I have also played (and beaten) Spelunkey. I agree it’s a pretty good option. (I also think puzzle games like Baba Is You are good in a somewhat more direct way, as are multiplayer games that require modeling incentives and coordination)
I’m spending a lot of effort these days on “training rationality qua rationality”. But I actually somewhat like that Downwell is reflex-based, because it forces to me to think “okay, how do I deliberate practice something that requires a lot of skills at once, in a domain where it’s hard to cleanly separate them?”.
The mechanism by which Downwell is hard to train is different from the mechanism by which, say, estimating the value of X-risk reduction projects is hard to train. But (I think) there is some shared structure of “man, it’s really hard to train this” and then finding a way to push through and train it anyway.
Downwell is particularly significant to me because I know I plateau’d at it previously, so it’s easier to see the diff of whether an intense deliberate practice focus can help. (This is a fairly unique fact about me+Downwell and not relevant to other people though)
Congrats!
I have also played (and beaten) Spelunkey. I agree it’s a pretty good option. (I also think puzzle games like Baba Is You are good in a somewhat more direct way, as are multiplayer games that require modeling incentives and coordination)
I’m spending a lot of effort these days on “training rationality qua rationality”. But I actually somewhat like that Downwell is reflex-based, because it forces to me to think “okay, how do I deliberate practice something that requires a lot of skills at once, in a domain where it’s hard to cleanly separate them?”.
The mechanism by which Downwell is hard to train is different from the mechanism by which, say, estimating the value of X-risk reduction projects is hard to train. But (I think) there is some shared structure of “man, it’s really hard to train this” and then finding a way to push through and train it anyway.
Downwell is particularly significant to me because I know I plateau’d at it previously, so it’s easier to see the diff of whether an intense deliberate practice focus can help. (This is a fairly unique fact about me+Downwell and not relevant to other people though)