basic practices must come before advanced practices
We aren’t at a point yet where we distinguish “basic” from “advanced” practices. Most of what CFAR teaches is a 4-day workshop. CFAR doesn’t try to teach anything that takes a year to understand.
The idea that basics are somehow easy to understand also mistakes a lot about what learning deep knowledge is about.
Basics are hard because they are fundamentals and affect a lot.
When dancing Salsa there was the saying: “At congresses beginners take the intermediate classes, intermediates take the advanced classes and the advanced people take the beginners classes”.
Today I was at my meditation/movement class and the teacher (with ~15 years in the method and likely much more than 10000 hours of meditation) was saying that she still fails to have a good grasp on the basic of rhythm and that it alludes her.
We aren’t at a point yet where we distinguish “basic” from “advanced” practices.
This is a good point; I have assumed that there would eventually be a hierarchy of sorts established. I was allowing for instruction being developed (whether by CFAR or someone else) even down below the levels that are usually assumed in-community. When Duncan says,
Picture throwing out a complete text version of our current best practices, exposing it to the forces of memetic > selection and evolution.
I interpret this to mean even by people who have no experience of thinking-about-thinking at all. As you aptly point out, the fundamentals are very hard—there may be demand for just such materials from future advanced rationalists for exactly that reason. So what I suggest is that the components of the instruction be segregated while retaining clear structure, and in this way minimize the skimming and corruption problems.
That being said, I fully endorse the priority choices CFAR has made thus far, and I do not share the (apparent) intensity of Duncan’s concern. I therefore understand if even evaluating whether this is a problem is a low priority.
This is a good point; I have assumed that there would eventually be a hierarchy of sorts established.
“Eventually” is a key word. I think in ten years CFAR’s curriculum will be more settled than it is today.
Take triggers action plans (TAP). They are considered a basic. In the scientific literature and in CFAR’s first workshops they were called “implementation intentions”. CFAR found that it’s useful to have a short word with TAP to be the concept more usable.
That’s not a change in something basic.
That being said, I fully endorse the priority choices CFAR has made thus far, and I do not share the (apparent) intensity of Duncan’s concern.
A while ago someone in this community tried to write a guide for a self-help technique. Let’s call him Bob. Bob read the official guide. The offical guide for the techique referenced a few ingridents that Bob didn’t kow. To do the technique properly the person doing it needs to do X and Y. Bob didn’t know what X and Y were supposed to be. Bob however was widely read in the self-help literature so he simply replaced X and Y with M and N while writting his own guide for the technique.
Bob also didn’t have much experience with actually using the technique. In that case I told Bob, don’t publish that guide and I think the draft for the guide didn’t circulate further or got more work.
I think before I went to me first self-help seminar I was like Bob. I spent 4 years spending 3 hours per day at a personal development forum where I was a moderator, so I thought I know what I was talking about. LessWrong draw people like that you read a lot but who often don’t practice techniques enough.
From this writeup take the part about CoZE exercises. The writeup says that it’s good to develop a playful attitude but if you look at it’s step by step list the steps it gives likely don’t develop a playful attitude. I don’t know the quality of CFAR’s CoZE teachings but if CFAR knows how to actually teach people to do them with a playful attitude, CFAR alumni do something that person trying to follow the writeup won’t do.
Having read the writeup might make it harder for someone who comes to CFAR to actually understand what CFAR teaches as CoZE because the person has already a preconveiced notion.
We aren’t at a point yet where we distinguish “basic” from “advanced” practices. Most of what CFAR teaches is a 4-day workshop. CFAR doesn’t try to teach anything that takes a year to understand.
The idea that basics are somehow easy to understand also mistakes a lot about what learning deep knowledge is about. Basics are hard because they are fundamentals and affect a lot.
When dancing Salsa there was the saying: “At congresses beginners take the intermediate classes, intermediates take the advanced classes and the advanced people take the beginners classes”.
Today I was at my meditation/movement class and the teacher (with ~15 years in the method and likely much more than 10000 hours of meditation) was saying that she still fails to have a good grasp on the basic of rhythm and that it alludes her.
This is a good point; I have assumed that there would eventually be a hierarchy of sorts established. I was allowing for instruction being developed (whether by CFAR or someone else) even down below the levels that are usually assumed in-community. When Duncan says,
I interpret this to mean even by people who have no experience of thinking-about-thinking at all. As you aptly point out, the fundamentals are very hard—there may be demand for just such materials from future advanced rationalists for exactly that reason. So what I suggest is that the components of the instruction be segregated while retaining clear structure, and in this way minimize the skimming and corruption problems.
That being said, I fully endorse the priority choices CFAR has made thus far, and I do not share the (apparent) intensity of Duncan’s concern. I therefore understand if even evaluating whether this is a problem is a low priority.
“Eventually” is a key word. I think in ten years CFAR’s curriculum will be more settled than it is today.
Take triggers action plans (TAP). They are considered a basic. In the scientific literature and in CFAR’s first workshops they were called “implementation intentions”. CFAR found that it’s useful to have a short word with TAP to be the concept more usable.
That’s not a change in something basic.
A while ago someone in this community tried to write a guide for a self-help technique. Let’s call him Bob. Bob read the official guide. The offical guide for the techique referenced a few ingridents that Bob didn’t kow. To do the technique properly the person doing it needs to do X and Y. Bob didn’t know what X and Y were supposed to be. Bob however was widely read in the self-help literature so he simply replaced X and Y with M and N while writting his own guide for the technique.
Bob also didn’t have much experience with actually using the technique. In that case I told Bob, don’t publish that guide and I think the draft for the guide didn’t circulate further or got more work.
I think before I went to me first self-help seminar I was like Bob. I spent 4 years spending 3 hours per day at a personal development forum where I was a moderator, so I thought I know what I was talking about. LessWrong draw people like that you read a lot but who often don’t practice techniques enough.
From this writeup take the part about CoZE exercises. The writeup says that it’s good to develop a playful attitude but if you look at it’s step by step list the steps it gives likely don’t develop a playful attitude. I don’t know the quality of CFAR’s CoZE teachings but if CFAR knows how to actually teach people to do them with a playful attitude, CFAR alumni do something that person trying to follow the writeup won’t do.
Having read the writeup might make it harder for someone who comes to CFAR to actually understand what CFAR teaches as CoZE because the person has already a preconveiced notion.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/n5h/unofficial_canon_on_applied_rationality/d4et suggests that this is writeup of CoZE does indeed recommend things fundamentally opposed to CFAR teachings.
Doing things like this in a playful way is a basic. A basic that’s hard to learn.