I’m not sure we have any rationalist pubs. We don’t have much physical space that’s decidated to rationality.
We do have plenty of events and while some events are more about social interaction we also have events that are more about training skills. CFAR has (or had?) their weekly dojo and many other cities like Berlin (where I live) have their own weekly dojo event.
I didn’t know about weekly dojos and have never attended any, that sounds very exciting. Tell me more about what happens at the Berlin weekly dojo events?
Also, to clarify, I meant both “pubs” and “gyms” metaphorically—i.e. lots of what happens on LessWrong is like a pub in the above sense, whereas other things, like the recent exercise prize, is like a gym.
The overall structure we have in Berlin is at the moment every Monday:
19:00-19:10 Meditation (Everyone that’s late can only enter after the meditation is finished)
19:10-19:20 Check commitments that were made last week and only people to brag about other accomplishments
19:20-19:30 Two sessions of Resolve Cycles (we still use the Focused Grit name)
19:30-19:40 Session Planning
19:40-20:05 First Session
20:05-20:10 Break
20:10-20:35 Second Session
20:35-20:40 Break
20:40-21:05 Third Session
21:05-21:10 Break
21:10-21:15 Set commitments for the next week
Individual sessions are proposed in the session planning and everybody can go to sessions they find interesting. Sometimes there are sessions in parallel.
Some sessions are about practicing CFAR techniques, some about Hamming Circles for individual issues of a person. Some are also about information exchanges like exchanging ways to use Anki.
Our dojo is invite-only and people who are members are expected to attend regularly. Every dojo session is hosted by one of the dojo members and the person who hosts the session is supposed to bring at least one session. Everyone is expected to host in a given time frame.
We now have the dojo I think for over a year and that’s the structure which evolved. It has the advantage that there’s no need for one person to do a huge amount of preparation. In the CFAR version Valentine used to present new techniques every week but that was part of the job of being in charge of curriculum development at CFAR.
We also have a monthly meetup that usually mixes some rationality technique with social hangout at a 50:50 ratio.
1) What are some examples of what “practicing CFAR techniques” looks like?
2) To what extent are dojos expected to do “new things” vs. repeated practice of a particular thing?
For example, I’d say there’s a difference between a gym and a… marathon? match? I think there’s more of the latter in the community at the moment: attempting to solve particular bugs using whatever means are necessary.
I’m not sure we have any rationalist pubs. We don’t have much physical space that’s decidated to rationality.
We do have plenty of events and while some events are more about social interaction we also have events that are more about training skills. CFAR has (or had?) their weekly dojo and many other cities like Berlin (where I live) have their own weekly dojo event.
I didn’t know about weekly dojos and have never attended any, that sounds very exciting. Tell me more about what happens at the Berlin weekly dojo events?
Also, to clarify, I meant both “pubs” and “gyms” metaphorically—i.e. lots of what happens on LessWrong is like a pub in the above sense, whereas other things, like the recent exercise prize, is like a gym.
The overall structure we have in Berlin is at the moment every Monday:
19:00-19:10 Meditation (Everyone that’s late can only enter after the meditation is finished)
19:10-19:20 Check commitments that were made last week and only people to brag about other accomplishments
19:20-19:30 Two sessions of Resolve Cycles (we still use the Focused Grit name)
19:30-19:40 Session Planning
19:40-20:05 First Session
20:05-20:10 Break
20:10-20:35 Second Session
20:35-20:40 Break
20:40-21:05 Third Session
21:05-21:10 Break
21:10-21:15 Set commitments for the next week
Individual sessions are proposed in the session planning and everybody can go to sessions they find interesting. Sometimes there are sessions in parallel.
Some sessions are about practicing CFAR techniques, some about Hamming Circles for individual issues of a person. Some are also about information exchanges like exchanging ways to use Anki.
Our dojo is invite-only and people who are members are expected to attend regularly. Every dojo session is hosted by one of the dojo members and the person who hosts the session is supposed to bring at least one session. Everyone is expected to host in a given time frame.
We now have the dojo I think for over a year and that’s the structure which evolved. It has the advantage that there’s no need for one person to do a huge amount of preparation. In the CFAR version Valentine used to present new techniques every week but that was part of the job of being in charge of curriculum development at CFAR.
We also have a monthly meetup that usually mixes some rationality technique with social hangout at a 50:50 ratio.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Rxz6uvTayTjDGk3Rq/personal-story-about-benefits-of-rationality-dojo-and is a story from a dojo that happened in Ohio. Given that the link to the dojo website is dead, it might be that the dojo died.
Thanks for describing that! Some questions:
1) What are some examples of what “practicing CFAR techniques” looks like?
2) To what extent are dojos expected to do “new things” vs. repeated practice of a particular thing?
For example, I’d say there’s a difference between a gym and a… marathon? match? I think there’s more of the latter in the community at the moment: attempting to solve particular bugs using whatever means are necessary.