One nice way to do this might be to wait until EY releases The Art of Rationality, and then the LW community could develop a workbook of exercises and sample problems to go along with it. In many cases, the sample problems could be borrowed from textbooks on, for example, probability theory.
Very good suggestion. I'd read him mention writing a book. Maybe if he sees this post he'll be reminded that young Padawans are waiting in eager anticipation. And, yes, if LW-ers could put together a nice workbook to go along with it, that would be fantastic.
I suspect that if the workbook came included with the book, a lot fewer people would buy it though. Possibly it could contain the address at which you could access the workbook online, and maybe print it out, although even such a trivial inconvenience could still be a barrier to a lot of people.
I think that it may be worth moving this article to the main page.
I agree re. an included workbook and to clarify, when I said "go along with it" I meant "related/parallel content," not "physically attached."
I think a downloadable PDF (easily accessible, easily revised/updated) for little or no cost would be optimal. I'd be willing to pay for it to cover the time and effort invested by other LWers. I'd also volunteer my time for free to the project as an organizer/assembler to assist those willing to supply/decide the actual content. I have a decent amount of experience with writing technical manuals and a fair amount of experience using LaTeX, which would lend itself well to the writing of an organized, footnoted workbook type of publication.
I think that it may be worth moving this article to the main page.
If perhaps two more agree with this, I'll do it... otherwise forcefully suggest it and I'll do it based on your recommendation alone. Again, I really have no idea what constitutes a top-level-worthy post!
Please move this to the main page. I'd love to see it done; I don't know if there's anything I could contribute in the way of time and knowledge.
I also second (third?) the suggestion for trying to make it a companion to The Art of Rationality. Desrtopa, why do you think fewer people would buy it if they came together? Is it because books with workbooks attached look intimidating?
Is it because books with workbooks attached look intimidating?
Yes, that and it conveys the impression that reading it is work,
I liked the idea of a separate, electronic format for several reasons:
I think that it may be worth moving this article to the main page.
If perhaps two more agree with this, I'll do it...
Move this to the main page.
Possibly it could contain the address at which you could access the workbook online, and maybe print it out, although even such a trivial inconvenience could still be a barrier to a lot of people.
Bothering to access the workbook online could be a practice test of instrumental rationality in and of itself.
And if you explicitly frame it as such, the entire book has primed them to pass this particular test.
I know there had been talk at the SIAI house about debiasing workshops (built around flashcards, as I was told). Does anyone know the status of that project?
There was a thing where we gave 90% confidence intervals for questions off of little cards; I think that was done in the time going up to Burning Man
I have been asking around about this. No one seems to have heard of it. Are you perhaps thinking of Divia's anki cardsets?
Someone mentioned the idea at Burning Man. Possibly Jasen? I think it was mentioned at Future Camp. I only know that it was suggested that SIAI was preparing (two-week?) workshops for this Summer, and was anticipating many more attendees for that than Visiting Fellows.
So did this ever get off the ground? Seems like a fantastic project, and if not, I'd like to push to make it happen.
I imagine something like Lovasz' Combinatorial Problems and Exercises, maybe also in a format amenable to spaced repetition. How many of us are qualified to contribute though? I certainly am not.
We could also write separate exercise books for different topics, and then each of us could specialize and sort of distributed pair-teach-learn in Bittorrent style. For example, Patrick has been helping me a lot (and I think he enjoys teaching me). I'd obviously like to return the favor, perhaps in another subject.
I'd been tossing around the idea of a popular "How to Improve Your Life" sort of site. The user answers questions regarding what they are disappointed in, some 'dance around the bush' type questions to work around people's self-bias and questions to judge education level on various necessary topics.
The system would then weight the answers and calculate what improvements would have the highest cost/benefit. My assumption was that most people would suffer from too little time, irrational beliefs or health issues. A site is then suggested to support improvement.
There are tons of free sites for too little time (GTD), improving health (mostly calorie counters) and knowledge (spaced repetition sites, Khan Academy, etc). There is nothing I know of to step people through rationality. When I say 'step through', think an expert system similar to software 'wizards'.
I've been leaning, and this post helped shove me over, that helping address the lack of a rationality site is the more immediate good. (A rational/informed person wouldn't need a site to point out what areas need improvement, and then google it)
Anyhow....
I plan on starting to outline a rationality specific version of the above and code it for a LAMP stack. Anyone else interested, or have a better suggestion? If no better suggestions, I'll start a sourceforge project.
Very interesting idea -- it would be great if some would help you with the questions and I agree that you may need some tricky ones to pull out the biases and actually target the most immediate areas for improvement. I like the idea!
I think this is a great idea, and I'm willing to offer time toward such a project.
I had a related, overly-ambitious LessWrong project idea (it contained a variant of this one). But I'll post that in a new thread, to keep this one focused.
Note: This was originally posted in the discussion area, but motions to move it to the top level were made.
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My own desire to improve my rationality coupled with some posts criticizing LessWrong not too long ago led to an idea. For reference, the posts I mean are these:
Unfortunately, I don't know of any resources to help people traverse the path you're facing in a series of small safe steps.