Reading the comments… well, this escalated quickly.
I can imagine this going either horribly right or horribly wrong. So I appreciate if a group of volunteers actually does the experiment, instead of everyone offering their preferred analogy for what should happen. Preferably with good safety mechanism, of which I can imagine two, already mentioned in this debate:
(1) Give members a mandatory time off, once in a while, to spend with their friends outside the “Army”. Not just a weekend, but a full week, once in a while.
(2) If possible, it would be good to reduce the financial impact of leaving the group as much as possible. In a perfect world, there would be none. But of course, if you want to live in the same house, that costs money. It would be nice if the group could somehow collect extra money, as an insurance, to allow people leave without financial consequences. Perhaps make everyone pay 10% or 20% extra for the house?
There is always a tension between freedom and commitment, and between individual freedom and group cooperation. It seems generally good to err on the side of freedom, because people in positions of power often have a bias in favor of less freedom (for others, of course), so this is how we balance it. On the other hand, akrasia—almost a proverbial trait of wannabe rationalists—is often an inability to follow one’s own commitments. Already damaging for individuals; making group activity almost impossible. It would be nice to be able to overcome this, and enter high-commitment situations (with limited scope, for limited time). Otherwise, we lose a lot of potential.
I can imagine myself benefitting from some kind of commitment enforcement, and rational life coaching in general. Of course, the devil is in the details. That’s where things can go wrong easily. But if we can create enough safeguards, I support trying this, because there is so much to win.
A possible approach could be to select in advance two or three people trusted by the rationalist community as supervisors of the project. The supervisors would not participate in the project directly, but would have regularly scheduled meetings with members, individually, outside of the project, where the members could provide their opinions, and after hearing all of them, the supervisors would post an anonymized summary report on LW.
EDIT: Except for the part about posting an anonymized summary report on LW. It’s entirely reasonable to have outside advisors and supervisors (in the sense of “well, if the thing’s as good as I say it’ll be, then I have no reason to want to hide”). However, it’s silly to pretend that the house grants LW any kind of oversight, or specifically seeks LW’s approval—I posted here because I thought LW would be a) mildly interested and b) would, in exchange for the mild interestingness be willing to provide some solid, concrete criticism, but that’s pretty much as far as it goes.
Reading the comments… well, this escalated quickly.
I can imagine this going either horribly right or horribly wrong. So I appreciate if a group of volunteers actually does the experiment, instead of everyone offering their preferred analogy for what should happen. Preferably with good safety mechanism, of which I can imagine two, already mentioned in this debate:
(1) Give members a mandatory time off, once in a while, to spend with their friends outside the “Army”. Not just a weekend, but a full week, once in a while.
(2) If possible, it would be good to reduce the financial impact of leaving the group as much as possible. In a perfect world, there would be none. But of course, if you want to live in the same house, that costs money. It would be nice if the group could somehow collect extra money, as an insurance, to allow people leave without financial consequences. Perhaps make everyone pay 10% or 20% extra for the house?
There is always a tension between freedom and commitment, and between individual freedom and group cooperation. It seems generally good to err on the side of freedom, because people in positions of power often have a bias in favor of less freedom (for others, of course), so this is how we balance it. On the other hand, akrasia—almost a proverbial trait of wannabe rationalists—is often an inability to follow one’s own commitments. Already damaging for individuals; making group activity almost impossible. It would be nice to be able to overcome this, and enter high-commitment situations (with limited scope, for limited time). Otherwise, we lose a lot of potential.
I can imagine myself benefitting from some kind of commitment enforcement, and rational life coaching in general. Of course, the devil is in the details. That’s where things can go wrong easily. But if we can create enough safeguards, I support trying this, because there is so much to win.
A possible approach could be to select in advance two or three people trusted by the rationalist community as supervisors of the project. The supervisors would not participate in the project directly, but would have regularly scheduled meetings with members, individually, outside of the project, where the members could provide their opinions, and after hearing all of them, the supervisors would post an anonymized summary report on LW.
This is all generally sensible. +1
EDIT: Except for the part about posting an anonymized summary report on LW. It’s entirely reasonable to have outside advisors and supervisors (in the sense of “well, if the thing’s as good as I say it’ll be, then I have no reason to want to hide”). However, it’s silly to pretend that the house grants LW any kind of oversight, or specifically seeks LW’s approval—I posted here because I thought LW would be a) mildly interested and b) would, in exchange for the mild interestingness be willing to provide some solid, concrete criticism, but that’s pretty much as far as it goes.