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ESPR Postmortem 2018: All the bad things document.
Fuck lotus!
They started at once, and went about among the Lotus-eaters, who did them no hurt, but gave them to eat of the lotus, which was so delicious that those who ate of it left off caring about home, and did not even want to go back and say what had happened to them, but were for staying and munching lotus with the Lotus-eaters without thinking further of their return; nevertheless, though they wept bitterly I forced them back to the ships and made them fast under the benches. Then I told the rest to go on board at once, lest any of them should taste of the lotus and leave off wanting to get home — The Odyssey
I have this intuition that things memes are somewhat like the lotus of the story: irresistible and endlessly expandable. Memes can fill up as much time as we let them. Back where I come from, in Madrid, memes do rutinely fill up 20 - 80% of conversations between university math students.
There is still a right amount of memes, but it is way lower than what it has been this year. I don't want a meme workshop in ESPR.
Caveat: It could be that I don't fully understand how they generate group cohesion and other desirable things. I categorize them as low-brow, low-clash, null long term impact.
Examples: ESPR Network (crackfiction), seal of approval meme, cat facts, penis envy jokes, images with text which hack your brain.
Memes clash with my aesthetics so hard. I want to see less of them next year.
Fuck Stories at Midnight.
In previous iterations of ESPR, participants stayed up very late talking amongst themselves. This year they went to sleep later because most of them stayed up listening to a charismatic staff member narrate life-stories, though followed by what I'm told was solid discussion of rationality topics.
This again clashes with my aesthetics so hard. After talking with Stag like reasonable people, we've agreed to next year hold them on alternating nights / every third night and measure quality of discussion, sleepiness in later classes, etc., afterwards. Some more planning is needed.
Is there a mechanism for iterated improvement?
Institutional memory for ESPR is not yet a very well developed thing. Talk has been made of setting up a document for the next person who takes your role, and I don't know whether this is exhaustive.
Last year, Owen Shen wrote an ESPR-Postmortem analyzing some aspects of the camp. And we have Google Drives with information with previous years. I feel that they were underutilized.
Communicate more with SPARC
SPARC another program with similar characteristics, though it has been running for longer. Steal their insights without remorse. For example: what bets do they use for their prediction markets?
The Failure of Prediction Markets and Betting (of which I was in charge)
See this Google Docs file about how things can be improved.
Make Sure that We Record Classes
This year, I pushed for classes to be recorded, and some members of our team may or may not have done this competently. Next year, make sure it happens.
The Rationalist Dojo Story
Orgasmic Ops Organization
In comparison to last year, Anne and Graeme did great.
Status games are a prisoner's dilemma-like game
Consider the following payoffs:
Play for status / Play for status: ESPR is a little bit worse, each prisoner maybe gains a little more status but loses focus on making the camp better.
Play for status / Not play for status: The first person gains status and gets to shape ESPR now and in future years, the second doesn't. The second person gathers resentment.
Not play for status / Not play for status, or more realistically, talking things over with regards to status: ESPR is a little bit better, and there is no resentment.
I feel like this year I found myself in the second scenario. It is not clear to me yet what I will do next year. Related to which:
Public humiliation is unpleasant
A member of staff then said "sorry not sorry". This hurt me and took me by surprise.