ScottL comments on Unofficial Canon on Applied Rationality - Less Wrong

28 Post author: ScottL 15 February 2016 01:03PM

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Comment author: RainbowSpacedancer 15 February 2016 05:30:34PM *  6 points [-]

I had a very similar thought to this post. So similar in fact that I went ahead and wrote a kind of user guide for each CFAR's techniques (though it has changed a great deal even in the last 4 months since I finished writing). I also have never been to a CFAR workshop and drew on many of the same online sources that you have. It took about a month to compile of working in my spare time. My motivation for doing so was the cost of attending a workshop (financially and time costs) were simply too high for someone in my position overseas.

I've printed it and only use it personally. I've never shared it other than with one close friend. I'm concerned about you posting this now, for the same reasons that stopped me from sharing my compilation even though I could see a great deal of benefit in it.

My thoughts for not sharing it are,

  1. CFAR has all of this material readily available likely in a much more comprehensive and accurate format. CFAR are altruists. Smart altruists. The lack of anything like this canon suggests that they don't think having this publicly available is a good idea. Not yet anyway. Even the workbook handed out at the workshops isn't available.

  2. I highly value CFAR as an organisation. I want them to be highly funded and want as many people to attend their workshops as possible. It would upset me to learn that someone had read my compilation and not attended a workshop thinking they had gotten most of the value they could.

Comment author: ScottL 16 February 2016 01:11:34PM *  2 points [-]

CFAR has all of this material readily available likely in a much more comprehensive and accurate format.

My assumption was that they don't have this because of time and effort constraints as well as other priorities.

I highly value CFAR as an organisation. I want them to be highly funded and want as many people to attend their workshops as possible. It would upset me to learn that someone had read my compilation and not attended a workshop thinking they had gotten most of the value they could.

The CFAR team are valuable because they are practitioners, experimenters and pioneers, not because of their techniques. That is, they are not valuable because they are hoarding potentially valuable information, but because they are at the frontier and are able to teach their material extremely well. The important question is does my material or yours help with improving the art of rationality and peoples understanding of it. I still think it does, but In retrospect, I think that I should have made it clearer that trying to learn this material by yourself is probably a bad idea.

Comment author: Duncan_Sabien 17 February 2016 01:50:15AM 4 points [-]

"trying to learn this material by yourself is probably a bad idea."

I'd say probably a difficult idea, rather than a bad one. Risky, including uncanny valley and disheartening. But that's literally what the generators of CFAR content did, and others can, too.