I had an idea to increase average people’s rationality with 4 qualities:
It doesn’t seem/feel “rationalist” or “nerdy.”
It can work without people understanding why it works
It can be taught without understanding its purpose
It can be perceived as about politeness
A high school class, where people try to pass Intellectual Turing Tests. It's not POLITE/sophisticated to assert opinions if you can't show that you understand the people that you're saying are wrong.
We already have a lot of error-detection abilities when our minds criticize others' ideas, we just need to access that power for our own ideas.
I'm not sure to what extent you want people to criticize ideas in this thread, and I'm going to test the waters. Give me feedback on how well this matches the norms you envision.
An immediate flaw comes to mind, that any elaboration of this idea should respond to: Changing the high school curriculum is very difficult. If you've acquired the social capital to change the curriculum of a high school, you should not spend it by making such a small, marginal contribution, but rather you could probably find something with a larger effect with the same social capital.
Ever had a minor insight, but didn't feel confident or interested enough to write a top-quality LW post? Personally, the high standards of LW and my own uncertainty have kept me from ever bothering to present a number of ideas.
Here, you can post quick little (preferably under 100 words) insights, with the explicit understanding that the idea is unpolished and unvetted, and hey, maybe nobody will be interested, but it's worth a shot.
Voters and commenters are invited to be especially charitable, given that we already know that these ideas are less-than-perfect in concept or presentation or ______, and we want people to be able to present their ideas quickly so that they can be understood, rather than having to craft them to be defensible.
If a crucial flaw is found in an insight, or if the idea is unoriginal, please point it out.
Alternatively, if enough interest is shown, the idea can be expanded on in a Discussion post, and you are invited to include in your post a disclaimer that, even if this idea is not of interest to everybody, some people have shown interest over in the Unpolished Insights Thread, and this post is targeted towards interested people like them.
Hopefully, this format lets us get the best of both worlds, easily filtering out unneeded content without anybody feeling punished, and calling the best ideas out into the light, without scaring anybody off with high standards.
(Post your ideas separately, so that they can be voted for or commented on separately)