The MATS Models post contains a bunch of my models after updating on how working with Aysajan went. About half the exercises in that post are things I tested with Aysajan (prototypical examples, framing, existing evidence, all the writing stuff), and a bunch of them are made to address specific skill-bottlenecks which I noticed by working with Aysajan (especially the sort of stuff in What Are You Tracking In Your Head?).
Updates besides those:
We explicitly did not focus on alignment/AI; the idea was to get a practice loop going on other hard problems. I don’t think that loop ever really properly got going.
One contributing mistake: I gave Aysajan lots of freedom in what problems to focus on; in hindsight I think I should have assigned problems, especially early on.
I now think we did some things in the wrong order.
We covered a bunch of technical content early on (especially via framing exercises); I now think practice with prototypical examples should have come before that. I didn’t realize until pretty late that the prototypical examples skill was super-important and missing, and I think having that skill dramatically increases the returns to technical study in general.
We spent a lot of time on problem choice early on (like e.g. Hamming questions). As mentioned above, I now think I should have assigned problems early on and worked on problem choice later.
Having worked with both Aysajan and the MATS teams, I’ve updated toward both full-time attention and (small) teams mattering a lot. ~3 people working together on the same problems basically full-time in the same room results in way more focus than other setups, given the same level of attention from me.
I’m very curious for an update on how this went and what you both learned.
The MATS Models post contains a bunch of my models after updating on how working with Aysajan went. About half the exercises in that post are things I tested with Aysajan (prototypical examples, framing, existing evidence, all the writing stuff), and a bunch of them are made to address specific skill-bottlenecks which I noticed by working with Aysajan (especially the sort of stuff in What Are You Tracking In Your Head?).
Updates besides those:
We explicitly did not focus on alignment/AI; the idea was to get a practice loop going on other hard problems. I don’t think that loop ever really properly got going.
One contributing mistake: I gave Aysajan lots of freedom in what problems to focus on; in hindsight I think I should have assigned problems, especially early on.
I now think we did some things in the wrong order.
We covered a bunch of technical content early on (especially via framing exercises); I now think practice with prototypical examples should have come before that. I didn’t realize until pretty late that the prototypical examples skill was super-important and missing, and I think having that skill dramatically increases the returns to technical study in general.
We spent a lot of time on problem choice early on (like e.g. Hamming questions). As mentioned above, I now think I should have assigned problems early on and worked on problem choice later.
Having worked with both Aysajan and the MATS teams, I’ve updated toward both full-time attention and (small) teams mattering a lot. ~3 people working together on the same problems basically full-time in the same room results in way more focus than other setups, given the same level of attention from me.