Just to add another single datapoint, I have had a very different experience of living around Berkeley rationalists. The people around me are constantly pushing me to actually think through the positions I put forward, to ground my beliefs more firmly in reality, and to think more deeply in general. Where three years ago (when I moved here) I was painfully shy and hopelessly intimidated by the intellectual conversations around me, I’m now much more self-confident and much slower to defer to others epistemically. I have learned to tackle big projects and face problems without immediately giving up. The changes are somewhat nebulous (i.e. it’s not like I had some very tangible change like going to the gym every day), but they’re very clear to anyone who interacted with me three years ago vs today. I definitely don’t think most of this would happened if I weren’t around the Berkeley rationalists. I wasn’t exactly doing deliberate practice, but I also didn’t just sit around hoping for osmosis to make me cooler—like Ray, I think I really benefited from the ‘try things’ mindset. I was constantly throwing myself out of my comfort zone, and while it often went quite poorly, I’m happy with the end result.
Most credit goes to Habryka for meeting me where I was at while simultaneously always encouraging me to push my boundaries, but the fact that literally everyone I live with has gone through CFAR instructor training certainly also helps, as did working at a few rationalist/EA orgs and having casual interactions with people who I know are a lot smarter and better at rationality than me.
Just to add another single datapoint, I have had a very different experience of living around Berkeley rationalists. The people around me are constantly pushing me to actually think through the positions I put forward, to ground my beliefs more firmly in reality, and to think more deeply in general. Where three years ago (when I moved here) I was painfully shy and hopelessly intimidated by the intellectual conversations around me, I’m now much more self-confident and much slower to defer to others epistemically. I have learned to tackle big projects and face problems without immediately giving up. The changes are somewhat nebulous (i.e. it’s not like I had some very tangible change like going to the gym every day), but they’re very clear to anyone who interacted with me three years ago vs today. I definitely don’t think most of this would happened if I weren’t around the Berkeley rationalists. I wasn’t exactly doing deliberate practice, but I also didn’t just sit around hoping for osmosis to make me cooler—like Ray, I think I really benefited from the ‘try things’ mindset. I was constantly throwing myself out of my comfort zone, and while it often went quite poorly, I’m happy with the end result.
Most credit goes to Habryka for meeting me where I was at while simultaneously always encouraging me to push my boundaries, but the fact that literally everyone I live with has gone through CFAR instructor training certainly also helps, as did working at a few rationalist/EA orgs and having casual interactions with people who I know are a lot smarter and better at rationality than me.