Not all the skills I learned were new, but instructors were good at showing me how to apply them more broadly (i.e. I already usually priced small expenditures against the cost of chocolate lava cake at a restaurant as my $/food pleasure utility benchmark, but I didn’t have pins for other things of value to me, like my time
Some of the useful things I learned were software (Remember the Milk and Freemind, especially). I didn’t know much about these tools before, and it was really helpful to have instructors go over specific ways they used them, work through upcoming projects with me, answer follow-up questions months later, and do specific tie-ins to things we learned in other units
The best thing about the minicamp was its coherency. Over the first few days, the skills felt a bit piecemeal, but by the end of the week, I had learned how to make a lot of the discrete skills and tricks reinforce each other,
Specific things that improved as the result of attending minicamp:
I do a fair amount of freelance writing, and I think I’ve gotten about 1.5x-2x faster at turning out writing.
I spend a lot less time/mental energy/stress trying to keep track of tasks, and it’s easy for me to set up tripwires for commitments in the far future (I’ve already got a reminder set to schedule a Ramond Llull party this summer, setting quick tasks to email an article I like to a friend so I don’t have to keep muttering it to myself til I’m by my email).
I’m more likely to use precommitments to reduce analysis paralysis (I’ll try getting to the mall to run this errand, but if it takes more than 10 minutes to get to the highway, I’ll give up and won’t feel bad; I don’t know when I want to get a cookie because I want a cookie or because I want a treat, so I’ll go to random.org and take a 1/3 chance instead of worrying about whether I ought to)
I’m a ″people-hater’ with a reasonable record of behavior self-modification; how much of what you learned is (or more importantly, is not) covered in Checklist of Rationality Habits or elsewhere on the site?
If you’re a “people-hater” who is able to easily self-modify, why do you still “hate” people? Are you sure you’re not rationalizing the usefulness of your dislike of others? What do you find yourself saying to yourself and others about what being a “people-hater” achieves for you. Are there other ways for you to achieve those without hating people? What do you find yourself saying to yourself and others about why it’s hard to change? What if in a group of 20+ people interested in rationality, someone has a cool trick you haven’t tried?
Even if you’re 90% sure you should hate people, you’re 10% sure you shouldn’t. Supposing you were wrong, what would it be worth to you, e.g. in hours of happiness or positive effects on others, integrated over the rest of your life, to find that out? You’d have an interesting chance of finding that out immersed for a few days in a group of people who could produce interesting arguments for both sides of the issue.
I say this as someone who used to dislike people a lot, changed on purpose, and am now happier and doing better for it ;)
ETA But I think I see what Anna is saying about not attending if you hate being near people...
I don’t actually hate people, I’m just very averse towards socializing with unfamiliar people in that sort of environment described, and was just paraphrasing that same point for emphasis.
They will swiftly become familiar people. If you think that spending three days around two dozen people would be a terrible experience, then I recommend against applying; if you just consider yourself not very social, I recommend applying.
I attended the July week-long camp, AMA.
Some of my post-camp impressions:
Not all the skills I learned were new, but instructors were good at showing me how to apply them more broadly (i.e. I already usually priced small expenditures against the cost of chocolate lava cake at a restaurant as my $/food pleasure utility benchmark, but I didn’t have pins for other things of value to me, like my time
Some of the useful things I learned were software (Remember the Milk and Freemind, especially). I didn’t know much about these tools before, and it was really helpful to have instructors go over specific ways they used them, work through upcoming projects with me, answer follow-up questions months later, and do specific tie-ins to things we learned in other units
The best thing about the minicamp was its coherency. Over the first few days, the skills felt a bit piecemeal, but by the end of the week, I had learned how to make a lot of the discrete skills and tricks reinforce each other,
Specific things that improved as the result of attending minicamp:
I do a fair amount of freelance writing, and I think I’ve gotten about 1.5x-2x faster at turning out writing.
I spend a lot less time/mental energy/stress trying to keep track of tasks, and it’s easy for me to set up tripwires for commitments in the far future (I’ve already got a reminder set to schedule a Ramond Llull party this summer, setting quick tasks to email an article I like to a friend so I don’t have to keep muttering it to myself til I’m by my email).
I’m more likely to use precommitments to reduce analysis paralysis (I’ll try getting to the mall to run this errand, but if it takes more than 10 minutes to get to the highway, I’ll give up and won’t feel bad; I don’t know when I want to get a cookie because I want a cookie or because I want a treat, so I’ll go to random.org and take a 1/3 chance instead of worrying about whether I ought to)
I’m studying martial arts.
I’m a ″people-hater’ with a reasonable record of behavior self-modification; how much of what you learned is (or more importantly, is not) covered in Checklist of Rationality Habits or elsewhere on the site?
If you’re a “people-hater” who is able to easily self-modify, why do you still “hate” people? Are you sure you’re not rationalizing the usefulness of your dislike of others? What do you find yourself saying to yourself and others about what being a “people-hater” achieves for you. Are there other ways for you to achieve those without hating people? What do you find yourself saying to yourself and others about why it’s hard to change? What if in a group of 20+ people interested in rationality, someone has a cool trick you haven’t tried?
Even if you’re 90% sure you should hate people, you’re 10% sure you shouldn’t. Supposing you were wrong, what would it be worth to you, e.g. in hours of happiness or positive effects on others, integrated over the rest of your life, to find that out? You’d have an interesting chance of finding that out immersed for a few days in a group of people who could produce interesting arguments for both sides of the issue.
I say this as someone who used to dislike people a lot, changed on purpose, and am now happier and doing better for it ;)
ETA But I think I see what Anna is saying about not attending if you hate being near people...
I don’t actually hate people, I’m just very averse towards socializing with unfamiliar people in that sort of environment described, and was just paraphrasing that same point for emphasis.
They will swiftly become familiar people. If you think that spending three days around two dozen people would be a terrible experience, then I recommend against applying; if you just consider yourself not very social, I recommend applying.
This! :)