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.
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?
I liked the idea of a separate, electronic format for several reasons:
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.
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.
Note: This was originally posted in the discussion area, but motions to move it to the top level were made.
-----
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: