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.)
Hey everyone,
I'm a 20 year old student of Serbian literature (from Serbia). I found this site while browsing through some math blogs and it seems very nice.
About me: Currently my main interest is writing short stories. I view them as arranging words so they appeal to my own emotions, intuition, subconscious, what not. I also like mathematics and I like to explore relations and find out new rules between numbers, lines, etc., although it sometimes bores me because my imagination has to be strictly inside the boundaries of logic there, while with literature I can do anything that pleases my taste, personal desires. Both are manifestations of human imagination (just like music, or drawing), but literature could be called 'dirty' because it is not stripped from our colorful humanness. I've been introduced to rationality when I was 15 as I started programming. Before that I liked to play alone and construct giant slides for marbles, I like to draw maps. My mother thought me to personify objects when I was a kid - "Do not tear the flowers, it hurts them!" - that lead me to think that such things, as well as houses, etc. have human properties. A house would have an intention, a toy would be sad if we leave it on the floor, cars would be happy or angry, etc. I know that such a worldview is not very helpful or practical, but it is sure fun to see things like this sometimes! What triggers it usually is when I enjoy purely sensual activities where meaning and logic are excluded (sex, e.g.). Walking out into the dark with such an attitude to reality can also be scary sometimes - everything is vibrant, full of life, emotion, humanness - I get oversensitive, I guess, like an unknowing little animal.
Although I have tried pushing myself in more practical directions, looks like that I turn back naturally to my art. So I decided to hope for writing some stories/books that will influence people in some peculiar way, depending on how they react to such ideas. I have felt some guilt because of my artistic attitudes before - "You should be a programmer, a physicist, a mathematician!" I thought to myself, because I thought that picking a job where pure rational thought is needed is what every man should strive for, while unnecessary things such as artistic tendencies (with all its quirks) should be left behind as some illness that people overcome when they realize how reality really works. But I act on behalf of my instincts - and if I try not to, I feel sad. So I listen to them, mostly.
One question I have been turning around in my mind recently - are there limitations of mathematical explorations? Or will things keep growing, branching and getting more complex year after year? Is a mathematician someone who is happy if he can grab a bucketful of water out of the ocean? The world seems amazingly broad to me and my work compared to it as just a pile of symbols which might trigger thoughts another system has learnt to associate with them. However, no matter how big and cold things are, I think there is no reason to be scared. Usually, sadness would come from denying the obvious truth. To live is a miracle indeed (sorry if I got cheesy by the end ;).
Oops. Looks like Eliezer's doing some night-and-fog again.