I’m recently considering if problems like ones from International Olympiad in Linguistics (https://ioling.org/) can be a good exercise or test for some aspects of Rationality.
See example problems here: https://ioling.org/booklets/iol-2018-indiv-prob.en.pdf
Usually you are given 10-20 sentences in some obscure or ancient language with translations and are tasked with translating some more lines.
The generic strategy would be:
Generate some hypotheses about how the language works
Think of base probabilities and ways to test the ideas
Test selected ideas using given data
Update your beliefs
Repeat
In my opinion this kind of problems is a sweet spot between exactness and “soft” understanding of the world and language in general. Physics and mathematics problems might be too much to the “exactness” end of the scale.
I don’t really expect that the Rationalist Test as you described it would really contain IOL-like problems, but hopefully it gives some inspiration
I’m recently considering if problems like ones from International Olympiad in Linguistics (https://ioling.org/) can be a good exercise or test for some aspects of Rationality. See example problems here: https://ioling.org/booklets/iol-2018-indiv-prob.en.pdf Usually you are given 10-20 sentences in some obscure or ancient language with translations and are tasked with translating some more lines. The generic strategy would be:
Generate some hypotheses about how the language works
Think of base probabilities and ways to test the ideas
Test selected ideas using given data
Update your beliefs
Repeat
In my opinion this kind of problems is a sweet spot between exactness and “soft” understanding of the world and language in general. Physics and mathematics problems might be too much to the “exactness” end of the scale.
I don’t really expect that the Rationalist Test as you described it would really contain IOL-like problems, but hopefully it gives some inspiration