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Summer Program on Applied Rationality and Cognition

Open Philanthropy (2016) Center for Applied Rationality — general support, Open Philanthropy, September.

The Summer Program on Applied Rationality and Cognition (SPARC) is a free program that aims at helping high school students develop quantitative thinking skills and improve mental habits by applying techniques from decision theory, theory, behavioral economics and statistics.statistics. It takes place at California State University, East Bay, typically for two weeks in late July. Boarding and food are provided free of charge.

The Summer Program on Applied Rationality and Cognition (SPARC) "helps talentedis a free program that aims at helping high school students apply theirdevelop quantitative thinking skills to their lives and the world. SPARC is hosted in Northernimprove mental habits by applying techniques from decision theory, behavioral economics and statistics. It takes place at California State University, East Bay, typically for around two weeks, typicallyweeks in late JulyJuly. Boarding and early August. Room and boardfood are provided free of charge." (Summer Program on Applied Rationality and Cognition 2021)

BibliographyFurther reading

Summer Program on Applied Rationality and Cognition (2021) What is SPARC?, SPARC.

The Summer Program on Applied Rationality and Cognition (SPARC) "helps talented high school students apply their quantitative thinking skills to their lives and the world. SPARC is hosted in Northern California for around two weeks, typically in late July and early August. Room and board are provided free of charge." (SPARC(Summer Program on Applied Rationality and Cognition 2021)

SPARCSummer Program on Applied Rationality and Cognition (2021) What is SPARC?, SPARC.

MichaelA3y20

Related vague and uninformed thoughts: 

  1. Is the AI Safety Camp sufficiently similar to be mentioned in related entries? 
  2. Is this cluster of things notable enough that we should have a tag for summer camps, rationality camps, or something like that, even if we also have tags for each individual program/organisation/camp? 
    1. I think I really hate the name "rationality camps" for reasons I don't really understand. (Maybe "rationality" is too close in my cognitive schema to "concentration"? Maybe it just sounds arrogant and cult-like?) But maybe a nearby name could be found.
Reply
MichaelA3y40

Yeah, I guess I was just unsure whether they were sufficiently notable and sufficiently separate (especially SPARC and ESPR) to warrant 2 or 3 separate entries, rather than just 1. But I was on the fence anyway, so your message tipped me over and I've now made the other two entries: 

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/espr 

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/caspar

(I haven't done any tagging for them yet, though.)

(By the way, I like your habit of proposing an action, leaving time for someone to disagree before the action is taken, but also stating that you'll do it if nothing is heard back by a certain time. This seems good for avoiding indefinite vague background deliberation, forgetting about the thing, and/or bystander effects. I've been doing this lately as well, and I think I picked it up from you, so thanks for that.)

Reply
Pablo3y20

I think it's best to have separate entries for each, since these are different organizations (though it seems that both SPARC and ESPR are connected to CFAR). Feel free to create the other articles; otherwise I'll create them myself tomorrow.

Reply

The Summer Program on Applied Rationality and Cognition (SPARC) "helps talented high school students apply their quantitative thinking skills to their lives and the world. SPARC is hosted in Northern California for around two weeks, typically in late July and early August. Room and board are provided free of charge." (source)(SPARC 2021)

Open Philanthropy (2016) https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants/center-applied-rationality-sparcCenter for Applied Rationality — SPARC, Open Philanthropy, July.

https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants/center-applied-rationality-general-Open Philanthropy (2016) Center for Applied Rationality — general support, Open Philanthropy, September.

SPARC (2021) What is SPARC?, SPARC.

https://sparc-camp.org/SPARC. Official website.

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Applied to CFAR's annual update [link] 3y ago
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Applied to High School EA Outreach 3y ago
MichaelA3y40

I'm not sure whether (1) this tag should also cover ESPR and/or CaSPAR or (2) there should be a separate tag for those. And if we go with (1), I'm not sure whether that should just be reflected in the text of this entry or also in the title (e.g., calling it "SPARC & ESPR" or "SPARC & CaSPAR" or "rationality summer camps"). 

Edit: Yeah, now I feel like I really don't want people to feel that we have to stick with this tag's current scope just because the tag is now made. Feel just as free to propose a tag that covers multiple programs as you would've if I hadn't yet made this tag. The text can easily be changed. (The reason I made this tag before commenting in the tag proposal thread is just that it was clear there should be some tag with this sort of scope, and I already had some posts open that I wanted to give the tag to.)

Reply
2
Pablo
3y
I think it's best to have separate entries for each, since these are different organizations (though it seems that both SPARC and ESPR are connected to CFAR). Feel free to create the other articles; otherwise I'll create them myself tomorrow.
4
MichaelA
3y
Yeah, I guess I was just unsure whether they were sufficiently notable and sufficiently separate (especially SPARC and ESPR) to warrant 2 or 3 separate entries, rather than just 1. But I was on the fence anyway, so your message tipped me over and I've now made the other two entries:  https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/espr  https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/caspar (I haven't done any tagging for them yet, though.) (By the way, I like your habit of proposing an action, leaving time for someone to disagree before the action is taken, but also stating that you'll do it if nothing is heard back by a certain time. This seems good for avoiding indefinite vague background deliberation, forgetting about the thing, and/or bystander effects. I've been doing this lately as well, and I think I picked it up from you, so thanks for that.)
2
MichaelA
3y
Related vague and uninformed thoughts:  1. Is the AI Safety Camp sufficiently similar to be mentioned in related entries?  2. Is this cluster of things notable enough that we should have a tag for summer camps, rationality camps, or something like that, even if we also have tags for each individual program/organisation/camp?  1. I think I really hate the name "rationality camps" for reasons I don't really understand. (Maybe "rationality" is too close in my cognitive schema to "concentration"? Maybe it just sounds arrogant and cult-like?) But maybe a nearby name could be found.