Hi LessWrong,

Two years ago, when I travelled to Belize, I came up with an idea for a self-sufficient scalable program to address poverty. I saw how many people in Belize were unemployed or getting paid very low wages, but I also saw how skilled they were, a result of English being the national language and a mandatory education system. Many Belizeans have a secondary/high school education in Belize, and the vast majority have at least a primary school education and can speak English. I thought to myself, "it's too bad I can't teleport Belizeans to the United States, because in the U.S., they would automatically be able to earn many times more the minimum wage in Belize with their existing skills."

But I knew there was a way to do it: "virtual teleportation." My solution involves using computer and internet access in conjunction with training and support to connect the poor with high paying international work opportunities. My tests of virtual employment using Upwork and Amazon Mechanical Turk show that it is possible to earn at least twice the minimum wage in Belize, around $3 an hour, working with flexible hours. This solution is scalable because there is a consistent international demand for very low wage work (relatively speaking) from competent English speakers, and in other countries around the world like South Africa, many people matching that description can be found and lifted out of poverty. The solution could become self-sufficient because running a virtual employment enterprise or taking a cut of the earnings of members using virtual employment services (as bad as that sounds) can generate enough income to pay for the relatively low costs of monthly internet and the one-time costs of technology upgrades.

If you have any feedback, comments, suggestions, I would love to hear about it in the comments section. Feedback on my fundraising campaign at igg.me/at/bvep is also greatly appreciated.

If you are thinking about supporting the idea, my team and I need your help to make this possible. It may be difficult for us to reach our goal, but every contribution greatly increases the chances our fundraiser and our program will be successful, especially in the early stages. All donations are tax-deductible, and if you’d like, you can also opt-in for perks like flash drives and t-shirts. It only takes a moment to make a great difference: igg.me/at/bvep.

Thank you for reading!

So what is "rational healthcare?" BetterCare. BetterCare is a startup that brings healthcare sharing from Christian healthcare sharing ministries to the general public. We are also considering facilitating healthcare sharing among other circles like religious communities, local neighborhoods, or even interest-groups like rationalists. Christian healthcare sharing ministries don’t provide health insurance. Instead, they cut out the middlemen, in this case insurance companies, and let members share healthcare costs directly among themselves. The result is the equivalent of health insurance at half the price, and with low “deductibles” and full coverage of almost all conditions to boot. BetterCare can do the same for you. We can provide monthly rates at just $180 per person and $410 per family, as opposed to the U.S. national average for health insurance at $490 per person and $1363 per family per month. If you want to learn more and stay updated on our progress, check out our website and join the waitlist for new member opportunities at www.bettercare.tk.

Hi Less Wrong,

I've got the opportunity to promote books and other forms of content to a largely teenage audience. I'm looking for some good book recommendations and recommendations for a limited amount of other media (websites, movies, etc) that will spread awareness of positive ideas and issues in the world, while still being entertaining to the target audience. HPMOR comes to mind, and although I don't think its main focus is to promote an issue to readers, it is an excellent choice because it is well ranked, promotes rationality which can directly help readers, and is completely free to read online. Recommendations don't have to be free, but that is a very important factor.

Thanks everyone!

Edit: Thanks everyone for your contributions. I realize I was being a little too vague, I think content that promotes ethical/altruistic behavior is mainly what I am looking for, either inspiring it with fiction or causing motivation for it with nonfiction. I am looking for free web content, although paid content recommendations are also appreciated. This is for a general youth audience, not a club or any sort of interest group.

I have not made significant progress in my life since I started reading Less Wrong. I was always really enthusiastic to improve myself, especially after I learned about all these new ideas and projects several months ago.

However, I didn't seem to be able to get myself to work on anything useful.

I believed my inability to get things done was the major contributing factor to my lack of success until recently. Akrasia is still a big problem in my life, but I noticed an interesting trend: every day I was effortlessly working on projects that would make me more effective with no problems, but I had severe procrastination when I had to do homework.

I realized that I was not really procrastinating because I did not want to work on my goals, rather I wanted to work on my goals but I knew I was "supposed" to finish my academic work first. I procrastinate on homework, which takes up time, and that stops me from working on my goals.

I could be wrong, but that made since, especially after I cut my main projects like reading The Sequences once school started although I had plenty of time.

I currently want to create a large positive impact on the world, but I did not wake up one morning and decide that school was the best way to accomplish that goal. Instead, like most students, I was never given a choice and instead shoved into the system. I never thought there could be a different way even though I really disliked school. Attempts to share the idea of unschool were met with strong resistance. Learning about Less Wrong and the Effective Altruism community was the push I needed to break out of my beliefs of how to become successful and influence the world.

I would still be willing to subject myself to what I see as unhelpful and inefficient activities if it helps me help others later on in life, as unappealing as it seems. My question is: Is staying in high school the best way to improve the world while still having financial stability, or is unschooling during high school then applying to a top college a better way to learn useful skills and get all the benefits of college admissions, or is dropping out all together and working on Your Most Valuable Skill 24/7 the best way to get on the path of world improvement? A significant obstacle to unschooling is that unfortunately my parents will not tolerate an idea as risky as that.

I'm not sure what to do...

But I am ready to go beyond tsuyoku naritai and Make an Extraordinary Effort. May the wisdom of Less Wrong lead me to take the best course of action!

Edit: Please choose one option and support your answer:

1. High school and then admission to a top college

2. Unschool during high school, hope to get into a good college (is it likely?)

3. Drop out completely, work only on useful world saving skills

Article Prerequisite: Self-Improvement or Shiny Distraction: Why Less Wrong is anti-Instrumental Rationality

Introduction

The goal of this post is to explore the idea of rationality training, feedback and ideas are greatly appreciated.

Less Wrong’s stated mission is to help people become more rational, and it has made progress toward that goal. Members read and discuss useful ideas on the internet, get instant feedback because of the voting system, and schedule meetups with other members. Less Wrong also helps attract more people to rationality.

Less Wrong helps with sharing ideas, but it fails to help people put elements of epistemic and instrumental rationality into practice. This is a serious problem, but it would be hard to fix without altering the core functionality of Less Wrong.

Having separate websites for reading and discussing ideas and then actually using those ideas would improve the real world performance of the Less Wrong community while maintaining the idea discussion, “marketing”, and other benefits of the Less Wrong website.

How to create a useful website for self improvement

1. Knowledge Management

When reading blogs, people only see recent posts and those posts are not significantly revised. A wiki would allow for the creation of a large body of organized knowledge that is frequently revised. Each wiki post would have a description, benefits of the topic described, resources to learn the topic, user submitted resources to learn the topic, and reviews of each resource. Posts would be organized hierarchically and voted on for usefulness to help readers effectively improve what they are looking for. Users could share self-improvement plans to help others improve effectiveness in general or in a specific topic as quickly as possible.

2. Effective Learning

Resources to learn topics should be arranged or written for effective skill acquisition, and there may be different resource categories like exercises for deliberate practice or active recall questions for spaced repetition.

3. Quality Contributors

Contributors would, at the very least, need to be familiar with how to write articles that supported the skill acquisition process agreed upon by the entire community. Required writing and research skills would produce higher quality work. I am not sure if being a rationalist would improve the quality of articles.

Problems

1. Difficult requirements

The number of prerequisites necessary to contribute to and use the wiki would really lower the amount of people who will be able to benefit from the wiki. It's a trade off between effectiveness and popularity. What elements should be included to maximize the effectiveness of the website?

2. Interest

There has to be enough interest in the website, or else a different project should be started instead. How many people in the Less Wrong community, and the world at large, would be interested in self improvement and rationality? 

3. Increasing the effectiveness of non altruistic people

How much of the target audience wants to improve the world? If most do not, then the wiki would essentially be a net negative on the world. What should the criteria be to view and contribute to the wiki? Perhaps only Less Wrong members should be able to view and edit the wiki, and contributors must read a quick start guide and pass a quick test before being allowed to post.