A few notes about the site mechanics
A few notes about the community
If English is not your first language, don't let that make you afraid to post or comment. You can get English help on Discussion- or Main-level posts by sending a PM to one of the following users (use the "send message" link on the upper right of their user page). Either put the text of the post in the PM, or just say that you'd like English help and you'll get a response with an email address.
* Normal_Anomaly
* Randaly
* shokwave
* Barry Cotter
A note for theists: you will find the Less Wrong community to be predominantly atheist, though not completely so, and most of us are genuinely respectful of religious people who keep the usual community norms. It's worth saying that we might think religion is off-topic in some places where you think it's on-topic, so be thoughtful about where and how you start explicitly talking about it; some of us are happy to talk about religion, some of us aren't interested. Bear in mind that many of us really, truly have given full consideration to theistic claims and found them to be false, so starting with the most common arguments is pretty likely just to annoy people. Anyhow, it's absolutely OK to mention that you're religious in your welcome post and to invite a discussion there.
A list of some posts that are pretty awesome
I recommend the major sequences to everybody, but I realize how daunting they look at first. So for purposes of immediate gratification, the following posts are particularly interesting/illuminating/provocative and don't require any previous reading:
- Your Intuitions are Not Magic
- The Apologist and the Revolutionary
- How to Convince Me that 2 + 2 = 3
- Lawful Uncertainty
- The Planning Fallacy
- Scope Insensitivity
- The Allais Paradox (with two followups)
- We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think
- The Least Convenient Possible World
- The Third Alternative
- The Domain of Your Utility Function
- Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality
- The True Prisoner's Dilemma
- The Tragedy of Group Selectionism
- Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided
- That Alien Message
More suggestions are welcome! Or just check out the top-rated posts from the history of Less Wrong. Most posts at +50 or more are well worth your time.
Welcome to Less Wrong, and we look forward to hearing from you throughout the site.
(Note from orthonormal: MBlume and other contributors wrote the original version of this welcome message, and I've stolen heavily from it.)
I'm 41, working on a wiki project for sustainability and development, which I love (and part-time on a related project which I like and actually get paid for). I use the same username everywhere, so if you're curious, you won't have trouble finding the wiki project.
I'm a one-time evangelical Christian. I think it was emotional damage from my upbringing that made me frightened to let go of that, and I stayed a believer for 9 years, starting in my late teens. I took it extremely seriously, and there were good things about that. But with hindsight, I would direct people to other places for their personal growth than becoming a believer. Later, just a few years ago, I did the Landmark Forum, which was very powerful and mostly very positive, though I wouldn't recommend that as a first step in working on personal development, unless you're already pretty successful and mature. I'm also a big fan of Nonviolent Communication, and I'd recommend that to anyone.
I learned about Less Wrong a year ago (from someone else on the wiki project) and loved it. I've been meaning to join, but the thing that prompted me now is that I need help, in the form of accountability, and this seems like a good place.
I do a lot of work, but I find myself distracted from the work I most need to do. The persistence of the problem leads me to carry out a "lifestyle experiment" for the next 3 weeks. I'm calling it my "3 week Serious Focus experiment", and the key ingredients are:
The rules for the Serious Focus experiment are:
I'm going to start now, but I'm making my official start date 2 days away, so there's time for feedback on the plan and to adjust it if needed, before I launch the experiment.
Glad to join you all at Less Wrong!
How's your Serious Focus experiment going?