If someone is asking a lot of money just to teach old techniques under a new name, that... doesn't seem right. Even if the students are told in the textbook that the technique is actually old and known -- are they told it before they pay for the lessons? Are they told it openly at the beginning, or is it just a tiny footnote on page 98?
On the other hand, if the technique is not exactly the same, and CFAR believes that the modifications provide a significant bonus, then maybe the new name is deserved. Perhaps also if the old name is so inconvenient that people have problems remembering it and connecting the label with the referent. Also, sometimes there exist so many versions of some old technique, that the label doesn't connect to anything specific (ask all those people who "meditate" what precisely they do; everyone seems to use this word however they wish).
Having to reinvent old techniques seems like not doing your homework. (How many other old techniques are you going to reinvent in the next five years? How much funding do you need for that?)
I can imagine CFAR having good reasons for what they do. But I can also imagine them to suffer a "rationalist" arrogant version of Dunning–Kruger effect; something like: "Oh, I am so rational that I absolutely do not have to pay attention to the domain experts, because there is absolutely nothing I could learn from them, it's all just mumbo-jumbo... now let me think and invent my own mumbo-jumbo which will be more rational, because a more rational person - albeit a total beginner in the domain - invented it". (I am working at the frontiers of science / You are doing pseudoscience / They are superstitious.)
I would need more specific data to make a conclusion here. Looking forward to a public textbook.
If someone is asking a lot of money just to teach old techniques under a new name, that... doesn't seem right. Even if the students are told in the textbook that the technique is actually old and known -- are they told it before they pay for the lessons?
That assumes that the main point of the lesson is to teach specific techniques. That doesn't seem to be the case from what I understand by talking to Val about CFAR's strategy at the LW community camp in Berlin (I wasn't at an actual CFAR workshop).
...Oh, I am so rational that I absolutely do not have to
Is rationality training in it's infancy? I'd like to think so, given the paucity of novel, usable information produced by rationalists since the Sequence days. I like to model the rationalist body of knowledge as superset of pertinent fields such as decision analysis, educational psychology and clinical psychology. This reductionist model enables rationalists to examine the validity of rationalist constructs while standing on the shoulders of giants.
CFAR's obscurantism (and subsequent price gouging) capitalises on our [fear of missing out](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out). They brand established techniques like mindfulness as againstness or reference class forecasting as 'hopping' as if it's of their own genesis, spiting academic tradition and cultivating an insular community. In short, Lesswrongers predictably flouts [cooperative principles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle).
This thread is to encourage you to speculate on potential rationality techniques, underdetermined by existing research which might be a useful area for rationalist individuals and organisations to explore. I feel this may be a better use of rationality skills training organisations time, than gatekeeping information.
To get this thread started, I've posted a speculative rationality skill I've been working on. I'd appreciate any comments about it or experiences with it. However, this thread is about working towards the generation of rationality skills more broadly.