Hi everyone :). I like Anki, find it quite useful and use it daily. There is one thing that constantly annoyed me about it, though - the state of shared decks and of infrastructure around them.

There is a lot of topics that are of common interest for a large number of people, and there is usually some shared decks available for these topics. The problem with them is that as they are usually decks created by individuals for their own purposes and uploaded to ankiweb. So they are often incomplete/of mediocre quality/etc and they are rarely supported or updated.

And there is no way to collaborate on the creation or improvement of such decks, as there is no infrastructure for it and the format of the decks won't allow you to use common collaboration infrastructure (e.g. Github). So I've been recently working on a plugin for Anki that will allow you to make a full-feature Import/Export to/from JSON. What I mean by full-feature is that it exports not just cards converted to JSON, but Notes, Decks, Models, Media etc. So you can do export, modify result, or merge changes from someone else and on Import, those changes would be reflected on your existing cards/decks and no information/metadata/etc would be lost.

The point is to provide a format that will enable collaboration using mentioned common collaboration infrastructure. So using it you can easily work with multiple people to create a deck, collaborating for example, via Github, and then deck could be updated and improved by contributions from other people.

I'm looking for early adopters and for feedback :).

The ankiweb page for plugin (that's where you can get the plugin): https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1788670778

Github: https://github.com/Stvad/CrowdAnki

Some of my decks, on a Github (btw by using plugin, you can get decks directly from Github):

Git deck: https://github.com/Stvad/Software_Engineering__git

Regular expressions deck: https://github.com/Stvad/Software_Engineering__Regular_Expressions

Deck based on article Twenty rules of formulating knowledge by Piotr Wozniak:

https://github.com/Stvad/Learning__How-to-Formulate-Knowledge

You're welcome to use this decks and contribute back the improvements.

There were some concerns here (http://lesswrong.com/lw/2po/selfimprovement_or_shiny_distraction_why_less/) regarding value of LessWrong community from the perspective of instrumental rationality. 

In the discussion on the relevant topic I've seen the story about how community can help  http://lesswrong.com/lw/2p5/humans_are_not_automatically_strategic/2l73 from this perspective.

And I think It's a great thing that local community can help people in various ways to achieve their goals. Also it's not the first time I hear about how this kind of community is helpful as a way of achieving personal goals.

Local LessWrong meetups and communities are great, but they have kind of different focus. And a lot of people live in places where there are no local community or it's not active/regular.

So I propose to form small groups (4-8 people). Initially, groups would meet (using whatever means that are convenient for a particular group), discuss the goals of each participant in a long and in a short term (life/year/month/etc). They would collectively analyze proposed strategies for achieving these goals. Discuss how short term goals align with long term goals. And determine whether the particular tactics for achieving stated goal is optimal. And is there any way to improve on it?

Afterwards, the group would meet weekly to:

Set their short term goals, retrospect on the goals set for previous period. Discuss how successfully they were achieved, what problems people encountered and what alterations to overall strategy follows. And they will also analyze how newly set short-term goals coincide with long-term goals. 

In this way, each member of the group would receive helpful feedback on his goals and on his approach to attaining them. And also he will fill accountable, in a way, for goals, he have stated before the group and this could be an additional boost to productivity.

I also expect that group would be helpful from the perspective of overcoming different kind of fallacies and gaining more accurate beliefs about the world. Because it's easier for people to spot errors in the beliefs/judgment of others. I hope that group's would be able to develop friendly environment and so it would be easier for people to get to know about their errors and change their mind. Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

Group will reflect on it's effectiveness and procedures every month(?) and will incrementally improve itself. Obviously if somebody have some great idea about group proceedings it makes sense to discuss it after usual meeting and implement it right away. But I think regular in-depth retrospective on internal workings is also important.

If there are several groups available - groups will be able to share insights, things group have learned during it's operation. (I'm not sure how much of this kind of insights would be generated, but maybe it would make sense to once in a while publish post that would sum up groups collective insights.)

There are some things that I'm not sure about: 

• I think it would be worth to discuss possibility of shuffling group members (or at least exchanging members in some manner) once in a while to provide fresh insight on goals/problems that people are facing and make the flow of ideas between groups more agile.
• How the groups should be initially formed? Just random assignment or it's reasonable to devise some criteria? (Goals alignment/Diversity/Geography/etc?)

I think initial reglament of the group should be developed by the group, though I guess it's reasonable to discuss some general recommendations.

So what do you think? 

If you interested - fill up this google form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1IsUQTp_6pGyNglBiPOGDuwdGTBOolAKfAfRrQloYN_o/viewform?usp=send_form

Hi, I was considering possibility of undergoing some kind of genetic testing for a while now. But I hesitated because I have a quite limited financial resources available right now. Eventually I've figured that in the future I'd do it anyway, so why don't just do it right away. Especially taking into account that knowing some data available via such tests in an earlier stage of life and acting on it could be quite beneficial in a long run. 

So after that realization I've thought about going with 23andme and performing SNP genotyping. But in the process of browsing related information I've encountered article about rapid decreasing in price for Whole genome sequencing. After that I've found this listing: https://www.scienceexchange.com/services/whole-genome-seq?page=2 and the lowest price tag there is $795 (but it's not clear whether that particular option is applicable to human genomes).

And as a result the whole WGS thing seems quite appealing, but I have some concerns here. I still have quite limited finance and WGS seems to have at least 10x prize in relation to SNP. And the other concern is data applicability (more on this one further).

Information about what and how you can do with WGS data is somewhat scarce on the Internet. So I have some questions here:

• What can I actually do with data from WGS?

I know that for SNP tests there are tools like Promethease (http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Promethease) that allow you to analyze your data. But I was not able to find anything about tools for analyzing your WGS data.

So are there any good tools available for you to analyze your WGS data? And: Is it computationally feasible to get results in an adequate time, using a general pc for this purposes?

• Do you know any end-customer oriented company that provides WGS for a good price?

And finally with all above said: should I go for whole genome sequencing/SNP/or my whole line of reasoning is invalid and I should wait for now and get WGS in a few years for a smaller price?

(My main concern here is positive influence on health in a long run.)

Thanks.