Center for Applied Rationality

The Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR) is a nonprofit organization based in Berkeley, California that hosts workshops intended to improve participants' abilities to think rationally and overcome cognitive bias. It was founded in 2012 by Julia Galef, Anna Salamon, Michael Smith and Andrew Critch. Its president as of 2016 is Anna Salamon.

CFAR was founded, according to Galef, to enhance rationality using "a set of techniques from math and decision theory for forming your beliefs about the world as accurately as possible, and for making decisions that are most likely to achieve your goals" and that "rationality need not come with ideological baggage." It reoriented its mission in December 2016 to promote rationality in order to reduce artificial intelligence risk.

CFAR's workshops draws upon fields such as psychology and behavioral economics. Most workshop attendees report feeling happier and more productive, with a high participant satisfaction rate, though the New York Times said that some aspects felt "creepy, even cultish", such as a social environment that encouraged groupthink, and that some participants found them "disorienting". CFAR has conducted surveys of participants which indicate that workshops reduce neuroticism and increase perceived efficacy. In 2016, CFAR was ranked by Forbes as one of the best management consulting firms in the United States.

CFAR is part of the rationality movement surrounding Eliezer Yudkowsky's site LessWrong, from which CFAR originated and of which it is one of the sponsoring organizations. CFAR works closely with the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, with which it shares an office.

Skype founder Jaan Tallinn provides scholarships for selected Estonian students to attend them.