Epistemic Status/Effort: I'm 85% confident this is a good idea, and that the broader idea is at least a good direction. Have gotten feedback from a few people and spend some time actively thinking through ramifications of it. Interested in more feedback.

TLDR:

1) When asking a group a question, i.e. "what do you think about X?", ask people to wait 12 seconds, to give each other time to think. If you notice someone else ask a question and people immediately answering, suggest people pause the conversation until people have had some time to think. (Probably specific mention "12 second rule" to give people a handy tag to remember)

2) In general, look for opportunities to improve or share social norms that'll help your community think more clearly, and show appreciation when others do so (i.e. "Epistemic Norms")

(this was originally conceived for the self-described "rationality" community, but I think is a good idea any group that'd like to improve their critical thinking as well as creativity.)

There are three reasons the 12-second rule seems important to me:

• On an individual level, it makes it easier to think of the best answer, rather than going with your cached thought.
• On the group level, it makes it easier to prevent anchoring/conformity/priming effects.
• Also on the group level, it means that people take longer to think of answers get to practice actually thinking for themselves

I said "hey, shouldn't we stop to each think first?" (this happens to be a thing my friends in NYC do). And I was somewhat surprised that the response was more like "oh, I guess that's a good idea" than "oh yeah whoops I forgot."

It seemed like a fairly obvious social norm for a community that prides itself on rationality, and while the question wasn't *super* important, I think its helpful to practice this sort of social norm on a day-to-day basis.

This prompted some broader questions - it occurred to me there were likely norms and ideas other people had developed in their local networks that I probably wasn't aware of. Given that there's no central authority on "good epistemic norms", how do we develop them and get them to spread? There's a couple people with popular blogs who sometimes propose new norms which maybe catch on, and some people still sharing good ideas on Less Wrong, effective-altruism.com, or facebook. But it doesn't seem like those ideas necessarily reach saturation.

Atrophied Skills

The first three years I spent in the rationality community, my perception is that my strategic thinking and ability to think through complex problems actually *deteriorated*. It's possible that I was just surrounded by smarter people than me for the first time, but I'm fairly confident that I specifically acquired the habit of "when I need help thinking through a problem, the first step is not to think about it myself, but to ask smart people around me for help."

Eventually I was hired by a startup, and I found myself in a position where the default course for the company was to leave some important value on the table. (I was working in an EA-adjaecent company, and wanted to push it in a more Effective Altruism-y direction with higher rigor). There was nobody else I could turn to for help. I had to think through what "better epistemic rigor" actually meant and how to apply it in this situation.

Whether or not my rationality had atrophied in the past 3 years, I'm certain that for the first time in long while, certain mental muscles *flexed* that I hadn't been using. Ultimately I don't know whether my ideas had a noteworthy effect on the company, but I do know that I felt more empowered and excited to improve my own rationality. 

I realized that, in the NYC meetups, quicker-thinking people tended to say what they thought immediately when a question was asked, and this meant that most of the people in the meetup didn't get to practice thinking through complex questions. So I started asking people to wait for a while before answering - sometimes 5 minutes, sometimes just a few seconds.

"12 seconds" seems like a nice rule-of-thumb to avoid completely interrupting the flow of conversation, while still having some time to reflect, and make sure you're not just shouting out a cached thought. It's a non-standard number which is hopefully easier to remember.

(That said, a more nuanced alternative is "everyone takes a moment to think until they feel like they're hitting diminishing returns on thinking or it's not worth further halting the conversation, and then raising a finger to indicate that they're done")

Meta Point: Observation, Improvement and Sharing

The 12-second rule isn't the main point though - just one of many ways this community could do a better job of helping both newcomers and old-timers hone their thinking skills. "Rationality" is supposed to be our thing. I think we should all be on the lookout for opportunities to improve our collective ability to think clearly. 

I think specific conversational habits are helpful both for their concrete, immediate benefits, as well as an opportunity to remind everyone (newcomers and old-timers alike) that we're trying to actively improve in this area.

I have more thoughts on how to go about improving the meta-issues here, which I'm less confident and will flesh out in future posts.

This article is in a superposition of tongue-in-cheek and tongue straight in the mouth. (That's a Norwegian expression meaning "to concentrate on something difficult".) If you read it, please report your experimental observation of which it is, so that we can determine the amplitudes of the two states. However, I am actually making a serious point: Why do we have this non-optimal norm, and can we change it? 

Gyms, at least the ones I've been in, seem to have a norm that each user should wipe his own sweat off the machine he just used. This is obviously inefficient. Consider that there are two kinds of users: Sensible, rational people (SRPs) who don't give a damn about other people's sweat on the machine; and finicky fussbudget frumpy failures (4Fs) (names chosen at random out of a hat, and completely unrelated to my own opinion on the point) who are too precious to have anyone else's sweat in their immediate vicinity; it's not as though they're going to shower after their exercise, right? Anyway. Under the existing norm, everyone has to clean once per machine use, but only the 4Fs are getting any utilons. Clearly, if we switch to a norm that everyone optionally cleans the machine they're about to use, then the SRPs are saved some work, while the 4Fs still get to use clean machines. This is an obvious Pareto improvement. Moreover, it's also a Nash equilibrium (and, incidentally, the current norm is a puzzling failure of the usual rule of thumb that social arrangements are Nash equilibria - why have we chosen this particular activity as one where we put effort into pushing people away from the equilibrium?) since nobody can improve his situation by cleaning the machine after using it, or failing to clean beforehand. 

Please spread the word of this obvious improvement in gym-users' quality of life! Also, please push society towards the Nash equilibrium by defecting from the current norm: Either clean your machine before, not after, using it, or else don't clean it at all. If anyone challenges you, give them a quick lecture on economics - this has the added benefit of making you popular with the opposite sex. 

Some possible objections:

1. My mother taught me to clean up after myself.

And imagine how much more pleasant your childhood would have been, if only you'd known about Nash equilibria and Pareto improvements! However, not all is lost: You can still try to convince your SO or roommate that the one who cares most about mess should be the one to clean it up. 

2. My utility function has a term for not making others do work.

Also, apparently, for signalling your concern for others. The total amount of work done is rather less in my proposed new equilibrium. Suggest you update accordingly. 

3. I prefer cleaning up my own sweat to cleaning that of others.

Have you considered the benefits of self-modifying to be more masochistic? Today's society offers all kinds of opportunities for turning yourself on, if only you could take advantage! This could actually be more efficient than taking a pill that makes you bisexual, since you can only sleep with so many people in one lifetime anyway. Repeat after me: Thank you for making me clean the machine, Master! Please may I clean another? There, do you feel the surge of hormones? 

4. If I have to clean the machine, everyone else should too!

Until the rest of society has self-modified to be sufficiently masochistic to derive pleasure from your dominance, you should not attempt to impose it on them. This aside, have you considered the benefits of suggesting suitable punishments for anyone who doesn't clean their machine? Aren't they being rather naughty? Many exciting encounters may result from this handy ice-breaker! 

5. My gym doesn't have that norm.

Excellent! Please spread the word. Today your gym, tomorrow mine! 

Edit - Barring a major surprise, this post should be regarded as a worthless artifact of my impulse to do things instead of talking about them.  I apologize for any time wasted on this, and would recommend ignoring it unless it is for historical purposes.  I'll just stick to things I'm less bad at from now on.

This article will be edited as people post and discuss.  

I believe that we need to have a clear, concise statement about the beliefs, practices, and taboos that it is rational to hold, and that we already hold as a group.  To be clear, this is not an attempt to make new norms, but an attempt to codify the ones that we already hold and to get a rough estimate of the popularity/importance of each.

Core Rational - skills, meta-beliefs, and habits that enhance personal rationality

Social Rational - norms that enhance working in groups rationally

LessWrong Norms - norms for dealing with Less Wrong specifically

Common Knowledge - basic, useful beliefs to build on

Please post one phrase at a time and then give your reasoning under it.  Once any idea has a common consensus, I'll add it to this article in the appropriate list.  

Edited - Removed the word 'should' as someone has suggested a better phrasing.  Edited again - category change, remove extra now-useless examples.

Evolution. Morality. Strategy. Security/Cryptography. This hits so many topics of interest, I can't imagine it not being discussed here. Bruce Schneier blogs about his book-in-progress, The Dishonest Minority:

Humans evolved along this path. The basic mechanism can be modeled simply. It is in our collective group interest for everyone to cooperate. It is in any given individual's short-term self interest not to cooperate: to defect, in game theory terms. But if everyone defects, society falls apart. To ensure widespread cooperation and minimal defection, we collectively implement a variety of societal security systems.

I am somewhat reminded of Robin Hanson's Homo Hypocritus writings from the above, although it is not the same. Schneier says that the book is basically a first draft at this point, and might still change quite a bit. Some of the comments focus on whether "dishonest" is actually the best term to use for defecting from social norms.