Systems theory, in first place, is a topic that I found while rummaging through online sources, including Wikipedia, for items to add to the poll; it's described there as the "study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems in all fields of research. [....] In this context the word systems is used to refer specifically to self-regulating systems, i.e. that are self-correcting through feedback." Leadership seems to fall into both the social and "being effective" categories of interest, but has only lightly been touched on in previous discussion here despite a lot of ink spilled on the topic elsewhere -- the top Google results for "leadership" on this site are currently Calcsam's post on community roles and a book review for the Arbinger Institute's Leadership and Self Deception. "To Lead, You Must Stand Up" also comes to mind.
How to Use It
The spreadsheet includes columns for "Currently Investigated By" and "Writeup URLs" -- feel free to add your name or writeup links. If you already know a thing or two about one of the above topics, share your knowledge in a comment below or in a discussion post as appropriate, similar to the earlier "What can you teach us?" If you want to survey what currently exists on a topic, grab a few books, investigate, and then let us know what you found. When a related post instead of just a comment is appropriate, I recommend the tag "topic_search" As mentioned previously, even investigations that end in a comment to this post that a topic isn't useful for LW is still itself useful for the search.
At the end of June, I asked Less Wrong to vote for "What topic[s] would be best for an investigation and brief post?" in order to direct a search for topics to examine here. My thanks to everyone that participated (especially since the comments hint that the poll format was not well-liked). The most-wanted topics follow, and the complete list can be found on Google Docs -- maps and graphs related to the poll are also available on All Our Ideas. A score for a topic in the results below is an "estimated [percent] chance that it will win against a randomly chosen idea."
Systems theory, in first place, is a topic that I found while rummaging through online sources, including Wikipedia, for items to add to the poll; it's described there as the "study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems in all fields of research. [....] In this context the word systems is used to refer specifically to self-regulating systems, i.e. that are self-correcting through feedback." Leadership seems to fall into both the social and "being effective" categories of interest, but has only lightly been touched on in previous discussion here despite a lot of ink spilled on the topic elsewhere -- the top Google results for "leadership" on this site are currently Calcsam's post on community roles and a book review for the Arbinger Institute's Leadership and Self Deception. "To Lead, You Must Stand Up" also comes to mind.
How to Use It
The spreadsheet includes columns for "Currently Investigated By" and "Writeup URLs" -- feel free to add your name or writeup links. If you already know a thing or two about one of the above topics, share your knowledge in a comment below or in a discussion post as appropriate, similar to the earlier "What can you teach us?" If you want to survey what currently exists on a topic, grab a few books, investigate, and then let us know what you found. When a related post instead of just a comment is appropriate, I recommend the tag "topic_search" As mentioned previously, even investigations that end in a comment to this post that a topic isn't useful for LW is still itself useful for the search.