I think they’re OK. I think some CFAR staff are really great. I think that their incidental effect of causing people to have more social ties to the rationalist/EA Bay Area community is probably pretty good.
I’ve done CFAR-esque exercises at AIRCS workshops which were very helpful to me. I think my general sense is that a bunch of CFAR material has a “true form” which is pretty great, but I didn’t get the true form from my CFAR workshop, I got it from talking to Anna Salamon (and somewhat from working with other CFAR staff).
I think that for (possibly dumb) personal reasons I get more annoyed by them than some people, which prevents me from getting as much value out of them.
I generally am glad to hear that an EA has done a CFAR workshop, and normally recommend that EAs do them, especially if they don’t have as much social connection to the EA/rationalist scene, or if they don’t have high opportunity cost to their time.
For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t describe the social ties thing as incidental—it’s one of the main things CFAR is explicitly optimizing for. For example, I’d estimate (my colleagues might quibble with these numbers some) it’s 90% of the reason we run alumni reunions, 60% of the reason we run instructor & mentorship trainings, 30% of the reason we run mainlines, and 15% of the reason we co-run AIRCS.
How long ago did you attend your CFAR workshop? My sense is that the content CFAR teaches and who the teachers are have changed a lot over the years. Maybe they’ve gotten better (or worse?) about teaching the “true form.”
(Or maybe you were saying you also didn’t get the “true form” even in the more recent AIRCS workshops?)
I think they’re OK. I think some CFAR staff are really great. I think that their incidental effect of causing people to have more social ties to the rationalist/EA Bay Area community is probably pretty good.
I’ve done CFAR-esque exercises at AIRCS workshops which were very helpful to me. I think my general sense is that a bunch of CFAR material has a “true form” which is pretty great, but I didn’t get the true form from my CFAR workshop, I got it from talking to Anna Salamon (and somewhat from working with other CFAR staff).
I think that for (possibly dumb) personal reasons I get more annoyed by them than some people, which prevents me from getting as much value out of them.
I generally am glad to hear that an EA has done a CFAR workshop, and normally recommend that EAs do them, especially if they don’t have as much social connection to the EA/rationalist scene, or if they don’t have high opportunity cost to their time.
For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t describe the social ties thing as incidental—it’s one of the main things CFAR is explicitly optimizing for. For example, I’d estimate (my colleagues might quibble with these numbers some) it’s 90% of the reason we run alumni reunions, 60% of the reason we run instructor & mentorship trainings, 30% of the reason we run mainlines, and 15% of the reason we co-run AIRCS.
Yeah, makes sense; I didn’t mean “unintentional” by “incidental”.
How long ago did you attend your CFAR workshop? My sense is that the content CFAR teaches and who the teachers are have changed a lot over the years. Maybe they’ve gotten better (or worse?) about teaching the “true form.”
(Or maybe you were saying you also didn’t get the “true form” even in the more recent AIRCS workshops?)