I had a very similar thought to this post. So similar in fact that I went ahead and wrote a kind of user guide for each CFAR’s techniques (though it has changed a great deal even in the last 4 months since I finished writing). I also have never been to a CFAR workshop and drew on many of the same online sources that you have. It took about a month to compile of working in my spare time. My motivation for doing so was the cost of attending a workshop (financially and time costs) were simply too high for someone in my position overseas.
I’ve printed it and only use it personally. I’ve never shared it other than with one close friend. I’m concerned about you posting this now, for the same reasons that stopped me from sharing my compilation even though I could see a great deal of benefit in it.
My thoughts for not sharing it are,
CFAR has all of this material readily available likely in a much more comprehensive and accurate format. CFAR are altruists. Smart altruists. The lack of anything like this canon suggests that they don’t think having this publicly available is a good idea. Not yet anyway. Even the workbook handed out at the workshops isn’t available.
I highly value CFAR as an organisation. I want them to be highly funded and want as many people to attend their workshops as possible. It would upset me to learn that someone had read my compilation and not attended a workshop thinking they had gotten most of the value they could.
CFAR has all of this material readily available likely in a much more comprehensive and accurate format. CFAR are altruists. Smart altruists. The lack of anything like this canon suggests that they don’t think having this publicly available is a good idea. Not yet anyway. Even the workbook handed out at the workshops isn’t available.
Rather than deferring to the judgment of the Smart Altruists and assuming that within their secret backroom discussions they’ve determined with logic, rigor, and a plethora of academic citations that it’s crucial to the mission of raising the sanity waterline to not release a comprehensive exposition of their body of rationality techniques, perhaps we need only consider your second point except in less reverential light:
I highly value CFAR as an organisation. I want them to be highly funded and want as many people to attend their workshops as possible. It would upset me to learn that someone had read my compilation and not attended a workshop thinking they had gotten most of the value they could.
So much for the Internet-era model of “free information to be disseminated to all”.
Without a deferential attitude toward the Great Rationalists of CFAR, Occam’s Razor suggests that perhaps they’re simply trying to keep the money flowing. Would it upset you if thousands of people without the resources or time to make it to a CFAR workshop had access to a self-study version of the CFAR curriculum?
Rather than deferring to the judgment of the Smart Altruists and assuming that within their secret backroom discussions they’ve determined with logic, rigor, and a plethora of academic citations that it’s crucial to the mission of raising the sanity waterline to not release a comprehensive exposition of their body of rationality techniques, perhaps we need only consider your second point except in less reverential light.
Given the ease with which CFAR could publish all their material online it seems worth considering why they haven’t done so. If spreading rationality wide is indeed their goal, then why haven’t they picked this low hanging fruit yet? I’d rather not have to make any assumptions so if someone from CFAR is reading this perhaps they can answer that.
So much for the Internet-era model of “free information to be disseminated to all”. Without a deferential attitude toward the Great Rationalists of CFAR, Occam’s Razor suggests that perhaps they’re simply trying to keep the money flowing. Would it upset you if thousands of people without the resources or time to make it to a CFAR workshop had access to a self-study version of the CFAR curriculum?
Of course that would not upset me. If the CFAR curriculum remained forever available only to the few who attended their workshops that would be sad indeed. But CFAR Labs is currently working on new rationality sequences, and I don’t think the curriculum will be as inaccessible for much longer.
I want the world to be a more rational place. I want as many people as possible to have the opportunity to become more rational in the most effective way available. More than any other individual or group it seems to me that CFAR is best positioned to achieve that goal. Even if the reason is money—if that money goes towards increasing the speed at which effective rationality techniques are developed and spread worldwide then all the better.
Pretty sure the main reason for not publicising their ideas so far has been their wanting to get lots of good feedback loops around learning whether it works or not. This year they’re planning to scale up a lot how many courses they run, to work with a lot more people, and I think Anna has mentioned somewhere that she wants to write a lot of her main insights up somewhere public. I think they just wanted to take the time to be confident they had good stuff.
CFAR has all of this material readily available likely in a much more comprehensive and accurate format. CFAR are altruists. Smart altruists. The lack of anything like this canon suggests that they don’t think having this publicly available is a good idea. Not yet anyway. Even the workbook handed out at the workshops isn’t available.
Having it publicly available definitely has huge costs and tradeoffs. This is particularly true when you’re worried about the processes you want to encourage getting stuck as a fixed doctrine—this is essentially why John Boyd preferred presentations over manuals when running his reform movement in the US military.
this is essentially why John Boyd preferred presentations over manuals when running his reform movement in the US military.
It’s strange that you mention John Boyd because, to be honest, I was thinking of him when I decided to post the material. I don’t believe that John’s preference for presentations over documentation was a good one. In general, I oppose obscurity and restriction of information although there are times that I don’t, e.g. when it’s from a lack of resources or an extremely short material turnover rate etc. In regards, to John Boyd’s stuff, personally, I know that I had to waste a lot of time wading through a lot of simplistic and pretty useless information (pretty much just the simple OODA loop stuff) to understand his material. I believe that this is his only published paper. Also, it was only really the Osinga thesis which has allowed me to understand his ideas. Although, I do need to go over it again.
This is particularly true when you’re worried about the processes you want to encourage getting stuck as a fixed doctrine
Wouldn’t most of these issues would be avoided if you gave some warning that the material is in flux and versioned it as well. So, you had a CFAR material version 1, version 2 etc. Also, doesn’t it seem a bit weird to give the potential of the information becoming a doctrine enough weight that it causes the restriction of this information? It seems weird to me since the skills that CFAR and Boyd are/were trying to teach are in large part about breaking out of fixed doctrines. It’s kind of like stopping someone from learning martial arts because you don’t want them to get hurt while training.
CFAR has all of this material readily available likely in a much more comprehensive and accurate format.
My assumption was that they don’t have this because of time and effort constraints as well as other priorities.
I highly value CFAR as an organisation. I want them to be highly funded and want as many people to attend their workshops as possible. It would upset me to learn that someone had read my compilation and not attended a workshop thinking they had gotten most of the value they could.
The CFAR team are valuable because they are practitioners, experimenters and pioneers, not because of their techniques. That is, they are not valuable because they are hoarding potentially valuable information, but because they are at the frontier and are able to teach their material extremely well. The important question is does my material or yours help with improving the art of rationality and peoples understanding of it. I still think it does, but In retrospect, I think that I should have made it clearer that trying to learn this material by yourself is probably a bad idea.
“trying to learn this material by yourself is probably a bad idea.”
I’d say probably a difficult idea, rather than a bad one. Risky, including uncanny valley and disheartening. But that’s literally what the generators of CFAR content did, and others can, too.
I strongly endorse (1). I also expect them to change (1) before too long, or otherwise open up their activities much more, and because of these two points, I will not be linking people to the OP.
I had a very similar thought to this post. So similar in fact that I went ahead and wrote a kind of user guide for each CFAR’s techniques (though it has changed a great deal even in the last 4 months since I finished writing). I also have never been to a CFAR workshop and drew on many of the same online sources that you have. It took about a month to compile of working in my spare time. My motivation for doing so was the cost of attending a workshop (financially and time costs) were simply too high for someone in my position overseas.
I’ve printed it and only use it personally. I’ve never shared it other than with one close friend. I’m concerned about you posting this now, for the same reasons that stopped me from sharing my compilation even though I could see a great deal of benefit in it.
My thoughts for not sharing it are,
CFAR has all of this material readily available likely in a much more comprehensive and accurate format. CFAR are altruists. Smart altruists. The lack of anything like this canon suggests that they don’t think having this publicly available is a good idea. Not yet anyway. Even the workbook handed out at the workshops isn’t available.
I highly value CFAR as an organisation. I want them to be highly funded and want as many people to attend their workshops as possible. It would upset me to learn that someone had read my compilation and not attended a workshop thinking they had gotten most of the value they could.
Rather than deferring to the judgment of the Smart Altruists and assuming that within their secret backroom discussions they’ve determined with logic, rigor, and a plethora of academic citations that it’s crucial to the mission of raising the sanity waterline to not release a comprehensive exposition of their body of rationality techniques, perhaps we need only consider your second point except in less reverential light:
So much for the Internet-era model of “free information to be disseminated to all”.
Without a deferential attitude toward the Great Rationalists of CFAR, Occam’s Razor suggests that perhaps they’re simply trying to keep the money flowing. Would it upset you if thousands of people without the resources or time to make it to a CFAR workshop had access to a self-study version of the CFAR curriculum?
Given the ease with which CFAR could publish all their material online it seems worth considering why they haven’t done so. If spreading rationality wide is indeed their goal, then why haven’t they picked this low hanging fruit yet? I’d rather not have to make any assumptions so if someone from CFAR is reading this perhaps they can answer that.
Of course that would not upset me. If the CFAR curriculum remained forever available only to the few who attended their workshops that would be sad indeed. But CFAR Labs is currently working on new rationality sequences, and I don’t think the curriculum will be as inaccessible for much longer.
I want the world to be a more rational place. I want as many people as possible to have the opportunity to become more rational in the most effective way available. More than any other individual or group it seems to me that CFAR is best positioned to achieve that goal. Even if the reason is money—if that money goes towards increasing the speed at which effective rationality techniques are developed and spread worldwide then all the better.
Pretty sure the main reason for not publicising their ideas so far has been their wanting to get lots of good feedback loops around learning whether it works or not. This year they’re planning to scale up a lot how many courses they run, to work with a lot more people, and I think Anna has mentioned somewhere that she wants to write a lot of her main insights up somewhere public. I think they just wanted to take the time to be confident they had good stuff.
Having it publicly available definitely has huge costs and tradeoffs. This is particularly true when you’re worried about the processes you want to encourage getting stuck as a fixed doctrine—this is essentially why John Boyd preferred presentations over manuals when running his reform movement in the US military.
It’s strange that you mention John Boyd because, to be honest, I was thinking of him when I decided to post the material. I don’t believe that John’s preference for presentations over documentation was a good one. In general, I oppose obscurity and restriction of information although there are times that I don’t, e.g. when it’s from a lack of resources or an extremely short material turnover rate etc. In regards, to John Boyd’s stuff, personally, I know that I had to waste a lot of time wading through a lot of simplistic and pretty useless information (pretty much just the simple OODA loop stuff) to understand his material. I believe that this is his only published paper. Also, it was only really the Osinga thesis which has allowed me to understand his ideas. Although, I do need to go over it again.
Wouldn’t most of these issues would be avoided if you gave some warning that the material is in flux and versioned it as well. So, you had a CFAR material version 1, version 2 etc. Also, doesn’t it seem a bit weird to give the potential of the information becoming a doctrine enough weight that it causes the restriction of this information? It seems weird to me since the skills that CFAR and Boyd are/were trying to teach are in large part about breaking out of fixed doctrines. It’s kind of like stopping someone from learning martial arts because you don’t want them to get hurt while training.
My assumption was that they don’t have this because of time and effort constraints as well as other priorities.
The CFAR team are valuable because they are practitioners, experimenters and pioneers, not because of their techniques. That is, they are not valuable because they are hoarding potentially valuable information, but because they are at the frontier and are able to teach their material extremely well. The important question is does my material or yours help with improving the art of rationality and peoples understanding of it. I still think it does, but In retrospect, I think that I should have made it clearer that trying to learn this material by yourself is probably a bad idea.
“trying to learn this material by yourself is probably a bad idea.”
I’d say probably a difficult idea, rather than a bad one. Risky, including uncanny valley and disheartening. But that’s literally what the generators of CFAR content did, and others can, too.
I strongly endorse (1). I also expect them to change (1) before too long, or otherwise open up their activities much more, and because of these two points, I will not be linking people to the OP.