From "Go Forth and Create the Art!":
Yet there is, I think, more absent than present in this "art of rationality"—defeating akrasia and coordinating groups are two of the deficits I feel most keenly. I've concentrated more heavily on epistemic rationality than instrumental rationality, in general. And then there's training, teaching, verification, and becoming a proper experimental science based on that. And if you generalize a bit further, then building the Art could also be taken to include issues like developing better introductory literature, developing better slogans for public relations, establishing common cause with other Enlightenment subtasks, analyzing and addressing the gender imbalance problem...
When you try to develop part of the human art of thinking (...) You will be tempted by fake explanations of the mind, fake accounts of causality, mysterious holy words, and the amazing idea that solves everything.
I hope that someone who learns the part of the Art that I've set down here (...) will not immediately run away; they will not just make stuff up at random; they may be moved to consult the literature in experimental psychology; they will not automatically go into an affective death spiral around their Brilliant Idea; they will have some idea of what distinguishes a fake explanation from a real one.
You will need to draw on multiple sources to create your portion of the Art. You should not be getting all your rationality from one author (...) To the best of my knowledge there is no true science that draws its strength from only one person.
I somewhat suspect that you couldn't develop the Art just by sitting around thinking to yourself, "Now how can I fight that akrasia thingy?" You'd develop the rest of the Art in the course of trying to do something. Maybe even (...) some task difficult enough to strain and break your old understanding and force you to reinvent a few things.
...or just read the whole article from 2009.
So, I would like to see a summary of everything we know about (a) defeating akrasia, and (b) coordinating groups. Along with how do we know what we think we know: was there a replicated experiment that proved something, or is it just a hypothesis from a popular book that feels right?
Unlike programming a Friendly AI, this is something all of us can try at home. But doing it properly would require some research and experiments.
Speaking of akrasia, I'm hoping some people will write and post articles about these intriguing topics.
Do we know whether akrasia is just one thing?
I suggested recently that part of the problem with with LW was a lock of discussion posts which was caused by people not thinking of much to post about.
When I ask myself "what might be a good topic for a post?", my mind goes blank, but surely not everything that's worth saying that's related to rationality has been said.
So, is there something at the back of your mind which might be interesting? A topic which got some discussion in an open thread that could be worth pursuing?
If you've found anything which helps you generate useable ideas, please comment about it-- or possibly write a post on the subject.