You mentioned specific groups which try to reach a specific goal. That's great, on the level of individual goals. But we also need to go more meta. The foreign language group will not tell you to stop learning the language if your life situation changes so that the original purpose of learning the language is no longer valid; or if simply a better opportunity appears and it would be rational to move your limited resources from the language towards something else. Also, if you already haven't decided to study a specific language, the group will not find you and explore with you whether starting learning the language would be a good idea for you.

A rationalist group could help with this. We could already provide this support to each other; on meetups, on skype, on mailing lists. Some of us already use our good friends for this purpose; but the problem is that these friends are not always LW-style rationalists, so sometimes we only get their "cached thoughts" as an advice. Also, some people may use a psychologist; not necessarily as a source of rational advice, but as someone to listen and reflect on obvious irrationalities.

So, I think many of us are already using somewhat similar solutions, but either they were not consciously optimized, or they were optimized only for a partial goal.

The participant could be observed by the LW community; something like a reality show. The costs of observation would have to be weighted, but I imagine the volunteer would provide:

A short log every day. Such as: "Learned 30 new words with Anki. Met with a friend and discussed our plans; seems interested, but we didn't agree on anything specific. Exercise. Wrote two pages of my thesis, the last one needs a rewrite. Spent 3 hours on internet." Not too detailed, not to waste too much time, but detailed enough to provide an idea about progress. (The log would be outside of LW, to reduce the volunteer's temptation to procrastinate here.)

A plan every week: What do I want to achieve; what needs to be done. Something like a GTD plan with "next actions". What could go wrong, and how will I react. What do I want to avoid, and how. -- At the end of the week: A summary, what happened as expected, what was different, what lessons can be taken. -- The LW hive mind would discuss this, and the volunteer can decide to follow their suggestions.

Every month: A comment-sized report in LW Group Rationality Diary; for the same reason other people write there: to encourage each other.

going crazy and frustrated trying to apply not yet processed for daily human consumption raw heuristics and biases research to everyday living 24/7

In this case I would recommend giving feedback: "I'm trying to do this, and it drives me crazy. Any advice? I spent thinking five minutes about it, and here are my ideas: X, Y, Z."

or doing the general wise living thing that smart people with life experience often already do to the best of their ability

This could probably be solved by making a prediction at the beginning of the project. The volunteer would list the changes in the previous years, successes and failures, and interpolate: "Using my previous years as an outside view, I predict that if I didn't participate in this experiment, I would probably do A, B, C." At the end of the project, the actual outcomes can be compared with the prediction.

Live rationally to what end? Not having a clear idea of what my goals are is the first problem that comes to my mind when looking at this.

Sure. The goals would be stated by the volunteer, either from the beginning, or at least at the end of the first month.

I don't see why "my goals are doing exactly what I already do day in, day out, so I've already been living rationally all this time, thank you very much" would necessarily be incoherent for example.

It's perfectly okay. It just does not make sense to participate in the experiment for this specific person. The experiment is meant for people who are not in this situation.

Instead of trying to do the perfect thing immediately, I would recommend continuous improvement. Find the most painful problems, and fix them first. Find the obvious mistakes, and do better (not best, just better). Progress towards your current goals, but when you realize they were mistaken, improve them. If you think you couldn't do a big change, start with doing small changes; and once in a while reconsider your beliefs about the big change. The goal is not to be perfect, but to keep improving.

If at the end you are significantly better than a prediction based on your past, that's a success. If as a side effect we get better experimental data, or if you can rewrite and publish your logs as an e-book to make extra money and do an advertisement for CFAR, that's even better. If you inspire dozen other people, and if most of them also become significantly better than the predictions based on their pasts; and if the improvement is still there even after the end of experiments; that would be completely awesome.

The decision of what is "better" is of course individual, but I hope there would be strong correlation. (On the other hand, I would expect different opinions on what is "best".)

I think most Christians would say that Jabocs completely misunderstood Christianity.

Jacobs' Biblical behavior : Christianity = Hollywood rationality : LW rationality

He cheated by approximating the outside behavior, while preserving his inside behavior (thoughts and beliefs) as much as possible. When the year was over, he probably reverted back to normal. That kind of experiment is only good for examining a strawman. And also... for publicity.

I believe that in this community it is completely obvious that we are not trying to perform the Hollywood rationality. However, there is still a risk that our understanding is imperfect, and taking ideas seriously will expose the imperfections. For example, we may publicly profess that emotions are important, and yet our "rational" plans may fail to consider them. But this is where we need to use our ability to go meta and think: "okay, this plan sounded completely reasonable, but now that I am doing it for two months, I feel somehow unhappy and unmotivated", so we try to update the plan, instead of merely (a) blindly following it, or (b) giving up completely.

I don't have a completely clear idea at this moment -- to be honest, I am not even sure if the whole thing is not completely insane -- but I imagine a very high commitment to the cause. For example, I am somewhat trying to live rationally, but I keep forgetting some useful things, or I break my rules all the time if I don't feel like following them, etc. And the idea is that as a volunteer, I would stop making various kinds of excuses, and would give other people more control over my life or express my objections as honestly as I could. For example if other people told me to quit my job and do something else, I would either do it, or would write an explanation of why I am not convinced that this is the rational thing to do. I would respond to all rationality advice (at least by saying "sorry, for some emotional reasons I don't completely understand, I can't do this"), instead of merely picking the parts that feel nice and silently ignoring the rest, and even forgetting those nice parts whenever it is convenient.

In other words, I would make an extraordinary effort to live rationally, the whole year. If some things are taboo to me, I would try to declare that in advance (of course I cannot predict everything), to make a difference between something that is unacceptable in long term, and a short-term desire to avoid some inconvenience. I would take risks, when told to, assuming that the given advice is good. Or I would make some clear limits, such as: the money I have now in my bank account I want to remain there untouched during the experiment, and I will not take any debt; but of the money I make during the experiment, you can tell me how to use it. -- Something like the guy who lived one year Biblically did: he also had some limits, e.g. didn't stone anyone, but otherwise he tried to follow the rules.

Your refusal to move to a different area, even if adviced to, does not disqualify you automatically. If this is your psychological constraint, it's good to be open about it. On the other hand, if such constraint would make the members of the hive-mind so disappointed that they refuse to provide you support within these limits, that could disqualify you. (Or they may just decide to use their limited resources on someone with less constraints.) But if we communicate this all in advance, we minimize the risk of disappointment during the experiment; everyone either agrees on the same rules, or does not participate. If the hive-mind knows about your constraints in advance, they have no right to complain later.

EDIT: After reading what I wrote... seems like I'm equating "living rationally" and "obeying the LW hive-mind", which technically are two different things. The idea behind this is that there is only one rationality, there is no "my rationality" and "your rationality" (there may be different values, though). I usually behave irrationally when I am under control of my impulses, because at that moment, they are all I see. Replacing these impulses with outside control should improve things. And the communication would make my thoughts more explicit, which also should help.

EDIT2: I believe it will be entertaining. It will be like a reality show (which is something humans love to watch, even if they are ashamed to admit it), only instead of stupid people doing pointless things there will be smart people doing potentially awesome things. Humans love stories. Humans love being a part of story.