that it tests.
Agreed, but I think it is easier to see yourself confront your irrational impulses with blackjack. For instance, you’re faced with a 16 versus a 10; you know you have to hit, but your emotions (at least mine) tell me not to. Anyone else experience this same accidental rationality test?
For amateur players, sure. But there is an easily memorizable table by which to play BJ perfectly, either basic strategy or counting cards. So you always clearly know what you should do. If you are playing BJ to win, it stops being a test of rationality.
Whereas even when you become skilled at poker, it is still a constant test of rationality both because optimal strategy is complex (uncertainty about correct strategy means lots of opportunity to lie to yourself) and you want to play maximally anyway (uncertainty about whether opponent is making a mistake gives you even more chances to lie to yourself). Kinda like life...
Whether a person memorizes and uses the table is still a viable test. No rational person playing to win would take an action incompatible with the table, and acting only in ways compatible with the table is unlikely to be accidental for an irrational person.
A way of determining whether people act rationally when it is relatively easy to do so can be quite valuable, since most people don’t.
Poker isn’t just about calculating probabilities, it’s also about disguising your reactions and effectively reading others’. Being rational has nothing to do with competence at social interaction and deception.
A good test has no confounding variables. Poker, then, is not a good test of rationality.
Any test in which there are confounding variables should be suspect, and every attempt should be made to eliminate them. Looking at ‘winners’ isn’t useful unless we know the way in which they won indicates rationality. Lottery winners got lucky. Playing the lottery has a negative expected return. Including lottery winners in the group you scrutinize means you’re including stupid people who were the beneficiaries of a single turn of good fortune.
The questions we should be asking ourselves are: What criteria distinguish rationality from non-rationality? What criteria distinguish between degrees of rationality?
Play poker for significant amounts of money. While it only tests limited and specific areas of rationality, and of course requires some significant domain-specific knowledge, poker is an excellent rationality test. The main difficulty of playing the game well, once one understands the basic strategy, is in how amazingly well it evokes and then punishes our irrational natures. Difficulties updating (believing the improbable when new information comes in), loss aversion, takeover by the limbic system (anger / jealousy / revenge / etc), lots of aspects that it tests.
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To some extent, all tests have the problem of transfer.
Could someone please explain, what is meant by “transfer” here?
A problem here is that it takes something like tens or hundreds of thousands of hands for the signal to emerge from the noise.
Agreed, but I think it is easier to see yourself confront your irrational impulses with blackjack. For instance, you’re faced with a 16 versus a 10; you know you have to hit, but your emotions (at least mine) tell me not to. Anyone else experience this same accidental rationality test?
For amateur players, sure. But there is an easily memorizable table by which to play BJ perfectly, either basic strategy or counting cards. So you always clearly know what you should do. If you are playing BJ to win, it stops being a test of rationality.
Whereas even when you become skilled at poker, it is still a constant test of rationality both because optimal strategy is complex (uncertainty about correct strategy means lots of opportunity to lie to yourself) and you want to play maximally anyway (uncertainty about whether opponent is making a mistake gives you even more chances to lie to yourself). Kinda like life...
Whether a person memorizes and uses the table is still a viable test. No rational person playing to win would take an action incompatible with the table, and acting only in ways compatible with the table is unlikely to be accidental for an irrational person.
A way of determining whether people act rationally when it is relatively easy to do so can be quite valuable, since most people don’t.
A problem here is it takes tens or hundreds of thousands of hands for results not to be dominated by noise.
Poker isn’t just about calculating probabilities, it’s also about disguising your reactions and effectively reading others’. Being rational has nothing to do with competence at social interaction and deception.
A good test has no confounding variables. Poker, then, is not a good test of rationality.
I understand Annoyance’s point to be: Prefer online poker to in-person.
An excellent point and suggestion.
Any test in which there are confounding variables should be suspect, and every attempt should be made to eliminate them. Looking at ‘winners’ isn’t useful unless we know the way in which they won indicates rationality. Lottery winners got lucky. Playing the lottery has a negative expected return. Including lottery winners in the group you scrutinize means you’re including stupid people who were the beneficiaries of a single turn of good fortune.
The questions we should be asking ourselves are: What criteria distinguish rationality from non-rationality? What criteria distinguish between degrees of rationality?