A question that has been asked before, and so may be stupid: What concrete examples are there of gains from CfAR training (or self-study based on LessWrong)? These would have to come in the form of very specific examples, preferably quantitative.
E.g. “I was $100,000 in debt and unemployed for 2 years, and now I have employment earning twice what I ever have before and am out of debt.”
“I never had a relationship that lasted more than 2 months, but now am happily married.”
“My grade point average went up from 2.2 to 3.8”
“After struggling to diet and exercise for years, I finally got on track and am now in the best shape of my life.”
I want to point out that this question doesn’t quite test for the right thing. One way an organization like CFAR can cause extreme life improvements is by encouraging participants to do extreme things generally in order to increase the variance of alumni outcomes after the workshops. That leads to potentially many extreme improvements but also potentially many extreme… disimprovements? And the latter are harder to notice because of survivorship bias. (There’s also regression to the mean to watch out for: you expect the population of CFAR workshop attendees to be somewhat selected for having life problems and those could just randomly improve afterwards.)
I expect the main benefit of CFAR training should be that it improves median outcomes; that is, that it improves alumni ability to consistently win. But this is hard to test for by asking for anecdotes: it would be better to do statistics.
You’re absolutely right. CfAR could get statistics by measuring quantifiable goals across its students: Grade point average, wealth, weight-loss; preferably with a control group. Until then, I’m just looking for any info I can get.
Fair enough. In that case, after my first CFAR workshop I lost 15 pounds over the course of a few months (mostly through changes in my diet) and started sleeping better (harder to quantify, but I would estimate at least an effective hour’s worth of extra sleep a night).
Within 3 months of attending a CFAR workshop I had left my job for one that I preferred and that paid 15% more. Within 6 months I had started exercising daily (previously once every few weeks), waking up consistently at 6am (previously varied anywhere from 8-10am), and eating significantly healthier (I also started eating vegetarian meals 2-3 times a week, previously 0). Independent of any of these concrete behaviors, I now have a very strong belief that I can intentionally construct/change my life and behavior in ways that will actually work.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc, etc. I have a fairly strong belief that attending a CFAR workshop and interacting with the alumni community has been at least partially causal in me improving my life, but I don’t think any of what I’ve said constitutes good evidence of that claim.
The first time I read the sequences, they were earth-shattering revelations that upset my entire life. The second time I read them, I could only make it few a few posts, because everything they said was obvious. So one gain for me is that existential/religious questions no longer bother me. I got answers that satisfied me, and I’ve moved on with my life. I suppose you could argue that I could have found the same answers somewhere else, but honestly, I doubt it.
Another big change is how I argue with people. One of my favorite Less Wrong ideas is the Taboo a word sequence. I use this all time. Whenever I encounter some vague statement like “Freewill is nonsense” or “We should live in a more just society” or something like that, I taboo the word and try something else. I approach words differently. I don’t know if this has improved my life, but I no longer feel as though I am incapable of expressing myself and my position.
I think I may be more rational. I know, without a doubt, that participating in LessWrong has caused me to self-identify as a rationalist, more than I would have if I had not come here. I feel that this self-identity is enriching and has made me a better person.
I try and do something I have never done before every other week. This habit was inspired and reinforced by Less Wrong. This has made me less afraid to do new things.
I often catch myself rationalizing. This didn’t used to happen, I think.
I’ve installed various mental habits from my time on Less Wrong. My habit of trying to notice rationalization as it happens, in combination with the “Tsuyoku Naritai” attitude, led me to become much more serious about physical fitness. In the last fourteen months, I’ve gone from moderately overweight and sedentary to lean, fit, and strong, with a minimum of the motivation issues that had previously prevented me.
I’ve never attended CFAR and am not especially deeply involved with LW, so this may not really be the kind of example you’re looking for.
Search “Rationality Diaries” on LW to see a huge archive of examples from recent years. (Those are places where users upload recent stories of victory from their lives.)
I worked as a neuroscience research assistant for 5 years. For the latter 3 of those years, I had wanted to leave that job and move on to something better, but had been unable to make a decision about what to pursue and to actually pursue it.
7 months after my first CFAR workshop, I started a new job making 25% more. There were other causal factors. Part of the motivation to do job searching was due to the fact that my research position would be ending, and part of the salary increase was due to the fact that I left academia. But I also credit CFAR training, including the follow-ups and the support I got from the community, as a significant cause of this success.
Other semi-quantifiable changes:
-I keep a budget now.
-I’m investing money for retirement each month. I was not investing any before.
-I’ve learned 1.5 new programming languages, and have learned several new statistical analysis methods (consider that I was doing almost nothing in terms of job-relevant skill development prior to CFAR).
-I’ve started a biweekly productivity meeting at my apartment (before I did not organize events other than the occasional party).
I’ve made many other changes in my life regarding habits, learning and practicing new things, and pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone. Perhaps the most important thing for me is that I no longer have the sense of being overwhelmed by life, or of there being large categories of things that I just can’t do. I’d say this is mostly the result of a cascade of changes that occurred in my life due to attending CFAR. And to repeat what nbouscal said, I feel like I can change my life in ways that will both work and feel good.
Most benefits (that I can recognize) aren’t particularly concrete. Some things (like the length of my relationship) could be in part of internalizing LW concepts but I have no way to measure it.
The biggest concrete impact is that I’ve grown more social. Not just within the aspiring rationalist community (also that’s also a big part of it) but by slowly expanding my comfort zone and having a bigger understanding on what I find important in different kinds of social encounters.
Not a very satisfactory answer, I assume. I think that’s because of two reasons:
My life wasn’t in a good spot the last year (or even two years) due to things that were more or less out of my direct control. Not the best circumstances to execute big life-changing plans.
A lot of the benefits I’ve gotten from hanging out on LW are relatively small. They do add up to larger increases in my wellbeing, but nothing particularly concrete.
If you want marketing materials or want to estimate the upper bound, the question is useful. If you think you’ll get some sort of a representative sample, um, sorry to disappoint you...
A story about how someone got a result usually contains more than just the result. It suggest what kind of techniques the person learned and makes responsible for the success. It can also tell you about the background of the person.
Case studies are useful to start thinking about a subject.
Quite right. There are always people who undergo spontaneous improvement, and if we cherry-pick success stories, we might just come up with those examples. I’d rather have a proper statistical study, and I think that CfAR is working on that. But until then, I’ll make do with success stories.
Could a psychological payoff be specific enough as well? Would e.g. “an embellished sense of intellectual superiority” be too vague for the purpose of your question?
A question that has been asked before, and so may be stupid: What concrete examples are there of gains from CfAR training (or self-study based on LessWrong)? These would have to come in the form of very specific examples, preferably quantitative.
E.g. “I was $100,000 in debt and unemployed for 2 years, and now I have employment earning twice what I ever have before and am out of debt.”
“I never had a relationship that lasted more than 2 months, but now am happily married.”
“My grade point average went up from 2.2 to 3.8”
“After struggling to diet and exercise for years, I finally got on track and am now in the best shape of my life.”
etc.
I want to point out that this question doesn’t quite test for the right thing. One way an organization like CFAR can cause extreme life improvements is by encouraging participants to do extreme things generally in order to increase the variance of alumni outcomes after the workshops. That leads to potentially many extreme improvements but also potentially many extreme… disimprovements? And the latter are harder to notice because of survivorship bias. (There’s also regression to the mean to watch out for: you expect the population of CFAR workshop attendees to be somewhat selected for having life problems and those could just randomly improve afterwards.)
I expect the main benefit of CFAR training should be that it improves median outcomes; that is, that it improves alumni ability to consistently win. But this is hard to test for by asking for anecdotes: it would be better to do statistics.
You’re absolutely right. CfAR could get statistics by measuring quantifiable goals across its students: Grade point average, wealth, weight-loss; preferably with a control group. Until then, I’m just looking for any info I can get.
Fair enough. In that case, after my first CFAR workshop I lost 15 pounds over the course of a few months (mostly through changes in my diet) and started sleeping better (harder to quantify, but I would estimate at least an effective hour’s worth of extra sleep a night).
Within 3 months of attending a CFAR workshop I had left my job for one that I preferred and that paid 15% more. Within 6 months I had started exercising daily (previously once every few weeks), waking up consistently at 6am (previously varied anywhere from 8-10am), and eating significantly healthier (I also started eating vegetarian meals 2-3 times a week, previously 0). Independent of any of these concrete behaviors, I now have a very strong belief that I can intentionally construct/change my life and behavior in ways that will actually work.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc, etc. I have a fairly strong belief that attending a CFAR workshop and interacting with the alumni community has been at least partially causal in me improving my life, but I don’t think any of what I’ve said constitutes good evidence of that claim.
The first time I read the sequences, they were earth-shattering revelations that upset my entire life. The second time I read them, I could only make it few a few posts, because everything they said was obvious. So one gain for me is that existential/religious questions no longer bother me. I got answers that satisfied me, and I’ve moved on with my life. I suppose you could argue that I could have found the same answers somewhere else, but honestly, I doubt it.
Another big change is how I argue with people. One of my favorite Less Wrong ideas is the Taboo a word sequence. I use this all time. Whenever I encounter some vague statement like “Freewill is nonsense” or “We should live in a more just society” or something like that, I taboo the word and try something else. I approach words differently. I don’t know if this has improved my life, but I no longer feel as though I am incapable of expressing myself and my position.
I think I may be more rational. I know, without a doubt, that participating in LessWrong has caused me to self-identify as a rationalist, more than I would have if I had not come here. I feel that this self-identity is enriching and has made me a better person.
I try and do something I have never done before every other week. This habit was inspired and reinforced by Less Wrong. This has made me less afraid to do new things.
I often catch myself rationalizing. This didn’t used to happen, I think.
I’ve installed various mental habits from my time on Less Wrong. My habit of trying to notice rationalization as it happens, in combination with the “Tsuyoku Naritai” attitude, led me to become much more serious about physical fitness. In the last fourteen months, I’ve gone from moderately overweight and sedentary to lean, fit, and strong, with a minimum of the motivation issues that had previously prevented me.
I’ve never attended CFAR and am not especially deeply involved with LW, so this may not really be the kind of example you’re looking for.
OK, that’s a pretty specific benefit. Thanks.
Search “Rationality Diaries” on LW to see a huge archive of examples from recent years. (Those are places where users upload recent stories of victory from their lives.)
Thank you, those have some excellent answers to my question.
I worked as a neuroscience research assistant for 5 years. For the latter 3 of those years, I had wanted to leave that job and move on to something better, but had been unable to make a decision about what to pursue and to actually pursue it.
7 months after my first CFAR workshop, I started a new job making 25% more. There were other causal factors. Part of the motivation to do job searching was due to the fact that my research position would be ending, and part of the salary increase was due to the fact that I left academia. But I also credit CFAR training, including the follow-ups and the support I got from the community, as a significant cause of this success.
Other semi-quantifiable changes: -I keep a budget now. -I’m investing money for retirement each month. I was not investing any before. -I’ve learned 1.5 new programming languages, and have learned several new statistical analysis methods (consider that I was doing almost nothing in terms of job-relevant skill development prior to CFAR). -I’ve started a biweekly productivity meeting at my apartment (before I did not organize events other than the occasional party).
I’ve made many other changes in my life regarding habits, learning and practicing new things, and pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone. Perhaps the most important thing for me is that I no longer have the sense of being overwhelmed by life, or of there being large categories of things that I just can’t do. I’d say this is mostly the result of a cascade of changes that occurred in my life due to attending CFAR. And to repeat what nbouscal said, I feel like I can change my life in ways that will both work and feel good.
Most benefits (that I can recognize) aren’t particularly concrete. Some things (like the length of my relationship) could be in part of internalizing LW concepts but I have no way to measure it.
The biggest concrete impact is that I’ve grown more social. Not just within the aspiring rationalist community (also that’s also a big part of it) but by slowly expanding my comfort zone and having a bigger understanding on what I find important in different kinds of social encounters.
Not a very satisfactory answer, I assume. I think that’s because of two reasons:
My life wasn’t in a good spot the last year (or even two years) due to things that were more or less out of my direct control. Not the best circumstances to execute big life-changing plans.
A lot of the benefits I’ve gotten from hanging out on LW are relatively small. They do add up to larger increases in my wellbeing, but nothing particularly concrete.
Maybe I’ve got a better answer in a year.
If you want marketing materials or want to estimate the upper bound, the question is useful. If you think you’ll get some sort of a representative sample, um, sorry to disappoint you...
A story about how someone got a result usually contains more than just the result. It suggest what kind of techniques the person learned and makes responsible for the success. It can also tell you about the background of the person.
Case studies are useful to start thinking about a subject.
Quite right. There are always people who undergo spontaneous improvement, and if we cherry-pick success stories, we might just come up with those examples. I’d rather have a proper statistical study, and I think that CfAR is working on that. But until then, I’ll make do with success stories.
I think the question is a useful one even if it fails to elicit useful answers.
I went from being single to being in a relationship that’s still going 2ish years later but who knows if going to a CFAR thing was at all responsible.
Could a psychological payoff be specific enough as well? Would e.g. “an embellished sense of intellectual superiority” be too vague for the purpose of your question?
That’s the Dunning-Kruger thing, isn’t it? :-P
that’s… not a stupid question.