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I signed up for a CFAR workshop, and got a scholarship, but couldn't travel for financial reasons. Is there a way to get travel assistance for either WAISS or the MIRI Fellowship program? I'll just apply for both.
WAISS, MSFP, CfML, and (for high-school-aged folk) EuroSPARC all have some ability to apply for travel assistance.
It was unfortunate that the CFAR for ML Researchers workshop collides with the European LW yearly meetup. I am a ML researcher, and I would love to go to San Francisco, but I don't want to miss the European meetup either. :)
Alas, yes; I found that unfortunate as well, since I, too, had wanted to attend both!
In response to
Why CFAR's Mission?
The fundraiser closes today at midnight Pacific time; if you've been planning to donate, now is the moment. Marginal funds seem to me to be extremely impactful this year; I'd be happy to discuss. http://rationality.org/donate-2015/
In response to
Why CFAR's Mission?
It feels like there is an implicit assumption in CFAR's agenda that most of the important things are going to happen in one or two decades from now. Otherwise it would make sense to place more emphasis on creating educational programs for children where the long term impact can be larger (I think). Do you agree with this assessment? If so, how do you justify the short term assumption?
It feels like there is an implicit assumption in CFAR's agenda that most of the important things are going to happen in one or two decades from now.
I don't think this; it seems to me that the next decade or two may be pivotal, but they may well not be, and the rest of the century matters quite a bit as well in expectation.
There are three main reasons we've focused mainly on adults:
Adults can contribute more rapidly, and so can be part of a process of compounding careful-thinking resources in a shorter-term way. E.g. if adults are hired now by MIRI, they improve the ratio of thoughtfulness within those thinking about AI safety, and this can in turn impact the culture of the field, the quality of future years’ research, etc.
For reasons resembling (1), adults provide a faster “grounded feedback cycle”. E.g., adults who come in with business or scientific experience can tell us right away whether the curricula feel promising to them; students and teens are more likely to be indiscriminatingly enthusiastic. .
Adults can often pay their own way at the workshops; children can’t; we therefore cannot afford to run very many workshops for kids until we somehow acquire either more donation, or more financial resource in some other way.
Nevertheless, I agree with you that programs targeting children can be higher impact per person and are extremely worthwhile in the medium- to long-run. This is indeed part of the motivation for SPARC, and expanding such programs is key to our long-term aims; marginal donation is key to our ability to do these quickly, and not just eventually.
In response to
The correct response to uncertainty is *not* half-speed
Either way, fullspeed was best. My mind had been naively averaging two courses of action -- the thought was something like: "maybe I should go forward, and maybe I should go backward. So, since I'm uncertain, I should go forward at half-speed!" But averages don't actually work that way.
Averages don't work that way because you did the math wrong: you should have stopped! I understand the point that you're trying to make with this post, but there are many cases in which uncertainty really does mean you should stop and think, or hedge your bets, rather than go full speed ahead. It's true there are situations in which this isn't the case, but I think they're rare enough that it's worth acknowledging the value of hesitation in many cases and trying to be clear about distinguishing valid from invalid hesitation.
It's true there are situations in which this isn't the case, but I think they're rare enough that it's worth acknowledging the value of hesitation in many cases and trying to be clear about distinguishing valid from invalid hesitation.
It seems to me that thinking through uncertainties and scenarios is often really really important, as is making specific safeguards that will help you if your model turns out to be wrong; but I claim that there is a different meaning of "hesitation" that is like "keeping most of my psyche in a state of roadblock while I kind-of hang out with my friend while also feeling anxious about my paper", or something, that is very different from actually concretely picturing the two scenarios, and figuring out how to create an outcome I'd like given both possibilities. I'm not expressing it well, but does the distinction I am trying to gesture at make sense?
In response to
The correct response to uncertainty is *not* half-speed
Either way, fullspeed was best. My mind had been naively averaging two courses of action -- the thought was something like: "maybe I should go forward, and maybe I should go backward. So, since I'm uncertain, I should go forward at half-speed!" But averages don't actually work that way.
Averages don't work that way because you did the math wrong: you should have stopped! I understand the point that you're trying to make with this post, but there are many cases in which uncertainty really does mean you should stop and think, or hedge your bets, rather than go full speed ahead. It's true there are situations in which this isn't the case, but I think they're rare enough that it's worth acknowledging the value of hesitation in many cases and trying to be clear about distinguishing valid from invalid hesitation.
If you take a weighted sum of (75% likely 60mph forward) + (25% likely 60 mph backward), you get (30 mph forward).
Stopping briefly to choose a plan might've been sensible, if it was easier to think while holding still; stopping after that (I had no GPS or navigation ability) wouldn't've helped; I had to proceed in some direction to find out where the hotel was, and there was no point in doing that not at full speed.
Often a person should hedge bets in some fashion, or should take some action under uncertainty that is different from the action one would take if one were certain of model 1 or of model 2. The point is that "hedging" or "acting under uncertainty" in this way is different in many particulars from the sort of "kind of working" that people often end up accidentally doing, from a naiver sort of average. Often it e.g. involves running info-gathering tests at full speed, one after another. Or e.g., betting "blue" each time in this experiment, while also attempting to form better models.
In response to
Why CFAR's Mission?
I mostly agree with the post, but I think it'd be very helpful to add specific examples of epistemic problems that CFAR students have solved, both "practice" problems and "real" problems. Eg., we know that math skills are trainable. If Bob learns to do math, along the way he'll solve lots of specific math problems, like "x^2 + 3x - 2 = 0, solve for x". When he's built up some skill, he'll start helping professors solve real math problems, ones where the answers aren't known yet. Eventually, if he's dedicated enough, Bob might solve really important problems and become a math professor himself.
Training epistemic skills (or "world-modeling skills", "reaching true beliefs skills", "sanity skills", etc.) should go the same way. At the beginning, a student solves practice epistemic problems, like the ones Tetlock uses in the Good Judgement Project. When they get skilled enough, they can start trying to solve real epistemic problems. Eventually, after enough practice, they might have big new insights about the global economy, and make billions at a global macro fund (or some such, lots of possibilities of course).
To use another analogy, suppose Carol teaches people how to build bridges. Carol knows a lot about why bridges are important, what the parts of a bridge are, why iron bridges are stronger than wood bridges, and so on. But we'd also expect that Carol's students have built models of bridges with sticks and stuff, and (ideally) that some students became civil engineers and built real bridges. Similarly, if one teaches how to model the world and find truth, it's very good to have examples of specific models built and truths found - both "practice" ones (that are already known, or not that important) and ideally "real" ones (important and haven't been discovered before).
Example practice problems and small real problems:
- Fermi estimation of everyday quantities (e.g., "how many minutes will I spend commuting over the next year? What's the expected savings if I set a 5-minute timer to try to optimize that?);
- Figuring out why I'm averse to work/social task X and how to modify that;
- Finding ways to optimize recurring task X;
- Locating the "crux" of a disagreement about a trivia problem ("How many barrels of oil were sold worldwide in 1970?" pursued with two players and no internet) or a harder-to-check problem ("What are the most effective charities today?"), such that trading evidence for the crux produces shifts in one's own and/or the other player's views.
Larger real problems: Not much to point to as yet. Some CFAR alums are running start-ups, doing scientific research for MIRI or elsewhere, etc. and I imagine make estimates of various quantities in real life, but I don't know of any discoveries of note. Yet.
In response to
Why CFAR's Mission?
First, on a meta-note, since Anna was too humble to mention it herself, I want to highlight that the CFAR 2015 Winter Fundraiser will last through January 31, 2016, with every $2 donated matched by $1 from CFAR supporters. Just to be clear, for those who don't know me, I'm not a staff person or Board member at CFAR, and am in fact the President of another organization spreading rationality and effective altruism to a broad audience, so with a somewhat distinct mission with CFAR, which targets, as Anna said, those elites who are in the strongest position to impact the world. However, I'm also a monthly donor to CFAR, and very much support the mission, and encourage you to donate to CFAR during this fundraiser, since your dollars will do a lot of good there.
Second, let me come down from meta, and speak from my CFAR donor hat. I'm curious to learn more about the target group of elites that you talk about Anna, namely those "who are most likely to actually usefully impact the world." When I think of MIRI Summer Fellows, I totally get your point regarding AI research. But what about offering training to others such as aspiring politicians/bureaucrats who are likely to be in the position to make AI-relevant policies, and also policies that address short and medium-term existential risk in the next several of decades before the possibility of FAI becomes more tangible - existential risk like cyberwarfare, nuclear war, climate change, etc. If we can get politicians to be more sane about short, medium, and long-term existential risk, it seems like that would be a win-win scenario. What are CFAR's thoughts on that?
If we can get politicians to be more sane about short, medium, and long-term existential risk, it seems like that would be a win-win scenario. What are CFAR's thoughts on that?
Getting politicians to me more sane sounds awesome, but somewhat harder for us and more outside our immediate reach than getting STEM-heavy students to be more sane. I realize I said "who are most likely to actually usefully impact the world", but I should perhaps instead have said "who have high values for the product of [likely to usefully impact the world if they think well] * [comparatively easy for us to assist in acquiring good thinking skills]"; and STEM seems to help with both of these.
Still, we are keen to have aspiring politicians, civil servants, etc. to our workshops, we've found financial aid for several such in the past, and we'd love it if you or others would recommend our workshops to aspiring rationalists who are interested in this path (as well as in other paths).
This is my main question. I've never seen anything to imply that multi-day workshops are effective methods of learning. Going further, I'm not sure how Less Wrong supports Spaced Repetition and Distributed Practice on one hand, while also supporting an organization that's primary outreach seems to be crash courses. It's like Less Wrong is showing a forum wide cognitive dissonance that nobody notices.
That leaves a few options:
- I'm wrong (though I consider it highly unlikely)
- CFAR never bothered to look it up or uses self selection to convince themselves it's effective
- CFAR is trying to optimize for something aside from spreading rationality, but they aren't actually saying what.
See my reply above. It is worth noting also that there is follow-up after the workshop (emails, group Skype calls, 1-on-1 follow-up sessions, and accountability buddies), and that the workshops are for many an entry-point into the alumni community and a longer-term community of practice (with many participating in the google group; attending our weekly alumni dojo; attending yearly alumni reunions and occasional advanced workshops, etc.).
(Even so, our methodology if not what I would pick if our goal was to help participants memorize rote facts. But for ways of thinking, it seems to work better than anything else we've found. So far.)
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By the way, when do we get acceptance/rejection notifications? (And do we? :))
I have applied to the Fellows program. But I would need to know the answer to my application, in order to buy not terribly expensive flights, and to book holidays for that period. It's really useful for those of us who live in the other side of the planet to know. :) (I am not complaining, I appreciate the enormous work you guys are putting out there, including this free workshop, but it would be cool to know something about the application process. It is fine if I was rejected (well, I will be sad :)), but please let us know.)
Working through these slowly; should be up to date by 4/24.