I like the idea of "generic" levels because I'd like other people's appraisals of what they think are standard skills of human competence. (For example, it took me a while to realize that fitness is a standard domain of human competence, and that I was being silly by defining myself as "just not into exercise.")
I agree with wanting to know what others think of as standard skills of human competence, and non-standard, interesting/useful skills of human competence. But I don't see how needing generic levels follows from that. You can know just as much by having a (strength, stamina, math, chemistry, literature, instrumental music, etc.) level system, and with folks giving suggestions for what would be most useful to accomplish life goals generally, without trying to organize those skills into a "human level 1, human level 2" system.
I just got this random idea that people who want to become better at life could benefit from a common scale of "leveling". No, I don't mean vague Lesswrongey things like "changing your mind". I mean a set of concrete criteria like "you qualify for level 2 if you can do 5 pull-ups, have solved 30 Project Euler problems, and did 10 cold approaches". Obviously there would be separate ladders for different character classes, but not too many. Also obviously, my example was a bit too high for level 2. So I guess I really want to ask some meta questions here:
1) Do you think agreeing on a common leveling scale would be a good thing for a substantial subset of LW users? Would you feel good about leveling up and telling other people about it on LW?
2) Is there some good way to determine leveling criteria that are neither too high nor too low? Maybe make an intermediate scale of "experience points"?