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gjm comments on Open thread, Oct. 27 - Nov. 2, 2014 - Less Wrong
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I'd like to ask LessWrong's advice. I want to benefit from CFAR's knowledge on improving ones instrumental rationality, but being a poor graduate I do not have several thousand in disposable income nor a quick way to acquire it. I've read >90% of the sequences but despite having read lukeprog's and Alicorn's sequences I am aware that I do not know what I do not know about motivation and akrasia. How can I best improve my instrumental rationality on the cheap?
Edit: I should clarify, I am asking for information sources: blogs, book recommendations, particularly practice exercises and other areas of high quality content. I also have a good deal of interest in the science behind motivation, cognitive rewiring and reinforcement. I've searched myself and I have a number of things on my reading list, but I wanted to ask the advice of people who have already done, read or vetted said techniques so I can find and focus on the good stuff and ignore the pseudoscience.
(Apologies for the slight thread hijack here.)
It occurs to me that CFAR's model of expensive workshops and generous grants to the impoverished (note: I am guessing about the generosity) is likely to produce rather odd demographics: there's probably a really big gap between (1) the level of wealth/income at which you could afford to go, and (2) the level of wealth/income at which you would feel comfortable going, especially as -- see e.g. cursed's comments in this thread -- it's reasonable to have a lot of doubt about whether they're worth the cost. (The offer of a refund mitigates that a bit.)
Super-handwavy quantification of the above: I would be really surprised if a typical person whose annual income is $30k or more were eligible for CFAR financial aid. I would be really surprised if a typical person whose income is $150k or less were willing to blow $4k on a CFAR workshop. (NB: "typical". It's easy to imagine exceptions.) Accordingly, I would guess that a typical CFAR workshop is attended mostly by people in three categories: impoverished grad students, etc., who are getting big discounts; people on six-figure salaries, many of them quite substantial six-figure salaries; and True Believers who are exceptionally convinced of the value of CFAR-style rationality, and willing to make a hefty sacrifice to attend.
I'm not suggesting that there's anything wrong with that. In fact, it strikes me as a pretty good recipe for getting an interesting mix of people. But it does mean there's something of a demographic "hole".
I rather think there may be demand for a cheaper, less time dependent method of attending. It may be several seasons before they end up back in my country for example. Streaming/recording the whole thing and selling the video package seems like it could still get a lot of the benefits across. Their current strategy only really makes sense to me if they're still in the testing and refining stage.
I think they are. If everything goes well they will have published papers that proves that their stuff works by the time they move out of the testing and refining stage.
Any idea how long that will be (months, years, decades)?
You can always shoot someone an email and ask about the financial aid thing, and plan a trip stateside around a workshop if, with financial aid, it looks doable, and if after talking to someone, it looks like the workshop would predictably have enough value that you should do it now rather than when you have more time and money.