This game was played with with two people and three blocks. We were not
told what the rules were. So first, the guy takes two blocks. In
response, I take three blocks. He takes one of them back. I take the
three blocks and set up a bridge. He takes them and sets up a different
bridge...
At the end of the game, I was asked "Who won?" Yes, my opponent had
won. You see, I had been absent the day this game was introduced to
everyone else, so when it was played with me, I thought my opponent knew
the rules. There weren't any, but he knew that and I didn't. So when I
was playing, I got sort of frantic and desperate; I would try elaborate
strategems, while my opponent calmly switched blocks back and forth.
Yes, I lost.
What did I learn from this? I don't know that I could put it into
words. In one sense I was defeated by my conviction that I was losing,
so I "defeated myself", but not in the same sense as Lyle's anxiety
interfered with his auditory short-term memory. The main moral is that
if you remove all the rules from the game, what remains is the
psychology of competition; and now I know to handle that in its most
elemental form. Perhaps some of it has spilled over into more rarefied
forms.
Moral of the story: If the rules aren't clear, do your best to believe
you're winning. (This only applies in debates and such; I would not
advise using it in science or engineering.)
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.