Paricipants' criticisms of 2011 minicamp


1	Zero to ten, are you glad you came?	Which parts of the camp didn't work particularly well for you, and what do you think we could do to improve?

2	10	Shower schedules could be more structured. Some periods of time for self-reflection would be great. I feel I've accomplished little self-reflection, as I'm too tired each night to do my normal pre-sleep review of the day, etc.
3	10	The social effectiveness component could have been a little better integrated with the epistemic rationality sessions. Rapidly switching between very different styles of instruction was difficult. Some of the social effectiveness training was very well integrated, but others felt like a lot of subjective opinion and less rigorously researched.
4	9	There were almost too many sessions and many of the participants didn't even get to see the city or meet the community. I personally experienced a bit of information overload and would have appreciated ending earlier and having more time to reflect.
5	9	It was far better than my expectations. The description of it could have been more specific.
6	9	Need more organized outlines. Tell us what you're going to tell us. Explain where the session is going and what it's going to teach us.
7	10	See below, also, the food situation could have been improved with a few minutes thought ahead of time. In fact, presenting certain challenges (like "how should we handle food" or "how should we handle showers" to the entire group in the beginning could have been a good way to get better results, I would hope). Basically, there was not enough kitchen to produce food for the number of people that were present. Instead, it should have been catered. People probably would not have minded paying the marginal cost. I know I planned on spending a lot more than I did.
8	10	Move most of the social stuff (rejection therapy and hugging) to the beginning. Sessions were often cut short, with little opportunity for deep exploration. This is likely due to time limitations, but perhaps there's some way to fix it. I would have preferred to spend more time working on the fundamentals of rationality, rather than learning about subcultures or hair.
9	3	Timing and scheduling was a big problem - many of the sessions lasted too long. This could have been prevented by better organization on the part of instructors. The "camp" aspect of the program felt weird to me. Living in a big house with 25 other people was uncomfortable to me. The living environment got quite messy. I felt strange having a class right outside the bedroom door. It would be good if there were two buildings/spaces, one where the classes happened, the other where people lived.
10	9	Scheduling some meditation time every day would have been helpful. It would be a great break, since the rest of the day is so busy. I would also have liked to have scheduled time to reflect and write about everything I was learning. I felt like I didn't have as much time as I'd like to figure out how to actually implement some of the new ideas, which made it hard to apply them as effectively as possible right away.
11	9	Epistemic rationality tended to be the least useful unit, NOT because this was the least important or the least well-taught (it was neither) but because we had the least opportunity to practice it. It's all well and good to say "practice making predictions," but I would have really liked to see sessions explicitly devoted to reevaluating your choice of job/career, of city, of relationship(s), of friends, of investments, etc. To the extent that we did these things, they were often in optional, content-heavy sessions that were crammed in around meals; more time would have allowed a chance not just to communicate the subject-specific principles but for each person to apply new epistemic techniques to his or her situation.
12	10	lacking sleep and exercise. dunno how to improve this.. hard to decide to sleep when so much is going on, there's ppl to talk to, etc.
13	9	If the camp were longer, I'd definitely need structured time to review everything. As it is, I'm going to have to spend a lot of time next week making Anki decks, filling out worksheets, etc.
14	10	The scheduling fell into the planning fallacy quite hard, and never seemed to get up: it should have been taken into account just how much the attendee's enjoy and benefit from discussion. Planning to cover less in each session with more time for discussion would prevent the sessions from interfering with other plans.
15	9	Large-group discussions, generally, were slow and painful. Also, they can be easily tied up by one or two poor interlocutors, unless the discussion leader is forceful.
16	10	i would like to see more free time or guided individual use of the topocs covered. The social aspects had the most immediate impact in part because there was much low-hanging fruit and in part because of the field trips, which were effectively guided free time for interested participants. I would like to have a handbook or document of all the worksheets and exercises, as a reference, with notes
17	10	I have a ton of stuff to integrate in the coming weeks and months and I had to reassure myself throughout the second half that it wasn't a problem that I wasn't practicing everything yet just writing down the salient practices for later the constant "we didn't have time to get to this part" was understandable but definitely annoying"
18	10	The schedule went overtime too much, it would have sometimes made sense to cut shorter on lunch or dinner. We spent a lot of time sitting, and more physical activities during the breaks (even short ones) would have been great.
19	10	Sessions often ran past time, which is fine, but it would be nice if the schedule was adjusted for that. In other words, I am all for having longer sessions, as long as we stick to them. It would be nice to have a whole house to ourselves. It would be nice to have scheduled alone time for everyone.
20	9	Slightly smaller class sizes might have helped.
21	10	.
22	10	There were times when I felt like I really wanted to walk in to a session that ran really late and shout that it was time to leave and start the next session. I feel like adding in more time per session or blocking out "flexible time" where sessions can go late if they want would be a really good idea, and would prevent people from being stuck outside with nothing to do until the session finishes
23	8	Fashion and social skills could have been divided into ability sets. There wasn't really any downtime, for the excellent reason that there were so many interesting things to do, but it still would have been nice to relax a bit, get to see San Francisco in the company of locals, etc. I think the post camp networking has worked out fairly well, but potentially this couldn't be guaranteed at every incarnation, so it might be worth having a more official backup plan.