Another potential cause of the narrow focus, I think, is some people in fact expecting the vast majority of impact to be from a small group of orgs they mostly already know about. Curious whether you disagree with that expectation (i.e., you think the impact distribution of orgs is flatter than that), or whether you’re just claiming that e.g. the distribution of applicants should be flatter regardless?
Adam_Scholl
Karma: 96
Currently CFAR is on sabbatical, which we planned to allocate a couple months this year toward anyway. I.e., we’re reading, and learning and scheming, and in general trying to improve ourselves in ways that are hard to find time for during our normally-dense workshop schedule.
We’re considering a range of options for what to do next—e.g. online workshops, zoom mentoring, helping other orgs in some way—but we haven’t yet settled on a decision.
[Link] We run the Center for Applied Rationality, AMA
[Link] CFAR: Progress Report & Future Plans
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.
At one point an EA fund manager told me something like, “the infrastructure fund refuses to support anything involving rationality/rationalists as a policy.” Did a policy like this exist? Does it still?