we realized we had reached a local optimum and become stuck...So then we smashed everything with a hammer...and we think we’re now out of the local optimum
Suggestion: A unit on identifying and escaping bad local optima, if you don’t have one already. It seems to me that an awful lot of people-years are lost to situations that are sub-par but painful to get out of (e.g. crappy jobs).
Attention Workshop: A 2.5-day workshop on clearing mental space. This failed and taught us some important points about what doesn’t work.
I’d be curious to see a post-mortem on this and other failed efforts. I like that CFAR is willing to acknowledge when it’s screwed up. That I don’t find this willingness terribly surprising says some nice things about the LW-sphere it pulls from.
Generally upvoted, but I think there’s a significant difference between “tried something that didn’t work” and “screwed up”—the former is executing on a correct decision algorithm (which includes explore as well as exploit patterns), the latter means actually making a bad decision given the available information.
I’d also be curious to see an elaboration on the Attention workshop. The concept of attention as a limited and important resource was one of my main takeaways from the 4-day workshop (+discussions on the alumni list), leading me to the tools I needed to gain better focus and not feel overwhelmed all the time. Now and then I try to explain the concepts in conversations with people who I think might benefit from it, so I’d be interested in how not to do it.
Suggestion: A unit on identifying and escaping bad local optima, if you don’t have one already. It seems to me that an awful lot of people-years are lost to situations that are sub-par but painful to get out of (e.g. crappy jobs).
I’d be curious to see a post-mortem on this and other failed efforts. I like that CFAR is willing to acknowledge when it’s screwed up. That I don’t find this willingness terribly surprising says some nice things about the LW-sphere it pulls from.
Generally upvoted, but I think there’s a significant difference between “tried something that didn’t work” and “screwed up”—the former is executing on a correct decision algorithm (which includes explore as well as exploit patterns), the latter means actually making a bad decision given the available information.
I’d also be curious to see an elaboration on the Attention workshop. The concept of attention as a limited and important resource was one of my main takeaways from the 4-day workshop (+discussions on the alumni list), leading me to the tools I needed to gain better focus and not feel overwhelmed all the time. Now and then I try to explain the concepts in conversations with people who I think might benefit from it, so I’d be interested in how not to do it.
Strongly agree with the last two sentences here.