One view: The first section (say, from “While working as the curriculum director” to “Do you know what you are doing, and why you are doing it?”) I want as its own post. The Fundamental Question is too short. (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xWozAiMgx6fBZwcjo/the-fundamental-question) I think this is a useful question to have loaded in a person’s brain, and the first section of this post explains how to use it and makes a pitch for why it’s important. I haven’t yet linked someone to How To: A Workshop (or anything) and told them “Ignore the title and everything after the first few minutes” yet but I really have been tempted. That loop of asking what you’re doing and why is a loop that I want a dozen examples of. The Rest Is Commentary is one example, and I still want to be able to link just that first section with a better title. From this view, everything in The Rest Is Commentary actively detracts from the essay because people bounce off upon seeing the length or get bogged down trying to follow the dense, almost stream of consciousness section.
A second view: Most people aren’t trying to run a one instructor CFAR workshop and so I don’t think they’ll latch on to The Rest Is Commentary, but I think given three examples of The Rest Is Commentary in different fields it would be easy (or easier) to generalize. What does this look like for a programmer adding a feature? What does this look like for winning a poker tournament? What does this look like for building a shed? It’s hard to untangle the workshop details from the Do You Know What You Are Doing details. Yes, I know they’re integrated and entangled. I want to factor them out so I can see how they interact.
I suspect I would have a better understanding of this technique if I had three more The Rest Is Commentary style essays, one where someone runs a workshop and isn’t using this technique, one where someone builds a shed with this technique, and one where someone builds a shed without this technique. That’s not a knock against what Duncan’s written here, that’s a hope for followup work.
A third view: I haven’t tried to run a one instructor CFAR workshop, but I am interested in doing that or something like it. I personally really want the version of The Rest Is Commentary with footnotes and definitions and expansions. I’ve pieced many of them together with reference to the CFAR handbook and searching through old LessWrong posts. Serious offer Duncan: Make a copy of this as a draft, let me have edit access, and I’ll go through and add footnotes to short explanations of concepts with hyperlinks to the longer explanations. I strongly suspect the object level of running a workshop isn’t the point of this post and that it’s an example to illustrate Do You Know What You Are Doing. One of my two biggest frustrations with CFAR is that it doesn’t seem to generate more instructors, and pairing a clearer The Rest Is Commentary with the CFAR handbook feels like an actual stab in that direction.
That’s probably not a viable version of the thing I really want, which is a book I can read and follow to create beisutsukai. I don’t think that book is reasonably doable, you probably need someone to point out the specific mistakes you’re making, you probably need to practice with something like Tutoring Wheels, I don’t think it’s fair to blame The Rest Is Commentary for not being the solution I want. If I had the solution I want I’d mail one to every active LW community and every would-be group of aspiring rationalists.
The long example in this post remains useful to me personally because of my interest in the object level. When I run meetups that try to teach a little rationality, there’s a How To: A Workshop on my shoulder.
I have three views on this post.
One view: The first section (say, from “While working as the curriculum director” to “Do you know what you are doing, and why you are doing it?”) I want as its own post. The Fundamental Question is too short. (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xWozAiMgx6fBZwcjo/the-fundamental-question) I think this is a useful question to have loaded in a person’s brain, and the first section of this post explains how to use it and makes a pitch for why it’s important. I haven’t yet linked someone to How To: A Workshop (or anything) and told them “Ignore the title and everything after the first few minutes” yet but I really have been tempted. That loop of asking what you’re doing and why is a loop that I want a dozen examples of. The Rest Is Commentary is one example, and I still want to be able to link just that first section with a better title. From this view, everything in The Rest Is Commentary actively detracts from the essay because people bounce off upon seeing the length or get bogged down trying to follow the dense, almost stream of consciousness section.
A second view: Most people aren’t trying to run a one instructor CFAR workshop and so I don’t think they’ll latch on to The Rest Is Commentary, but I think given three examples of The Rest Is Commentary in different fields it would be easy (or easier) to generalize. What does this look like for a programmer adding a feature? What does this look like for winning a poker tournament? What does this look like for building a shed? It’s hard to untangle the workshop details from the Do You Know What You Are Doing details. Yes, I know they’re integrated and entangled. I want to factor them out so I can see how they interact.
I suspect I would have a better understanding of this technique if I had three more The Rest Is Commentary style essays, one where someone runs a workshop and isn’t using this technique, one where someone builds a shed with this technique, and one where someone builds a shed without this technique. That’s not a knock against what Duncan’s written here, that’s a hope for followup work.
A third view: I haven’t tried to run a one instructor CFAR workshop, but I am interested in doing that or something like it. I personally really want the version of The Rest Is Commentary with footnotes and definitions and expansions. I’ve pieced many of them together with reference to the CFAR handbook and searching through old LessWrong posts. Serious offer Duncan: Make a copy of this as a draft, let me have edit access, and I’ll go through and add footnotes to short explanations of concepts with hyperlinks to the longer explanations. I strongly suspect the object level of running a workshop isn’t the point of this post and that it’s an example to illustrate Do You Know What You Are Doing. One of my two biggest frustrations with CFAR is that it doesn’t seem to generate more instructors, and pairing a clearer The Rest Is Commentary with the CFAR handbook feels like an actual stab in that direction.
That’s probably not a viable version of the thing I really want, which is a book I can read and follow to create beisutsukai. I don’t think that book is reasonably doable, you probably need someone to point out the specific mistakes you’re making, you probably need to practice with something like Tutoring Wheels, I don’t think it’s fair to blame The Rest Is Commentary for not being the solution I want. If I had the solution I want I’d mail one to every active LW community and every would-be group of aspiring rationalists.
The long example in this post remains useful to me personally because of my interest in the object level. When I run meetups that try to teach a little rationality, there’s a How To: A Workshop on my shoulder.