I have a high opinion of the minicamp (after observing fiddlemath before and after the camp, anecdotally I'd say he "leveled up" in notable ways that would be worthwhile for me), and I'll probably apply. That being said:
This post gives off bad vibes to (my mental model of) outsiders- I wouldn't be comfortable showing it to a non-LessWrong person and saying "This is what I'll be doing". I'm holding the post to a pretty high standard, because signaling matters a lot for an event where you're asking money from people and putting them through an intensive program (it pattern-matches things that people are wary of, from "multilevel marketing seminar" to "Christian retreat").
Some suggestions:
Here's another random idea:
When I read product or movie reviews, I tend to look for the negatives as much as (if not more than) the positives; I also pay attention to the rating distribution (especially if it's bimodal). If I can't find any negatives, I tend to assume that the product has been astroturfed, and move on.
So, did the SIAI ever receive any negative comments about the rationality minicamp ? If so, where can I read them ?
I posted earlier that the surveys were confidential, but actually, I just reread them, and there doesn't seem to be anything personal in the "Which parts of the camp didn't work particularly well for you, and what do you think we could do to improve?" column, which was basically the "what negative comments do you have?" column. So I pasted those answers into a new spreadsheet and posted them to the web; you can read participants' collected complaints here.
If you or anyone wants to do a survey, I can give you the email addresses of the minicampers, and you can email them and see what you get and post it online (assuming you write in your email that you are looking for publishable comments, etc.). Let me know if you/anyone seriously wish to do this.
Many of the minicampers are on LW, also; the folks with testimonials above have linked LW accounts; but there is of course selection bias there.
Anna says we're still looking at locations but it's looking at around $115/person/night just for lodging + meals, and that the 3-day camps actually include 4 nights the way everyone counts things and we have to purchase it. Anna also notes that she and Julia and Michael get $3k/month and this takes way more of their time than just the actual days. So definitely not a Singinst fundraiser. That data is available very easily so I'm posting it right now.
A specific example of an exercise from last year's minicamp that a lot of people liked was "Value of Information" which included the technical details of how to calculate VoI and exercises in being sensitive to particular forms of scope (how much does it cost, how long does it last, how often does it happen).
We're still working out the program which is why it's not posted even tentatively (we were just in the middle of some agonizing about priorities).
$115/person/night
Wait, what? Can I just stay in a hostel and eat from the gorcery store?
Can I just stay in a hostel and eat from the gorcery store?
To make a rational decision, more information is necessary, such as: How much does the hostel cost? Does it have decent beds? Distance from hostel to the place of workshop. Local food costs. Etc. (Don't forget to include facts like if you sleep in a different place than majority, you deprive yourself of opportunity of some morning/evening informal chat.)
Generally: how much would I really save by "hostel & grocery store" and how much would it reduce my gains from the workshop?
Speaking for myself, I would like to cut some costs (together with the cost of flying it makes my salary for 2 months), but there is always a risk. Once I slept in a hostel with beds so bad that I really did not sleep much that night. Now if I imagine 9 such nights plus jet lag, and the resulting effect on my concentration and memory, I would get much less benefit per dollar spent.
I guess we'd charge about 1/2 of the total (noting that you'd still be having meals with the rest of us)... but I suspect commuting is harder than you think, given how intensively scheduled it is. Err on the side of applying, and we can discuss.
Also, if anyone's unable to afford camp for whatever reason, apply anyhow and check the "needs scholarship" box and we can see what can be worked out.
Agree but... if I knew where in the bay area it's being held I could tell whether it's just around the corner, or a 1.5 hour commute.
This post gives off bad vibes to (my mental model of) outsiders.
I had the same impression; the post makes the minicamp sound like your average, run-of-the-mill, self-help seminar scam -- complete with testimonials and everything.
That not necessarily a bad thing. Lots of people pay for those. And such people are in need of rationality help!
Good to know.
I mean, it kind of is a standard workshop (like ones on public speaking, or italian cooking, or, yes, self-help)... except that the content is about Bayesian math, and microeconomics, and the cognitive science of standard human error patterns and so on. And the people you get to network with are other LW-ers who are interested in actually applying this content to practical problems, and coming to embed Bayesian patterns into the details of one's day-to-day thoughts instead of just into the way you answer pen-and-paper questions.
But, yes, similar workshop format, different content. Maybe we should make the ad different too in some way. I wonder if my inclusion of the testimonials and survey data, in particular, may have been misleading -- I was trying to say "look, past participants (who were smart LW-ers a lot like you) liked it, so maybe you will too", but it may have come across as a stronger claim. I'd say come check it out if you're interested, or else wait for a subsequent year if you want to have seen "proof that this will definitively change your life" first or something (which we may or may not ever manage, though we're certainly working on it), and, meanwhile, whether you come or not, do keep contributing on LW, trying exercises yourself in your own life, and generally helping to figure out what rationality can be.
I attended the 2011 minicamp.
It's been almost a year since I attended. The minicamp has greatly improved me along several dimensions.
I now dress better and have used techniques provided at minicamp to become more relaxed in social situations. I'm more aware of how I'm expressing my body language. It's not perfect control and I've not magically become an extrovert, but I'm better able to interact in random social situations successfully. Concretely: I'm able to sit and stand around people I don't know and feel and present myself as relaxed. I dress better and people have noticed and I've received multiple comments to that effect. I've chosen particular ways to present myself and now I get comments like 'you must play the guitar' (this has happened five times since minicamp haha). This is good since it loads the initial assumptions I want the person to load.
I've intentionally hacked my affectation towards various things to better reach my goals. For years I never wanted to have children. My wife said (earlier this year, after minicamp) that she wanted to have kids. I was surprised and realized that given various beliefs (love for wife, more kids good for society, etc) I needed to
To address your second point first, the -attendees- were not a group who strongly shared common beliefs. Some attended due to lots of prior exposure to LW, a very small number were strong x-risk types, several were there only because of recent exposure to things like Harry Potter and were curious, many were strongly skeptical of x-risks. There were no discussions that struck me as cheering for the team -- and I was actively looking for them!
Some counter evidence, though: there was definitely a higher occurrence of cryonicists and people interested in cryonics than you'd find in any random sample of 30 people. I.e.: some amount >2 vs some amount close to 0. So we weren't a wildly heterogeneous group.
As for the instructors - Anna and Luke were both very open about the fact that the rationality-education process is in its infancy and among the various SIAI members there is discussion about how to proceed. I could be wrong, I interpreted Eliezer as being somewhat skeptical of the minicamp process. When he visited, he said he had almost no involvement related to the minicamp. I believe he said he was mainly a sounding board for some of the ideas. I'm interpreting his involvement in t...
Applied. Looks good. Might decide it's not worth it, but you make a good case.
One thing. 0 to 10 ratings are utterly useless. The median is almost always around 7, for almost anything. Please give us calibrated statistics, not subjective pseudo-quantities where most of the contribution is from noise and offset.
Reminds me of business planning types ranking alternatives 1..n and then treating the indexes as utilities. ick. TYPE ERROR.
We've actually noticed in our weekly sessions that our nice official-looking yes-we're-gathering-data rate-from-1-to-5 feedback forms don't seem to correlate with how much people seem to visibly enjoy the session - mostly the ratings seem pretty constant. (We're still collecting useful data off the verbal comments.) If anyone knows a standard fix for this then PLEASE LET US KNOW.
I'd suggest measuring the Net Promoter Score (NPS) (link). It's used in business as a better measure of customer satisfaction than more traditional measures. See here for evidence, sorry for the not-free link.
To interpret, split the responses into 3 groups:
NPS = [% who are Promoters] - [% who are Detractors]. Good vs. bad NPS varies by context, but +20-30% is generally very good. The followup question is a good way to identify key strengths and high priority areas to improve.
NPS is a really valuable concept. Means and medians are pretty worthless compared to identifying the percentage in each class, and it's sobering to realize that a 6 is a detractor score.
(Personal anecdote: I went to a movie theater, watched a movie, and near the end, during an intense confrontation between the hero and villain, the film broke. I was patient, but when they sent me an email later asking me the NPS question, I gave it a 6. I mean, it wasn't that bad. Then two free movie tickets came in the mail, with a plea to try them out again.
I hadn't realized it, but I had already put that theater in my "never go again" file, since why give them another chance? I then read The Ultimate Question for unrelated reasons, and had that experience in my mind the whole time.)
The median is almost always around 7, for almost anything.
An anecdote on a related note...
There was once a long-term online survey about patterns of usage of a particular sort of product (specifics intentionally obscured to protect the guilty). One screen asks something like "Which of these have you used in the past year", and it shows 4 products of different brands in random order and "None of the above", and respondents can select multiple brands. Different respondents answer every week, but the results are pretty consistent from one week to the next. Most respondents select one brand.
One week, they took away one of the brands. If it were tracking real usage, you'd expect all of the responses for that brand to have shifted over to "None of the above". Instead, all of a sudden people had used the other 3 brands about 4/3 as often as the previous week. It was exactly the result one would expect if practically everyone were answering randomly. That pattern kept up for a few weeks. Then the question was changed back, and the usage of all 4 brands went back to 'normal'.
Some of the effect could be accounted for by a substitution principle; instead of asking oneself for each option whether one's used it in the last year, it's easier to ask which of them one recalls using most recently (or just which of them seems most salient to memory), check that, and move on. If people do actually switch between products often enough, this would create that dynamic.
I tried to take that into account when reading.
I know, I did too, but that is really the sort of calculation that should be done by a large-scale study that documents a control distribution for 0-10 ratings that such ratings can be calibrated against.
treating the indexes as utilities
Please explain.
In my engineering school, we had some project planning classes where we would attempt to calculate what was the best design based on the strength of our preference for performance in a variety of criteria (aesthetics, wieght, strength, cost, etc). Looking back I recognize what we were doing as coming up with a utility function to compute the utilities of the different designs.
Unfortunately, none of us (including the people who had designed the procedure) knew anything about utility functions or decision theory, so they would do things like rank the different criteria, and the strength of each design in each criteria, and then use those directly as utility wieghts and partial utilities.
(so for example strength might be most important (10), then cost (9) then wieght (8) and so on. and then maybe design A would be best (10) in wieght, worst (1) in strength, etc)
I didn't know any de...
Since a couple of people want before/after information, here's some: Before minicamp: I was able to work around 5 hours per day on research.
After: 10 hours/day, sustainable for months.
After: Less afraid to try new professional directions than ever before, by a margin much wider than this trait has ever changed for me.
After: Secured $24,000 of grant money from DARPA to work on applications of algebraic geometry to machine learning, my first time trying out applied math. Loving it.
After: Difference in productivity was so noticeable that I'm volunteering my time as an instructor at the next few camps (I taught some at the last camp, too) because I expect it to have further positive, lasting effects on my professional / personal life.
After: Got a new dissertation advisor; many people around me seemed to think that was impossible or risque, but it has gone very well and been very refreshing, given my interests. (Before the camp I was more afraid to make what felt like a "sudden" change, which was actually something I had been thinking about for a year and was not sudden at all.)
Note: My experience at the camp may not have been typical, because I did teach a few sessions at t...
Here are some points, as I think of them.
The Good
I feel like most of the value I got out of the minicamp in terms of techniques came early. This is probably due a combination of effects:
1) I reached a limit on my ability to internalize what I was learning without some time spent putting things to use. 2) I was not well mentally organized -- my rationality concepts were all individual floating bits not well sewn together -- so I reached a point where new concepts didn't fit into my map very easily.
I agree things got more disorganized, in fact, I remember on a couple occasions seeing the 'this isn't the outcome I expected' look on Anna's face and the attempt to update and try a different approach or go with the flow and see where things were leading. I marked this responsiveness as a good thing.
As for your ugly it's important to note that was a casual discussion among attendees. I suppose this highlights risks from a general increase in credibility-giving by close temporal association with other new ideas you're giving credibility to? Example: I talked to a lot of curious people that week about how Valve's internal structure works, but no one should necessarily run off and establish a Valve-like company without understanding Valve's initial conditions, goals, employee make-up, other institutions, and comparing them with their own initial conditions, goals, employees, institutions, etc.
Request/advice: please consider taping the sessions. This will be useful to:
I agree with this.
I would rather see them for free on YouTube or something. It would help me and others decide if it was something we'd want to try out ourselves.
Without having attended one, and as someone who has been reading OB/LW ever since Eliezer started posting at OB, it seems like the largest benefit I would get out of such a thing is the social networking benefits. If I'm right, and if I'm typical, you wouldn't be removing motivation for most potential camp attendees because they wouldn't get the biggest benefit ...person-to-person networking and friendship-building.
I'd say it was likely that those, whose motivation to attend was removed by feeling like they'd already got everything out of the camps by watching the videos, would be more than counteracted by interest raised in the camps by the videos.
Unless the videos make the camp seem boring or not worthwhile, of course!
In the long run, we are working anyhow to port the exercises into a form that will work well at local LW meet-ups.
I attended minicamp last year, and I followed up with almost all of the attendees since then. I have had periodic Skype chats to see how it impacted their lives, so I can pretty confidently say that the minicamp:
It definitely had a positive impact on me, but I represent more of a median result than an outlier. Since minicamp, I:
Sold my company, and am on track to make more money in the time since minicamp than I've made in the past few years. The decisions that lead to this were a direct result of the systematic decision and planning process I implemented because of minicamp
Turned down a job offer at Google to work at an even more awesome company. I both learned about--and got an interview with--this company directly because of a contact from minicamp
Improved in a hundred small ways (again, directly attributable to notes I made at minicamp), from fashion (I now regularly get compliments where I got none before) to health (I use less time to exercise and eat, yet feel much better)
There were definitely parts of the...
In answer to “Zero to ten, has your epistemic rationality improved?”, the median answer was 7 (mean 6.9).
That's not something to ask people, that's something you ought to actually measure before and after, otherwise what kind of rationalists are you.
In answer to “Zero to ten, will your life go significantly differently because you came to mini-camp?” the median answer was 7.5 (the mean was 6.9) [This was the response that was most positively surprising to me.].
How long after the camp ended did you ask that question? If not very long, the answers don't surprise me at all. Asking such a question a year after the camp would be more interesting.
This sounds great. A couple questions:
Why do you ask for my LW username? Will I be judged for poorly thought out comments or misfired jokes?
What is the difference between the 3 day and the week long? How do I decide?
Feedback: I'm interested in this but will not attend.
Why: I'm a professional in another city with limited vacation time. I could potentially go to the Bay Area for this, but it'd be expensive in money, time, and vacation not spent elsewhere. I believe it might still be worth doing it, but am not convinced.
However, I AM convinced that if one were held in my city (in this case, Seattle) for a similar price, I would be very interested. The cost could be offset because lodging/travel by the instructors would be paid instead of the attendees. If the workshops were something like Thursday/Friday evening and all weekend, so much the better.
Suggestion for the future: Check interest for doing these locally in other major cities and run the numbers to see if it's worth it. It might not make sense, but if it did, count me in!
Thanks. I doubt I will go this year for the reasons I listed above. Next year when I have more vacation time built up I'd consider doing it.
Although if you'd like to include "read advance chapters of HPMOR" into the benefits, I'm in.
I attended the minicamp last summer, at more personal expense than most participants, since I flew in from europe (I did have other things to do in California, so the cost wasn't entirely for minicamp).
If you want an analogy with minicamp, think of an academic summer school. At the most important level, I think the only thing that really separates minicamp (or an academic summer school) from christian camps is that the things they teach at minicamp (and summer schools) are mostly correct.
I go to summer schools to learn from people who have thought about things that I care about, in greater depth than I have. If you don't believe that will be true, don't go. You should be able to make a reasonable guess whether you think you have things to learn by looking at the instructors posts on less wrong.
I definitely agree with many things that the other participants said. I found that minicamp gave me a sense that things that normal people consider insoluble are often not, and a well thought out series of actions can lead you to places that most people would not believe. I also found it inspiring to be around a group of people that really care about improving themselves - something that I h...
7b) Is there any evidence I'll be glad I went that a Christian retreat could not produce just as easily?
Edit: Okay, 15 seconds to this being downvoted was a little hasty.
I know that this is mere anecdote; and that after doesn't strictly imply because of. But, since the mini-camp, people who know me would probably agree that:
To emphasize the last point, uncomfortably personally: I am no longer cripplingly unable to examine my own sexuality, ask women out, or engage in relationships. (I'm still inexperienced for my age, though this improves over time.) These changes are due to techniques I learned at mini-camp: not lessons of the form "how to pick up women", but "how to be right about yourself".
Also, I suspect my writing has improved.
There are also internal, mental changes; and I suspect that the rate at which my agency improves has increased. But you'd get the same report in different words from someone after a Christian brainwashing retreat, so I suppose these are pretty weak evidence for you.
Finding people who could converse at a high level about the most important topics in the world was more fulfilling than I could have imagined. You can get some of this at a meetup - and I've been to meetups in Chicago, St. Louis, and the Bay - but the level of fulfillment I got at the mini-camp was the greatest by far.
Again, forgetting all the rationality training - there were moments at mini-camp when everyone was hanging out and I would literally have trouble deciding where to stand in a room because every conversation going around me was so ridiculously interesting that I couldn't stand choosing where to place myself. I felt like a wealth of knowledge was being spilt around me, and if I didn't scramble to consume as much as possible I'd miss some lifechanging insight and regret it forever. It was so beautiful it hurt.
Again, forgetting all the rationality training - there were moments at mini-camp when everyone was hanging out and I would literally have trouble deciding where to stand in a room because every conversation going around me was so ridiculously interesting that I couldn't stand choosing where to place myself. I felt like a wealth of knowledge was being spilt around me, and if I didn't scramble to consume as much as possible I'd miss some lifechanging insight and regret it forever. It was so beautiful it hurt.
Wow. That's like the opposite of most parties.
As an attendee, my personal data might be relevant:
I have gained practice deliberately acquiring new habits and soliciting useful feedback. Before camp I had no specific plans for self-improvement other than "work harder", and now I actually keep track of what works and what doesn't. For instance, I am deliberately improving my public speaking skills by giving talks on Minicamp material once a week to a limited audience. I would place a bet that the "alternate universe me" who instead attended Inspirational Retreat X (IRX) would not have had lasting effects nearly a year later.
I am deliberately extending my network of contacts. Speaking to new people was a skill that I didn't have pre-Minicamp. On this point, "alternate universe me" could have reasonably acquired similar skills from IRX, but I have relatively strong reason to believe that those skills would be much more of a black box than they are now. I usually leave workshops inspired, but I can tell if it's a poor workshop when I try to apply the skills I learned and discover that it's not as easy as it seemed to be according to the instructor's examples. There is a difference between "explain...
Before the bootcamp, I'd just barely managed to graduate college and didn't have the greatest prospects for finding a job. (Though to be fair, I was moving to SF and it was a CS degree.)
At the bootcamp, I founded (and then folded) a startup with other bootcampers, which was profoundly educational and cost a couple months of time and <$100.
Now, <1 year after the bootcamp, I'm doing programming and design work on the new SimCity, which is as close to a dream job for me as could reasonably be expected to exist.
I can't attribute all my recent success to the bootcamp, because I was pretty awesome beforehand, but it really did dramatically improve my effectiveness in a number of domains (my girlfriend is grateful for the fashion tips I picked up, for example). Other specific things I've found useful include meditation, value of information calculations, and rejection therapy.
Note that your original comment has positive and rising karma at this point. I have a high estimation of the minicamps (partially because I'm friends with fiddlemath, who really has appeared to level up since last summer in noticeable ways), but I'm glad that you're stubborn about making SIAI/CMR show you some good evidence.
Sorry, "Christian retreat" didn't convey the idea, and in any case I gave a link to a better explanation of the part of conceptspace I was trying to refer to. I'll take it out since the link should suffice.
Since several people have asked for negative reviews in addition to positive ones, I'll share my mixed review, starting with the bad:
The first minicamp was divided into two types of sessions: epistemic rationality, and social effectiveness.
The epistemic rationality sessions always seemed "right", but what we did didn't translate directly into making improvements in my day-to-day rationality. The exercises were fun and seemed like they were "on the right track," but I am still putting time and energy into figuring out how to turn "knowing" about rationality into actually making good decisions. (Other minicamp participants reported spectacular gains, so perhaps I'm just a slow learner in that respect.)
On the other hand, the instructors did and do seem quite serious about making things better along that axis, so I would expect this coming minicamp to be superior in some ways.
The social effectiveness training was much more concrete and I was able to apply it immediately. I've gotten measurable results - compliments, and most shockingly to me, strangers smile at me on the street. On the other hand, I don't think that should be Rationality Org's comparative ...
There are a lot of glowing recommendations from past participants here. In fact, I have not noticed a single criticism from a past participant. This reeks of self-censorship, because even if rationality mini-camp was overall an awesome experience, it is very unlikely that it was perfect.
In order to do my small part to counteract the social pressure not to criticize those with high status, I hereby pre-commit to upvoting any comment from a past participant that contains criticism of the mini-camp. This includes comments that are generally positive but include criticism of specific aspects.
“I do not say this lightly... but if you're looking for superpowers, this is the place to start.”
Sing karaoke...
Now I can't get this image out of my head of Eliezer singing 'I am the very model of a singularitarian '...
A question for Eliezer, Anna or Luke: under which circumstances would you prefer people came to minicamp, and under which circumstances would you prefer people just gave that money (inc. travel) to the SI?
Not that I'm necessarily going to follow this advice, just curious which factors you think are relevant.
Vaguely related question: I'm sure I remember there being a minicamp in New York in the past (EDIT: I was wrong). What's the expected length of time before the next east coast camp?
People seem to be getting the impression that these minicamps may be primarily fundraising opportunities for the Singularity Institute. So, by way of explanation:
can you clarify whether Rationality Group is the same thing as the Center for Modern Rationality?
They are the same. We're still testing names. I've talked with several marketing firms, and right now my assistant is tracking down additional companies who focus on market-testing organization names.
If in doubt, apply. You can always decide to not come after being accepted, gaining info, etc. (Applying is a 10-15 minute process.)
As to money vs. minicamp: come to minicamp. Especially if you've had little to no in-person contact with this community before. You'll learn more, acquire more money-making skills, make friends, and get into a better position for long-term influence. At least, that's my impression.
We haven't run any on the east coast; at some point we'd like to run do this, probably after refining our curriculum, growing our instructor-set, etc., but probably not in the next 12 months.
I would definitely go to one of these again. Are you considering repeats? If so how much do you expect repeats to get out of it?
My primary partner is curious about this sort of thing, since unsurprisingly I talk about it all the time. Should I be thinking about going on my own or both of us going? We live in London UK.
Thanks for putting this together - I am intrigued by a mini-camp.
One of the questions in the application form is tickbox for "Interested in potentially working for CMR".
Could someone give some more detail on that question?
A google of "site:lesswrong.com CMR" didn't give me anything useful.
Out of curiosity, what does the menu look like? Is it based around a specific, dare I say "rational" diet? Paleo, Bulletproof, Shangri-la?
I understand that you are expected to have read at least part of the sequences, but what sort of general education is necessary, if any? What kind of math should a participant be able to do in order to get optimal utility out of the event? I am seriously considering flying out to attend, and would like to know if I need to review anything :)
Consider giving an example of the sort of decision making procedure that is taught in camp, with the subject of the example whether one should attend the camp.
E.g.:
Write down all the reasons you think you are considering on a sheet of paper, in pro and con columns. Circle those that do not refer to consequences of going or not going to camp. Then shut your eyes to think for two minutes and think of at least five alternatives that you are likely to do instead of camp. Make pro and con lists for the most likely three of these. Then circle non-consequences. G...
Could you specify location of the minicamp? Or suggest several possible locations? I just want to calculate trip time from San Francisco International Airport, I also hope it will be useful information for all applicants outside of USA, like me.
As somebody about as far from the Bay Area as a USian can get, and who has been hearing great things from a friend in the area about the CMR workshops… when will there be online workshops and/or camps for the northeast or the east coast in general?
Regarding effectiveness skepticism - what do we expect the camps to achieve? Is it testable, and can we agree how to test it in advance?
Thanks for this post, I may be interested in attending.
I live in the Bay Area, however, and I would be happy to drive back and forth, so I would be more inclined to pay less and not receive lodging. Is there any chance that the option of doing so would be available to me?
EDIT: Oops, I just now read this comment which brings up the same question. OK.
Another question I realized is probably more relevant: What has been the median age for attendees of these events? Are they demographically young college age students, or what?
The possibility of flying out for this only became apparent to me very late on. I submitted an application as soon as I knew it was an option for me, which was the 22nd of April. Since it seems like applicants are already getting answers, I'm resigned to the possibility that my application was submitted too late to be considered.
Is that in fact the case? If so, it's probably worth modifying or removing the "Apply Now" links. If not though, I'll adjust my holiday plans accordingly.
Are applications still being accepted? I had been busy the previous days, so I only just submitted mine.
In the LW community apparently most people don't know how to dress well. I read some testimonials, and part are in some sense about achieving goals like been more sociable, and not to be a anti-social nerd.
There a re skeptics too, however for me the effectiviness of (decision theory + psychological tests) is clear, only in the few comments a read. Maybe they are overly optimistic, but the feel of improvement and the evidence in their professions indicate that the cost/benefit is superior of the most camps/groups out there.
I applied, but accidentally submitted it with an obviously incomplete current/past employment field. What would be a sensible way to remedy this?
“I do not say this lightly... but if you're looking for superpowers, this is the place to start.”
--Michael Curzi, summer 2011 minicamp participant
Who: You and a class full of other aspiring rationalists and world-optimizers, from around the world.
What: Two 3-day weekend minicamps and one 8-day minicamp, filled with hands-on activities for applying rationality to your life, your goals, and the making of a better world. (See details in the FAQ.)
When and where: We're running three camps, so that we can do this for three sets of participants: May 11-13 and June 22-24 for the 3-day camps, and July 21-28 for the eight-day camp, all in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Why: Because you’re a social primate, and the best way to jump into a new way of thinking, make friends, and accomplish your goals is often to spend time with other primates who are doing just that.
Other reasons:
Instructors:
Cost: $650 for the three-day programs; $1500 for the week-long program. This includes lodging[1], meals, and tuition.
(Note that this *still* isn't quite enough to make running minicamps sustainable in the long-run; a lodging + meals at retreat centers start at around $90 per person per night, the "three-day camps" include four nights, and these workshops take a staff of about 5 full-time people for over a month each prior to each workshop, most of us at $3k/month, counting curriculum development time (plus miscellaneous expenses). We are trying to strike a compromise between "charge enough that we can run more camps" and staying affordable, especially for our start-up phase; costs will probably go up in following years.)
Three days (or a week) isn’t long enough to learn rationality, but it's long enough to learn how to learn rationality, and to get some momentum toward doing so.
Come meet us, and see what you can do.
Apply now.
Frequently Asked Questions:
1. I’m older. Should I still apply?
Yes! We're aiming for a more diverse crowd and would love to add your wider set of experiences and skills.
2. I’d like to come, but I’m not sure you’ll accept me. Should I still apply?
Absolutely! You can fill out our form in as little 10 minutes. What’s the harm?[2]
3. I’d like to come, but I can’t afford it. Should I still apply?
Yes, you should definitely apply. A limited number of scholarships will probably be available this time, and more may be available later.
(There's also an option on the application form if you want to apply but can't make any of the times - this just says that you want to be part of future minicamps and makes sure we have your application details.)
4. What will we do, exactly?
We're still working out the details. In our current model:
5. I’m new to all this. Will it make sense?
If you’ve read at least fifteen posts from the core sequences, yes it will. If you haven’t: why not read them now?
We’ll also aim for an atmosphere in which everyone is free to make mistakes and to try things, and in which people are receptive to a wide range of skill levels.
6. I’ve already read the Sequences seventeen times, and also I’m a self-made billionaire with three PhDs. Will I learn anything new?[3]
We hope so. We’re covering a good range of material, with much more of a focus on practice and exercise than in the Sequences, incorporating new lessons learned since the LW material was written, and with some instructors who've developed their own takes on rationality.
7. What evidence is there that I'll be glad I went?
After last year's minicamp, participants completed an anonymous exit survey. (With the instructions: "We're asking you these questions to learn how to run camps; please be honest; it'll help us more if you're accurate than if you're positive.") Here are their answers to the most relevant questions:
We also asked participants for testimonials -- statements designed to be shown to others, in case they wanted to recommend such camps. They wrote:
“This was an intensely positive experience. This was easily the most powerful change self-modification I've ever made, in all of the social, intellectual, and emotional spheres. I'm now a more powerful person than I was a week ago -- and I can explain exactly how and why this is true.
At mini-camp, I've learned techniques for effective self-modification -- that is, I have a much deeper understanding of how to change my desires, gather my willpower, channel my time and cognitive resources, and model and handle previously confusing situations. What's more, I have a fairly clear map of how to build these skills henceforth, and how to inculcate them in others. And all this was presented in such a way that any sufficiently analytical folk -- anyone who has understood a few of the LW sequences, say -- can gain in extreme measures.”
--Matt Elder / Fiddlemath
“I expected a week of interesting things and some useful tools to take away. What I got was 8 days of constant, deep learning, challenges to my limits that helped me grow. I finally grokked that I can and should optimize myself on every dimension I care about, that practice and reinforcement can make me a better thinker, and that I can change very quickly when I'm not constrained by artificial barriers or stress.
I would not recommend doing something like this right before another super-busy week, because I was learning at 100% of capacity and will need a lot of time to unpack all the things I learned and apply them to my life, but I came away with a clear plan for becoming better. It is now a normal and easy thing for me to try things out, test my beliefs, and self-improve. And I'm likely to be much more effective at making the world a better place as well, by prioritizing without fear.
The material was all soundly-researched and effectively taught, with extremely helpful supplemental exercises and activities. The instructors were very helpful in and out of session. The other participants were excited, engaged, challenging, and supportive.
I look forward to sharing what I've learned with my local Lesswrong meetup and others in the area. If that's even 1/4 as awesome as my time at the Mini-Camp, it will make our lives much better.”
--Ben Hoffman / Benquo
“I really can't recommend this camp enough! This workshop broke down a complex and intertwined set of skills labelled in my brain as "common sense" and distinguished each part so that I could work on them separately. Sessions on motivation, cognition, and what habits to build to not fool yourself were particularly helpful. This camp was also the first example that I've seen of people taking current cognitive science and other research, decoding it, and showing people what's been documented to work so that they can use it too. It feels to me now as though the coolest parts of the sequences have been given specific exercises and habits to build off of. This camp, and the people in it, have changed my path for the better.”
--David Jones / TheDave
You can also read the full testimonials from everyone who chose to give one.
Apply now
(You can totally fill out the application in just 10 minutes, so you might want to fill in the blanks right now -- we'd like to announce the first acceptances (for May) in the next week)
[1] More exactly, we provide a bed in a shared room at a house or retreat center rented by SIAI.
[2] Sometimes people say they’re “afraid of wasting our time” by sending in an application. In a word, no. If you’re interested in us, we’re interested in you. It takes just seconds to read someone’s form, and our experience shows that many of our highest-value people have been the ones who hesitated to apply.
[3] Okay, fine, this isn’t really a frequently asked question. But seriously, we’ll be covering a lot that isn’t in the sequences -- and the flesh-and-blood experience of meeting other aspiring rationalists is hard to duplicate.
ETA: CMR is still looking for good teachers and curriculum designers. If you're interested, please especially consider coming to a minicamp; we're hoping to find some good hires there.
ETA2: We will probably have answers to all applicants within about two weeks (i.e., by April 16 or so), with answers to the May folks probably earlier than the others. If for some reason you need your application processed *faster* than this, please shoot me an email: annasalamon at gmail.