For me, though, I really need the coordination part. A global study room where you can come and go wouldn’t work as well for me: it lacks the precommitment I get from agreeing with an individual to work alongside eachother at a specific time and date. I can make the agreement in far mode, and then near mode sticks to it, only if I made the agreement with someone else than myself.
Another thing that popped into my mind when reading this is that you’re trying to create a large joint effort, where everyone involved tends to procrastinate. That might be difficult.
I could imagine a different form of group arising if two individuals start out together, and then add a third at the same time and date, and if that works, keep adding people slowly. This would only work on skype if one person has a paid account, but I guess google hangouts could work.
Edit: An ongoing non-work-intended rationalist hangout would be quite interesting. It might have the same time-sapping risk as #lesswrong on IRC though.
Yes, there are different failure modes. One of them is “never starting”. Another is “starting… and then abandoning the original goal and doing something else (e.g. browsing a web)”. My idea could work for the second one, but not for the first one.
It’s an interesting idea, for sure.
For me, though, I really need the coordination part. A global study room where you can come and go wouldn’t work as well for me: it lacks the precommitment I get from agreeing with an individual to work alongside eachother at a specific time and date. I can make the agreement in far mode, and then near mode sticks to it, only if I made the agreement with someone else than myself.
Another thing that popped into my mind when reading this is that you’re trying to create a large joint effort, where everyone involved tends to procrastinate. That might be difficult.
I could imagine a different form of group arising if two individuals start out together, and then add a third at the same time and date, and if that works, keep adding people slowly. This would only work on skype if one person has a paid account, but I guess google hangouts could work.
Edit: An ongoing non-work-intended rationalist hangout would be quite interesting. It might have the same time-sapping risk as #lesswrong on IRC though.
Yes, there are different failure modes. One of them is “never starting”. Another is “starting… and then abandoning the original goal and doing something else (e.g. browsing a web)”. My idea could work for the second one, but not for the first one.