In an attempt to encourage more people to actually do awesome things (a la instrumental rationality), I am proposing a new monthly thread (can be changed to bi-weekly, should that be demanded). Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to comment on this thread explaining the most awesome thing you've done this month. You may be as blatantly proud of you self as you feel. You may unabashedly consider yourself the coolest freaking person ever because of that awesome thing you're dying to tell everyone about. This is the place to do just that.

Remember, however, that this isn't any kind of progress thread. Nor is it any kind of proposal thread.This thread is solely for people to talk about the awesomest thing they've done all month. not will do. not are working on. have already done. This is to cultivate an environment of object level productivity rather than meta-productivity methods.

So, what's the coolest thing you've done this month?

Update: the prize is now finished!

The previous contest was poorly formatted for eliciting the most useful reviews of the spaced repetition literature so I've created a new slightly different contest. 

I'm interested in making projects happen on Less Wrong. In order to find out what works and to inspire others to try things too, I'm sponsoring the following small project:

Spaced Repetition is often mentioned on Less Wrong as a technique for adding facts to memory. I've started using Anki and it certainly seems to be useful. However, I haven't seen a good summary of evidence on Spaced Repetition and I would like to change that.

I hereby offer a prize, currently $385, to the best literature review submitted by August 1st. 'Best' will be judged by voting with discussion beforehand by the Seattle LW meetup group. People are not allowed to vote for their own submissions.

The summary should address questions such as:

• What spacing is best?
• How much does spaced repetition actually help memory?
• Does spaced repetition have hidden benefits or costs?
• Does the effectiveness vary across domains? How much? 
• Is there research on the kinds of questions that work best? Especially for avoiding 'guessing the password' and memorizing the card per se rather than the material.
• What questions do researchers think are most important?
• Is there any interesting ongoing research? If so, what is it on?
• What, if any, questions do researchers think it is important to answer? Are there other unanswered questions that would jump out at a smart person?
• What does spaced repetition not do that people might expect it to?

The post should summarize the state of current evidence and provide citations to back up the claims in the article. Referencing both academic and non-academic research is encouraged. Lukeprog's The Science of Winning At Life sequence contains several examples of good literature review posts.

If you think you would benefit from the result of this project, please add to the prize! You can contribute to the prize on the ChipIn page.

If you have suggestions, questions or comments, please leave them in the comments. Prizes demotivating? Due date too soon/far? Specification too vague? Judgement procedure not credible enough?

This project is tagged with the 'project' tag and listed on the Projects wiki page.

There is probably some obvious solution to this puzzle, but it eludes me.  I'm not sure how to plug it into the equation for Bayes' Theorem.  And the situation described happened last August, so I'm probably not going to figure it out on my own.

There are two lightswitches next to each other, and they control two lights (which have no other switches connected to them).  I have used the switches a few times before, but don't occurrently recall which switch goes to which light, or whether the up or down position is the one that signifies off-ness.  One light is on, one light is off, and the switches are in different positions.  I want both lights off.  So I guess a switch, and I'm right.  What should be my credence be that my previous experience with this set of lightswitches helped me guess correctly, given that I felt like I was guessing at random (and would have had a 50% shot at being right were that the case)?  How much would this be different if I'd guessed wrong the first time?

For millennia, the practice of meditation has been deeply intertwined with many of the world's major and minor religious and spiritual traditions, as a technique aimed as everything from developing magical powers to communing with gods and demons. By contrast, during the last few decades in the West, enthusiasts have promoted meditation (along with a variety of its secularized offshoots) as a good way to cultivate relaxation, creativity, and psychological self-improvement in the context of our hurried and stressful lives. Because of this variegated cultural history, it's no surprise that many people see it as either as an exercise that leads to irrationality and madness, or as a harmless but questionably-effective pop science fad---sometimes both at once!

Set against this backdrop, small and somewhat private groups with an interest in meditation have long gathered together in secret to discuss and learn. Not satisfied with the popular dogmas, they got down to figuring out, as best they could, whether meditation really leads to anything that could be called "enlightenment": by experimenting on themselves, comparing notes with others, seeing where it led them, and seeing whether it would repeatably lead others to the same point. Because their subject is taboo, they have labored in the shadows for a very long time; but the modern mass-adoption of the internet has allowed what they know to reach a widening audience. And while they fought for years to discover these things, you now have the opportunity to hear about them merely for the cost of your internet connection---for some of you that may be a blessing, but guard your minds so that it isn't also a curse.