Teaching Bayesian networks by means of social scheming, or, why edugames don’t have to suck

[Kaj Sotala]

So like I mentioned before, as part of my Master's thesis I'm implementing a version of The Fundamental Question that's focused on teaching the math of Bayesian networks. I blogged about its general philosophy, and also mentioned something about the specifics, here: http://kajsotala.fi/2013/10/teaching-bayesian-networks-by-means-of-social-scheming-or-why-edugames-dont-have-to-suck/

I expect that folks on this list would be most interested in hearing that I settled on a concept for the setting, chosen because it happens to inspire me and because it might be useful in attracting folks who like HPMOR; quoting from the post:

My preliminary design for such a game is set in an academy that’s inspired both by Harry Potter’s Hogwarts (to be more specific, the Hogwarts in the fanfic Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality) and Revolutionary Girl Utena’s Ohtori Academy. Studying both physical combat and magic, the students of the academy are a scheming lot, ruled over by an iron-fisted student council made up of seven members… And figuring out things like exactly which student is cheating on their partner and who else knows about it, may turn out to be crucial for a first-year student seeking to place herself and her chosen allies in control of the council. If only she can find out which students are trustworthy enough to become her allies… misreading the evidence about someone’s nature may come to cost her dearly later.

[Desrtopa]

The setting sounds like it could be fun, but I think there's something to be said for trying to reach an audience that's not already involved in HPMoR; after all, HPMoR is already written as something of a gateway to learning rationality skills, so while the fanbase might be more likely than most to be interested in a game which teaches rationality skills, they're also likely to have less to learn from it than the baseline population. Also, something like an official endorsement from Eliezer could attract a lot of HPMoR's fanbase even to a game with a significantly different setting.

In any case, I'm still interested in offering writing for the game if you'll have me; if you'd prefer to have strict creative control of the setting, I'd be happy to provide content such as NPC dialogue.

[Kaj Sotala]

You may be right - but then, I would expect this setting to be one that could very well attract non-MoR-people as well. There's a huge amount of folks who watch high school dramas and such, after all. Also, it's one that happens to inspire me at the moment, and we don't want to get stuck in an infinite loop of forever trying to find the theoretically perfect setting. :-)

And I'm still very happy to have help! (Just checked with my supervisor - as long as all the writing in the thesis itself is from my keyboard, I'm free to collaborate as much as I want with people WRT the game itself.) We'll just have to come up with a way to do the collaboration effectively online. I'll try to do a writeup of what I have in mind of the setting / game content ASAP, so that we'll be on the same page as much as possible.

[Kaj Sotala]

So, still didn't get setting overview written, but I did write this piece which presents one possible choice that the main character might encounter in the game: http://kajsotala.fi/2013/10/towards-meaningfully-gamifying-bayesian-networks/ . More to come!