Subskill: Be able to identify the internal feeling of having a required conclusion, of an argument only having one allowed answer, and (a slightly different internal sensation) of other answers being disallowed.
Level one: After this skill is explicitly mentioned and invoked by some other process, be able to notice this internal sense of required-conclusion-ness (disallowed-ness) when you consciously focus on it.
Level two: Have a constant perceptual eye out for feelings like this, notice automatically without needing to be "on guard", chain into applying other anti-rationalization skills (e.g. Litany of Tarski).
Exercise idea: For items on the hot-topic list, identify ones that you care about, and:
Exercise A: Try to identify directly, just from looking at the issue and imagining the potential answers to it, the emotional sense that there's only one allowed answer to it, and the emotional sense that a different answer is not allowed.
Exercise B: Imagine being in the process of losing an argument about that issue. Identify the drive (desperation, need) to regain the lost territory and win. Then imagine being in the process of winning an argument about that issue...
Recent brainstorming sessions at SIAI (with participants including Anna, Carl, Jasen, Divia, Will, Amy Willey, and Andrew Critch) have started to produce lists of rationality skills that we could potentially try to teach (at Rationality Boot Camp, at Less Wrong meetups, or similar venues). We've also been trying to break those skills down to the 5-second level (step 2) and come up with ideas for exercises that might teach them (step 3) although we haven't actually composed those exercises yet (step 4, where the actual work takes place).
The bulk of this post will mainly go into the comments, which I'll try to keep to the following format: A top-level comment is a major or minor skill to teach; upvote this comment if you think this skill should get priority in teaching. Sub-level comments describe 5-second subskills that go into this skill, and then third-level comments are ideas for exercises which could potentially train that 5-second skill. If anyone actually went to the work of composing a specific exercise people could run through, that would go to the fourth-level of commenting, I guess. For some major practicable arts with a known standard learning format like "Improv" or "Acting", I'll put the exercise at the top and guesses at which skills it might teach below. (And any plain old replies can go at any level.)
I probably won't be able to get to all of what we brainstormed today, so here's a PNG of the Freemind map that I generated during our session.