If you think you can produce net-positive children...parents of Isaac Newton, I'm looking at you...
Considered as an altruistic endeavor, you probably do better to find existing kids with the potential to be net-positive and help them reach their potential.
you probably do better to find existing kids with the potential to be net-positive and help them reach their potential.
I have my doubts, or rather, I think it depends on a lot of things. I take it Steve Jobs' parents were decent average people who went out of their way to raise their brilliant adoptive son as best they could, with great success. But, of course, this involved for them almost exactly the same expense of time or money as it would to raise a biological child of their own, which nullifies a good chunk of the original argument, as I understood it. Maybe "finding existing kids with the potential to be net-positive and helping them reach their potential" is as expensive as raising children in the ordinary way.
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.
"The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you're not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one." -Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
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.
I think I'm seconding this when I say that one of the most rational of Muggle studies has been magic, in the sense of stage illusionism. There's a long history of stage magicians -- beginning at least with Houdini -- debunking self-declared spiritualists and psychics and so on. James Randi, Penn and Teller, and even Johnny Carson spring to mind.
A well-known Crossfit quote: "Men will die for points" :-)
"A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon" -- Napoleon Bonaparte
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".
I'm at least mildly creeped out by occasional cultish behavior on LessWrong. But every cause wants to be a cult
Eliezer said so, so therefore it is Truth.
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.
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What about targeted vaccinations and other health interventions for smart kids? I don't think this is a good idea, partly because it's going to be so much less efficient than just helping everyone, but you may. Alternatively tutoring is free and with a similar level of time costs to raising your own children you could tutor a lot of others.
Not at all, that sounds great, if it were possible. Certainly generally effective health interventions sound even far more likely. But if there were a health intervention that only benefited smart kids, I would definitely consider that a net plus as to not having it exist at all.
[ETA] If it imposed some extrinsic cost on everyone else, that would be a different matter, but that's not how vaccines work, is it?