Having kids is a special case of spending your time and money in ways that make you happy.

I don't know, maybe a very special case. I'd say rather it's a way of creating new people with their own utility [I see now Lumifer made this point before me], and ideally their own contributions to overall utility. Alternatively, some new people may represent losses to overall utility overall.

If you think you can produce net-positive children...parents of Isaac Newton, I'm looking at you...it's worthwhile to spend all the time and effort and money to raise them. It may be immoral not to have kids. If your children are likely to be sociopaths, or merely net drains on society, then maybe you should just get a cat or something.

But how do you tell in advance whether a child is going to be extraordinarily good or bad in advance? Probably you can't, but I'd bet you can take a good Bayesian guess in advance as to whether the product of a given union is going to be above or below some given point for contributions to society.

I suspect that many traditions and protocols promote competent decision making. Do you think that, say, the U.S. military would do better in Afghanistan if President Obama issued an order declaring "when in battle ignore all considerations of tradition and protocol"? Group coordination is hard, organizations put a huge amount of effort into it, and traditions and protocols often reflect their best practices.

You might want to take a look at the techniques/slide decks that people have used when they've attempted similar things in the past. I remember there being at least a few discussion posts on rationality-spreading-tactics.

A well-known Crossfit quote: "Men will die for points" :-)

You could check out Wikipedia on public choice theory and organizational theory .

For a more humorous approach, you could read The Peter Principle . You could also check out Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy .

It may be that the benefit of LessWrong skews towards autodidacts -- after all, EY himself famously is self-taught. With that said, I'd say hell yeah a studious reading of LessWrong can teach you more than a "typical core college class." Sorry to say a typical core college class is far less than it should be. There are a few excellent teachers of core classes out there, but the academic system just is not set up to provide proper incentives for introductory undergraduate teaching.

I'd agree with your exception for technical classes such as general chemistry, not closely related to the core mission of LessWrong. However, if you choose to get involved in computer science related discussions on this forum, you had better punch your weight.

A second related question is whether there's a possibility of building a college course -- or college-like course, perhaps a MOOC -- specifically revolving around mastery of the content in LessWrong (perhaps starting with the Sequences).

Aha, mastery is the question, isn't it? I have no full answer for that. I hope some other LessWrongers will have.

With that said, the stupid questions forum is potentially better for specific questions than you could get from most graduate student tutors.

The cults try to get members to sever ties with the family and friends, for example - and this is a filter, most people get creeped out and a few go through with it.

I'm not sure whether that's true. You have people on LessWrong talking about cutting family ties with nonrational family members and nobody get's creeped out.

I don't think I have ever witnessed people getting creeped out by such discussions in the self help area and I think I have frequently heard people encouraging others to cut ties with someone that "holds them back".

Not sure if it involves supply of executive function , but I'm reminded of Kaj_Solata's own post to like each other, sing and dance in synchrony . He specifically mentioned military drill as an example.

I suspect that "executive function" as an individual is very different from executive function in the context of a highly collective institution like a military unit.

Thanks, Maia, but my interest in this is from the perspective of an altruist who wants to know whether humanity will improve or disintegrate. I am interested in things that might create selection pressures that affect things like ethical behavior and competence. It seems like you've read about this subject so I'm wondering if you know of any research on micro-evolution affecting traits that are important to humanity having a good future.

Does it look at possible effects of arranged marriages?