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.)
Hello! I found this site due to a series of links that impressed me and tickled my curiosity. It started out with an article an author friend of mine posted on FB about "Incognito Supercomputers and the Singularity". It points out a possible foreshadowing of the advent of avatars as written about in his and his brother's books.
I am female, 55 years old, and tend to let my curiosity guide me.
I call myself a spiritual atheist. It wasn't until I could reconcile my intangible (spiritual?) experiences with my ongoing discovery that religion's definition of god was useless to me that I could use the term atheist and feel like it fit. Ironically, I found myself outgrowing my religious upbringing (Mormon and born-again Christian) when I desired a more honest relationship with god. It took several years of paying attention to what lined up and held together, and noticing what no was no longer intellectually tenable that I first came to the realization I could no longer call myself a Christian. The change to atheism with Buddhist leanings was not very hard after that.
I have been a massage therapist for almost 20 years now. I also enjoying using the symbolism and synchronicity of astrology for spiritual and psychological points of view. I suspect that many spiritual experiences have to do with right brain functions. I am currently reading, FINGERPRINTS OF GOD, What Science is Learning About the Brain and Spiritual Experience, by Barbara Bradley Hagerty.
I honestly don't know much about logic and reason from a scientific or mathematical basis. I hope to change that as I can spend time here reading and listening and thinking and changing as needed. I suspect I am right brain dominant, and I learn in very different ways. Memorization is tricky for me, I learn best by doing and using my hands. It's a good thing I am a massage therapist.
Off the bat, I can say that I am delighted to see people willing to change as they get better data and I am appreciating the idea of Crocker's rules. It is sometimes impossible to really exchange ideas if one has to stop and mop up the offended feelings of someone who doesn't understand the exchange of information for it's own sake.
Thanks for doing this site and I'm looking forward to lurking for a while and then learning more about myself and others.