It seems like testing is the go-to idea among contributors thus far for determining whether a person has achieved the level of proficiency in a field that would be commensurate with earning a diploma from a reputable accredited university, but while I have no data to support the following conjecture, I wonder whether electonic testing is even a valid method of determining anything but memory recall at a specific point or set of points in time, if the testing involves multiple steps (i.e. midterms and final).
Why not use projects commisioned or suggested by interested corporations, involving the use of teamwork/teambuilding, leadership, logistics, creativity, and work ethic, while also providing opportunities for prospective employees - people who may have been using Khan Academy alone for years and have not developed the contacts and overall sense of common academic context college students develop over time - to develop those all-important working relationships. Additionally this would allow employers to have more control over the skillsets they actively seek out, and give self-teaching students an opportunity to understand the kind of skills that will actually get them where they want to go in their careers.
Corporations or individuals would use paid accounts to have the opportunity to work with our teams to determine the kind of project that would most help them find the talents they need, and also help determine the conditions of success.
Projects ideally would have practical applications and real-world effects, and any sucessful projects that end up turning their own profit would have predetermined payout models to distribute income between the patron, our company, and the actual prospects who worked on the project itself.
Students who wished to try for a project would could pay a one-time fee to have a lifetime account, and if possible this fee should be able to be covered by as many forms of reputable student financial aid as possible.
It's 2:00 in the morning and I just got back from Burning Man so I doubt my idea is actually coherent or worth pursuing, but on the off chance it is a good idea, I will just post this now and hope it is productive and promotes thoughtful discussion, if not actual support. That said, if there are any holes in the business model or logic that you post and no one else decides to address them, I will take another crack at it tomorrow.
Collaboration, independent work, etc. are very valuable and are needed.
Supervised tests also have a role to play.
SUMMARY: Let's collect people who want to work on for-profit companies that have significant positive impacts on many people's lives.
Google provides a huge service to the world - efficient search of a vast amount of data. I would really like to see more for-profit businesses like Google, especially in underserved areas like those explored by non-profits GiveWell, Singularity Institute and CFAR. GiveWell is a nonprofit that is both working toward making humanity better, and thinking about leverage. Instead of hacking away at one branch of the problem of effective charity by working on one avenue for helping people, they've taken it meta. They're providing a huge service by helping people choose non-profits to donate to that give the most bang for your buck, and they're giving the non-profits feedback on how they can improve. I would love to see more problems taken meta like that, where people invest in high leverage things.
Beyond these non-profits, I think there is a huge amount of low-hanging fruit for creating businesses that create a lot of good for humanity and make money. For-profit businesses that pay their employees and investors well have the advantage that they can entice very successful and comfortable people away from other jobs that are less beneficial to humanity. Unlike non-profits where people are often trying to scrape by, doing the good of their hearts, people doing for-profits can live easy lives with luxurious self care while improving the world at the same time.
It's all well and good to appeal to altruistic motives, but a lot more people can be mobilzed if they don't have to sacrifice their own comfort. I have learned a great deal about this from Jesse and Sharla at Rejuvenate. They train coaches and holistic practitioners in sales and marketing - enabling thousands of people to start businesses who are doing the sorts of things that advance their mission. They do this while also being multi-millionaires themselves, and maintaining a very comfortable lifestyle, taking the time for self-care and relaxation to recharge from long workdays.
Less Wrong is read by thousands of people, many of whom are brilliant and talented. In addition, Less Wrong readers include people who are interested in the future of the world and think about the big picture. They think about things like AI and the vast positive and negative consequences it could have. In general, they consider possibilities that are outside of their immediate sensory experience.
I've run into a lot of people in this community with some really cool, unique, and interesting ideas, for high-impact ways to improve the world. I've also run into a lot of talent in this community, and I have concluded that we have the resources to implement a lot of these same ideas.
Thus, I am opening up this post as a discussion for these possibilities. I believe that we can share and refine them on this blog, and that there are talented people who will execute them if we come up with something good. For instance, I have run into countless programmers who would love to be working on something more inspiring than what they're doing now. I've also personally talked to several smart organizational leader types, such as Jolly and Evelyn, who are interested in helping with and/or leading inspiring projects And that's only the people I've met personally; I know there are a lot more folks like that, and people with talents and resources that haven't even occurred to me, who are going to be reading this.
Topics to consider when examining an idea:
An example idea from Reichart Von Wolfsheild:
A project to document the best advice we can muster into a single tome. It would inherently be something dynamic, that would grow and cover the topics important to humans that they normally seek refuge and comfort for in religion. A "bible" of sorts for the critical mind.
Before things like wikis, this was a difficult problem to take on. But, that has changed, and the best information we have available can in fact be filtered for, and simplified. The trick now, is to organize it in a way that helps humans. which is not how most information is organized.
Collaboration
Finally: If this works right, there will be lots of information flying around. Check out the organization thread and the wiki.