I strongly disagree with Greg. I think CFAR messed up very badly, but I think the way they messed up is totally consistent with also being able to add value in some situations.
We have data I find convincing suggesting a substantial fraction of top EAs got value from CFAR. ~ 5 years have passed since I went to a CFAR workshop, and I still value what I learned and think it’s been useful for my work. I would encourage other people who are curious to go (again, with the caveat that I don’t know much about the new program), if they feel like they’re in a place of relative strength and can take a discerning eye to what they’re taught.
If I, with (mostly) admirable candour, describe a series of grossly incompetent mistakes during my work as a doctor, the appropriate response may still be to disqualify me from future medical practice (there are sidelines re. incentives, but they don’t help)
I think doctor is a really disanalogous example to use; doctors are in one of the relatively few professions where screwups regularly lead to death; we want to some somewhat risk-averse, with respect to doctors (and e.g. pilots or school bus drivers), at least if the screwups are the very dangerous kind (as opposed to like, being terrible at filing one’s paperwork), and aren’t based on a reasonable CBA (e.g. enrolling patients in a clinical trial with a drug that looked promising but turned out to be dangerous). For lots of other professions, this example looks way less compelling; e.g. I doubt people would think that a startup founder or movie director or author who had a bunch of failures but also some big wins should be banned from their profession or ostracized in their community. I think in-person overnight events about psychology are in a pretty in-between risk category.
As noted in the post, I got Scott’s permission before posting this.