I had an idea for a web-based app for evaluating instrumental rationality techniques, something like Digg or a UserVoice-based forum where techniques get upvoted, downvoted, merged, separated and discussed. However, I don’t currently have a solution for the problem of ‘impulse upvoting’ (“hey, this technique sounds cool, let’s upvote it!”) -- I don’t know how to make the upvotes reflect long-term usefulness of the techniques.
My current best idea regarding the impulse upvote problem is “making techniques pay rent”, literally:
Each app user has a fixed small number of homepage slots for techniques. If a technique doesn’t work for a user, they can kick it out of the slot and replace it with another promising technique. Also, users can purchase more homepage slots for real-world money. Or the app can go even further: it can be free to download, but each slot will cost the user $0.99 per month.
This way we can rank the techniques based on their “rent time”, i.e. the time they spend in their slot, which is only counted for active users of the app.
Many of the techniques I’ve found on Less Wrong have increased my available time, money, energy, mood… if the only way I could have learned and used the technique was to have paid money for it, I would gladly. If there was a way to pay back, say, 10% of my actual gains from How to Beat Procrastination to Luke to do with as he wishes, I would press that button. Issues include not correctly estimating the counterfactual (without technique X, how well would I really have done? Surely not a complete crash-and-burn… and what were the actual consequences of not doing well? Surely not as bad as my overestimating-losses-brain estimates...), overcounting extra time that in part gets filled with things I will remove later for “extra time”, sending the rewards to the proximate cause of my learning the technique rather than someone further up the origin tree, people gaming the system as soon as it involves money they can steal, and probably others that marginal consideration is too small to bring to mind.
If there was a way to pay back, say, 10% of my actual gains from How to Beat Procrastination to Luke to do with as he wishes, I would press that button.
Sure, maybe, for Luke. What I want is not for SI to receive more money because Luke shared content that improved my life.
Instead, I want to have removed the inconveniences which make it hard to set in place the incentive “whosoever shares content that significantly improves lives will receive part of that improvement in compensation”, regardless of whether they might turn around and send that compensation to SI, and then to do my part in setting that incentive in place by pressing and letting it be known that I press all of those buttons, also magically not incurring the cost of lots of low quality fishing posts.
That said, parts of me were not happy with my giving as much as I have to SI until I pointed out to them that I clearly paid more per benefit-accrued for a college education… those parts are a little silly anyway so they didn’t notice that I overpaid for the benefits I gained from the college education and they’re happy now. ;)
This is something I’ve been thinking about for quite some time:
My current best idea regarding the impulse upvote problem is “making techniques pay rent”, literally:
Each app user has a fixed small number of homepage slots for techniques. If a technique doesn’t work for a user, they can kick it out of the slot and replace it with another promising technique. Also, users can purchase more homepage slots for real-world money. Or the app can go even further: it can be free to download, but each slot will cost the user $0.99 per month.
This way we can rank the techniques based on their “rent time”, i.e. the time they spend in their slot, which is only counted for active users of the app.
Many of the techniques I’ve found on Less Wrong have increased my available time, money, energy, mood… if the only way I could have learned and used the technique was to have paid money for it, I would gladly. If there was a way to pay back, say, 10% of my actual gains from How to Beat Procrastination to Luke to do with as he wishes, I would press that button. Issues include not correctly estimating the counterfactual (without technique X, how well would I really have done? Surely not a complete crash-and-burn… and what were the actual consequences of not doing well? Surely not as bad as my overestimating-losses-brain estimates...), overcounting extra time that in part gets filled with things I will remove later for “extra time”, sending the rewards to the proximate cause of my learning the technique rather than someone further up the origin tree, people gaming the system as soon as it involves money they can steal, and probably others that marginal consideration is too small to bring to mind.
I think it’s the grey button midway down http://singularity.org/donate/
Sure, maybe, for Luke. What I want is not for SI to receive more money because Luke shared content that improved my life.
Instead, I want to have removed the inconveniences which make it hard to set in place the incentive “whosoever shares content that significantly improves lives will receive part of that improvement in compensation”, regardless of whether they might turn around and send that compensation to SI, and then to do my part in setting that incentive in place by pressing and letting it be known that I press all of those buttons, also magically not incurring the cost of lots of low quality fishing posts.
That said, parts of me were not happy with my giving as much as I have to SI until I pointed out to them that I clearly paid more per benefit-accrued for a college education… those parts are a little silly anyway so they didn’t notice that I overpaid for the benefits I gained from the college education and they’re happy now. ;)