Bias: The Board Game

[Liran Valadarsky]

Hi,

Daniel and I had a fascinating meeting with the Russian LW organizers yesterday and we chatted quite a bit about the similarities/differences in our communities.

One of the really cool things they have in Moscow is a group-written board game which essentially lets people practice exercising and recognizing their biases.  I think it would be worth our while to build an adaptation to this game and implement it into board game night.  This could also serve as a non-wordy way of letting people experience cognitive biases (and introducing them to LW)

One toy example - 

- Person A speaks a sentence

- Person B has to identify the bias in the sentence of person A

- Person B continues the iteration with a sentence which keeps the bias constant and changes the subject

We can add teams and points and different types of rules (like changing the bias and keeping the subject constant).  We can also make this a card-game type thing where you randomly draw a bias and have to come up with sentences that make that type of error.  Or, instead of a sentence, have to analyze a story or comic strip, or make this into 'bias bingo' etc. etc. etc.

I realize the danger of self-brainwashing e.g. reinforcing biased loops but think this can be avoided with correct design (not to mention the fact that the ability to adopt and release biases at will is a very useful tool to possess).  For those familiar, the concept resonates with Edward de Bono's 'six thinking hats' game.

I also realize that this might not be a very easy concept to turn into a 'fun' game but think it's still worth trying.

What do you say?

+are the board game aficionados among us familiar with anything that already does something similar?

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Cheers,

Liran

[Vyacheslav Matyukhin]

Hi!

(I was one of these Russian LW organizers.)

I asked the people who designed our game if they could do the English translation, but in the meantime, here are the rules we use, in Russian: https://lesswrong-ru.hackpad.com/Fallacymania--neGfMe9MFjH

Note that http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/rhetological-fallacies/ is the great set of cards you can use.

PS: Alexander and Yuri, who invented the rules, are in the CC.

[Alexander230]

I will translate the rules on the next week, and send the link to this
group.

Here is another set of fallacies; I think it's more suitable for the
game, because those fallacies are easier to differ (no similar items in
the list):

http://obraz.io/ru/posters/poster_view/1/?back_link=%2Fru%2F&lang=en&arrow=right
http://obraz.io/ru/posters/poster_view/2/?back_link=%2Fru%2F&lang=en&arrow=left

08.04.2015 23:45, Vyacheslav Matyukhin пишет:

[Aleksandr Popov]

I've translated our current version of Fallacymania game rules into English: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzyKVqP6n3hKVnlVekQwMTdRWFU/view?usp=sharing

If you want to edit the rules, download the document from here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3839542/Fallacymania_3.1%20-%20rules.odt

To play this game, you will need:

1. Some prints of the rules, for players.
2. One pack of cards with numbers. You can just write numbers with pen on faces of poker cards. Or use random number generator app on a smartphone instead of cards.
3. Stopwatch app on a smartphone, to control round time limits. Also you can use any common timer app to set time limit for the entire game.
4. Some prints of fallacies. One pack of fallacies for each player. You can use this pack:

http://obraz.io/ru/posters/poster_view/1/?back_link=%2Fru%2F&lang=en&arrow=right
http://obraz.io/ru/posters/poster_view/2/?back_link=%2Fru%2F&lang=en&arrow=left

 Or this one:

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/rhetological-fallacies/

5. Write the numbers on fallacies. You can also add "zero" item for answering without fallacies if you want.
 
I recommend to dedicate 1 game master who will not play the game, but control the rules and timings, otherwise it will be difficult to play and to control simultaneously.

[Liran Valadarsky]

Perfect thanks alot Aleksandr!

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Cheers,

Liran

[Joshua Fox יהושע פוקס‎]

Thanks! I am looking forward to playing it.

On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 11:19 PM, Aleksandr Popov <alexan...@gmail.com> wrote: