it seems to say more about the effectiveness of local meetups vs. just reading about rationality.
Or the importance of interaction, especially live interaction, when it comes to changing your thought processes.
In particular, there’s quite a bit of value to getting real-time feedback about the thought processes you’re actually using at a given moment of time. By default, we tend to respond to descriptions of dysfunctional thought patterns by projecting them onto other people, and are not necessarily able to recognize the same pattern in ourselves… particularly if it’s an intuitive, system 1 type of process.
Sometimes, I think that of the services I provide as a mind hacking instructor, the most critical one is providing real-time distinctions between a student’s observations and confabulations. (Critical in the sense that without that basic distinction, the student will not be able to develop enough internal observation to be able to reliably apply any other change techniques on their own.)
When I hang out with other rationalists in real time, they can actually respond to and point out particular thought processes. Sometimes it’s pointing out or joking about a particular bias, other times it’s just waggling their eyebrow and asking if I’m sure.
The real-time feedback helps learning so much it’s ridiculous. The 1 week I spent in San Francisco probably saved me a few months of time, and there are specific useful insights that I don’t think I would have ever come up with on my own.
The point about interaction is a good one. I’ve been thinking to some extent about that, but I hadn’t considered the benefits of live interaction. That’s definitely easier to get when you have people meeting face to face. We’ll want to brainstorm some ways of getting an element of live interaction into an online setting.
Or the importance of interaction, especially live interaction, when it comes to changing your thought processes.
In particular, there’s quite a bit of value to getting real-time feedback about the thought processes you’re actually using at a given moment of time. By default, we tend to respond to descriptions of dysfunctional thought patterns by projecting them onto other people, and are not necessarily able to recognize the same pattern in ourselves… particularly if it’s an intuitive, system 1 type of process.
Sometimes, I think that of the services I provide as a mind hacking instructor, the most critical one is providing real-time distinctions between a student’s observations and confabulations. (Critical in the sense that without that basic distinction, the student will not be able to develop enough internal observation to be able to reliably apply any other change techniques on their own.)
This.
When I hang out with other rationalists in real time, they can actually respond to and point out particular thought processes. Sometimes it’s pointing out or joking about a particular bias, other times it’s just waggling their eyebrow and asking if I’m sure.
The real-time feedback helps learning so much it’s ridiculous. The 1 week I spent in San Francisco probably saved me a few months of time, and there are specific useful insights that I don’t think I would have ever come up with on my own.
The point about interaction is a good one. I’ve been thinking to some extent about that, but I hadn’t considered the benefits of live interaction. That’s definitely easier to get when you have people meeting face to face. We’ll want to brainstorm some ways of getting an element of live interaction into an online setting.
It can still be done online, e.g. Google+ Hangouts are an example of live group interaction (up to 10 people) that seems to be fairly popular.
The experience still isn’t as rich as in-person meeting, but it’s a big step up from pre-recorded video.