To address your second point first, the -attendees- were not a group who strongly shared common beliefs. Some attended due to lots of prior exposure to LW, a very small number were strong x-risk types, several were there only because of recent exposure to things like Harry Potter and were curious, many were strongly skeptical of x-risks. There were no discussions that struck me as cheering for the team—and I was actively looking for them!
Some counter evidence, though: there was definitely a higher occurrence of cryonicists and people interested in cryonics than you’d find in any random sample of 30 people. I.e.: some amount >2 vs some amount close to 0. So we weren’t a wildly heterogeneous group.
As for the instructors—Anna and Luke were both very open about the fact that the rationality-education process is in its infancy and among the various SIAI members there is discussion about how to proceed. I could be wrong, I interpreted Eliezer as being somewhat skeptical of the minicamp process. When he visited, he said he had almost no involvement related to the minicamp. I believe he said he was mainly a sounding board for some of the ideas. I’m interpreting his involvement in this thread now and related threads/topics as a belief shift on his part toward the minicamp being valuable.
I think your order of magnitude increases well describes a bad conceivable scenario, but poorly describes the scenario I actually witnessed.
Now, for cost, I don’t know. I’m attending a guitar camp in August that will be 7 days and cost me $2000. I would put the value of minicamp a fair amount above the value of the guitar camp, but I wouldn’t necessarily pay $3000 to attend minicamp. To answer the price question I would ask:
1) What else do I plan to spend the $1500 on? What plans or goals suffer setbacks? What would I otherwise buy?
2) What do I value the information from attending at? I can see how it would be easier to measure the value of information from a guitar camp versus one about something that feels more abstract. So maybe the first step is to find the concrete value you’ve already gotten out of LW. If you’ve read the sequences and you think there are useful tools there, you might start with ’what would be the estimated value from being able to clarify the things I’m unsure about.” So you take some measurement of value you’ve already gotten from LW and do some back of the napkin math with that.
3) Consider your level of risk aversion versus the value of minicamp now vs later. If these new minicamps are successful, more people will post about them. Attendees will validate or negate past attendee experiences. It may be that if $1500 is too much for you when measured against your estimation of the pay-off discounted by risks, that you simply wait. Either the camps will be shown to be valuable or they will be shown to be low value.
4) Consider some of the broad possible future worlds that follow from attending minicamp. In A you attend and things go great, you come out with new rationality tools. In B you attend and your reaction is neutral and you don’t gain anything useful. In C you attend and have poor experiences or worse suffer some kind of self-damage (ex: your beliefs shift in measurably harmful ways that your prior self would have not agreed to submit to ahead of time). Most attendees are suggesting you’ll find yourself in worlds like A. We could be lying because we all exist in worlds like C or we’re in B but feel an obligation to justify attending the camp or whatever. Weigh your estimate of our veracity with your risk aversion. Update the connected values.
I would suggest it unlikely that the SIAI be so skilled at manipulation that they’ve succeeded in subverting an entire group of people from diverse backgrounds and with some predisposition to be skeptical. Look for evidence that some people exist in B or C (probably from direct posts stating as much—people would probably want to prevent other people from being harmed).
There are other things to put into a set of considerations around whether to spend the money, but these are some.
I just wanted to say this (esp. the second part) is actually one of the most cogent posts about anything that I’ve read in quite some time, and as such, a self-referential example of the value of the camp. It should probably be more visible, and I recommend making it a discussion post about deciding whether/when to attend.
To address your second point first, the -attendees- were not a group who strongly shared common beliefs. Some attended due to lots of prior exposure to LW, a very small number were strong x-risk types, several were there only because of recent exposure to things like Harry Potter and were curious, many were strongly skeptical of x-risks. There were no discussions that struck me as cheering for the team—and I was actively looking for them!
Some counter evidence, though: there was definitely a higher occurrence of cryonicists and people interested in cryonics than you’d find in any random sample of 30 people. I.e.: some amount >2 vs some amount close to 0. So we weren’t a wildly heterogeneous group.
As for the instructors—Anna and Luke were both very open about the fact that the rationality-education process is in its infancy and among the various SIAI members there is discussion about how to proceed. I could be wrong, I interpreted Eliezer as being somewhat skeptical of the minicamp process. When he visited, he said he had almost no involvement related to the minicamp. I believe he said he was mainly a sounding board for some of the ideas. I’m interpreting his involvement in this thread now and related threads/topics as a belief shift on his part toward the minicamp being valuable.
I think your order of magnitude increases well describes a bad conceivable scenario, but poorly describes the scenario I actually witnessed.
Now, for cost, I don’t know. I’m attending a guitar camp in August that will be 7 days and cost me $2000. I would put the value of minicamp a fair amount above the value of the guitar camp, but I wouldn’t necessarily pay $3000 to attend minicamp. To answer the price question I would ask:
1) What else do I plan to spend the $1500 on? What plans or goals suffer setbacks? What would I otherwise buy?
2) What do I value the information from attending at? I can see how it would be easier to measure the value of information from a guitar camp versus one about something that feels more abstract. So maybe the first step is to find the concrete value you’ve already gotten out of LW. If you’ve read the sequences and you think there are useful tools there, you might start with ’what would be the estimated value from being able to clarify the things I’m unsure about.” So you take some measurement of value you’ve already gotten from LW and do some back of the napkin math with that.
3) Consider your level of risk aversion versus the value of minicamp now vs later. If these new minicamps are successful, more people will post about them. Attendees will validate or negate past attendee experiences. It may be that if $1500 is too much for you when measured against your estimation of the pay-off discounted by risks, that you simply wait. Either the camps will be shown to be valuable or they will be shown to be low value.
4) Consider some of the broad possible future worlds that follow from attending minicamp. In A you attend and things go great, you come out with new rationality tools. In B you attend and your reaction is neutral and you don’t gain anything useful. In C you attend and have poor experiences or worse suffer some kind of self-damage (ex: your beliefs shift in measurably harmful ways that your prior self would have not agreed to submit to ahead of time). Most attendees are suggesting you’ll find yourself in worlds like A. We could be lying because we all exist in worlds like C or we’re in B but feel an obligation to justify attending the camp or whatever. Weigh your estimate of our veracity with your risk aversion. Update the connected values.
I would suggest it unlikely that the SIAI be so skilled at manipulation that they’ve succeeded in subverting an entire group of people from diverse backgrounds and with some predisposition to be skeptical. Look for evidence that some people exist in B or C (probably from direct posts stating as much—people would probably want to prevent other people from being harmed).
There are other things to put into a set of considerations around whether to spend the money, but these are some.
I just wanted to say this (esp. the second part) is actually one of the most cogent posts about anything that I’ve read in quite some time, and as such, a self-referential example of the value of the camp. It should probably be more visible, and I recommend making it a discussion post about deciding whether/when to attend.
Nitpick—cRYonics. Thanks!
Doh, I have no idea why my hands type c-y-r instead of c-r-y, thanks.
You’re not alone—it’s a common mistyping!