Early on in my exposure to Less Wrong I encountered the metaphor of Rationality as Martial Art. I assumed at some point I would be a member of an active Rationality Dojo, regularly training and becoming progressively more formidable as I learned the Art.
Several years later, though I meet regularly with an awesome local group whose company I greatly enjoy, I still feel as though my training has not yet begun.
Can anyone point to an example of an active Rationality Dojo? What do you do there (Games? Exercises? Kata?)? Who are the instructors? The closest examples that I've seen are the Mega- and Mini-camps; can anyone shed some additional light on what went on there?
I was at the Rationality Mega-Camp. I and some others blogged about the experience here: http://rationalitybootcamp.blogspot.com/
We had 3-6 hours of daily rationality sessions:
1) basic rationality -- cognitive bias, applying Bayes' theorem, microeconomics, 5-second skills
2) social effectiveness -- fashion training, rejection therapy, persuasion
3) fixing bugs in your emotions -- cognitive behavioral therapy, internal family systems, nonviolent communication
4) brain contortions -- memory, meditation, drawing, talking with Michael Vassar :)
5) long-term effectiveness -- business and entrepreneurship, planning and thinking strategically, high-impact philanthropy
Beyond the sessions, we had a number of people who were just really great rationalists spending time together talking about interesting topics. It was a very social, communal environment.
This is great, thanks! I'll check out the blog as well.
Are campers continuing training now that they're back home? Are you still in contact?