Hi.

I came here following Eliezer when he left OB. I think the main reasons why I am not participating more are:

• I am an undergraduate student just starting to learn about rationality. I often struggle to understand the main posts and I am quite far from being able to contribute useful knowledge, new insights or a qualified opinion to any of the discussion here.
• But why not ask more questions? I usually consider asking questions an extremely important thing to do. The problem is, although I have pretty much read all of the current posts, I have not yet caught up with all the older material. So I think I do not have the right to ask questions and bother you with things that you might already have explained elsewhere in full detail. I feel like I should first do my part of the work before I can expect others to take the time and explain things to me.
• I am from Germany and not an English native speaker. Writing something in an environment with such high linguistic standards is additionally intimidating (I regularly come across words in LW posts that I have never seen before and have to look them up - to me a sign that my language skills are not appropriate to write here. Coming to speak of it: please excuse my bad language!)
• the karma-system clearly conveys the message that the community only wants the most qualified contributions - I simply do not feel fit to provide them.

By the way: I was a silent reader for quite a long time. Then I finally signed up a while ago to vote for a comment that I thought should get more attention. This did not work because as a newly registered user I did not have enough karma to vote and so I gave up. Apparently the community does not even consider me fit to vote, so I won't do it.

Thank you all who are contributing to this site, lurking here and knowing one is not alone is such a pleasure!