What are you going to do about sleep? The 9:30P − 5A schedule the US Army uses? A 3A-12N schedule? Will you schedule night owls and morning larks differently, or force everyone to be one type?
One of the intentions of boot camp is shared suffering. The last line of the parent comment was sort of a joke, but the more I think about it the more serious it is. Hazing actually increases group strength, and one of basic’s functions is as a giant hazing program. Drill sergeants are trained to be hateable in a precise way. Is shared suffering one of your goals? Are you skilled at controlling how you make other people suffer?
Suffering is a big part of being a soldier and being physically active, but not necessarily part of being a rationalist and being mentally active. Will you keep that for the group effects, or try and make the process as pleasant as possible? Is rationality training something that goes better when you force it, like physical training or unit cohesion, or something that goes worse when you force it? Will you try to manage/preserve the curiosity of students, and how? How skilled are you at detecting and manipulating the bounds of human endurance?
Is there a reason you picked boot camp (training to become a soldier) as a model instead of novice or postulant in the Bayesian Order (training to become a monk)? Monks do the things you mention, and tend to have a more recognizably mental focus than soldiers, and seem much like a much more obvious model.
I’ve gone twice to IHS seminars (applications close in a week!), and greatly enjoyed the experience. They’re week-long, with 4 105 minute lectures a day, lots of discussion time, and a nightly social that supposedly ends at midnight, before (optional) breakfast the next morning at 8. The other students are great, and I still keep up with several that I’ve met there, but the professors are the real draw. The slogan is “sleep less and think more,” and it’s clear by the end of the week that the pace isn’t sustainable (the middle day has a free afternoon which I use to catch up on sleep, so I tend to be better off than most).
I still can’t get over the time. 10 weeks is basic combat training. 10 weeks is Y Combinator (and they’re the same 10 weeks). 10 weeks is two summer sessions at college, or almost a full long semester. 660 hours at California’s minimum wage is $5,280. A 10-week communal experience is a good format for many things, but I don’t yet see why it’s a good format for rationality training, and risking that much time on something under someone else’s control seems risky at best.
I agree with Vaniver about the time commitment issue. Even ignoring being able to find things for people to do for all that time, and accounting for burnout, and similar troubles, there remains the problem that ten weeks is a sizeable portion of someone’s life. Most people, especially those who work during the summer, will have a lot of difficulty putting their lives on hold for two and a half months.
At this point in my life, I could not sacrifice a summer of job experience (and the money I would earn from that). I would be happy, ecstatic even, to attend something like this for one, maybe two, weeks, but ten is simply too much time. Running shorter workshops would also let you do some research, and iron out the wrinkles before you try something on this scale.
I appreciate what you’re trying to accomplish, and it’s a great idea, and a valiant effort, but I think you’re going too big, too fast.
(Disclaimer: As a past SIAI Visiting Fellow and current Bay Area resident, I’ve talked to Jasen about his plans, but do not speak for him or SIAI.)
I think you may be overextending the “boot camp” analogy a bit beyond the intended connotations of organization/discipline/intensity. That said:
Suffering is a big part of being a soldier and being physically active, but not necessarily part of being a rationalist and being mentally active.
Doing anything hard often involves fear, frustration, self-doubt, disapproval, sacrifice, and other sorts of pain. Not suffering in response to these signals, and not letting them overly sway your actions (giving up too soon, or not doing scary things) is really useful. Make no mistake, the intent of the course is not just to train theoretical rationality, but to enable people to do hard and meaningful things.
(I don’t mean to say that causing suffering is an intended part of the course, just to state why I think learning to withstand pain is more important to becoming a formidable rationalist than it sounds like you do.)
Will you keep that for the group effects, or try and make the process as pleasant as possible? Is rationality training something that goes better when you force it, like physical training or unit cohesion, or something that goes worse when you force it? Will you try to manage/preserve the curiosity of students, and how? How skilled are you at detecting and manipulating the bounds of human endurance?
I don’t mean to say that causing suffering is an intended part of the course, just to state why I think learning to withstand pain is more important to becoming a formidable rationalist than it sounds like you do.
I agree with you that it is very important and a very valuable skill. What I was trying to get across is that the suffering faced by a solider and a rationalist are different kinds of suffering, and the same strategies may not be effective. Does the ability to continue pumping iron, despite your screaming muscles, translate into the ability to speak in public, despite your screaming brain?
Does the ability to continue pumping iron, despite your screaming muscles, translate into the ability to speak in public, despite your screaming brain?
Interesting. I haven’t had any fear of public speaking, and so I don’t know what it’s like to overcome it (while I do have difficulty motivating myself to continue exercising). Are there other mental fears / obstacles that seem like good examples?
I guess ‘noticing a bias’ might be an entirely orthogonal skill, but I’m not sure if that’s applicable.
Mind you I wouldn’t call pumping iron despite your screaming muscles a particularly efficient way to improve your ability to speak in public despite your screaming brain. But it certainly helps. Some relevant mediating factors:
Improved willpower and self control.
Decreased salience of psychological distress—you can feel the discomfort without it needing to control or define you.
Increased testosterone levels promote social risk-taking.
Physical conditioning increases self esteem—your perception of your own status. The instinct to not draw public attention—and not place yourself above your station—is intrinsically linked to your relative status levels.
Exercise changes posture. Even things as simple as standing differently change how difficult public speaking is!
Regarding your comments on “shared suffering,” increasing group strength, I find it interesting that the original poster mentions, “And then at the end, some of us are going to go to Burning Man for training in desert survival and living in an emotionally positive community.” I have heard many people comment that the shared hardships of the Playa (dust storms, wild temperature swings, alkaline corrosion of everything around, and paralyzing post-rain mud, to name a few) are much of what makes the community work as well as it does. Having attended last year, I’m inclined to agree, but would love to understand more concretely (data, research, …) what aspects, if any, of Burner culture (gifting, for example?) can be causally linked to shared hardship.
Back on topic, wouldn’t this be a great chance for a study on shared hardship? Put half of the participants on the top floor of a leaky dorm with no elevator and old, crummy utilities, and the other half in cushy appartments… maybe change locations halfway through, so the “advantage” is reversed.
Though I guess with only 10-15 participants, the amount of useful data will be limited.
In any case, if the organizers doesn’t already know about the cohesion-inducing effects of shared hardship, they may well learn about them at Burning Man...
It seems likely to me that people invest more in friends when things are going poorly because that’s when friends are more valuable. When you’re in a desert, you probably realize on some level that foraging is a bad strategy and you are a hairless primate dependent on the other hairless primates around you. But I don’t know a way to test that explanation.
More thoughts:
What are you going to do about sleep? The 9:30P − 5A schedule the US Army uses? A 3A-12N schedule? Will you schedule night owls and morning larks differently, or force everyone to be one type?
One of the intentions of boot camp is shared suffering. The last line of the parent comment was sort of a joke, but the more I think about it the more serious it is. Hazing actually increases group strength, and one of basic’s functions is as a giant hazing program. Drill sergeants are trained to be hateable in a precise way. Is shared suffering one of your goals? Are you skilled at controlling how you make other people suffer?
Suffering is a big part of being a soldier and being physically active, but not necessarily part of being a rationalist and being mentally active. Will you keep that for the group effects, or try and make the process as pleasant as possible? Is rationality training something that goes better when you force it, like physical training or unit cohesion, or something that goes worse when you force it? Will you try to manage/preserve the curiosity of students, and how? How skilled are you at detecting and manipulating the bounds of human endurance?
Is there a reason you picked boot camp (training to become a soldier) as a model instead of novice or postulant in the Bayesian Order (training to become a monk)? Monks do the things you mention, and tend to have a more recognizably mental focus than soldiers, and seem much like a much more obvious model.
I’ve gone twice to IHS seminars (applications close in a week!), and greatly enjoyed the experience. They’re week-long, with 4 105 minute lectures a day, lots of discussion time, and a nightly social that supposedly ends at midnight, before (optional) breakfast the next morning at 8. The other students are great, and I still keep up with several that I’ve met there, but the professors are the real draw. The slogan is “sleep less and think more,” and it’s clear by the end of the week that the pace isn’t sustainable (the middle day has a free afternoon which I use to catch up on sleep, so I tend to be better off than most).
I still can’t get over the time. 10 weeks is basic combat training. 10 weeks is Y Combinator (and they’re the same 10 weeks). 10 weeks is two summer sessions at college, or almost a full long semester. 660 hours at California’s minimum wage is $5,280. A 10-week communal experience is a good format for many things, but I don’t yet see why it’s a good format for rationality training, and risking that much time on something under someone else’s control seems risky at best.
I agree with Vaniver about the time commitment issue. Even ignoring being able to find things for people to do for all that time, and accounting for burnout, and similar troubles, there remains the problem that ten weeks is a sizeable portion of someone’s life. Most people, especially those who work during the summer, will have a lot of difficulty putting their lives on hold for two and a half months.
At this point in my life, I could not sacrifice a summer of job experience (and the money I would earn from that). I would be happy, ecstatic even, to attend something like this for one, maybe two, weeks, but ten is simply too much time. Running shorter workshops would also let you do some research, and iron out the wrinkles before you try something on this scale.
I appreciate what you’re trying to accomplish, and it’s a great idea, and a valiant effort, but I think you’re going too big, too fast.
(Disclaimer: As a past SIAI Visiting Fellow and current Bay Area resident, I’ve talked to Jasen about his plans, but do not speak for him or SIAI.)
I think you may be overextending the “boot camp” analogy a bit beyond the intended connotations of organization/discipline/intensity. That said:
Doing anything hard often involves fear, frustration, self-doubt, disapproval, sacrifice, and other sorts of pain. Not suffering in response to these signals, and not letting them overly sway your actions (giving up too soon, or not doing scary things) is really useful. Make no mistake, the intent of the course is not just to train theoretical rationality, but to enable people to do hard and meaningful things.
(I don’t mean to say that causing suffering is an intended part of the course, just to state why I think learning to withstand pain is more important to becoming a formidable rationalist than it sounds like you do.)
These are good questions.
I agree with you that it is very important and a very valuable skill. What I was trying to get across is that the suffering faced by a solider and a rationalist are different kinds of suffering, and the same strategies may not be effective. Does the ability to continue pumping iron, despite your screaming muscles, translate into the ability to speak in public, despite your screaming brain?
Thanks!
Yes.
Interesting. I haven’t had any fear of public speaking, and so I don’t know what it’s like to overcome it (while I do have difficulty motivating myself to continue exercising). Are there other mental fears / obstacles that seem like good examples?
I guess ‘noticing a bias’ might be an entirely orthogonal skill, but I’m not sure if that’s applicable.
Mind you I wouldn’t call pumping iron despite your screaming muscles a particularly efficient way to improve your ability to speak in public despite your screaming brain. But it certainly helps. Some relevant mediating factors:
Improved willpower and self control.
Decreased salience of psychological distress—you can feel the discomfort without it needing to control or define you.
Increased testosterone levels promote social risk-taking.
Physical conditioning increases self esteem—your perception of your own status. The instinct to not draw public attention—and not place yourself above your station—is intrinsically linked to your relative status levels.
Exercise changes posture. Even things as simple as standing differently change how difficult public speaking is!
Regarding your comments on “shared suffering,” increasing group strength, I find it interesting that the original poster mentions, “And then at the end, some of us are going to go to Burning Man for training in desert survival and living in an emotionally positive community.” I have heard many people comment that the shared hardships of the Playa (dust storms, wild temperature swings, alkaline corrosion of everything around, and paralyzing post-rain mud, to name a few) are much of what makes the community work as well as it does. Having attended last year, I’m inclined to agree, but would love to understand more concretely (data, research, …) what aspects, if any, of Burner culture (gifting, for example?) can be causally linked to shared hardship.
Back on topic, wouldn’t this be a great chance for a study on shared hardship? Put half of the participants on the top floor of a leaky dorm with no elevator and old, crummy utilities, and the other half in cushy appartments… maybe change locations halfway through, so the “advantage” is reversed.
Though I guess with only 10-15 participants, the amount of useful data will be limited.
In any case, if the organizers doesn’t already know about the cohesion-inducing effects of shared hardship, they may well learn about them at Burning Man...
It seems likely to me that people invest more in friends when things are going poorly because that’s when friends are more valuable. When you’re in a desert, you probably realize on some level that foraging is a bad strategy and you are a hairless primate dependent on the other hairless primates around you. But I don’t know a way to test that explanation.