(The argument is that) A lot of the CFAR workshop material is very context dependent, and would lose significant value if distilled into text or video. Personally speaking, a lot of what I got out of the workshop was only achievable in the intensive environment—the casual discussion about the material, the reasons behind why you might want to do something, etc - a lot of it can’t be conveyed in a one hour video. Now, maybe CFAR could go ahead and try to get at least some of the content value into videos, etc, but that has two concerns. One is the reputational problem with ‘publishing’ lesser-quality material, and the other is sorta-almost akin to the ‘valley of bad rationality’. If you teach someone, say, the mechanics of aversion therapy, but not when to use it, or they learn a superficial version of the principle, that can be worse than never having learned it at all, and it seems plausible that this is true of some of the CFAR material also.
I agree that there are concerns, and you would lose a lot of the depth, but my real concern is with how this makes me perceive CFAR. When I am told that there are things I can’t see/hear until I pay money, it makes me feel like it’s all some sort of money making scheme, and question whether the goal is actually just to teach as many people as much as possible, or just to maximize revenue. Again, let me clarify that I’m not trying to attack CFAR, I believe that they probably are an honest and good thing, but I’m trying to convey how I initially feel when I’m told that I can’t get certain material until I pay money.
It’s akin to my personal heuristic of never taking advice from anyone who stands to gain from my decision. Being told by people at CFAR that I can’t see this material until I pay the money is the opposite of how I want to decide to attend a workshop, I instead want to see the tapes or read the raw material and decide on my own that I would benefit from being in person.
Yeah, I feel these objections, and I don’t think your heuristic is bad. I would say, though, and I hold no brief for CFAR, never having donated or attended a workshop, that there is another heuristic possibly worth considering: generally more valuable products are not free. There are many exceptions to this, and it is possible for sellers to counterhack this common heuristic by using higher prices to falsely signal higher quality to consumers. But the heuristic is not worthless, it just has to be applied carefully.
We do offer some free classes in the Bay Area. As we beta-test tweaks or work on developing new material, we invite people in to give us feedback on classes in development. We don’t charge for these test sessions, and, if you’re local, you can sign up here. Obviously, this is unfortunately geographically limited. We do have a sample workshop schedule up, so you can get a sense of what we teach.
If the written material online isn’t enough, you can try to chat with one of us if we’re in town (I dropped in on a NYC group at the beginning of August). Or you can drop in an application, and you’ll automatically be chatting with one of us and can ask as many questions as you like in a one-on-one interview. Applying doesn’t create any obligation to buy; the skype interview is meant to help both parties learn more about each other.
While you have good points, I would like to say that making money is not unaligned with the goal of teaching as many people as possible. It seems like a good strategy is to develop high-quality material by starting off teaching only those able to pay. This lets some subsidize the development of more open course material. If they haven’t gotten to the point where they have released the subsidized material, then I’d give them some more time and judge them again in some years. It’s a young organization trying to create material from scratch in many areas.
I feel your concerns, but tbh I think the main disconnect is the research/development vs teaching dichotomy, not (primarily) the considerations I mentioned. The volunteers at the workshop (who were previous attendees) were really quite emphatic about how much they had improved, including content and coherency as well as organization.
(April 2013 Workshop Attendee)
(The argument is that) A lot of the CFAR workshop material is very context dependent, and would lose significant value if distilled into text or video. Personally speaking, a lot of what I got out of the workshop was only achievable in the intensive environment—the casual discussion about the material, the reasons behind why you might want to do something, etc - a lot of it can’t be conveyed in a one hour video. Now, maybe CFAR could go ahead and try to get at least some of the content value into videos, etc, but that has two concerns. One is the reputational problem with ‘publishing’ lesser-quality material, and the other is sorta-almost akin to the ‘valley of bad rationality’. If you teach someone, say, the mechanics of aversion therapy, but not when to use it, or they learn a superficial version of the principle, that can be worse than never having learned it at all, and it seems plausible that this is true of some of the CFAR material also.
I agree that there are concerns, and you would lose a lot of the depth, but my real concern is with how this makes me perceive CFAR. When I am told that there are things I can’t see/hear until I pay money, it makes me feel like it’s all some sort of money making scheme, and question whether the goal is actually just to teach as many people as much as possible, or just to maximize revenue. Again, let me clarify that I’m not trying to attack CFAR, I believe that they probably are an honest and good thing, but I’m trying to convey how I initially feel when I’m told that I can’t get certain material until I pay money.
It’s akin to my personal heuristic of never taking advice from anyone who stands to gain from my decision. Being told by people at CFAR that I can’t see this material until I pay the money is the opposite of how I want to decide to attend a workshop, I instead want to see the tapes or read the raw material and decide on my own that I would benefit from being in person.
Yeah, I feel these objections, and I don’t think your heuristic is bad. I would say, though, and I hold no brief for CFAR, never having donated or attended a workshop, that there is another heuristic possibly worth considering: generally more valuable products are not free. There are many exceptions to this, and it is possible for sellers to counterhack this common heuristic by using higher prices to falsely signal higher quality to consumers. But the heuristic is not worthless, it just has to be applied carefully.
We do offer some free classes in the Bay Area. As we beta-test tweaks or work on developing new material, we invite people in to give us feedback on classes in development. We don’t charge for these test sessions, and, if you’re local, you can sign up here. Obviously, this is unfortunately geographically limited. We do have a sample workshop schedule up, so you can get a sense of what we teach.
If the written material online isn’t enough, you can try to chat with one of us if we’re in town (I dropped in on a NYC group at the beginning of August). Or you can drop in an application, and you’ll automatically be chatting with one of us and can ask as many questions as you like in a one-on-one interview. Applying doesn’t create any obligation to buy; the skype interview is meant to help both parties learn more about each other.
While you have good points, I would like to say that making money is not unaligned with the goal of teaching as many people as possible. It seems like a good strategy is to develop high-quality material by starting off teaching only those able to pay. This lets some subsidize the development of more open course material. If they haven’t gotten to the point where they have released the subsidized material, then I’d give them some more time and judge them again in some years. It’s a young organization trying to create material from scratch in many areas.
I feel your concerns, but tbh I think the main disconnect is the research/development vs teaching dichotomy, not (primarily) the considerations I mentioned. The volunteers at the workshop (who were previous attendees) were really quite emphatic about how much they had improved, including content and coherency as well as organization.
(Relevant)