Moving to San Francisco has a lot of expenses other than housing expenses, including costs for movers, travel costs (and the costs of moving back if you fail), costs to stop and start utilities, storage costs to store your possessions for 9 weeks if you live in the office, and the excess everyday costs that come from living in an area where everything is expensive. It's also a significant disruption to your social life (which could itself decrease your chances of finding a job, and is a cost even if it doesn't.)

Don't dismiss what non-LWers are trying to say just because they don't phrase it as a LWer would. "Didn't offer real accreditation" means that they 1) are skeptical about whether the the plan teaches useful skills (doing a Bayseian update on how likely that is, conditional on the fact that you are not accredited), or 2) they are skeptical that the plan actually has the success rate you claim (based on their belief that employers prefer accreditation, which ultimately boils down to Bayseianism as well).

Furthermore, it's hard to figure the probability that something is a scam. I can't think of any real-world situations where I would estimate (with reasonable error bars) that something has a 50% chance of being a scam. How would I be able to tell the difference between something with a 50% chance of being a scam and a 90% chance of being a scam?

I've wondered why more people don't train to be software engineers. According to wikipedia, 1 in 200 workers is a software engineer. A friend of mine who teaches programming classes estimates 5% of people could learn how to program. If he's right, 9 out of 10 people who could be software engineers aren't, and I'm guessing 8 of them make less in their current job than they would if they decided to switch.

One explanation is that most people would really hate the anti-social aspect of software engineering. We like to talk a lot about how it's critical for that job to be a great communicator etc., but the reality is, most of the time you sit at your desk and not talk to anyone. It's possible most people couldn't stand it. Most jobs have a really big social factor in comparison, you talk to clients, students, patients, supervisors, etc.

I did, but the job I got was being a TA for App Academy, so that might not count in your eyes.

Indeed it does not. I don't count your experience as an example of the OP.

dissatisfied with their experience of job search.

That's... an awfully strange phrasing. Do you mean they all found a web development job as a result of attending App Academy? Or what?

5. And, most importantly, doing so has (not "will"! already has!) caused them to win, in a clear, unambiguous, significant way.

You have, I take it, already gotten a job as a result of finishing App Academy?

move to San Francisco

Unrelatedly to my other response: uh, move to San Francisco? That... costs a lot of money. Even if only for nine weeks. Where did you live for the duration?

Yvain, could you give a real-life example analogous to your Goofus & Gallant story?

That is, could you provide an example (or several, even better) of a situation wherein:

1. There is some opportunity for clear, unambiguous victory;
2. Taking advantage of it depends primarily on taking a strange/unconventional/etc. idea seriously (as distinct from e.g. not having the necessary resources/connections, being risk-averse, having a different utility function, etc.);
3. Most people / normal people / non-rationalists do not take the idea seriously, and as a consequence have not taken advantage of said opportunity;
4. Some people / smart people / rationalists take the idea seriously, and have gone for the opportunity;
5. And, most importantly, doing so has (not "will"! already has!) caused them to win, in a clear, unambiguous, significant way.

Note that cryonics does not fit that bill (it fails point 5), which is why I'm asking for one or more actual examples.

I took the survey.

I'm a computer science student. I did a course on information theory, and I'm currently doing a course on Universal AI (taught by Marcus Hutter himself!). I've found both of these courses far easier as a result of already having a strong intuition for the topics, thanks to seeing them discussed on LW in a qualitative way.

For example, Bayes' theorem, Shannon entropy, Kolmogorov complexity, sequential decision theory, and AIXI are all topics which I feel I've understood far better thanks to reading LW.

LW also inspired me to read a lot of philosophy. AFAICT, I know about as much philosophy as a second or third year philosophy student at my university, and I'm better at thinking about it than most of them are, thanks to the fantastic experience of reading and participating in discussion here. So that counts as useful.