Anna Salamon has reduced her involvement in the last few years and seems significantly less involved with the broader strategic direction of CFAR (though she is still involved in some of the day-to-day operations, curriculum development, and more recent CFAR programmer workshops). [Note: After talking to Anna about this, I am now less certain of whether this actually applies and am currently confused on this point]
Could someone clarify the situation? (Possible sub-questions: Why did Oliver get this impression? Why was he confused even after talking talking to Anna? To what extent and in what ways has Anna reduced her involvement in CFAR in the last few years? If Anna has reduced her involvement in CFAR, what is she spending her time on instead?)
I’ve worked closely with CFAR since it’s founding in 2012, for varying degrees of closely (ranging from ~25 hrs/week to ~60 hrs/week). My degree of involvement in CFAR’s high-level and mid-level strategic decisions has varied some, but at the moment is quite high, and is likely to continue to be quite high for at least the coming 12 months.
During work-type hours in which I’m not working for CFAR, my attention is mostly on MIRI on MIRI’s technical research. I do a good bit of work with MIRI (though I am not employed by MIRI—I just do a lot of work with them), much of which also qualifies as CFAR work (e.g., running the AIRCS workshops and assisting with the MIRI hiring process; or hanging out with MIRI researchers who feel “stuck” about some research/writing/etc. type thing and want a CFAR-esque person to help them un-stick). I also do a fair amount of work with MIRI that does not much overlap CFAR (e.g. I am a MIRI board member).
Oliver remained confused after talking with me in April because in April I was less certain how involved I was going to be in upcoming strategic decisions. However, it turns out the answer was “lots.” I have a lot of hopes and vision for CFAR over the coming years, and am excited about hashing it out with Tim and others at CFAR, and seeing what happens as we implement; and Tim and others seem excited about this as well.
My attention oscillates some across the years between MIRI and CFAR, based partly on the needs of each organization and partly on e.g. there being some actual upsides to me taking a backseat under Pete as he (and Duncan and others) made CFAR into more of a functioning institution in ways I would’ve risked reflexively meddling with. But there has been much change in the landscape CFAR is serving, and it’s time I think for there to be much change also in e.g. our curriculum, our concept of “rationality”, our relationship to community, and how we run our internal processes—and I am really excited to be able to be closely involved with CFAR this year, in alliance with Tim and others.
Back in April, Oliver Habryka wrote:
Could someone clarify the situation? (Possible sub-questions: Why did Oliver get this impression? Why was he confused even after talking talking to Anna? To what extent and in what ways has Anna reduced her involvement in CFAR in the last few years? If Anna has reduced her involvement in CFAR, what is she spending her time on instead?)
I’ve worked closely with CFAR since it’s founding in 2012, for varying degrees of closely (ranging from ~25 hrs/week to ~60 hrs/week). My degree of involvement in CFAR’s high-level and mid-level strategic decisions has varied some, but at the moment is quite high, and is likely to continue to be quite high for at least the coming 12 months.
During work-type hours in which I’m not working for CFAR, my attention is mostly on MIRI on MIRI’s technical research. I do a good bit of work with MIRI (though I am not employed by MIRI—I just do a lot of work with them), much of which also qualifies as CFAR work (e.g., running the AIRCS workshops and assisting with the MIRI hiring process; or hanging out with MIRI researchers who feel “stuck” about some research/writing/etc. type thing and want a CFAR-esque person to help them un-stick). I also do a fair amount of work with MIRI that does not much overlap CFAR (e.g. I am a MIRI board member).
Oliver remained confused after talking with me in April because in April I was less certain how involved I was going to be in upcoming strategic decisions. However, it turns out the answer was “lots.” I have a lot of hopes and vision for CFAR over the coming years, and am excited about hashing it out with Tim and others at CFAR, and seeing what happens as we implement; and Tim and others seem excited about this as well.
My attention oscillates some across the years between MIRI and CFAR, based partly on the needs of each organization and partly on e.g. there being some actual upsides to me taking a backseat under Pete as he (and Duncan and others) made CFAR into more of a functioning institution in ways I would’ve risked reflexively meddling with. But there has been much change in the landscape CFAR is serving, and it’s time I think for there to be much change also in e.g. our curriculum, our concept of “rationality”, our relationship to community, and how we run our internal processes—and I am really excited to be able to be closely involved with CFAR this year, in alliance with Tim and others.