Ok, I'm about to sound hypercritical and rambly. What I'm actually doing is running through the mental models in my head for "how businesses work" and trying to come up with possible failure points and solutions. I think you've jumped ahead to the "how can we create this thing" stage without first running through the "how can we make this a viable, sustainable sytem" part.
Incentives: One thing you might run into is the typical problems with bartering systems - you have to find two people who have exactly equal knowledge that's worth the same to each other, that takes the same amount of time to teach, and is exactly the knowledge that the other wants - otherwise, the trade will not be worth it for one of the people.
One way you could fix this is to have a "time currency" - If you tutor someone for one hour, you than have one hour that you can use to "pay" another tutor.
Network Effect: This is a network, so the typical chicken and egg problem occurs with the network effect - it only works if you have a ton of people who can tutor in a variety of fields, but you're not going to attract that ton of people if there's not already tutors there that want to tutor them. There's a few ways to deal with this, and I think that you should use all the strategies if you want this to work:
Double Sided Market:
MVP: To me, going through the whole model, that assumption of symmetry between tutored and tutoring is the riskiest assumption, and the riskiest assumption should always be what you test in your MVP (minimum viable product). The simplest way to test this would just be to go on craigslist and put up an ad that says "Looking to be tutored in XYZ, willing to trade for tutoring in A,B, or C subject."
If you get say, 5 legitimately interested responses, that's enough to contact those people, talk to them about your idea, and see if they'll tutor someone. If they will, you can go on to the next step and start creating your launch list.
People: The first failure point that comes up in any startup is not usually getting a good idea, it's executing on it. The tone of your post seemed like it was saying "here's a cool idea I have" vs. "Here's something I'm going to do." But my model of this is that if you don't make it happen, it won't get done. No one else is going to execute this for you.
Perhaps it would make sense to have people comment on the essential content of a course before the tutor and the student shake hands? It might be hard to guess the amount of knowledge one has to impart/consume in just the way that both parties agree on it and it is actually useful. And improvising in the middle of a session is clearly suboptimal. OTOH, students can help each other, too.
Is there an online test to learn one's preferred method of learning new material (listening vs reading)? I know that for me, reading about math in Russian is far less tiring than in English, and listening to an English explanation is still more demanding. Perhaps, when people are offered options to choose, they would be able to read stuff in their own time and then come online to review their understanding?
(Sorry for answering your comment instead of the OP, I just can't copypaste much text when on my phone, and I started typing with some other idea:( I'll try to avoid it in future)
Thanks--this is a great analysis. It sounds like you would be much more convinced if even a few people already agreed to tutor each other--we can try this as a first step.
It would be great if LW could scrounge up enough resources to help people studying for the careers recommended by the 80000 hours. Starting with a list of the needed, but not covered in college, subjects.
LW itself doesn't "scrounge up resources". Individual people have time and can spend it. If you think that a thread about a particular subject should exists go ahead and open it.
Undergraduate mathematics, Statistics, Machine Learning, Intro to Apache Spark, Intro to Cloud Computing with Amazon
Physics, quantum mechanics, related math concepts like linear algebra, abstract vector spaces, differential equations, calculus.
Much of the material in the LW sequences.
Optimization and machine learning. Also, shell scripting, python, perl, matlab, computability, numerical methods, basic data structures and algorithms.
More randomly: electrochemical energy storage, Li-ion batteries, distance running, dog training, Christian theology, Latin, English/American literature, poetry.
Perhaps more people would sign up if 'teaching' was relaxed into 'guided discussion'? In that case, for example, the vegetarians could hang out together in Skype or just download instructions/videoes, each teaching the others some new dish to make their cooking more robust? I would then brew some vegetarian borsch (although it isn't supposed to be so).
Also, there is a difference between teaching a skill and teaching information. I could, for example, help people study Russian and Ukrainian, though I have never taught language before.
Sociology, political science and international politics, economics (graduate level), psychology, psychiatry, medicine.
Meditation (empirical/practical emphasis), and more broadly the psychology associated with executive function and attentional control.
Set theory, topology, deep learning. Probably most math/computer science topics.
Anything that someone thinks they have a really good intuitive explanation for. Omniscience was one of my life goals when I was growing up.
Given your strengths, you might find First concepts of topology by Chinn and Steenrod a nice introduction.
Mathematical modelling in ecology.
Fossilized pterydophytes (just an ordered list of scientific articles would do.)
MADS-box genes in plants (especially not connected with flowering).
Perhaps some tutoring in German.
I like this idea. There are lots of things that I know and even more things that I'm interested in knowing, but I'm not sure I understand how it would play out.
How much tutoring experience do you have? What sorts of resources would there be for tutors? How long do you see tutor relationships lasting? What does it look like to tutor someone in Python Programming. Is this person trying to learn python on their own? Are they following a guide I'm familiar with? I know calculus like the back of my hand, but that doesn't mean I have lesson plans mapped out. Tutoring is typically done in-addition to some other form of education.
I'm not sure that every student can be a teacher, and if you want people to be good teachers, I think it will require giving them access to a lot more resources than a GoogleGroups page and webcam.
I like the concept, I'd be interested in seeing a more fleshed out description.
In the formal sense "university" is a synonym for "community". That is what the wheel is called.
This app has a similar model, however, not based on mutual teaching, but on the concept that everybody mentors someone who is less advanced: http://www.understudyapp.com/ As far as I know, it didn't take off though.
I have seen that before, I think was a lw rationalist project but I'm not sure. From what I remember the web page was pretty dull, so maybe that make it fail(or prevent it to grow).
P.S. I will post a link If I can find the site.
I wonder if anyone has thought about setting up an online community dedicated to peer-to-peer tutoring. The idea is that if I want to learn "Differential Geometry" and know "Python programming", and you want to learn "Python programming" and know "Differential geometry," then we can agree to tutor each other online. The features of the community would be to support peer-to-peer tutoring by: