I disagree. My impression is that SPARC is important to CFAR’s strategy, and that aiming at younger people than that would have less long-term impact on how rational the participants become.
Hi Peter! I am Vadim, we met in a LW meetup in CFAR’s office last May.
You might be right that SPARC is important but I really want to hear from the horse’s mouth what is their strategy in this regard. I’m inclined to disagree with you regarding younger people, what makes you think so? Regardless of age I would guess establishing a continuous education programme would have much more impact than a two-week summer workshop. It’s not obvious what is the optimal distribution of resources (many two week workshops for many people or one long program for fewer people) but I haven’t seen such an analysis by CFAR.
Peer pressure matters, and younger people are less able to select rationalist-compatible peers (due to less control over who their peers are).
I suspect younger people have short enough time horizons that they’re less able to appreciate some of CFAR’s ideas that take time to show benefits. I suspect I have more intuitions along these lines that I haven’t figured out how to articulate.
Maybe CFAR needs better follow-ups to their workshops, but I get the impression that with people for whom the workshops are most effective, they learn (without much follow-up) to generalize CFAR’s ideas in ways that make additional advice from CFAR unimportant.
I disagree. My impression is that SPARC is important to CFAR’s strategy, and that aiming at younger people than that would have less long-term impact on how rational the participants become.
Hi Peter! I am Vadim, we met in a LW meetup in CFAR’s office last May.
You might be right that SPARC is important but I really want to hear from the horse’s mouth what is their strategy in this regard. I’m inclined to disagree with you regarding younger people, what makes you think so? Regardless of age I would guess establishing a continuous education programme would have much more impact than a two-week summer workshop. It’s not obvious what is the optimal distribution of resources (many two week workshops for many people or one long program for fewer people) but I haven’t seen such an analysis by CFAR.
Peer pressure matters, and younger people are less able to select rationalist-compatible peers (due to less control over who their peers are).
I suspect younger people have short enough time horizons that they’re less able to appreciate some of CFAR’s ideas that take time to show benefits. I suspect I have more intuitions along these lines that I haven’t figured out how to articulate.
Maybe CFAR needs better follow-ups to their workshops, but I get the impression that with people for whom the workshops are most effective, they learn (without much follow-up) to generalize CFAR’s ideas in ways that make additional advice from CFAR unimportant.