I’ve done less circling than Davis, and only really in the context of the rationality community, so I am even less of an expert here, but this basically sums up my perspective on circling as well. It seems pretty good in a narrow set of contexts, doesn’t seem to have super much to do with the core art of rationality, and falls in the category of things that seem to make people overconfident about the positive effects they produce (similar to memory palaces or lucid dreaming).
I do think it can help with a bunch of pretty important rationality skills, and might be covering some bases that are particularly deficient in the people who are currently part of this community (i.e. something like access to your felt senses and nuanced models of social reality).
Agree. I suspect ‘Circling’ per se is missing the forest for the trees (disclaimer, have only circled 10ish times), though they are adjacent to/accidentally facilitate something that actually works which I would be more likely to point to with the moniker ‘group mindfulness.’
The reason I think the actual thing is a rationality tool is that it, like meditation, is a lens polisher (the lens that sees its own flaws). You can use them as fora for noticing and then messing with your perceptual apertures as well as having other people point out cracks in your lens that you thought were in the territory. Strongly agree with the people saying that you don’t get the core thing if you don’t have a facilitator who knows enought to give detailed instructions and feedback. In the same way that if you get a poor meditation instructor you will just have a nice relaxing time without ever actually doing the thing, poor circlling will lead to the emotional benefits mentioned and if some people are starved for that it will get mistaken for the thing. It also requires very high trust to do the real thing, which random groups of 4-12 will not generally pull off.
I’ve done less circling than Davis, and only really in the context of the rationality community, so I am even less of an expert here, but this basically sums up my perspective on circling as well. It seems pretty good in a narrow set of contexts, doesn’t seem to have super much to do with the core art of rationality, and falls in the category of things that seem to make people overconfident about the positive effects they produce (similar to memory palaces or lucid dreaming).
I do think it can help with a bunch of pretty important rationality skills, and might be covering some bases that are particularly deficient in the people who are currently part of this community (i.e. something like access to your felt senses and nuanced models of social reality).
Agree. I suspect ‘Circling’ per se is missing the forest for the trees (disclaimer, have only circled 10ish times), though they are adjacent to/accidentally facilitate something that actually works which I would be more likely to point to with the moniker ‘group mindfulness.’
The reason I think the actual thing is a rationality tool is that it, like meditation, is a lens polisher (the lens that sees its own flaws). You can use them as fora for noticing and then messing with your perceptual apertures as well as having other people point out cracks in your lens that you thought were in the territory. Strongly agree with the people saying that you don’t get the core thing if you don’t have a facilitator who knows enought to give detailed instructions and feedback. In the same way that if you get a poor meditation instructor you will just have a nice relaxing time without ever actually doing the thing, poor circlling will lead to the emotional benefits mentioned and if some people are starved for that it will get mistaken for the thing. It also requires very high trust to do the real thing, which random groups of 4-12 will not generally pull off.