Since I am an amature rationalist, and possibly the least intelligent person in this community, it would be ideal for someone else to run this (preferrably CFAR themselves, or at least someone who has attended).
It seemed like you could probably use to read this blogpost by Zvi. I don’t want to offer generic empty encouragement, but do have a concrete model of what sort of projects are promising.
The moneyquote from Zvi’s post is “you’re probably one level higher than you think you are, and ready for one level higher worth of challenge.” (What this means depends on where you’re at).
It’s generally good for people to undertake projects that they might not be ready for, but which will cause them to grow in useful and interesting ways.
There are some particular classes of project that seem obvious/salient, but do come with some risks if you’re less experienced: outreach projects (such as what you’re proposing, I think) and coordination projects (such as, say, a rationality wiki or donation pooling tool).
This doesn’t mean don’t do that class of project, but it means take some considerations into account.
Outreach projects run the risk of giving people a false impression of the content. Sometimes it can make the group/community/project look bad, sometimes it can just present a confusing image of it (because communication is hard).
Coordination projects are risky because they gamble with the resource of “people being willing to invest effort switching tools or habits”. (i.e. if you get everyone to switch to a new thing, and then it turns out the thing isn’t very good, then they’re less willing to switch the next time someone comes up with a new coordination tool)
This project is fairly “outreach” flavored. But I think is fairly low risk so long as you make sure to distinguish the brand. (i.e. there are people who created a LessWrong youtube channel, which wasn’t actually affiliated with LessWrong, which got a bit confusing).
I do think “make a podcast based on Hammertime” is a pretty decent project (although I’d maybe chat with the author of Hammertime about it, esp if you’re going to make the link explicit). I agree with ChristianKI’s note that you should actually first try to integrate each technique and get a sense of whether it worked for you (or why it did not).
It seemed like you could probably use to read this blogpost by Zvi. I don’t want to offer generic empty encouragement, but do have a concrete model of what sort of projects are promising.
The moneyquote from Zvi’s post is “you’re probably one level higher than you think you are, and ready for one level higher worth of challenge.” (What this means depends on where you’re at).
It’s generally good for people to undertake projects that they might not be ready for, but which will cause them to grow in useful and interesting ways.
There are some particular classes of project that seem obvious/salient, but do come with some risks if you’re less experienced: outreach projects (such as what you’re proposing, I think) and coordination projects (such as, say, a rationality wiki or donation pooling tool).
This doesn’t mean don’t do that class of project, but it means take some considerations into account.
Outreach projects run the risk of giving people a false impression of the content. Sometimes it can make the group/community/project look bad, sometimes it can just present a confusing image of it (because communication is hard).
Coordination projects are risky because they gamble with the resource of “people being willing to invest effort switching tools or habits”. (i.e. if you get everyone to switch to a new thing, and then it turns out the thing isn’t very good, then they’re less willing to switch the next time someone comes up with a new coordination tool)
This project is fairly “outreach” flavored. But I think is fairly low risk so long as you make sure to distinguish the brand. (i.e. there are people who created a LessWrong youtube channel, which wasn’t actually affiliated with LessWrong, which got a bit confusing).
I do think “make a podcast based on Hammertime” is a pretty decent project (although I’d maybe chat with the author of Hammertime about it, esp if you’re going to make the link explicit). I agree with ChristianKI’s note that you should actually first try to integrate each technique and get a sense of whether it worked for you (or why it did not).
This could actually be the theme of the podcast. “Each week I try to integrate one technique and then report on how it went.”
Sounds more interesting than just an explanation of what the technique is.