Rationality lessons from Overwatch, a multiplayer first-person shooter:
1) Learning when you’re wrong: The killcam, which shows how I died from the viewpoint of the person who killed me, often corrects my misconception of how I died. Real life needs a killcam that shows you the actual causes of your mistakes. Too bad that telling someone why they are wrong is usually considered impolite.
2) You get what you measure: Overwatch’s post-game scoring gives metals for teamwork activities such as healing and shots blocked and this contributes to players’ willingness to help their teammates.
3) Living in someone else’s shoes: The game has several different classes of characters that have different strengths and weaknesses. Even if you rarely play a certain class, you get a lot from occasionally playing it to gain insight into how to cooperate with and defeat members of this class.
Addressing 1) “Learning when you’re wrong” (in a more general sense):
Absolutely a good thing to do, but the problem is that you’re still losing time making the mistakes. We’re rationalists; we can do better.
I can’t remember what book I read it in, but I read about a practice used in projects called a “pre-mortem.” In contrast to a post-mortem, in which the cause of death is found after the death, a pre-mortem assumes that the project/effort/whatever has already failed, and forces the people involved to think about why.
Taking it as a given that the project has failed forces people to be realistic about the possible causes of failures. I think.
In any case, this struck me as a really good idea.
Overwatch example: If you know the enemy team is running a Mcree, stay away from him to begin with. That flashbang is dangerous.
Real life example: Assume that you haven’t met your goal of writing x pages or amassing y wealth or reaching z people with your message. Why didn’t you?
On a tiny bit more serious note, I’m not sure the killcam is as useful as you say. It shows you how you died, but not necessarily why. The “why” reasons look like “lost tactical awareness”, “lingered a bit too long in a sniper’s field of view”, “dived in without team support”, etc. and on that level you should know why you died even without a killcam.
Other lessons from Overwatch: if a cute small British girl blinks past you, shoot her in the face first :-D
Cooperation is not a terminal goal. Winning the game is.
If I don’t see my team’s Reaper (or Tracer) ever, but the rear ranks of the enemy team mysteriously drop dead on a regular basis, that’s perfectly fine.
Agreed, but if a virtue and comparative advantage of rationalists is cooperating than our path to victory won’t often involve us using Reaper or Tracer.
I’m a bit mystified by how cooperation became a “virtue and comparative advantage of rationalists”. I understand why culturally, but if you start from the first principles, it doesn’t follow. In a consequentialist framework there is no such thing as virtue, the concept just doesn’t exist. And cooperation should theoretically be just one of the many tools of a rationalist who is trying to win. In situations where it’s advantageous she’ll cooperate and where it isn’t she won’t.
Rationality is systematized winning. If failure to cooperate keeps people like us from winning then we should make cooperation a virtue and practice it when we can. (I’m literally playing Overwatch while I answer this.)
The situation is symmetrical: if eagerness to cooperate keeps people like us from winning then we should make non-cooperation a virtue and practice it when we can.
Why are you phrasing this as either-or? We don’t need to decide whether a hammer or a screwdriver has a “higher marginal benefit”, we use both as appropriate. Cooperating is conditional on it being useful, sometimes it’s a good idea and sometimes it’s not.
Getting back to Overwatch, there are cases where you need to grab an assassin and go hunting for the enemy sniper, and there are cases where you need to be a healbot and just stand behind your tank...
I really enjoyed blacklight:retribution for the instant rationality training. There is literally an update button that lets you wallhack for a second or so. This makes you vulnerable as well, so there is a cost of information. You must keep making choices between information and taking actions based on your current model.
Rationality lessons from Overwatch, a multiplayer first-person shooter:
1) Learning when you’re wrong: The killcam, which shows how I died from the viewpoint of the person who killed me, often corrects my misconception of how I died. Real life needs a killcam that shows you the actual causes of your mistakes. Too bad that telling someone why they are wrong is usually considered impolite.
2) You get what you measure: Overwatch’s post-game scoring gives metals for teamwork activities such as healing and shots blocked and this contributes to players’ willingness to help their teammates.
3) Living in someone else’s shoes: The game has several different classes of characters that have different strengths and weaknesses. Even if you rarely play a certain class, you get a lot from occasionally playing it to gain insight into how to cooperate with and defeat members of this class.
Addressing 1) “Learning when you’re wrong” (in a more general sense):
Absolutely a good thing to do, but the problem is that you’re still losing time making the mistakes. We’re rationalists; we can do better.
I can’t remember what book I read it in, but I read about a practice used in projects called a “pre-mortem.” In contrast to a post-mortem, in which the cause of death is found after the death, a pre-mortem assumes that the project/effort/whatever has already failed, and forces the people involved to think about why.
Taking it as a given that the project has failed forces people to be realistic about the possible causes of failures. I think.
In any case, this struck me as a really good idea.
Overwatch example: If you know the enemy team is running a Mcree, stay away from him to begin with. That flashbang is dangerous.
Real life example: Assume that you haven’t met your goal of writing x pages or amassing y wealth or reaching z people with your message. Why didn’t you?
I read about pre-mortem-like questions in a book called Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.
That’s probably it; I read it recently. Thanks!
Goes into the “shit LW people say” bin :-D
On a tiny bit more serious note, I’m not sure the killcam is as useful as you say. It shows you how you died, but not necessarily why. The “why” reasons look like “lost tactical awareness”, “lingered a bit too long in a sniper’s field of view”, “dived in without team support”, etc. and on that level you should know why you died even without a killcam.
Other lessons from Overwatch: if a cute small British girl blinks past you, shoot her in the face first :-D
“Other lessons from Overwatch: if a cute small British girl blinks past you, shoot her in the face first :-D”
Pfft
Rationalists play Reaper. Shoot EVERYONE IN ALL THE FACES.
Pfft
Rationalists play whatever class at the moment is convenient for shooting everyone in the face in the most speedy and efficient manner :-P
So...Reaper.
Reaper gets relatively little value from cooperating with teammates so I hope that rationalists don’t find Reaper to be the best for them.
Cooperation is not a terminal goal. Winning the game is.
If I don’t see my team’s Reaper (or Tracer) ever, but the rear ranks of the enemy team mysteriously drop dead on a regular basis, that’s perfectly fine.
Agreed, but if a virtue and comparative advantage of rationalists is cooperating than our path to victory won’t often involve us using Reaper or Tracer.
Do you play on the Xbox?
I’m a bit mystified by how cooperation became a “virtue and comparative advantage of rationalists”. I understand why culturally, but if you start from the first principles, it doesn’t follow. In a consequentialist framework there is no such thing as virtue, the concept just doesn’t exist. And cooperation should theoretically be just one of the many tools of a rationalist who is trying to win. In situations where it’s advantageous she’ll cooperate and where it isn’t she won’t.
Nope, I play on a PC.
Rationality is systematized winning. If failure to cooperate keeps people like us from winning then we should make cooperation a virtue and practice it when we can. (I’m literally playing Overwatch while I answer this.)
The situation is symmetrical: if eagerness to cooperate keeps people like us from winning then we should make non-cooperation a virtue and practice it when we can.
My multitasking isn’t as good :-)
I guess it comes down to what has a higher marginal benefit, learning to cooperate or learning to succeed without cooperation.
Why are you phrasing this as either-or? We don’t need to decide whether a hammer or a screwdriver has a “higher marginal benefit”, we use both as appropriate. Cooperating is conditional on it being useful, sometimes it’s a good idea and sometimes it’s not.
Getting back to Overwatch, there are cases where you need to grab an assassin and go hunting for the enemy sniper, and there are cases where you need to be a healbot and just stand behind your tank...
I was wrong. Reaper and Mei can greatly benefit from cooperation.
I really enjoyed blacklight:retribution for the instant rationality training. There is literally an update button that lets you wallhack for a second or so. This makes you vulnerable as well, so there is a cost of information. You must keep making choices between information and taking actions based on your current model.