One of the problems the LW, EA, CFAR X-risk community has been faced with recently discussed on Slate Star Codex is the absorption of people interested in researching, volunteering, helping, participating in the community. A problem worth subdividing into how to get new people into the social community, which is addressed on the link above, and separate problem, absorbing their skills, ability, and willingness to volunteer, to which this post is dedicated: 

What should specific person Smith do to help in the project of preventing X-risk, improving the world, saving lives? We assume here Smith will not be a donor - in which case the response would be "donate" -  joined the community not long ago and has a skill set X.

Soon this problem will become worse due to influx of more people brought in by the soon to be published books by MacAskill, Yudkowsky and Singer coming out. There will be more people wanting to do something, and able to do some sorts of projects, but who are not being allocated any specific project that matches their skill set and values.

Now is a good time to solve it. I was talking about this problem today with Stephen Frey and we considered it would be a good idea to have a list of specific technical or research projects that can be broken down into smaller chunks for people to pick up and do. A Getting Things Done list for researchers and technology designers. Preferably those would be tractable projects that can be done in fewer than three months. There are some lists of open problems in AI and Superintelligence control, but not for many X-risks or other problems that some of the community frequently considers important.

So I decided to make a compilation of the questions and problems we already have listed here, and then ask someone (Oliver Habryka or a volunteer in the comment section here) to transform the compiled set into a standardized format.

A tentative category list

Area: X-risk, AI, Anti-aging, Cryonics, Rationality, IA, Self-Improvement, Differential Technological Development, Strategy, Civilizational Inadequacy, etc... describes what you have to value/disvalue in order for this project to match your values.

Project: description of which actions need to be taken in 3 month period for this project to be considered complete.

Context: if part of a larger project, which is it, and how will it connect to other parts. Also justification for that project.

Notes: any relevant constraints that may play a role, time-sensitivity, costs, number of people, location, etc...

For example at Luke's list of Superintelligence research questions, the first one:

1. How strongly does IQ predict rationality, metacognition, and philosophical sophistication, especially in the far right tail of the IQ distribution? Relevant to the interaction of intelligence amplification and FAI chances. See the project guide here.

Would be rendered as

Area: FAI ; Project:  Read Rationality and the Reflective Mind, by Keith Stanovich, to become familiar with the model of algorithmic and reflective minds. For this project, investigating metacognition means investigating the reflective mind. Find ways to test Stanovich’s predictions and answer the questions in the previous section. Design the study to give participants tests which high a IQ should help with and tests which a high IQ should not help with. This step will involve searching through Rationality and the Reflective Mind, and then directly contacting Stanovich to ask which tests he has not yet conducted. Context: this is the first of two part sub-study investigating IQ and metacognition, and needs being followed by conducting a new study investigating the correlation. These parts are complimentary with the study of IQ and philosophical success, and are relevant to assess the impact that intelligence augmentation will have in our likelihood of generating Friendly Artificial Intelligence. Notes: needs to be conducted by someone with a researcher affiliation and capacity to conduct a study on human subjects later, six month commitment, some science writing experience.

Edit: Here is a file where to start compiling projects - thanks Stephen!

This is the idea.To gather a comprehensive list of research or technical questions for the areas above, transform them into projects that can be more easily parsed and assigned than their currently scattered counterparts and make the list available to those who want to work on them. This post is the first step in collection, so if there are lists anywhere of projects, or research questions that may be relevant for any of the areas cited above, please post a link to these at the comments - special kudos if you already post it in the format above. Also let me know if you would like to volunteer in this. If you remember any question or specific project but don't see it in any list or on the comments, post it. When we create a standardized list for people to look through it will be separated by area, so people can visualize only projects related to what they value.

Compilation:

Lists of ideas and projects:

Superintelligence Strategic List - Muelhauser

Mechanisms of Aging - Ben Best

Cryonics Strategy Space - Froolow

Ideas and projects:

Go to Mars - Musk

Make it easy for people within the community to move to US, UK.

Preserve Brains

Find moral enhancers that improve global cooperation as well as intra-group cooperation

Open Borders

...

...

I've just inserted about 50 new links to my list of writings, most of which from Lesswrong, here. For convenience, I'm copying it below.

I write a lot about a variety of topics in English and until 2013 also did in Portuguese, Notice Google Chrome automatically translates texts if you need. This will someday be a compilation of all my writings, divided by Borgean topics. There are also writings I wish I had written:

The ones I really, really want you to read before you read the rest:

• 000 The Starting Gun
• 001 A sense that more is possible
• 002 Russell’s one page autobiography (Português)
• 003 De onde viemos?
• 004 10 Razões pelas quais estou indo embora
• 005 Six Harsh Truths that will make you a better person
• 006 This blog’s first post: Stop Learning, Start Doing
• 007 Altruistic Awesomeness, Your Challenge!  (O Fantástico Altruista)
• Nearly all of these above are intensely motivational in character. If you are truly allergic to motivational writings, read only 003, 004, 005 and 006.

Those that may help you save the world:

• 100 Troubles with Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV)
• 101 In praise of tribes that pretend to try: counter”-Critique of Effective Altruism. (critique of this)
• 102 On media and Effective Altruism. (Interacting with media distortion)
• 104 Amending the Orthogonality Thesis. (Suggests an amendment to this paper)
• 105 Share your goals (only) with who shares your goals.

Those that are very long and full of ideas:

• 010 Simulando Dennett (254 pages teaching you to think as Daniel Dennett does about biology, philosophy and AI, in portuguese)
• 011 On What Selves Are  See also Short-term selves versus rationality.
• 100 Troubles with CEV  (a genteral discussion of problems with Coherent Extrapolated Volition, our main strategic plan to save the world up to the time of writing.)
• 012 Calibrating against undetectable utilons and goal changing events  (how to actually reach your goals even if you change or they are in the far future)
• 013 Para onde vamos?

Those short:

• 020 Research is polygamous. The Importance of what you do needn’t be proportional to your awesomeness
• 021 Why is it rational to invest in retirement, I don’t get it!
• 022 Seize the maximal probability moment.
• 023 Noticing something completely absurd about yourself.
• 024 Words that don’t exist in English.

Those about how to live life to the fullest:

• 000 The Starting Gun
• 004 10 Razões pelas quais estou indo embora
• 007 Altruistic Awesomeness, Your Challenge!  (O Fantástico Altruista)
• 160 Inteligentes e audaciosos.

Those related to evolution:

• 045 Using evolution for sex and marriage. (How to use our natural mating systems and mechanisms to find partners in the time horizon of your desires.)

Those about minds:

• 030 How not to be a naïve computationalist. (The shortest way of delving in, learning from, and getting out of the field of Philosophy of Mind and Language.)
• 031 The cultural cost of Placebo. (In Oxford’s practical ethics blog)
• 032 I’ve warned you, but I shoouldn’t have. (Ethics, SSRI’s, Information Hazards)
• 033 Ciúme.
• 034 Two cognitive cases.

Those which are on Lesswrong but I think should have been read more:

• 040 “I know what she has to offer already” is almost certainly wrong
• 041 Drowning in an information ocean.
• 042 Complementing the Mega-Course for Aspiring Philosophers.
• 043 Mega-Course for Aspiring Philosophers.
• 044 Rationality versus short-term selves.
• 045 Using evolution for sex and marriage.

Those defying authority and important notions of the Status Quo:

• 060 Catching up with the present from the developing world. (An autobiographical account of growing up far from where innovation takes place, and people know what is going on)
• 061 On not getting a job as an option.
• 062 You are the average of the five people you spend most time with.
• 063 Patrimônio e felicidade, a hipótese do mergulho.
• 064 Anarco Individualismo e Transhumanismo social.

Those I currently dislike or find silly:

• 065 Good places to live as a Lesswrong member.
• 066 Incentives to make money, should we list them?
• 067 Should one be sad when an opportunity is lost?
• 068 The revenge of the nerds, humanity’s saviors.
• 069 Amor e probabilidade.

Those humorous:

• 070 Pay other species to pandemize vegetarianism for you.
• 071 How not to make money.

Those I want someone else to finish or rehash:

• 090 Let’s make a rational immortalist sequence
• 091 Absent Transhumanism and tranformative technologies, which Utopia is left?
• 092 Making the chaff invisible, and getting the wheat. (looking for alternatives to drinking from the fire hose of the web, and getting only content we actually want to see)
• 093 O segundo maior erro econômico que você vai cometer na vida.

Those in portuguese:

• 010 Simulando Dennett
• 120 Ditados populares corrigidos.
• 004 10 Razões pelas quais estou indo embora (do Brasil)
• 007 O Fantástico Altruista
• 003 De onde viemos?
• 013 Para onde vamos?
• 063 Patrimônio e felicidade, a hipótese do mergulho. (como usar seu patrimônio no tempo)
• 121 Casas em São Paulo, preço x felicidade.
• 122 Desprovando o princípio do hábito de Hume.
• 123 E se fosse possível tornar-se gay. (veja também Observações sobre ocomportamento sexual das pessoas)
• 124 Guiões do bom pensador.
• 125 Adorno, Snickers e etologia, a informavoridade como motor do homem contemporâneo.
• 126 Uma análise do conceito de racionalidade à luz de Putnam.
• 127 Os principais obstáculos ao conhecimento racional.
• 128 Sujeito e poderes da palavra falada e escrita: Uma ficção gravitando Derrida, Dennett e Pinker.
• 129 O mundo é grande! (tipos de multiverso)

Those not above:

• 150 Is the blood thicker near the tropics? Trade offs of living in the cold
• 151 Is there a way to stop liking sugar? (spoiler, no, there isn’t)
• 152 The unforbidden beauty of Islamic aesthetics.
• 153 Utopia, the hidden design. Part 1
• 154 Utopia, the hidden design. Part 2
• 155 Ética, herança, propriedade, há alternativa?
• 156 Teachings of Mount Qassioun (reflections at the top of Damascus’ only mountain)