Since several people have asked for negative reviews in addition to positive ones, I’ll share my mixed review, starting with the bad:
The first minicamp was divided into two types of sessions: epistemic rationality, and social effectiveness.
The epistemic rationality sessions always seemed “right”, but what we did didn’t translate directly into making improvements in my day-to-day rationality. The exercises were fun and seemed like they were “on the right track,” but I am still putting time and energy into figuring out how to turn “knowing” about rationality into actually making good decisions. (Other minicamp participants reported spectacular gains, so perhaps I’m just a slow learner in that respect.)
On the other hand, the instructors did and do seem quite serious about making things better along that axis, so I would expect this coming minicamp to be superior in some ways.
The social effectiveness training was much more concrete and I was able to apply it immediately. I’ve gotten measurable results—compliments, and most shockingly to me, strangers smile at me on the street. On the other hand, I don’t think that should be Rationality Org’s comparative advantage, and if that’s all you think you want out of the program you may be better off elsewhere.
By far the best think about Minicamp was bonding socially with a likeminded group of people. Having access to a group of people who were willing to travel and take two weeks to work on nothing but rationality was an experience I don’t think I could have done any other way.
A subset of us have been trying to have every-other-week Skype calls with each other on a rotating basis, and this has worked better than any drill or exercise to keep me focused on improving, raise my baseline expectations of my own rationality, and remind me that if I am experiencing distress or not getting what I want, that means I should be doing something different and I need to figure out what that is.
Minicamp also increased the mental availability of a bunch of rationality techniques I’d already known about in theory. I am much better about noticing when I’m rationalizing, and now at least have a fighting chance at diagnosing problems while they’re happening, rather than long afterwards.
Since several people have asked for negative reviews in addition to positive ones, I’ll share my mixed review, starting with the bad:
The first minicamp was divided into two types of sessions: epistemic rationality, and social effectiveness.
The epistemic rationality sessions always seemed “right”, but what we did didn’t translate directly into making improvements in my day-to-day rationality. The exercises were fun and seemed like they were “on the right track,” but I am still putting time and energy into figuring out how to turn “knowing” about rationality into actually making good decisions. (Other minicamp participants reported spectacular gains, so perhaps I’m just a slow learner in that respect.)
On the other hand, the instructors did and do seem quite serious about making things better along that axis, so I would expect this coming minicamp to be superior in some ways.
The social effectiveness training was much more concrete and I was able to apply it immediately. I’ve gotten measurable results—compliments, and most shockingly to me, strangers smile at me on the street. On the other hand, I don’t think that should be Rationality Org’s comparative advantage, and if that’s all you think you want out of the program you may be better off elsewhere.
By far the best think about Minicamp was bonding socially with a likeminded group of people. Having access to a group of people who were willing to travel and take two weeks to work on nothing but rationality was an experience I don’t think I could have done any other way.
A subset of us have been trying to have every-other-week Skype calls with each other on a rotating basis, and this has worked better than any drill or exercise to keep me focused on improving, raise my baseline expectations of my own rationality, and remind me that if I am experiencing distress or not getting what I want, that means I should be doing something different and I need to figure out what that is.
Minicamp also increased the mental availability of a bunch of rationality techniques I’d already known about in theory. I am much better about noticing when I’m rationalizing, and now at least have a fighting chance at diagnosing problems while they’re happening, rather than long afterwards.