get inspired about the important mission you’re all on
relax
brainstorm ambitious plans to save the future
generally have a good time
You go to a gym to:
exercise
that is, repeat a particular movement over and over, paying attention to the motion as you go, being very deliberate about using it correctly
gradually trying new or heavier moves to improve in areas you are weak in
maybe talk and socialise—but that is secondary to your primary focus of becoming stronger
in fact, it is common knowledge that the point is to practice, and you will not get socially punished for trying really hard, or stopping a conversation quickly and then just focus on your own thing in silence, or making weird noises or grunts, or sweating… in fact, this is all expected
not necessarily have a good time, but invest in your long-term health, strength and flexibility
One key distinction here is effort.
Going to a bar is low effort. Going to a gym is high effort.
In fact, going to gym requires such a high effort that most people have a constant nagging guilt about doing it. They proceed to set up accountability systems with others, hire personal trainers, use habit installer apps, buy gym memberships as commitment devices, use clever hacks to always have their gym bag packed and ready to go, introspect on their feelings off anxiety about it and try to find work-arounds or sports which suit them, and so forth…
People know gyms are usually a schlep, yet they also know going there is important, so they accept that they’ll have to try really hard to build systems which get them exercising.
However, things seem different for rationality. I’ve often heard people go “this rationality stuff doesn’t seem very effective, people just read some blog posts and go to a workshop or two, but don’t really seem more effective than other mortals”.
But we wouldn’t be surprised if someone said “this fitness stuff doesn’t seem very effective, some of my friends just read some physiology bloggers and then went to a 5-day calisthenics bootcamp once, but they’re not in good shape at all”. Of course they aren’t!
I think I want to suggest two improvements:
1) On the margin, we should push more for a cultural norm of deliberate practice in the art of rationality.
It should be natural to get together with your friends once a week and use OpenPhil’s calibration app, do Thinking Physics problems, practice CFAR techniques, etc…
2) But primarily: we build gyms.
Gyms are places where hundreds of millions of dollars of research have gone into designing equipment specifically allowing you to exercise certain muscles. There are also changing rooms to help you get ready, norms around how much you talk (or not) to help people focus, personal trainers who can give you advice, saunas and showers to help you relax afterwards...
For rationality, we basically have nothing like this [1]. Each time you want to practice rationality, you basically have to start by inventing your own exercises.
[1] The only example I know of is Kocherga, which seems great. But I don’t know a lot about what they’re doing, and ideally which should have rationality gyms either online or in every major hub, not just Moscow.
I personally find the word “need” (like in the title) a bit aversive. I think it’s generally meant as, “the benefit is higher than the opportunity cost”; but even that is a difficult statement. The word itself seems to imply necessary, and my guess is that some people would read “need” thinking it’s “highly certian.”
While I obviously have hesitation with religious groups, they have figured out a bunch of good things. Personally my gym is a very solo experience; I think that the community in churches and monasteries may make them better as a thing to learn from. I thought Sunday Assembly seemed interesting, though when I attended one, it kind of had a “Sunday School” vibe, which turned me off. I think I like the futurist/hackerspace/unconference/EA/philosopher combination personally, if such a combination could exist.
1. I did think about that when I wrote it, and it’s a bit strong. (I set myself a challenge to write and publish this in 15 min, so didn’t spent any more time optimising the title.) Other recommendations welcome. Thinking about the actual claim though, I find myself quite confident that something in this direction is right. (A larger uncertainty would be if it is the best thing for us to sink resources into, compared to other interventions).
2. Agree that there seems to be lots of black-box wisdom embedded in the institutions and practices of religions, and could be cool to try to unwrap it and import some good lessons.
I will note though that there’s a difference between:
the Sunday sermon thing (which to me seems more useful for building common knowledge, community, and a sense of mission and virtue).
the gym idea, which is much more about deliberate practice, starting from wherever you’re currently at
My main issue with “need” isn’t really that it’s strong, but that I predict it’s often misunderstood; people use it for all different levels of strength.
Fair point about the Sunday sermon thing. Some religious groups though do encourage lots of practice in religious settings though. (Like prayer in Islam)
I agree with the spirit of your point, but I think we would be better served by a category anchored by an example other than a modern gym.
To me the problem is that the modern gym is atomized and transactional: going to the gym is generally a solitary activity, even when you take a class or go with friends, because it’s about your workout and not collaboratively achieving something. There are notable exceptions, but most of the time when I think of people going to the gym I imagine them working out as individuals for individual purposes.
Rationality training takes more. It requires bumping up against other people to see what happens when you “meet the enemy” of reality, and doing that in a productive way requires a kind of collective safety or trust in your fellow participants to both meet you fairly and to support you even while correcting you. Maybe this was a feature of the classic Greek gymnasium, but I find it lacking from most modern gyms.
We do have another kind of place that does regularly engage in this kind of mutual engagement in practice that is not atomized or transactional, and that’s the dojo. The salient example to most people will be the dojo for practicing a martial art, and that’s a place where trust and shared purpose exist. Sure, you might spend time on your own learning forms, but once you have mastered the basics you’ll be engaged with other students head on in situations where, if one of you doesn’t do what you should, one or both of you can get seriously injured. Thus it is with rationality training, although there the injuries are emotional or mental rather than physical.
I haven’t been to a dojo (except briefly as a kid) so don’t have a clear model what it’s about.
Not sure how I feel about the part on “you must face off against an opponent, and you run the risk of getting hurt”. I think I disagree, and might write up why later.
Agree with you and the OP, and note that the difference between my mental trope of gym and dojo is that I can go to the gym whenever, but is a place where practices happen at specifically scheduled times. I can see wanting both.
I’m not sure we have any rationalist pubs. We don’t have much physical space that’s decidated to rationality.
We do have plenty of events and while some events are more about social interaction we also have events that are more about training skills. CFAR has (or had?) their weekly dojo and many other cities like Berlin (where I live) have their own weekly dojo event.
I didn’t know about weekly dojos and have never attended any, that sounds very exciting. Tell me more about what happens at the Berlin weekly dojo events?
Also, to clarify, I meant both “pubs” and “gyms” metaphorically—i.e. lots of what happens on LessWrong is like a pub in the above sense, whereas other things, like the recent exercise prize, is like a gym.
The overall structure we have in Berlin is at the moment every Monday:
19:00-19:10 Meditation (Everyone that’s late can only enter after the meditation is finished)
19:10-19:20 Check commitments that were made last week and only people to brag about other accomplishments
19:20-19:30 Two sessions of Resolve Cycles (we still use the Focused Grit name)
19:30-19:40 Session Planning
19:40-20:05 First Session
20:05-20:10 Break
20:10-20:35 Second Session
20:35-20:40 Break
20:40-21:05 Third Session
21:05-21:10 Break
21:10-21:15 Set commitments for the next week
Individual sessions are proposed in the session planning and everybody can go to sessions they find interesting. Sometimes there are sessions in parallel.
Some sessions are about practicing CFAR techniques, some about Hamming Circles for individual issues of a person. Some are also about information exchanges like exchanging ways to use Anki.
Our dojo is invite-only and people who are members are expected to attend regularly. Every dojo session is hosted by one of the dojo members and the person who hosts the session is supposed to bring at least one session. Everyone is expected to host in a given time frame.
We now have the dojo I think for over a year and that’s the structure which evolved. It has the advantage that there’s no need for one person to do a huge amount of preparation. In the CFAR version Valentine used to present new techniques every week but that was part of the job of being in charge of curriculum development at CFAR.
We also have a monthly meetup that usually mixes some rationality technique with social hangout at a 50:50 ratio.
1) What are some examples of what “practicing CFAR techniques” looks like?
2) To what extent are dojos expected to do “new things” vs. repeated practice of a particular thing?
For example, I’d say there’s a difference between a gym and a… marathon? match? I think there’s more of the latter in the community at the moment: attempting to solve particular bugs using whatever means are necessary.
Rationality has pubs; we need gyms
Consider the difference between a pub and a gym.
You go to a pub with your rationalist friends to:
hang out
discuss interesting ideas
maybe maths a bit in a notebook someone brought
gossip
get inspired about the important mission you’re all on
relax
brainstorm ambitious plans to save the future
generally have a good time
You go to a gym to:
exercise
that is, repeat a particular movement over and over, paying attention to the motion as you go, being very deliberate about using it correctly
gradually trying new or heavier moves to improve in areas you are weak in
maybe talk and socialise—but that is secondary to your primary focus of becoming stronger
in fact, it is common knowledge that the point is to practice, and you will not get socially punished for trying really hard, or stopping a conversation quickly and then just focus on your own thing in silence, or making weird noises or grunts, or sweating… in fact, this is all expected
not necessarily have a good time, but invest in your long-term health, strength and flexibility
One key distinction here is effort.
Going to a bar is low effort. Going to a gym is high effort.
In fact, going to gym requires such a high effort that most people have a constant nagging guilt about doing it. They proceed to set up accountability systems with others, hire personal trainers, use habit installer apps, buy gym memberships as commitment devices, use clever hacks to always have their gym bag packed and ready to go, introspect on their feelings off anxiety about it and try to find work-arounds or sports which suit them, and so forth…
People know gyms are usually a schlep, yet they also know going there is important, so they accept that they’ll have to try really hard to build systems which get them exercising.
However, things seem different for rationality. I’ve often heard people go “this rationality stuff doesn’t seem very effective, people just read some blog posts and go to a workshop or two, but don’t really seem more effective than other mortals”.
But we wouldn’t be surprised if someone said “this fitness stuff doesn’t seem very effective, some of my friends just read some physiology bloggers and then went to a 5-day calisthenics bootcamp once, but they’re not in good shape at all”. Of course they aren’t!
I think I want to suggest two improvements:
1) On the margin, we should push more for a cultural norm of deliberate practice in the art of rationality.
It should be natural to get together with your friends once a week and use OpenPhil’s calibration app, do Thinking Physics problems, practice CFAR techniques, etc…
2) But primarily: we build gyms.
Gyms are places where hundreds of millions of dollars of research have gone into designing equipment specifically allowing you to exercise certain muscles. There are also changing rooms to help you get ready, norms around how much you talk (or not) to help people focus, personal trainers who can give you advice, saunas and showers to help you relax afterwards...
For rationality, we basically have nothing like this [1]. Each time you want to practice rationality, you basically have to start by inventing your own exercises.
[1] The only example I know of is Kocherga, which seems great. But I don’t know a lot about what they’re doing, and ideally which should have rationality gyms either online or in every major hub, not just Moscow.
Few small points
I personally find the word “need” (like in the title) a bit aversive. I think it’s generally meant as, “the benefit is higher than the opportunity cost”; but even that is a difficult statement. The word itself seems to imply necessary, and my guess is that some people would read “need” thinking it’s “highly certian.”
While I obviously have hesitation with religious groups, they have figured out a bunch of good things. Personally my gym is a very solo experience; I think that the community in churches and monasteries may make them better as a thing to learn from. I thought Sunday Assembly seemed interesting, though when I attended one, it kind of had a “Sunday School” vibe, which turned me off. I think I like the futurist/hackerspace/unconference/EA/philosopher combination personally, if such a combination could exist.
1. I did think about that when I wrote it, and it’s a bit strong. (I set myself a challenge to write and publish this in 15 min, so didn’t spent any more time optimising the title.) Other recommendations welcome. Thinking about the actual claim though, I find myself quite confident that something in this direction is right. (A larger uncertainty would be if it is the best thing for us to sink resources into, compared to other interventions).
2. Agree that there seems to be lots of black-box wisdom embedded in the institutions and practices of religions, and could be cool to try to unwrap it and import some good lessons.
I will note though that there’s a difference between:
the Sunday sermon thing (which to me seems more useful for building common knowledge, community, and a sense of mission and virtue).
the gym idea, which is much more about deliberate practice, starting from wherever you’re currently at
My main issue with “need” isn’t really that it’s strong, but that I predict it’s often misunderstood; people use it for all different levels of strength.
Fair point about the Sunday sermon thing. Some religious groups though do encourage lots of practice in religious settings though. (Like prayer in Islam)
I agree with the spirit of your point, but I think we would be better served by a category anchored by an example other than a modern gym.
To me the problem is that the modern gym is atomized and transactional: going to the gym is generally a solitary activity, even when you take a class or go with friends, because it’s about your workout and not collaboratively achieving something. There are notable exceptions, but most of the time when I think of people going to the gym I imagine them working out as individuals for individual purposes.
Rationality training takes more. It requires bumping up against other people to see what happens when you “meet the enemy” of reality, and doing that in a productive way requires a kind of collective safety or trust in your fellow participants to both meet you fairly and to support you even while correcting you. Maybe this was a feature of the classic Greek gymnasium, but I find it lacking from most modern gyms.
We do have another kind of place that does regularly engage in this kind of mutual engagement in practice that is not atomized or transactional, and that’s the dojo. The salient example to most people will be the dojo for practicing a martial art, and that’s a place where trust and shared purpose exist. Sure, you might spend time on your own learning forms, but once you have mastered the basics you’ll be engaged with other students head on in situations where, if one of you doesn’t do what you should, one or both of you can get seriously injured. Thus it is with rationality training, although there the injuries are emotional or mental rather than physical.
I haven’t been to a dojo (except briefly as a kid) so don’t have a clear model what it’s about.
Not sure how I feel about the part on “you must face off against an opponent, and you run the risk of getting hurt”. I think I disagree, and might write up why later.
Agree with you and the OP, and note that the difference between my mental trope of gym and dojo is that I can go to the gym whenever, but is a place where practices happen at specifically scheduled times. I can see wanting both.
I’m not sure we have any rationalist pubs. We don’t have much physical space that’s decidated to rationality.
We do have plenty of events and while some events are more about social interaction we also have events that are more about training skills. CFAR has (or had?) their weekly dojo and many other cities like Berlin (where I live) have their own weekly dojo event.
I didn’t know about weekly dojos and have never attended any, that sounds very exciting. Tell me more about what happens at the Berlin weekly dojo events?
Also, to clarify, I meant both “pubs” and “gyms” metaphorically—i.e. lots of what happens on LessWrong is like a pub in the above sense, whereas other things, like the recent exercise prize, is like a gym.
The overall structure we have in Berlin is at the moment every Monday:
19:00-19:10 Meditation (Everyone that’s late can only enter after the meditation is finished)
19:10-19:20 Check commitments that were made last week and only people to brag about other accomplishments
19:20-19:30 Two sessions of Resolve Cycles (we still use the Focused Grit name)
19:30-19:40 Session Planning
19:40-20:05 First Session
20:05-20:10 Break
20:10-20:35 Second Session
20:35-20:40 Break
20:40-21:05 Third Session
21:05-21:10 Break
21:10-21:15 Set commitments for the next week
Individual sessions are proposed in the session planning and everybody can go to sessions they find interesting. Sometimes there are sessions in parallel.
Some sessions are about practicing CFAR techniques, some about Hamming Circles for individual issues of a person. Some are also about information exchanges like exchanging ways to use Anki.
Our dojo is invite-only and people who are members are expected to attend regularly. Every dojo session is hosted by one of the dojo members and the person who hosts the session is supposed to bring at least one session. Everyone is expected to host in a given time frame.
We now have the dojo I think for over a year and that’s the structure which evolved. It has the advantage that there’s no need for one person to do a huge amount of preparation. In the CFAR version Valentine used to present new techniques every week but that was part of the job of being in charge of curriculum development at CFAR.
We also have a monthly meetup that usually mixes some rationality technique with social hangout at a 50:50 ratio.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Rxz6uvTayTjDGk3Rq/personal-story-about-benefits-of-rationality-dojo-and is a story from a dojo that happened in Ohio. Given that the link to the dojo website is dead, it might be that the dojo died.
Thanks for describing that! Some questions:
1) What are some examples of what “practicing CFAR techniques” looks like?
2) To what extent are dojos expected to do “new things” vs. repeated practice of a particular thing?
For example, I’d say there’s a difference between a gym and a… marathon? match? I think there’s more of the latter in the community at the moment: attempting to solve particular bugs using whatever means are necessary.
Rationality gym (of a certain flavor): https://www.monasticacademy.com