Disclaimer: I work for CFAR and might well be biased in this response. That said, at CFAR we don’t (re)name techniques or exercises in order to obscure what we teach or to try and grow an insular community—we do so to improve comprehension and skill acquisition.
For instance, we used to call our class on implementation intentions “Implementation Intentions”, but we changed the name to TAP (Trigger-Action Planning) because that was much more memorable and provided a better handle for people to use the technique. (Compare “I’m going to make a TAP for that” to “I’m going to set up some implementation intentions for that”, or “How many TAPs have you set up recently?” to “How many goals have you created sets of implementation intentions for recently?”)
In other words, our goal isn’t to hide the source of this material—in fact, we explicitly discuss the source material and provide links to relevant research in our workbooks—but rather to aid ease of use and ease of learning.
As for the more general point, CFAR is quite interested in spreading the information that we teach, developing new techniques, and furthering the art and science of rationality.
Several of our alumni have gone on to teach CFAR material to interested folks in their own area. We’ve provided multiple scholarships to people attending workshops with an explicit goal of taking what we teach and bringing it to underserved communities. We hold an alumni reunion yearly where CFAR staff and alumni share what they’ve learned and give mini-talks on the latest interesting developments in or promising avenues for rationality training.
I suspect that, if anything, CFAR would like to be doing more to bring this material to a wider audience—there’s only so much time in the day, though!
Disclaimer: I work for CFAR and might well be biased in this response. That said, at CFAR we don’t (re)name techniques or exercises in order to obscure what we teach or to try and grow an insular community—we do so to improve comprehension and skill acquisition.
For instance, we used to call our class on implementation intentions “Implementation Intentions”, but we changed the name to TAP (Trigger-Action Planning) because that was much more memorable and provided a better handle for people to use the technique. (Compare “I’m going to make a TAP for that” to “I’m going to set up some implementation intentions for that”, or “How many TAPs have you set up recently?” to “How many goals have you created sets of implementation intentions for recently?”)
In other words, our goal isn’t to hide the source of this material—in fact, we explicitly discuss the source material and provide links to relevant research in our workbooks—but rather to aid ease of use and ease of learning.
As for the more general point, CFAR is quite interested in spreading the information that we teach, developing new techniques, and furthering the art and science of rationality.
Several of our alumni have gone on to teach CFAR material to interested folks in their own area. We’ve provided multiple scholarships to people attending workshops with an explicit goal of taking what we teach and bringing it to underserved communities. We hold an alumni reunion yearly where CFAR staff and alumni share what they’ve learned and give mini-talks on the latest interesting developments in or promising avenues for rationality training.
I suspect that, if anything, CFAR would like to be doing more to bring this material to a wider audience—there’s only so much time in the day, though!