This Thursday, two CFAR instructors will be brawling... I mean engaging in a charitable and truth-seeking debate over whether people ought to diminish sharply the amount of fructose they eat.
A lot of our CFAR classes focus on how to make sense of evidence and be alert to new information. Our Building Bayes Habits class helps you use Bayes's Rule to make quick and dirty (or more drawn out) estimates of how new evidence should shape your beliefs. Our class on Againstness helps you calm the Fight/Flight/Freeze response that can flare up when you run into data you don't like. And our Value of Information class helps you find small experiments that can help you test your hypotheses.
But we don't want to just practice using those skills in isolation. So, come out on Thursday, September 5th at 6pm for a participatory debate. We want the audience to be involved, not just in judging the arguments, but in shaping the structure of the discussion, so we're relying on you to help.
During the discussion, you can hold up small, auction-style paddles to make requests of the speakers. Requests like:
- Give an Example/Be Specific! - Ask the speaker to make zer point a little more concrete
- Paraphrase! - Get one of the speakers to paraphrase what the other person is saying, to make sure they've addressing what the other person actually thinks
- And several more!
This way, everyone in the room gets to practice the skill of steering a conversation to the heart of a dispute. You can RSVP at our Facebook event, and we look forward to disagreeing!