Postscript first: I'm interested, and I would like to see you succeed. At my present level of information, I am pessimistic about your chances of success and my desire to attend.
10 weeks is a massive time commitment. That's as long as actual basic. Do you have a plan for all that time, or or is that just why you picked that number?
Because at 6 days a week at 11 hours a day (presuming you use the same time as basic) for 10 weeks, you're looking at 660 hours of training. I can see how you can fill 660 hours with exercise and drills; it's not clear to me mental or group exercises scale similarly.
The comparison to what colleges would do if they tried to teach you how to think seems off. The standard college course represents 42 hours of in-class time; summer courses do that at 14 hours a week for 3 weeks. You're proposing a college course and a half's worth of class time per week, for 10 weeks. Now, that's possibly doable- especially if what you're doing is more like pushups and less like absorbing lectures- but a proof of concept seems like a good plan.
I'm also curious about the "next level of awesome" line. What's your current level of awesome? Do any of the instructors ha...
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 re...
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.
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:
Wow! I saw this and got all excited and read the application, then my brain calmed down and asked, "Do you really think you can get away for two months this summer? What about work?"
Then, "Also, you're getting married in July."
So that's out.
Would you consider "franchising" (i.e. sending around the curriculum, syllabus, and maybe a "lessons-learned" document to interested chapters in other cities)?
Congrats indeed!
We'll definitely be writing up a detailed curriculum and postmortem for internal purposes and I expect we'll want to make most if not all of it publicly available.
Someday I'd like to teach an undergraduate course on rationality at Smith college. It would be helpful to me if you kept track of exercises you think could work well for undergraduates.
Also, I'll be teaching an undergraduate course in game theory in the fall and am very open to having the class engage in rationality games.
To what degree will opting out of specific exercises/events be accepted or tolerated?
(Mostly asking out of curiosity, but if I were seriously considering going this would be a significant issue; I have a rather firm policy of not considering myself obligated to do things unless I've actively agreed to the specific thing, including reserving the right to decline to do things based on the tone or context of the request or demand, as an anti-foot-in-the-door measure, and your description of the nature of the event leads me to be unsure of whether this policy would get me sent home or otherwise cause problems.)
A "boot camp" is quite specifically an immersion experience, with the unfortunately cultic effects AdeleneDawner wishes to avoid. This would require detailed information beforehand, yes. It sounds way cool (and I'd love to be able to go myself), but FINE-GRAINED CONSENT ISSUES ARE REALLY QUITE IMPORTANT to many people.
"______ Boot Camp" seems to be a reasonably common construction, and I've always understood it to refer simply to intensive training in some specialized topic, without being especially evocative of the more sinister aspects of its military namesake.
(Though if accepting the full metaphor means we're taking it as a given that militaries are cults (indeed prototypical of cults), I'll take it!)
I suspect this is part of the normal lifecycle of Internet forums. A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy by Clay Shirky is the standard work on the topic.
Contrariwise, a group norm against status rankings does not stop them happening - it just means they form where you're not looking and bite you in the backside. The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman is the standard work on this topic.
To summarise the summary: people remain a problem.
I think you underestimate the difficulty of preventing a rapidly growing forum from degenerating into nothing but off color jokes.
My first thought was a slightly more sophisticated version of "OMG, WANT!". This seems like a brilliant idea, and I'd absolutely love to see it come to fruition. I can taste the sweet hintings of a future rationality dojos, already envision the unfolding of a greater future where more is possible. Ten weeks dedicated strictly to the Art, with other people who will actually CARE DEEPLY about being sane. How could I NOT want to be there? I'm a little iffy on whether or not all of these ideas are really the best, but hey--it's a work in progress.
I open up an application and start typing. But I'm finding myself intimidated by vastly open-ended form questions, and the mention that they're looking for "people who've demonstrated high productivity" and "who already seem like good epistemic rationalists". I have no such qualifications; I'm inexperienced, lazy, and honestly, I've internalized frustratingly little of what I've 'learned' on LessWrong. So I close the window.
But, the only way I can possible be sure that I won't get in is if I don't apply. And I do want to go, I really want this experience. So I open it and start again.
Then close it once more a few seconds later. Open. Close. Open. Close.
I think I may have a problem.
I think I also understand why rejection therapy is part of the curriculum. Unwillingness to put yourself out there is a severe handicap to winning.
What's the expected time load -- "full-time" or "all-consuming"? I can probably keep my freelance work down to about 20 hours a week, but would have to break the lease on my apartment to cut it down to nothing.
OK. What's the purpose of having it be all-consuming? Are you selecting for people who are truly committed? Are there returns to scale? Are you trying to break people out of old habits by denying them time in which to indulge them?
Indeed -- can someone speak to this? I'm married with a full time engineering job. There's no way I could get 10 weeks for this, despite how much I really, really, really want to. This seems tailored toward the unemployed, students, or simply those with ridiculously flexible work arrangements that I can't even fathom.
I favor the post above about making materials available. Heck.. maybe you should video record all the lectures as well.
I definitely see the benefits of "full immersion" -- it's just that at a certain point in life, I can't see ever being able to "fully immerse" myself again. I finally have the awareness and desire for things like this... but it's at a time when I can't participate. When I could have participated, I don't think I would have fully appreciated what a fantastic opportunity something like this would have been.
Does that make sense?
This seems tailored toward the unemployed, students, or simply those with ridiculously flexible work arrangements that I can't even fathom.
Pretty sure most of SIAI's visiting fellows so far have been unemployed or students--based on my experience with the fellows program, it's all-consuming in the sense that the fellows do most of their work and recreation in close proximity to other fellows. (And the fellows program used to be a summer fellows program, for what that's worth.)
A friend of mine pointed out that the folks that were part of the fellows program didn't seem terribly practical or results-oriented, and I suppose in retrospect this selection of unemployed folks could have been the reason why. (Come to think of it, when I knew people in the summer visiting fellows program, there were a few who were practical and results-oriented--I suppose this might have been a result of their falling in to the "student" category instead of the "unemployed" category. My friend only had experience with folks in the non-summer fellows program.)
It will definitely cost us money but, due to its experimental nature, will be free for all participants for this iteration at least. If we continue offering it in the future, we will probably charge money and offer scholarships.
How much is it likely to cost in the future? That is, what's the opportunity cost of not applying now? An approximate answer is fine.
Minor request: Could you let those of us that have been rejected without an interview know?
(ie, I just want to know if I was/will "potentially will be interviewed and/or accepted" or "already was rejected", thanks.)
I'm currently learning to draw on my own using the book "Drawing on the right side of the brain" by Betty Edwards, and it has really felt like using a cheat code to gain a mysterious superpower in a couple weeks of not-very-stressful work. (I'm 28 and never learned to draw before.) In fact I'm pretty sure that your bootcamp will use something like her technique, right?
In the spirit of The Best Textbooks on Every Subject, which book would you say is the best introduction to drawing and which two specific books that you've read/used is it superior to, and why?
Looking over the application now. Sadly many of the "list your accomplishments" sections in my case are going to be quite sparse... But hey, the only real cost to me re applying is fear of social embarrassment and a bit of time, so will just apply anyways, regardless. (At least I've read all the sequences...)
This would be great next year, when I take my gap year between high-school and uni. Although I must say, just seeing the results will be amazing in itself - I can't wait until you release the details of the games and such you used, and how well they worked. (I'm taking from your previous replies to comments that you intend on this, for now at least.)
Are there age limits? I saw on the application it asks about degrees, employment etc... which, as a 16-year-old, I don't have yet. But I think I could really benefit from this if it's still running in 2012.
I'm ...
One of the most interesting and useful things that I noticed in my experience with exercises similar to rejection therapy were the frequency and variety of times that people responded in ways that I didn't expect.
You mention feeling guilty for inconveniencing someone. What I noticed was that frequently I would be wrong about what people consider an inconvenience. Sometimes I would go up to someone and ask for something that I thought that at worst they'll hate and at best they'll be ambivalent about and I was completely surprised when that person was excited or interested in my suggestion. This really does happen and at first it is shocking. I think it's actually had a pretty dramatic effect on how I look at and think about the world. This effect was not limited to strangers. This happened (possibly even more) with people I knew or were my friends.
I think one of the motivations for this exercise is to uncover these hidden win-win encounters. I was very surprised by how large the mismatch can be between what I expect the outcome to be and what it actually is.
I want to stress that I think it is important to ask for things that you are actually interested in. There are two reasons for...
I am curious as well as envious.
To what degree and in what manner do you expect participants to be affected?
What will be the criteria of evaluation?
Sounds awesome. I don't think I can swing 10 continuous weeks off from work, but if in the future you all develop shorter segments - say, 4 weeks - I'd jump at the opportunity.
Or, alternately, something straddling two calendar years (i.e. midpoint on January 1st).
And a pony, as long as I'm wishing.
This essentially sounds like a more organized (and therefore probably better) version of what I was intending to try and teach myself this summer, so I am extremely, extremely interested. However, I'm currently a student and won't be on break for the beginning of June. Should I still apply? Airfare won't be an issue, and I'm willing to self-study and self-test (or get others to test me on) anything that I would otherwise miss in the first few days.
It's an interesting idea but I feel very skeptical about the generic plan. Personally, a revulsion for organized/standardized education is what drove me to look at things like Less Wrong in the first place. I think this is fairly common in the community, with many people interested in discussion of akrasia and self-work habits.
Also, considering the informality of ideas like "I want to be a good rationalist", I would expect this sort of thing to be much more open-ended and unstructured anyways. It doesn't seem to fit with the idea of a rigid syst...
It's an interesting idea but I feel very skeptical about the generic plan. Personally, a revulsion for organized/standardized education is what drove me to look at things like Less Wrong in the first place. I think this is fairly common in the community, with many people interested in discussion of akrasia and self-work habits.
Also, considering the informality of ideas like "I want to be a good rationalist", I would expect this sort of thing to be much more open-ended and unstructured anyways. It doesn't seem to fit with the idea of a rigid system or a "boot-camp". It just seems contrary to the idea of rationality and free thinking.
I'm sympathetic to this reaction, but I suspect a lot of it is a reversed-stupidity mistake. I've been repeatedly surprised by how poorly plans for open-ended, unstructured activities work in practice, and how useful (and non-unpleasant) skillfully-executed structure and discipline are. I don't understand why a "boot camp" would be contrary to rationality, unless you think structure and discipline require committing not to update on evidence.
(Also, most of the reasons people dislike organized education seem like they would be entirely irrelevant here.)
So does this have anything to do with the Visiting Fellows Program? It isn't a replacement, is it?
How will the A/B testing be overseen? Considering the limits to trying different combinations due to a lack of students you probably want to go at it most effectively. I am curious how that will be done. Including de:biasing the overseers.
Might be overthinking on my side. It sounds really exiting already.
I think that making the effort for something like this is just marvelous! This kind of intensity is really critical for meaningfully changing how someone thinks in the long run, and ten weeks of intense socializing with others concerned about existential risk with subsequent intermittent reinforcement is more than enough to create long-term loyalty to the cause, so to speak.
I echo Vaniver's concerns, though I imagine many of these issues will get hammered out in the course of just doing it once. I'm commenting because I want to raise awareness of a probl...
I looked up rejection therapy. It has a strong similarity to Stoicism, except that Stoicism requires not being attached to outcomes both in the social context and when interacting with inanimate objects. My confusion is with the implications of Rejection therapy. In Stoicism you do not become distressed because it is according to your nature as a human being to aim at certain things (friends, a warm house, a cow.). Aiming at those things in accordance with your nature is virtuous. Acquiring these things does not make you more or less virtuous. But with rej...
We're going to run A/B tests on you, and track the results to find out which training activities work best, and begin the tradition of evidence-based rationality training.
Can you expand on this? I often have the problem of attempting multiple cool new things at once that aim at the same goals and not knowing which ones worked and which didn't.
Hrm... you may get two copies of mine. I thought something may have gone odd when I submitted... all it did was take me to the wufoo signup page, so I went back and resubmitted. I guess that's just what it does, but just in case you get two copies of mine, that's why.
(on the other hand, if you got zero copies of mine, please tell me!)
Two sites blogging their way through the rationality boot camp:
Recording here that I've submitted my application (just in case something goes wrong). Evidently other people here find writing a lot easier than I do...
Hey, got a question about the application: I've read the ye olde Coherent Extrapolated Volition stuff way back when on the SL4 Wiki. ie, the 2004 thing. Is that equivalent to the publication referred to, or is there a more recent CEV paper that it's asking if I read?
Covering room, board, and airfare? That is very generous. I will check my schedule for the summer, this sounds like it could be interesting.
Also, I stand to gain enough from this that I will be applying anyway, but how selective are you planning to be? I guess this is still a work in progress, but if there are any age restrictions, limits on how many people can attend, or application costs I would like to know.
Dear Organizers,
Could you tell, please, when do you plan to finish the assignment of interviews, to send refusal letters and letters of acceptance?
I am worried a little, because it takes about 1-2 monthes for foreigners to obtain a visa.
Thanks, in advance, for your help.
Hello, world!
I just sent in my application. I'm really curious, and it looks like nothing I've ever seen before. I'm still a college student, so I doubt I'll be accepted (the first few questions make Rationality Boot Camp look as though it's targeted towards professors and established scientists), but this is something I'm really excited about, and it couldn't hurt to apply. I'm hoping for the best.
Peace and happiness, wobster109
It appears that the majority of the activities and the primary focus of this boot camp is on rationality when interacting with others... social rationality training. While some of this may apply across domains, my interest is strictly in "selfish" rationality... the kind of rationality that one uses internally and entirely on your own. So I don't really know if this would be worth the grandiose expense of 10 "all-consuming" weeks. Maybe it would help if I had more information on the exact curriculum you are proposing.
On the application, you ask
What are your top three ideas for projects to make the world a better place?
Do you only want original ideas?
This sounds like an amazing experience, and would make me more like the person I want to be. If this keeps happening from year to year, I'll figure out a way to make the time.
This sounds awesome. I can't attend this year due to other commitments but I hope you continue running it so I can do so later.
This sounds brilliant, and I will absolutely definitely sign up for future workshops if I can get the scheduling to work out. I second the other commentors who noted that shorter timeframes are more possible for many of us. But all that aside, I'm extremely happy just to see that something like this exists in the world.
Here is a proposed exercise for the boot camp:
Imagine that the year is 1898. Now design a safe nuclear power plant using only knowledge which was available in 1898.
Here's another proposed exercise:
You are a brilliant young Jewish mathematician living in Haifa, British Mandatory Palestine. The year is 1932. You are a member of the Irgun and your organization is concerned about an eventual Persian attack on the Jews using atomic energy. The Irgun has given you the assignment of figuring out a way to prevent this attack with minimal loss of life. Ideally you would sabotage the Persian machinery for creating atomic weapons.
In short, you are in charge of Operation Stuxnet. You must devise your strategy, tactics, and mechanisms using only knowledge and information which was available in 1932.
I'd like to make another request for clarification. One of the question asks for our "top three ideas for projects to make the world a better place". What's not clear to me is, are these supposed to be projects that don't already exist? I would assume not, as that wouldn't make a lot of sense ISTM, but that sort of implicit requirement is common enough I have to ask. Similarly there's the question of "just what make the world a better place" means; now given who's asking this I'd assume this is asking for highest EV overall and not making distinctions between introducing positive things and preventing negative things, but again that sort of thing is so common I feel I should ask.
I just sent in an application. I hope you'll at least consider it (I won't need special accomodations because I'll be sending my humanoid robot) rather than just be a racist evil human.
Attention: Anyone still interested in attending the course must get their application in by midnight on Friday the 8th of April. I would like to make the final decision about who to accept by mid April and need to finish interviewing applicants before then.
Sudden thought: Could I submit a second application if it occurs to me that I left out something obvious the first time around? :) (I mean, obviously I can, but would it be considered?) (Also, is there any bound on how long before we get some sort of response?)
I thought 'PERFECT' then I remembered I live half a world away.
Chances of a course by correspondence?
I've always thought going through a course with some of my friends would be a really good exercise.
It’s been over a year since the Singularity Institute launched our ongoing Visiting Fellows Program and we’ve learned a lot in the process of running it. This summer we’re going to try something different. We’re going to run Rationality Boot Camp.
We are going to try to take ten weeks and fill them with activities meant to teach mental skills - if there's reading to be done, we'll tell you to get it done in advance. We aren't just aiming to teach skills like betting at the right odds or learning how to take into account others' information, we're going to practice techniques like mindfulness meditation and Rejection Therapy (making requests that you know will be rejected), in order to teach focus, non-attachment, social courage and all the other things that are also needed to produce formidable rationalists. Participants will learn how to draw (so that they can learn how to pay attention to previously unnoticed details, and see that they can do things that previously seemed like mysterious superpowers). We will play games, and switch games every few days, to get used to novelty and practice learning.
We're going to run A/B tests on you, and track the results to find out which training activities work best, and begin the tradition of evidence-based rationality training.
In short, we're going to start constructing the kind of program that universities would run if they actually wanted to teach you how to think.
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.
When I call the program Rationality Boot Camp, I mean this quite literally. Six days per week, participants will rise, meditate, prepare and eat food, attend lectures, participate in group and individual activities and exercise together.
Everyone who applies needs to have read at least some of the Sequences, and may be assigned particular posts as makeup material - in which case you will need to read them before you arrive and you may be turned away otherwise. Apart from that, we'll look for a mix of people who've demonstrated high productivity and who already seem like good epistemic rationalists. The program will begin in the first week of June and continue through mid-August. We will cover room, board and airfare. We're going to try to take this up to the next level of awesome. It's our first time trying something this ambitious and there will be speedbumps - and if that sounds very scary, consider applying next year when we'll know more for certain about how to teach people courage and the art of overcoming setbacks. But if you're the sort of person who wants to be part of this program today, instead of putting it off into the indefinite future of maybe-never - or if you know that's the sort of person you want to be, and you're willing to put in the effort to reach up to that - then send in an application.
Edit:
Attention: Anyone still interested in attending the course must get their application in by midnight on Friday the 8th of April. I would like to make the final decision about who to accept by mid April and need to finish interviewing applicants before then.
I expect to make all decisions about acceptance before the end of April and will try to do so sooner. I will start scheduling skype interviews in a few days and will not wait until an arbitrary date before accepting people. Apply as soon as possible to maximize your chance of being considered for this summer!
Don't worry if you're not chosen this time. This program is an experiment, and if all goes well we will be holding holding several (even better!) programs like it each year. If we never hold it again, you probably didn't miss much.