[Note: I also attended the workshop and am writing this before reading the main post to avoid being biased.]
The out of class discussions alone were more than worth my while. However this is partially due to my circumstances, I am about to graduate college with a double major in CS and psychology. Deciding which (if either) field to pursue, and how to best pursue it is obviously quite important to me. Before going to the workshop, I had already done most of the obvious “due diligence” research on the matter, but still updated significantly during the workshop. Talking to several of the other CfAR participants, the instructors, and several LW people who stopped by (Lukeprog, Yvain ect.) uncovered many important points that I had missed. For example, I assumed the median staring salary for computer scientists was a reasonable estimate for what my starting salary would be. It turns out that I can expect to make about twice that much money if I use certain job hunting techniques I learned at the workshop and optimize for money (instead of, say, cool sounding problems). I don't expect most people to be in similar positions, but I do think asking questions at a CfAR event is a very powerful way of researching a fairly large class of problems. If all else fails pick one position and offer ridiculous side-bet odds with a high burden of proof on the other person.
As for the official lessons, if I actually internalize them all, and they work as advertised they will be some of the most important things I have learned in my life. If we take the outside view and assume that I will retain and successfully use them at the same rate as skills I learned at similar retreats then the expected value drops by more than half, but is still pretty high. Furthermore, I have several strong inside view reasons to believe I will retain more of what I learned here. The most obvious is the six weeks of follow up, but there are other reasons, like the fact that I actually slept at CfAR which should increase my retention.
-Edit, minor gramar stuff fixed. Also, I endorse the OP's view of the workshop, except for the sleep part. In particular I forgot to mention the venue, but both the Rose Garden Inn and the food were both spectacular (this was despite my having dietary restrictions). One minor complaint, the Inn could use more writing/setting food down surfaces.
In conclusion tell CfAR “Shut up and take my money.” or you will not go to space today.
For example, I assumed the median staring salary for computer scientists was a reasonable estimate for what my starting salary would be. It turns out that I can expect to make about twice that much money if I use certain job hunting techniques I learned at the workshop and optimize for money (instead of, say, cool sounding problems).
What changed your expectation of your starting salary?
So, the Center for Applied Rationality just ran another workshop, which Anna kindly invited me to. Below I've written down some thoughts on it, both to organize those thoughts and because it seems other LWers might want to read them. I'll also invite other participants to write down their thoughts in the comments. Apologies if what follows isn't particularly well-organized.
Feelings and other squishy things
The workshop was totally awesome. This is admittedly not strong evidence that it accomplished its goals (cf. Yvain's comment here), but being around people motivated to improve themselves and the world was totally awesome, and learning with and from them was also totally awesome, and that seems like a good thing.
Also, the venue was fantastic. CFAR instructors reported that this workshop was more awesome than most, and while I don't want to discount improvements in CFAR's curriculum and its selection process for participants, I think the venue counted for a lot. It was uniformly beautiful and there were a lot of soft things to sit down or take naps on, and I think that helped everybody be more comfortable with and relaxed around each other.
Main takeaways
Here are some general insights I took away from the workshop. Some of them I had already been aware of on some abstract intellectual level but hadn't fully processed and/or gotten drilled into my head and/or seen the implications of.
Here are some specific actions I am going to take / have already taken because of what I learned at the workshop.
I'm also planning to take various actions that I'm not writing above but instead putting into my GTD system, such as practicing specific rationality techniques (the workshop included many useful worksheets for doing this) and investigating specific topics like speed-reading and meditation.
The arc word (TVTropes warning) of this workshop was "agentiness." ("Agentiness" is more funtacular than "agency.") The CFAR curriculum as a whole could be summarized as teaching a collection of techniques to be more agenty.
Miscellaneous
A distinguishing feature the people I met at the workshop seemed to have in common was the ability to go meta. This is not a skill which was explicitly mentioned or taught (although it was frequently implicit in the kind of jokes people told), but it strikes me as an important foundation for rationality: it seems hard to progress with rationality unless the thought of using your brain to improve how you use your brain, and also to improve how you improve how you use your brain, is both understandable and appealing to you. This probably eliminates most people as candidates for rationality training unless it's paired with or maybe preceded by meta training, whatever that looks like.
One problem with the workshop was lack of sleep, which seemed to wear out both participants and instructors by the last day (classes started early in the day and conversations often continued late into the night because they were unusually fun / high-value). Offering everyone modafinil or something at the beginning of future workshops might help with this.
Overall
Overall, while it's too soon to tell how big an impact the workshop will have on my life, I anticipate a big impact, and I strongly recommend that aspiring rationalists attend future workshops.