ciphergoth comments on Help Fund Lukeprog at SIAI - Less Wrong

40 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 24 August 2011 07:16AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (276)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 25 August 2011 08:46:33PM 11 points [-]

Given the large amount of effort it took to get to the miny camps, all four of these could be easily explained by cognitive dissonance.

Comment author: ciphergoth 26 August 2011 07:39:58AM *  2 points [-]

What evidence would you expect them to have if the "minicamp" was a genuine success? (Edited - thanks for the correction, wedrified!)

Comment author: wedrifid 26 August 2011 08:02:01AM 8 points [-]

What evidence would you expect them to have if the "bootcamp" was a genuine success?

Bootcamp? I found the wording Eliezer used fascinating:

Co-organized and taught sessions for a highly successful one-week Rationality Minicamp, and taught sessions for the nine-week Rationality Boot Camp.

Have they actually claimed anywhere here that the bootcamp was successful?

Comment author: ciphergoth 26 August 2011 11:54:00AM 0 points [-]

Oops, fixed - thanks!

Comment author: JoshuaZ 26 August 2011 12:56:09PM 4 points [-]

Honestly, I'm not sure. Having a randomized control group and then looking at actual success would be nice. Even without a good control, one obvious thing to do would have been to do before and after tests of similar questions that test for rational behavior (e.g. whether they can recognize they are engaging in the sunk cost fallacy and things like that). It may be that given the circumstances the best evidence we have is self-reporting like this. If so, it is evidence for the success of the minicamps. But, it is not very strong evidence precisely because it is consistent with a variety of other not implausible hypotheses. This thread has made me more inclined to believe that the minicamps were successful, but had not strongly increased my confidence.