CFAR Participant Handbook

249 Pages·2019·27.929 MB·English

by  Center for Applied Rationality

Participant Handbook
2019
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Participant Handbook
By Duncan Sabien
How to use this book
Welcome, dear reader
Weexpectthatthereareafewkindsofpeoplewhomightfindthemselves
looking at this handbook.
IfyouhaveneverbeentoaCFARworkshop,anddon’thaveanynear-term
plans to come to one, then you may be the kind of person who would love to
settheireyesonaguidetoimprovingone’srationality,fullofstraightforward
instructions and exercises on how to think more clearly, act more effectively,
learn more from your experiences, make better decisions, and do more with
your life. This book is not that guide (nor is the workshop itself, for that
matter). It was never intended to be that guide.
This handbook began as a collection of worksheets and notes which we
handed out to people who attended our workshop sessions. That way they
would be able to refer back to these notes after the workshop, rather than
havingtofuriouslyscribbletheirownnotes. Withagreatdealofloveandat-
tentionforboththecontentsummarizedinthosehandoutsandtheirintended
audience,thesenoteshavebeenrefinedintothefarmorereadable,engaging,
and coherent handbook that you see before you, primarily by former CFAR
employee Duncan Sabien. But they are still, fundamentally, reference mate-
rial,intendedprimarilytorefreshthememoryandbolstertheunderstanding
of people who have already been through a CFAR workshop. They are not
designed to be a stand-alone guide to learning applied rationality.
What happens when someone who hasn’t been to a workshop and wants
to improve their rationality looks through this handbook? We don’t know.
Information from such people doesn’t make it back to us reliably. To take
a guess, most of the time, not all that much happens. Reading about how
to swing a tennis racket probably doesn’t have much effect on one’s tennis
game.
Youmightexpectthattennisanalogytoleadintoexhortationstoactually
try out the techniques and practice them, but (to reiterate) we don’t really
know what will happen if you actually try out the techniques and practice
themguidedonlybythistext. Ifsomeonereadsthewordsthatwe’vewritten
about the numbered steps to a technique, and forms an interpretation about
what those words mean, and tries to do the thing with their mind that
matchestheirinterpretationofthosewords,andpracticesagainandagain...
we might be surprised to see what they actually wind up doing. Maybe it’ll
be something useful, maybe not.
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While we don’t have direct data about what to do with this handbook if
you’rehopingtouseittoimproveyourrationalitywithouttheworkshop,we
will offer a guess at a recommendation: remain firmly grounded in your own
experiences, in your own judgment, in what you care about, in your existing
ways of doing things. As you come across new concepts in this handbook,
hold them up against your own experiences. If something seems like a bad
idea, don’t do it. If you do try something out, pay attention to how useful
it seems (according to however you already judge whether something seems
useful)andwhetheranythingaboutitseems“off”(accordingtohoweveryou
already judge that). If you wind up getting something useful out of this
handbook, I’d guess that it is likely to come from you tinkering around with
your existing ways of doing things (while taking some inspiration from what
you read here).
For example, when you read about a technique you might pause to think
aboutwhenit’ssupposedtobeuseful-whatclassofproblemsdothepeople
at CFAR think exists such that they expect this technique to be helpful?
And does that ring true to you?
(This is, perhaps surprisingly, not all that different from what we rec-
ommend to people at the start of a CFAR workshop. A workshop is more
about creating a space where people can reflect on how they’ve been doing
things, compare notes with other people, try out different approaches, and
build traction in useful direction than it is about mastering an established
set of techniques.)
Some briefer notes for other kinds of readers:
If you are wondering what rationality stuff CFAR has come up with,
then this book does offer glimpses into that. Although keep in mind that
it is not the CFAR workshop in book form. The number of pages that a
topic gets in the handbook does not necessarily reflect how important we
consider it or how much time it gets at a workshop, things that happen at
workshops outside of classes/concepts/techniques might not be reflected in
the handbook, and reading the lyrics isn’t quite the same as hearing a song.
IfyouknowanyonewhohasbeentoaCFARprogram,maybetryalsoasking
them about it.
If someone used a phrase that you’ve never heard before and said that
they got it from CFAR, then the handbook might be more helpful to you
since it is a reference book.
If you are going to attend an upcoming workshop and want to get a
head start, be aware that we don’t know whether reading the handbook in
advance is helpful (by getting a head start on learning the concepts) or anti-
helpful (like reading spoilers). Our uncertain & tentative recommendation is
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typically to not read the handbook in advance. If you do read parts of it in
advance, we encourage you to approach the workshop in the spirit of taking
a fresh look at things, and keep in mind that having some familiarity with
an idea still leaves a lot of room for engaging more with it.
If you have been to a CFAR workshop and are using this handbook as
a reference, then the handbook was designed just for you. The next section
goes into a bit more detail for you on how to use this book.
Further Reading:
CFARcofounderAnnaSalamon’sadviceonhowtolearnfrom“softskills”
books of varying quality.
How to learn soft skills lesswrong.com/posts/ZGzDNfNCXzfx6hYAH
Wikipedia’s take on using reference material (in particular, Wikipedia)
for self-study (in particular, in mathematics).
Help:Using Wikipedia for mathematics self-study wikipedia.org/w/
index.php?title=Help:Using Wikipedia for mathematics self-study
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Welcome, participant!
This is your content handbook. It’s meant as a reference material, so that
youcanrefreshyourselfonparticularstepsormethods,andgobeyondwhat’s
taught at the workshop. Each class has its own section, including:
• Epistemic status — This is a measure of our confidence in any given
model or technique, including whether it was developed from cognitive
science research, through practical iteration, or a mix of both. We
currently use five confidence categories:
– Preliminary/tentative. These are our most hypothetical courses,
comprising newly generated theories, experimental pedagogy, and
untested or anecdotal conjectures. While we wouldn’t include
them if they weren’t promising, they are likely to change as we
evaluate and iterate.
– Mixed. Like the courses in the preliminary/tentative category,
these include some elements that lack strong research-based un-
derpinnings, but they also rely heavily on established literature.
In general, we try to highlight which parts are more speculative.
– Anecdotally strong. This category overlaps with mixed in terms
of confidence level. Courses that are labeled anecdotally strong
generally have little or no formal research behind them, but have
been refined through iteration and feedback from participants.
– Firm. These are courses that are directly derived from or sup-
portedbyresearch,andaregenerallystraightforwardapplications
of well-known concepts in cognitive psychology, sociology, eco-
nomics, game theory, or decision theory.
– Establishedandconfirmed. Thesearethecourseswiththestrongest
possibleconfidence,basedon“laws”ratherthan“theories”—con-
cepts that have been repeatedly confirmed and interventions that
reliably have large and significant effects.
• Theory and context — None of our models or techniques were de-
velopedinavacuum;eachemergedinresponsetoacommonbias,situ-
ation, or problem, and is best used in some specific aspect of thinking,
planning,orexecution. Foreachone,wedescribethecontextsinwhich
it’s likely to be useful, as well as the observations or theories-of-mind
which informed its development.
• Step-by-step breakdown — The most basic how-to for each tech-
nique, with specific steps in specific order. Usually, this is not the best
or “final form” of a given piece of the art of rationality—instead, this
is your known-good jumping-off point as you tinker and try your own
experiments.
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• Resources for further exploration—We’vepulledtogetherawide
range of books, articles, and online sources for you to deepen your
understanding of the core theory behind our curriculum, or explore
further beyond the basic techniques.
Whileyoumaybetemptedtoreadaheadbeforeattendingtheassociated
classes, be forewarned—we’ve often found that participants have a harder
timegraspingagiventechniqueifthey’vealreadyanchoredthemselvesonan
incomplete understanding. Many of the explanations here are intentionally
approximate or incomplete, because we believe this content is best transmit-
ted in person. It helps to think of this handbook as a companion to the
workshop, rather than as a standalone resource.
Youdonot needthishandbookduringourclasses. Yourworkbook
contains all of the information and prompts you’ll need for our lectures and
activities. That being said, we hope that these pages provide you with lots
of food for thought, both between classes and after the workshop. Feel free
to fill those margins with questions and annotations!
Contents
I Introduction 11
What is “Applied Rationality”? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Advice from Opening Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
II Core Classes 21
Units of Exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Inner Simulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Trigger-Action Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Goal Factoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Focusing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Bucket Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Double Crux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Systemization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Taste & Shaping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Comfort Zone Expansion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Resolve Cycles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Hamming Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Internal Double Crux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
III Flash Classes 152
Pedagogical Content Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Polaris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Socratic Ducking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Eat Dirt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
OODA Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Gears-Level Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
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10 CONTENTS
Understanding Shoulds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Overlearning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Policy-Level Decisionmaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
The Area Under The Curve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Saving State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Five-Second Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
The Strategic Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
IV Appendices 184
Marginal Attention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Turbocharging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Againstness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Aversion Factoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Copernicus and Chaos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Frame-by-Frame Debugging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Mundanification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Negative Visualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Deliberate Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230