As someone who worked for CFAR full-time from early 2014 to mid-late 2016 and still teaches at CFAR workshops fairly regularly as a contractor, I can tell you that there has definitely been progress from the “Sequences era” style of rationality to what we are currently teaching. Earlier versions of the CFAR curriculum were closer to the Sequences and were also in my view worse (for instance, CFAR no longer teaches Bayes’s Theorem).
Not all of this has been fully visible to the public, though at least some of it is—for instance, here is Duncan’s post explaining Double Crux, one of CFAR’s “post-Sequences” innovations. I don’t think there are posts for every new technique but I do quite think there’s progress being made, some of which is reflected on LW.
Bayes occupies a place of privilege in the Sequences and for some time had a place of privilege in the CFAR curriculum as well, but it didn’t much work and so we stopped. I’m not saying it’s bad in principle, I’m saying it empirically didn’t work as a class for intro workshops despite our trying many different approaches.
You might dispute whether that’s a positive change, but it’s certainly a way in which I see “the state of the art” as having shifted over time.
Right, your comment was informative in letting us know that Double Crux (among other things) has replaced Bayes’ Theorem in the CFAR curriculum. But it also casually asserts that this is an example of progress and that the old curriculum was worse, in a way that suggests that you expected the reader to either already agree or immediately find it obvious. So I’m just letting you know that I don’t find it obvious.
I appreciate the concrete example. I was expecting more abstract topics, but applied rationality is also important. Double Cruxes pass the criteria of being novel and the criteria of being well known. I can only question if they actually work or made an impact (I don’t think I see many examples of them in LW), and if LW actually contributed to their discovery (apart from promoting CFAR).
As someone who worked for CFAR full-time from early 2014 to mid-late 2016 and still teaches at CFAR workshops fairly regularly as a contractor, I can tell you that there has definitely been progress from the “Sequences era” style of rationality to what we are currently teaching. Earlier versions of the CFAR curriculum were closer to the Sequences and were also in my view worse (for instance, CFAR no longer teaches Bayes’s Theorem).
Not all of this has been fully visible to the public, though at least some of it is—for instance, here is Duncan’s post explaining Double Crux, one of CFAR’s “post-Sequences” innovations. I don’t think there are posts for every new technique but I do quite think there’s progress being made, some of which is reflected on LW.
There might be some question about whether this can be described as “definitely making progress.”
Bayes occupies a place of privilege in the Sequences and for some time had a place of privilege in the CFAR curriculum as well, but it didn’t much work and so we stopped. I’m not saying it’s bad in principle, I’m saying it empirically didn’t work as a class for intro workshops despite our trying many different approaches.
You might dispute whether that’s a positive change, but it’s certainly a way in which I see “the state of the art” as having shifted over time.
Right, your comment was informative in letting us know that Double Crux (among other things) has replaced Bayes’ Theorem in the CFAR curriculum. But it also casually asserts that this is an example of progress and that the old curriculum was worse, in a way that suggests that you expected the reader to either already agree or immediately find it obvious. So I’m just letting you know that I don’t find it obvious.
I appreciate the concrete example. I was expecting more abstract topics, but applied rationality is also important. Double Cruxes pass the criteria of being novel and the criteria of being well known. I can only question if they actually work or made an impact (I don’t think I see many examples of them in LW), and if LW actually contributed to their discovery (apart from promoting CFAR).