What about an online group for high schoolers devoted to refining the art of human rationality?
Discovering LessWrong had a profound effect on me, shedding light on the way I study thought processes and helping me with a more rational approach. As a teenager in high school, I wish I could share LessWrong's teachings and philosophies with others at my level.
It would be awesome if we could create a list for the interests of LessWrong readers who are in their teens/in high school. I think this would allow a rational online community such as LessWrong to help develop more rationalists whether by outlining some plans to start rationality clubs in high school or discussing ways teenagers an approach rationality. I also think it would help more timid readers to express themselves and talk with other teenagers about common interests (adults could be allowed in to, if they are deemed appropriate for the community). Correct me if I'm wrong, but rationality training should start as soon as possible in the development process and what better age group to target than teenagers? Adolescence is a crucial transitional phase psychologically, biologically and culturally. I would love to see more collected articles on the evolution of rationality in the amazing, flexible mind of an adolescent. If the goal of this blog is to train humans to be rational-minded, more importance should be allocated to training teenagers. I do not think it hasn't happened yet for want of need among teenagers and if we concentrate some resources, gather a list of interested individuals and garner some interest we can make this work. This article is a good example of something that could be distributed in the proposed group:
For LW readers under 20: Note that the Thiel Fellowships (20 under 20) are now open for their next round of applications, and as they put it, "you have a huge readership of folk who would make great applicants". More info here. (from http://lesswrong.com/lw/f9r/weekly_lw_meetups_austin_berlin_cambridge_uk/)
There is also this LessWrong Highschoolers Facebook group created by Curtis SerVaas:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/201577993258819/
I recently Skyped (not officially a verb yet?) Anna Salamon who is the Executive Director of CFAR (Center for Applied Rationality). We had begun to develop this proposal. She is on the e-mail list and will be involved as a quasi-supervisor person. You can reach her at anna [at] appliedrationality [dot] org. Drop me a one-line e-mail with your name, age, and situation at [deleted] if you'd like to join the list. Speak up! Teenagers should be the subject of concentrated effort on LessWrong. We are the future, help us to reach the fruits of human rationality.
In saying this, I am in no way saying that the average teenager is stupid, or lacks the cognitive abilities to full read and appreciate Less Wrong.
However, the readability of the Core Sequences isn't at a low reading level. To make them more teen-friendly, we may wish to consider how to make them more accessible. This may mean making them shorter, summarizing the main ideas more frequently, and using applicable real-life examples more.
I'd be interested in knowing what kind of help we're looking for to make this happen. I'd be willing to help with the writing of the new articles if I knew which were most wanted, and had a few people (and some teens) to bounce them off of when completed.
In general, we need rationality materials for people of ordinary intelligence. The vast majority of people are part of the rationality waterline we're trying to raise. And it wouldn't surprise me if writing materials for them would lead to clearer, simpler explanations which are just as sound as the ones we have.