Error comments on CFAR in 2014: Continuing to climb out of the startup pit, heading toward a full prototype - Less Wrong

61 Post author: AnnaSalamon 26 December 2014 03:33PM

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Comment author: Error 26 December 2014 03:54:02PM 24 points [-]

we realized we had reached a local optimum and become stuck...So then we smashed everything with a hammer...and we think we're now out of the local optimum

Suggestion: A unit on identifying and escaping bad local optima, if you don't have one already. It seems to me that an awful lot of people-years are lost to situations that are sub-par but painful to get out of (e.g. crappy jobs).

Attention Workshop: A 2.5-day workshop on clearing mental space. This failed and taught us some important points about what doesn’t work.

I'd be curious to see a post-mortem on this and other failed efforts. I like that CFAR is willing to acknowledge when it's screwed up. That I don't find this willingness terribly surprising says some nice things about the LW-sphere it pulls from.

Comment author: lirene 29 December 2014 02:51:39PM 3 points [-]

I'd also be curious to see an elaboration on the Attention workshop. The concept of attention as a limited and important resource was one of my main takeaways from the 4-day workshop (+discussions on the alumni list), leading me to the tools I needed to gain better focus and not feel overwhelmed all the time. Now and then I try to explain the concepts in conversations with people who I think might benefit from it, so I'd be interested in how not to do it.

Comment author: Raemon 26 December 2014 10:38:35PM 17 points [-]

Generally upvoted, but I think there's a significant difference between "tried something that didn't work" and "screwed up" - the former is executing on a correct decision algorithm (which includes explore as well as exploit patterns), the latter means actually making a bad decision given the available information.

Comment author: ColonelMustard 26 December 2014 10:54:14PM 2 points [-]

Strongly agree with the last two sentences here.