Splendid post. I am generally pro CFAR being alive; I was also pleased to read that the new workshops will still be ~2/3rds the good content from the original workshops, not exclusively new and experimental stuff, which makes me more confident in encouraging people to go (i.e. that the floor on the experience will still be quite good). Many things in this post seem to me to accurately address pathologies in CFAR 1.0; here’s to CFAR 2.0 having even more success in developing an art of human rationality than CFAR 1.0.
Ways to help CFAR or to connect to CFAR besides donating:
[...]
Book our venue (or help a friend realize they’d enjoy booking the venue, if they would)
I’ll also let people know that I had a great experience renting the CFAR venue in Bodega Bay. I took the Inkhaven residents there for a weekend off-site, and the participants rated it really highly. It was a great bonding experience to be in a single house altogether, we had nice daily walks to the ocean, and Jack & Sunny were lovely hosts with their two adorable kittens. Endorsed as a good getaway space for up to ~50 people.
(And we do still need money to be viable, because being a custodian of such a community requires staff time and money for food/lodging/staff flights/etc.)
As a minor issue, I think I’m failing to understand this parenthetical. I already believe that many good non-profits need donations to live, and cannot sustain themselves fully on sales and revenue. This seemed to read to me though that aCFAR is justifying itself as needing funds primarily because of trying to sustain a community. Slightly earlier you wrote about the alumni community, which you felt was originally quite generative, then became lower quality, and you’d like to do something to get life into one again. But I don’t think you mean to imply that the alumni community is the sole purpose of donations. What did you mean here?
This seemed to read to me though that aCFAR is justifying itself as needing funds primarily because of trying to sustain a community. … What did you mean here?
From my POV, the main reason I want aCFAR in existence is to sustain (and allow to better-develop) a particular angle on rationality practice.
Like, suppose there were a bunch of people doing a bunch of bits of neat music, and you sorta had the idea that a jazz-type thing was nascent. And then maybe if you create a really cool bar or something with the right set of musicians and fans and stuff invited at once (a center), jazz congeals and becomes a thing.
My feeling is there’s a particular take on rationality that I want to help pop into existence. There’s a bunch of rhymes between stuff different ones of us staff are doing, near also Friedrich Hayek’s work and Christopher Alexander’s. I think we’re onto something, I want to see where it goes. And I think this thing develops best via practicing it together, in various ways—aCFAR staff trying it on ourselves and each other and volunteers; folks who don’t work for aCFAR but who are independently doing “rhyming” stuff coming and riffing and showing us there angles; the bits and pieces combining; etc.
This is the “community” (of creating / practicing/ refining) that I meant we are trying to cultivate. (Not our new alumni community, although it’ll overlap it.)
Splendid post. I am generally pro CFAR being alive; I was also pleased to read that the new workshops will still be ~2/3rds the good content from the original workshops, not exclusively new and experimental stuff, which makes me more confident in encouraging people to go (i.e. that the floor on the experience will still be quite good). Many things in this post seem to me to accurately address pathologies in CFAR 1.0; here’s to CFAR 2.0 having even more success in developing an art of human rationality than CFAR 1.0.
I’ll also let people know that I had a great experience renting the CFAR venue in Bodega Bay. I took the Inkhaven residents there for a weekend off-site, and the participants rated it really highly. It was a great bonding experience to be in a single house altogether, we had nice daily walks to the ocean, and Jack & Sunny were lovely hosts with their two adorable kittens. Endorsed as a good getaway space for up to ~50 people.
As a minor issue, I think I’m failing to understand this parenthetical. I already believe that many good non-profits need donations to live, and cannot sustain themselves fully on sales and revenue. This seemed to read to me though that aCFAR is justifying itself as needing funds primarily because of trying to sustain a community. Slightly earlier you wrote about the alumni community, which you felt was originally quite generative, then became lower quality, and you’d like to do something to get life into one again. But I don’t think you mean to imply that the alumni community is the sole purpose of donations. What did you mean here?
From my POV, the main reason I want aCFAR in existence is to sustain (and allow to better-develop) a particular angle on rationality practice.
Like, suppose there were a bunch of people doing a bunch of bits of neat music, and you sorta had the idea that a jazz-type thing was nascent. And then maybe if you create a really cool bar or something with the right set of musicians and fans and stuff invited at once (a center), jazz congeals and becomes a thing.
My feeling is there’s a particular take on rationality that I want to help pop into existence. There’s a bunch of rhymes between stuff different ones of us staff are doing, near also Friedrich Hayek’s work and Christopher Alexander’s. I think we’re onto something, I want to see where it goes. And I think this thing develops best via practicing it together, in various ways—aCFAR staff trying it on ourselves and each other and volunteers; folks who don’t work for aCFAR but who are independently doing “rhyming” stuff coming and riffing and showing us there angles; the bits and pieces combining; etc.
This is the “community” (of creating / practicing/ refining) that I meant we are trying to cultivate. (Not our new alumni community, although it’ll overlap it.)
Does that make sense?