Re: Which LessWrong projects are the highest value?

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Louie Helm

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Aug 8, 2011, 7:28:54 AM8/8/11
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Hey guys,

I read through the list of LW public goods projects. These ones strike me as particularly low-cost and high-value.


12
    1. A better front page for LessWrong (prize?)

    1. Creation of a LW hosting image to drastically reduce the work needed to work on less wrong


Also, this project may not look low-cost but it actually is since it's almost been completed. Someone should contact Tim Czech <timc...@gmail.com> for details. He created lots of questions and had someone working on the website but it was not someone from LW who understood the value of the project so they gave up without finishing it.... not realizing how much value they had deprived the world of!

  1. Developing exercises and tests that help understand or improve rationality

    1. A large set of good calibration questions

    2. A good website for taking calibration tests




Cheers,
Louie Helm


Kaj Sotala

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Aug 8, 2011, 12:43:41 PM8/8/11
to John Salvatier, lw-public-...@googlegroups.com
Hi John,

thanks for the query. My first impression was that the ones that first
jumped out as particularly high value were all the subsections of 11a.
Particularly students with university subscriptions (like me!) have
access to a vast amount of scientific research, but it's far from
obvious how to use it best, and this isn't taught as well as it should
be. I'm not sure of the cost, though - if one already has a lot of
experience in academia, then it could be straightforward, while
somebody else might need to spend a lot of time figuring out what to
say.

A lot of the other things in the list are hard to evaluate, as I think
they're in the category of "high-value if done well, less so if not".
Also I'm not sure of e.g. what the total impact of improving the
Wikipedia pages on cognitive biases would actually be, even if done
well. Book reviews are good if done for good books: I don't know
whether either of the two mentioned are worth it, but then I haven't
read Selfish Reasons and have only read part of Consciousness
Explained.

No particular low-cost, high-value things come to mind off the top of my head.

Those are my first impressions: I'll try to think of it and get back
to you if I come up with something more useful to say about the rest
of the things on the list. (A bit under time pressure right now.)

- Kaj


On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 7:08 PM, John Salvatier
<jsal...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
> Dear Kaj,
>
> I hope I find you well!
> Many projects would benefit people interested in living rationally but no
> individuals are motivated enough to execute them (more). The Public
> Goods Team is trying to encourage and facilitate systematic and organized
> work on such projects. One of our first steps is to identify the projects
> that are the lowest hanging fruit: those projects which are high value, and
> inexpensive (in terms of time, motivation, money etc.). We have come up with
> a preliminary list of such projects.
>
> We are especially interested in your judgment of which projects are most
> attractive, because we think the judgments of smart people who have thought
> about this sort of thing are especially informative. Thus we are conducting
> a small survey of the LessWrong top 10 contributors list and others who seem
> relevant. We will use the results of the survey to help us focus our efforts
> on the most valuable projects. We will also write up our results and post
> them to LessWrong.
>
> We have two questions:
>
> What projects not on the list seem low cost and high value?
> What projects seem like they are especially high value and low cost?
>
> If you would like to reply publicly (very much appreciated), please send
> your reply to lw-public-...@googlegroups.com
>
> Cheers,
> John Salvatier

Kaj Sotala

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Aug 8, 2011, 12:46:11 PM8/8/11
to John Salvatier, lw-public-...@googlegroups.com
On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 7:43 PM, Kaj Sotala <xue...@gmail.com> wrote:
> No particular low-cost, high-value things come to mind off the top of my head.

That should have been "low-cost, high-value things that are not on the
list already".

William Ryan

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Aug 10, 2011, 9:25:34 PM8/10/11
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XFrequentist recently asked me this same question, the rough list I came up with off the top of my head was:
  • Rebrand "rationalism"
  • Come up with an elevator pitch to explain what it is that distinguishes us
  • Create an online web app, which will walk people through an exercise that convinces them we are doing something real/useful
  • Gamify rationality in any way whatsoever
  • Read through the Sequences and boil them down into a set of core arguments, which can be delivered verbally and succinctly
  • Go through archives of all the LW meetup groups, create a list of what people have tried, and any feedback on what worked or didn't
I think the elevator pitch is high priority, going through the different meetup groups and gathering info is also up there.  In terms of boiling down the Sequences, various people have started doing so but there is nothing comprehensive yet.

I am happy to give this more thought.  Thanks for putting this effort together John!
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