CFAR modules
CREATED: [2021-07-21 Wed 20:08] ID: d15c8ddd-15b7-47f5-b4fd-30510e6bb367 ROAM_REFS: @CFARHandbook REVIEW_SCORE: 5.0 MTIME: [2025-02-25 Tue 17:24],[2024-12-29 Sun 21:52]
Things I remember learning and liking from the curriculum of the Center for Applied Rationality. I want to slowly add in the corroborating sources for each of these.
Most of our participants, though, find that there is a lot of opportunity for gain from systemization. Try mentally running through the following domains, looking for things that snag or require effort or are annoying or consume a lot of attention: Common routines • Waking up: Dealing with the alarm, using the bathroom or shower, getting dressed, gathering the things you need for the day • Meals: Deciding what to eat (and when), shopping, budgeting, taking care of dishes and leftovers • Work: Commute, getting settled, parts of your job that tend to be the same week in and week out • Computer: Startup, tab and window management, sites that you routinely visit and programs that you regularly use • Social: Connecting with friends, planning get-togethers, using email and Facebook and other social media Familiar spaces • Bedroom: laundry, clutter, lighting, temperature, floor space, outlets • Bathroom: shower supplies, drawers/medicine cabinet, toilet paper, towels, toothbrush/shaving • Kitchen: sink/dishwasher, cabinets, pantry, fridge, pots/pans/utensils • Living room: furniture, blankets/pillows, bookshelves, entertainment system, plants, carpet • Vehicle: electronics, music, trash/clutter, seats, storage • Workspace: desk, chair, computer, outlets, food • Bag/briefcase/backpack: weight, organization, clutter Shoulds and obligations • Physical health: eating habits, exercise, medical issues, rest • Financial well-being: banking, budgeting, investments • Intellectual growth: reading, problem solving, formal education • Close relationships: family, friends, loved ones, colleagues • Career: work/life balance, projects, job changes • Emotional well-being: hobbies, sleep, communication and support • Community: volunteering, church/school/club obligations, neighborhood events
1. adjust your seat
ID: ab5d7714-5146-411d-a5c9-660b5a8f7d85 REVIEW_SCORE: 4.0 MTIME: [2025-02-25 Tue 12:43],[2024-12-29 Sun 21:52]
take claims and recommendations and change them to suit the circumstance. Meant to mitigate the fact that nobody is average. See Perturbation Theory. There's probably something interesting to be said about how variations multiplied by ε in a distributed system is good hypothesis generation.
2. TAPs TAP
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Trigger-action plans. Create a habit by encoding it in the form "when X happens, do Y". A clean, composable API to one's habits. Tends to highlight blockers - when something feels terrible, it's easier to notice at the site of the deliberately set habit going awry.
3. Turbocharging training
ID: 319dc58c-0555-4563-a624-351b9fb6ddb9 REVIEW_SCORE: 0.0009135363700138956 MTIME: [2024-12-29 Sun 21:52]
Design training for the skill you want. Also a way to ask yourself to look at the performance of the skill closely. A domain-specific way to say "learn this on purpose". (many of these feel like being taught the grammar to a language you already speak.)
4. Picas
ID: d23e6ace-4281-44f5-b3e2-950e9a718100 REVIEW_SCORE: 0.0 MTIME: [2025-01-21 Tue 12:26]
Find the minimal specification of the thing you actually want - the iron instead of the dirt, the dirt instead of the iron. look at a thing that's kind of working, or providing feedback signals akin to "working". notice that this is shaped like "confounders". try to figure out what your feedback systems are actually trying to track. figure out how to get it reliably, and more of it. iterate until you can use the least-effort version of this getting-action to reap maximum rewards. Or: take cravings seriously.
5. Building Traction
Brainstorm a bunch of tasks that are part of a larger goal or project; then pick task whose completion represents the smallest unit of effort in the direction of what you want, and do it. Progress up the chain of difficulty if it feels as good and doable at the moment of performance as the last task seemed at its moment of performance. This is in the interest of building "traction" - that is, embodied rational belief that the next task in front of you can get done.
6. PCK seeking
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When seeking to learn something, identify the bit of it that you need to know in order to understand the rest, or the bit that will make the following bits easier to follow. This will probably cause you to "look at your own lens" a lot.
6.1. Pedagogical Content Knowledge
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The bit of a thing that you need to know to teach and/or learn the rest of it. By the same coin, the bit of a subject that is relevant to the general practice of teaching/learning.
7. gears-level understanding cfar
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Can you reason about the interacting components of a model? Can you tell when they collectively imply one conclusion and forbid another? Do you feel as though you believe such a conclusion, or merely know it? This concept points to both the practice of reasoning about "gears", and the feeling of drawing conclusions about "gears".
This node is a singleton!