Rationality

Julia Galef on Applied Rationality & CFAR

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• published: 09 Mar 2014
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Julia Galef's talk at EA in Melbourne, Australia - http://www.meetup.com/EAMelbourne/‎ CFAR: http://rationality.org - Ever made a mistake? Missed an opportunity? Cognitive scientists have found that even highly educated and successful people make predictable errors in judgement, and just knowing about these experimental results often isn't enough to fix the problem. But with practice and exercises, you can. At our workshops, you can learn about newly discovered failure patterns in human decision-making, and get trained to overcome them... --- Part of a meetup in Melbourne titled 'The Mind and Altruism': The challenges we face in making the world a better place are more complex than even the smartest human brains evolved to handle. To actually eliminate poverty, cure disease, and stop war, we need to make the best decisions we can. To do that, we must understand both the strengths and limitations of our minds. The Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR) is a San Francisco-based, non-profit organisation which takes this mandate seriously. They use breakthroughs in the study of cognition to improve human decision-making in the hope that we can solve humanity's greatest challenges. We are delighted to announce that Julia Galef, president, and Anna Salamon, executive director, of CFAR are visiting Melbourne and will present to Effective Altruism Melbourne. Following the presentations there will be a Q&A; session during which the audience can have their trickiest questions about effective altruism answered by Julia, Anna, and CFAR researcher, Daniel Keys. We are hosted for this event by the University of Melbourne Secular Society, who proudly support the use of reason and evidence when trying to do good. The event will be held at the University of Melbourne, with the specific room being finalised soon. For more Effective Altruism events and info see our Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/THINKMelbourne/ Note: Attendance for our events is normally much larger than just the numbers from Meetup.com suggest as most people RSVP to our Facebook events. ------------------------------------------------ More about the speakers: Julia is a writer, blogger, and public speaker focusing on science and rationality, and the co-host of the official podcast of the New York City Skeptics, "Rationally Speaking." She holds a degree in statistics from Columbia University. Anna Salamon has previously done machine learning research for NASA and applied mathematics research on the statistics of phage metagenomics. She holds a degree in mathematics from UC Santa Barbara. ------------------------------------------------ Julia, Anna, and the rest of the CFAR crew are currently in Melbourne for their first-ever international workshop. CFAR runs immersive workshops to help people boost their effectiveness and decision-making skills. For details, see http://rationality.org/workshops/ http://www.meetup.com/EAMelbourne/events/165186372/ Science, Technology & the Future - The Future By Design http://scifuture.org