Requesting low cost/high payoff projects ideas

post by jsalvatier · 2011-07-30T20:48:41.757Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 6 comments

There are many projects that would benefit people interested in living rationally but that no individuals are motivated enough to do (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 (below). What are other such projects?

1. Further contributions to the Science of Winning at Life sequence: 

1.1. Cognitive science of learning

1.2. Cognitive science of memory

1.3. Ergonomics

1.4. Behavioral conditioning

1.6. Fashion

1.7. Self control/conscienciousness research

2. Guides for explicitly applying LW material to your life, smaller sequences and exercises

3. Anki cards for the sequences and other useful topics/books

4. Introductory material that gets people hooked

5. User friendly guides to existing LW material

6. Meetup materials:

6.1. Exercises

6.1.1. Anti-rationalization

6.2. Notes and slides for presentations on specific topics

6.3. Game how-tos 

6.4. Rejection therapy

6.4.1. Repetition

7. Book reviews on potentially useful books

7.1. Selfish Reasons to have more kids (critique/review)

7.2. Consciousness Explained

8. Cleaning up cognitive bias Wikipedia entries

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

9.1. A large set of good calibration questions

9.2. A good website for taking calibration tests

10. Financial analyses, like Brandon Reinhart's analysis of SIAI

10.1. The Cryonics Institute

10.2. Alcor

10.3. FHI

11. Resources/Advice to help people do projects

11.1. Advice for doing research

11.1.1. Doing literature reviews

11.1.2. Dealing with publication bias

11.1.3. Signs of researcher bias

11.1.4. Searching for critical viewpoints, alternative theories, disconfirming evidence

11.1.5. How do you know when you're done? 

12. Improvements to LW's site

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

12.2. Selenium tests for the less wrong site so that bugs are caught faster

12.3. Larger user pages

12.4. A better front page for lesswrong (prize?)

12.5. Setting up other language version of LW and/or translations 

12.5.1. Russian 

12.5.2. Portuguese

12.5.3. Spanish

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