Comment on Rationality Boot Camp

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 01:03:21 GMT

More thoughts:

What are you going to do about sleep? The 9:30P - 5A schedule the US Army uses? A 3A-12N schedule? Will you schedule night owls and morning larks differently, or force everyone to be one type?

One of the intentions of boot camp is shared suffering. The last line of the parent comment was sort of a joke, but the more I think about it the more serious it is. Hazing actually increases group strength, and one of basic's functions is as a giant hazing program. Drill sergeants are trained to be hateable in a precise way. Is shared suffering one of your goals? Are you skilled at controlling how you make other people suffer?

Suffering is a big part of being a soldier and being physically active, but not necessarily part of being a rationalist and being mentally active. Will you keep that for the group effects, or try and make the process as pleasant as possible? Is rationality training something that goes better when you force it, like physical training or unit cohesion, or something that goes worse when you force it? Will you try to manage/preserve the curiosity of students, and how? How skilled are you at detecting and manipulating the bounds of human endurance?

Is there a reason you picked boot camp (training to become a soldier) as a model instead of novice or postulant in the Bayesian Order (training to become a monk)? Monks do the things you mention, and tend to have a more recognizably mental focus than soldiers, and seem much like a much more obvious model.

I've gone twice to IHS seminars (applications close in a week!), and greatly enjoyed the experience. They're week-long, with 4 105 minute lectures a day, lots of discussion time, and a nightly social that supposedly ends at midnight, before (optional) breakfast the next morning at 8. The other students are great, and I still keep up with several that I've met there, but the professors are the real draw. The slogan is "sleep less and think more," and it's clear by the end of the week that the pace isn't sustainable (the middle day has a free afternoon which I use to catch up on sleep, so I tend to be better off than most).

I still can't get over the time. 10 weeks is basic combat training. 10 weeks is Y Combinator (and they're the same 10 weeks). 10 weeks is two summer sessions at college, or almost a full long semester. 660 hours at California's minimum wage is $5,280. A 10-week communal experience is a good format for many things, but I don't yet see why it's a good format for rationality training, and risking that much time on something under someone else's control seems risky at best.

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