Calibration Practice

Being well calibrated, in the rationalist sense, is the skill of knowing what you do and do not know. When you think something is 80% likely to happen, that means you think you can make ten guesses like that and be wrong twice. If you're right on half of them, you're overconfident. If you're right on all of them, you're underconfident. It's useful when making plans, sorting through an uncertain world, making a profit on prediction markets, and (anecdotally, ask me for stories) for winning Magic: The Gathering games.

Today we're going to run through three different exercises intended to practice this skill. We'll take about twenty minutes for each exercise, taking a break between them. I'll start Calibration Trivia at fifteen minutes past the hour, so the agenda looks like

2:00: Doors open, hang out and socialize
2:15: Calibration Trivia
2:35: Break
2:40: Calibrate Your Judgement
3:00: Break
3:05: Simplified Poker Calibration
3:30: Wrapup, compare notes, and socialization