At CFAR workshops, people often become conscious of new ways their minds can work, and new things they can try. But we don’t have enough “and now I’ll try to repair my beautiful electronic sculpture, which I need to do right now because the windstorm just blew it all apart, and which will incidentally give me a bunch of real-world grounding” mixed in.
I’d love suggestions here.
I’ll try to make sure I’m running a D&D.Sci scenario over both of the spans you mentioned: data-science-y attendants would get a chance to test their data-science-y skills against small but tricky problems with knowable right answers, and non-data-science-y attendants would probably still get something out of spectating (especially if they make a point of trying to predict which participants are closest to said right answer).
(. . . and if anyone else has some kind of [inference|decision]-centric moderately-but-not-excessively-demanding public puzzle/challenge they’ve been meaning to run, those spans look like the time to do it.)
Thanks; I appreciate this thought and offer! I’m not sure how well “internet things” can co-exist with the sort of in-person “be fully present” thing that seems to help workshops do their magic, but, per CFAR’s recommendations, I’m gonna set a 5-minute timer later today and think on the best way to do it before declaring it impossible :)
Fwiw, the scenarios don’t have to be solved collaboratively online, and in fact most players play most of them solo. For that matter, they don’t need internet access: would-be players could make sure they have the problem description & the dataset & their favorite analysis tools downloaded, then cut the wifi.
(. . . unless “be fully present” rules out laptops too, in which case yeah nvm.)
It could, for a game with an unusually small & clean dataset (I’m thinking in particular of On The Construction Of Impossible Structures and How The Grinch Pessimized Christmas) . . . but realistically a LWer solving a problem like that on paper would spend the entire time lamenting that they weren’t using a computer, which doesn’t seem like a mental state conducive to personal growth. So nvm.
(I do have other thoughts on potential epistemic grounding activities but they’re all obvious: board games, 2-4-6 tests[1], pub quizzes with confidence intervals attached, etc.)
I’ll try to make sure I’m running a D&D.Sci scenario over both of the spans you mentioned: data-science-y attendants would get a chance to test their data-science-y skills against small but tricky problems with knowable right answers, and non-data-science-y attendants would probably still get something out of spectating (especially if they make a point of trying to predict which participants are closest to said right answer).
(. . . and if anyone else has some kind of [inference|decision]-centric moderately-but-not-excessively-demanding public puzzle/challenge they’ve been meaning to run, those spans look like the time to do it.)
Thanks; I appreciate this thought and offer! I’m not sure how well “internet things” can co-exist with the sort of in-person “be fully present” thing that seems to help workshops do their magic, but, per CFAR’s recommendations, I’m gonna set a 5-minute timer later today and think on the best way to do it before declaring it impossible :)
Fwiw, the scenarios don’t have to be solved collaboratively online, and in fact most players play most of them solo. For that matter, they don’t need internet access: would-be players could make sure they have the problem description & the dataset & their favorite analysis tools downloaded, then cut the wifi.
(. . . unless “be fully present” rules out laptops too, in which case yeah nvm.)
Would it work from print-outs?
It could, for a game with an unusually small & clean dataset (I’m thinking in particular of On The Construction Of Impossible Structures and How The Grinch Pessimized Christmas) . . . but realistically a LWer solving a problem like that on paper would spend the entire time lamenting that they weren’t using a computer, which doesn’t seem like a mental state conducive to personal growth. So nvm.
(I do have other thoughts on potential epistemic grounding activities but they’re all obvious: board games, 2-4-6 tests[1], pub quizzes with confidence intervals attached, etc.)
With different rules than the original 2-4-6 test, obviously.