Re: “it comes from CFAR, which is an anti-endorsement.”
I find that a large majority of people who have a moderate-to-strong negative opinion of CFAR have either a) never subjected that opinion to falsification or b) not checked in since forming the opinion a long time ago.
Generally speaking, when I engage with such people, they come away much less hesitant or skeptical or critical, and I believe this is because of justified updates rather than because of e.g. me having a persuasive reality distortion field.
Most of the updates come in one of the following forms:
Ah, okay, CFAR’s made significant improvements along this axis that I was right to criticize it on.
Ah, okay, CFAR is aware that this attribute that it has isn’t ideal; I thought they were proceeding in ignorance but in fact they’re making a cost-benefit decision and while I might disagree with their weighting I am less concerned that they’re blind or stupid.
Ah, okay, this criticism I had was based on assumptions that are simply false, or on information that is simply inaccurate, and while CFAR maybe deserves some blame for imperfect image management and creating-or-allowing-others-to-create those impressions, the problem I thought existed literally doesn’t exist.
Said, if you would like to engage publicly with me regarding your own hesitations/criticisms/suspicions, I’m happy to make double crux motions unilaterally from my end as we do so, and then you’d have at least half of a public instance of double crux. (I won’t insist that you use the frame yourself until you’re at least convinced that it has potential.)
I do note that my mainline prediction for “this doesn’t work or doesn’t happen” is something like “Said claims that it’s not worth his time and attention to repair his impression of CFAR, given opportunity costs and prioritization and expected outcomes according to his models.” That seems fair and plausibly correct, but if that’s the case, I do request that in future criticisms you flag that your negative model of my org is resistant to falsification.
I appreciate pretty much everything about your reply up above.
Agreement that there was a false equivalency re: right now vs. ever.
Agreement that my phrasing presupposed an outcome (though that makes sense when you take the context of “the guy talking is the curriculum director at CFAR”). I predict that outcome, optimistically, but in fact the actual target should be and is “investigate” not “repair.”
Unfortunately for the goal of record-keeping and evidence-creation, most of those interactions have taken place in person. I could generate stories about what they’re like, but a better option seems to be “start taking notes now when they happen, and ask permission to make said notes public with reasonable anonymity.”
Thanks for responding 100% positively/exactly as I would hope a LWer would respond. I’d love it if you let me know if I myself am not living up to that standard, as you gently did above.