I really welcome the announcement that CFAR is restarting. When I attended a workshop, I liked the participants, the lecturers, the atmosphere, and the impact of committing time to work on problems that participants had previously procrastinated. That said, a bunch of thoughts and questions:
I am not sure whether there is really some specific “rationality magic” about these workshops. The CFAR technique collection contains cool techniques, but it does not really feel that different from what you might do in time-management/micro-habits/GTD/whatever workshop combined with some things that seem like group coaching, psychological process consulting or things that at least feel a little woo.
There might be a specific group dynamic going on in these workshops that has to do with the commitment atmosphere, self-expectations, selection effects, the payment of $ 5000. This may get some people to become productive or whatever, but I assume it can also be unhealthy to others (note that not all unhealthy developments are on the level of psychosis or mania or whatever).
I attended a free workshop in Prague in 2022. So maybe some of the effects were different there. Nonetheless, I would like to know what insights you generated with those workshops (assuming that that was evaluated systematically). I think they were held for generating data.
It seems positive that “circling” is not mentioned as a “CFAR classic”.
I really welcome the announcement that CFAR is restarting. When I attended a workshop, I liked the participants, the lecturers, the atmosphere, and the impact of committing time to work on problems that participants had previously procrastinated. That said, a bunch of thoughts and questions:
I am not sure whether there is really some specific “rationality magic” about these workshops. The CFAR technique collection contains cool techniques, but it does not really feel that different from what you might do in time-management/micro-habits/GTD/whatever workshop combined with some things that seem like group coaching, psychological process consulting or things that at least feel a little woo.
There might be a specific group dynamic going on in these workshops that has to do with the commitment atmosphere, self-expectations, selection effects, the payment of $ 5000. This may get some people to become productive or whatever, but I assume it can also be unhealthy to others (note that not all unhealthy developments are on the level of psychosis or mania or whatever).
I attended a free workshop in Prague in 2022. So maybe some of the effects were different there. Nonetheless, I would like to know what insights you generated with those workshops (assuming that that was evaluated systematically). I think they were held for generating data.
It seems positive that “circling” is not mentioned as a “CFAR classic”.