I have been given the opportunity to prepare a workshop for the General Assembly team in London. General Assembly is geared towards education of entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs and have been very successful in New York, now expanding to London. The workshops are 90 minutes long, and usually gather anywhere from 15 to 35 people who have paid to attend.

While I considered doing something on concrete coding skills, I think by far the superior alternative (for myself and the audience) is to do a crash course on cognitive bias as it relates to startups, maybe throw in some other topics on rationality in a similar context. I am fairly confident that startups are an excellent testing ground for extreme rationality as they require exceptionally quick assimilation of new skills and knowledge, as well as demand rapid decisions with incomplete information.

So, as part of the brainstorming for this, here are my questions for you:

1.Do you think educating startup founders on cognitive bias/rationality will help them improve their outcomes?

2.Which biases would especially affect startups? Which of these can be mitigated (either by knowing about them or by utilising explicit strategies)?

3.What is a good way to use 90 minutes to get this information across?

4.What prior material exists to introduce rationality in a fast-paced manner? What prior material exists that relates startups to rationality?

5.Other relevant thoughts welcome

Should I go ahead with this, I will of course make the deck available for any others who may want to do similar presentations elsewhere.

Discussion article for the meetup : London This Sunday

Discussion article for the meetup :London This Sunday

Shulman on Superorgs

Best to read the link first and my comments later.

I have very little to comment on the topic itself, but I do find it odd that Robin takes such a confrontational stance, beginning from the first sentence "It has come to my attention that some think that by now I should have commented on Carl Shulman’s em paper" and culminating with a harsh analysis not only of Carl's conclusions, but about what (Robin believes) made him want to reach those conclusions, as well as SIAI's mission statement in general. There is negative framing, "obsession with making a god to rule us all (well)", that I wouldn't expect from someone trying to honestly represent the other side. It's not that I don't share some of those concerns, but to psychoanalyse (who you seem to have identified as) your opponent in an obvious effort to discredit, is at the very least unfair.  I was generally aware that there was some kind of tension between the former dynamic duo of Hanson - Yudkowsky, but it seems to have become full-blown hostility.

Robin does seem to find the courage to say he's glad others are looking into emulations, but the overall vibe I get is of someone protective of a research field they believe they uniquely 'get', someone who feels others should just get in line or get out of the ring, and it's a vibe not uncommon in academia.

I was reading the NY Times article on Decision Fatigue, when I came upon a hypothesis I would like everyone's feedback on.

I take as a premise that there seems to be a high prevalence of akrasia in the lesswrong community.

I also take as a premise that the sequences give us a more-than-usual detailed model of the world, one that presents us with more possible trade-offs we could be making in every day life.

So the conjecture that by trying to reduce bias and perform a lot of cognitive calculation, we effectively spend large parts of our days in a decision fatigued state, leading to akrasia problems.

Does this sound (un)reasonable? Why? How would you go about turning this into a testable proposition?

UPDATE: Anna Salamon has put up a detailed poll here that may shed some light on the situation. Please take some time to fill it in.