Hi Less Wrong,

I'm a computer scientist currently living in Seattle. I used to work for Google, but I've since left to work on a game-creation-software startup. I came to Less Wrong to see Eliezer's posts about Friendly AI and stayed because a lot of interesting philosophical discussion happens here. It's refreshing to see people engaging earnestly with important issues, and the community is supportive rather than combative; nice work!

I'm interested in thinking clearly about my values and helping other people think about theirs. I was surprised to see that there hasn't been much discussion here about moral, animal-suffering-based vegetarianism or veganism. It seems to me that this is a simple, but high-impact, step towards reflective equilibrium. Has there been a conclusive argument against it here, or is everyone on LW already vegetarian (I wish)?

I'd be very happy to talk with anyone about moral vegetarianism in a PM or in a public setting. Even if you don't want to discuss it, I encourage you to think about it; my relationship with animals was a big inconsistency in my value system, and in retrospect it was pretty painless to patch, since the arguments are unusually straightforward and the causal chain is short.

Greetings All.

I've been a Singularitan since my college years more than a decade ago. I still clearly remember the force with which that worldview and its attendant realizations colonized my mind.

At that time I was strongly enamored with a vision of computer graphics advancing to the point of pervasive, Matrix-like virtual reality and that medium becoming the creche from which superhuman artificial intelligence would arise. (the Matrix of Gibson's Neuromancer, as this was before the film of the same name). Actually, I still have that vision, and although it has naturally changed, we do appear finally to be on the brink of a major revolution in graphics and perhaps the attendant display tech to materialize said vision.

Anyway, I studied computer graphics, immersed myself in programming and figured making a video game startup would be a good first step to amassing some wealth so that I could then do the 'real work' of promoting the Singularity and doing AI research. I took a little investment, borrowed some money, and did consulting work on the side. After four years or so the main accomplishment was taking a runner up prize in a business plan competition and paying for a somewhat expensive education. That isn't as bad as it sounds though - I did learn a good deal of atypical knowledge.

Eventually I threw in the towel with the independent route and took a regular day job as a graphics programmer in the industry. After working so much on startups I had some fun with life for a change. I went to a couple of free 'workshops' at a strange house where some unusual guys with names like 'Mystery' and 'Style' taught the game, back before Style wrote his book and that community blew up. I found some interesting roommates (not affiliated with the above), and moved into a house in the Hollywood Hills. One of our neighbors had made a fortune from a website called Sextoy.com and threw regular pool parties, sometimes swinger parties. Another regular life in LA.

Over the years I had this mounting feeling that I was wasting my life, that there was something important I had forgotten. I still read and followed some of the Singularity related literature, but wasn't that active. But occasionally it would come back and occupy my mind, albeit temporarily. Kurzweil's TSIN reactivated my attention, and I attended the Singularity Summit in 2008, 2010. I already had a graphics blog and had written some articles for gaming publications, but in the last few years started reading more neuroscience and AI. I have a deep respect for the brain's complexity, but I'm still somewhat surprised at the paucity of large-scale research and the concomitant general lack of success in AGI. I'm not claiming (as of yet) to have some deep revolutionary new metamathical insight, but a graphics background gives one a particular visualizing intuition and toolbox for optimizing simulations that should come in handy.

All that being said, and even though I'm highly technical by trade, I actually think the engineering challenge is the easier part of the problem (only in relation), and I'm more concerned with the social engineering challenge. From my current reading, I gather that EY and the SIAI folks here believe that is all rolled up into the FAI task. I agree with the importance of the challenge, but I do not find the most likely hypothesis to be: SIAI develops FriendlyAI before anyone else in the world develops AI in general. I do not think that SIAI currently holds >50% of the lottery tickets, not even close.

However, I do think the movement can win regardless, if we can win on the social engineering front. To me now it seems that the most likely hypothesis is that the winning ticket will be some academic team or startup in this decade or the next, and thus the winning ticket (with future hindsght) is currently held by someone young. So it is a social engineering challenge.

The Singularity challenges everything: our social institutions, politics, religion, economic infrastructure, all of our current beliefs. I share the deep concern about existential risk and Hard Takeoff scenarios, although perhaps differing in particulars with typical viewpoints I've seen on this site.

How can we get the world to wake up?

I somehow went to two Singularity Summits without ever reading LessWrong or OverComingBias. I think I had read partly through EY's Seed AI doc at some point previously, but that was it. I went to school with some folks who are now part of LessWrong or SIAI: (Anna, Steve, Jennifer), and was pointed to this site through them. I've quite enjoyed reading through most of the material so far, and I don't think i'm half way through yet, although I don't see a completion meter anywhere.

I'm somewhat less interested in: raw 'Bayesianism' as enlightment, and Evo Psych. I used to be more into Evo Psych when I was into the game, but I equate that with my childish years. I do believe it has some utility in understanding the brain, but not nearly as much as neuroscience or AI themselves.

Also, as an aside, I'm curious about the note for theists. From what I gather, many LWers find the Simulation Argument to work. If so, that technically makes you a deist, and theism is just another potential hypothesis. Its actually even potentially a testable hypothesis. And even without the Simulation Argument, the Singularity seriously challenges strict atheism - most plausible Singluarity aware Eschatologies result in some black-hole diety spawning new universes - a god in every useful sense of the term at the end of our timeline.

I've always felt this great isolation imposed by my worldview: something one cannot discuss in polite company. Of course, that isolation was only ever self-imposed, and this site has opened my mind to the possibility that there's many now who have ventured along similar lines.

Hey Lesswrong! I'm just going to ramble for a second..

I like art, social sciences, philosophy, gaming, rationality and everything that falls in between. Examples include Go, Evolutionary Psychology, Mafia (aka Werewolves), Improvisation, Drugs and Debate.

See you if I see you!

Hello I am a professional composer/composition teacher and adjunct instructor teaching music aesthetics to motion graphic artists at the Fashion Institute of Technology and in the graduate computer arts department at the School of Visual Arts. I have a masters from the Juilliard School in composition and have been recorded on Newport Classics with Kurt Vonnegut and Michael Brecker.

I live and work in New York City. I spend my life composing and explaining music to students who are not musicians, connecting the language of music to the principles of the visual medium. Saying the accurate thing getting others to question me letting them find their way and admitting often that I am wrong is a life long journey.

Hi everyone! I'm an undergrad (rising junior) in the Bay Area, studying physics and computer science. I started reading OB in 2007, when I was in high school, and it's been a pretty big influence on me. I used to assume I'd end up doing theoretical physics research, but I'm reconsidering. I may decide to do more practical work, and it seems likely to me that the most important scientific challenges and advances during my lifetime will be in AI.

I grew up going to church and identified as Christian for a long time, even though I knew I did not believe most of what I was told at church. Reading Marcus Aurelius probably started me along the path to realizing I didn't have meaningful beliefs about God. By the time I read "Making Beliefs Pay Rent," I think my response was "...well, yeah." But it was nice seeing everything laid out so neatly; the real viewquake with OB for me was in how important it is to be able to communicate these kinds of ideas well. That's become one of my big personal projects; I've been taking on teaching and tutoring jobs, and it's finally occurred to me that I could really benefit by joining the discussions here. I'm looking forward to it--this is one of my favorite online communities and certainly the most stimulating that I've found.

I've existed for about 24 years, and currently live in Boston.

I regard many of the beliefs popular here - cyronics, libertarianism, human biodiversity, pickup artistry - with extreme skepticism. (As if in compensation, I have my own unpopular frameworks for understanding the world.) I find the zeitgeist here to be <em>interestingly</em> wrong, though, because almost everyone comes from a basically sane starting point - a material universe, conventionally "Western" standards of science, reason, and objectivity - and actively discusses how they can regulate their beliefs to adhere to these. I have an interest in achieving just this kind of regulation (am a "rationalist",) and am aware that it's epistemically healthy to expose myself to alternative points of view expressed in a non-crazy way. So hopefully the second aspect will reinforce the first.

As for why I'm a rationalist, I don't know, and the question doesn't seem particularly interesting to me. I regard it beyond questions of justification, like other desires.

Hello everyone!

I've been quietly lurking on this website for a while now, reading articles as fast as I can with much enthusiasm. I've read most of Eliezer's genius posts and started to read through others' posts now. I've came to this website when I learned about AI-in-a-box scenario. I am a 23 year old male. I have a B.S. in computer science. I like to design and program video games. My goal in life is to become financially independent and make games that help people improve themselves. I find the subject of rationality to be very interesting and helpful in general, though I have trouble seeing the application for the more scientific parts (bayes) of rationality in real life, since there is no <probability=x> tag attached to most events in life. I would like to pose a question to this community: do you think video games can help spread the message and the spirit of this website? What kind of video games will accomplish that? Would you be interested in working on a game or contributing to one in other ways (e.g. donations or play testing)? Or maybe instead of writing games I should just commit to S.I. and work on F.A.I.?

Hello, community. I'm another recruit from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. After reading the first few chapters and seeing that it lacked the vagueness, unbending archetypes, and overt because the author says so theme that usually drives me away from fiction, then reading Less Wrong's (Eliezer's?) philosophy of fanfiction, I proceeded to read through the Sequences.

After struggling with the question of when I became a rationalist, I think the least wrong answer is that I just don't remember. I both remember less of my childhood than others seem to and developed more quickly. I could rationalize a few things, but I don't think that's going to be helpful.

Anyway, I'm 21 with an A.A. in Nothing in Particular and going for a B.S. in Mathematics and maybe other useful majors in November.

P.S. Quirrell FTW

Greetings, all. Found this site not too long ago, been reading through it in delight. It has truly energized my brain. I've been trying to codify and denote a number of values that I held true to my life and to discussion and to reason and logic, but was having the most difficult time. I was convinced I'd found a wonderful place that could help me when it provided me a link to the Twelve Virtues of Rationality, which neatly and tidily listed out a number of things I'd been striving to enumerate.

My origins in rationality basically originated at a very, very young age, when the things adults said and did didn't make sense. Some of it did, as a matter of fact, make more sense once I'd gotten older - but they could have at least tried to explain it to me - and I found that their successes too often seemed more like luck than having anything to do with their reasons for doing things. I suppose I became a rationalist out of frustration, one could say, at the sheer irrationality of the world around me.

I'm a Christian, and have applied my understanding of Rationality to Christianity. I find it holds up strongly, but am not insulted that not everyone feels that way. This site may be slanted atheist, but I find that rationalists have more in common with each other no matter their religious beliefs than a rationalist atheist has with a dogmatic atheist, or a rationalist Christian has with a dogmatic Christian, generally speaking.

I welcome discussion, dialog, and spirited debate, as long as you listen to me and I listen to you. I have a literal way of speaking, and don't tend to indulge in those lingual niceties that are technically untrue, which so many people hold strongly to. My belief is that if you don't want to discuss something, don't bring it up. So if I bring something up, I'd better darn well be able to discuss it. My belief is also that I should not strongly hold an opinion if I cannot strongly argue against my opinion, so I value any and all strong arguments against any opinion I hold.

I look forward to meeting many of you!

My name is Laural, 33-yo female, degree in CS, fetish for EvPsych. Raised Mormon, got over it at 18 or so, became a staunch Darwinist at 25.

I've been reading OvercomingBias on and off for years, but I didn't see this specific site till all the links to the Harry Potter fanfic came about. I had in fact just completed that series in May, so was quite excited to see the two things combined. But I think I wouldn't have registered if I hadn't read the AI Box page, which convinced me that EY was a genius. Personally, I am more interested in life-expansion than FAI. I'm most interested in changing social policy to legalize drugs, I suppose; if people are allowed to put whatever existing substances in their bodies, the substances that don't yet exist have a better chance.

I also found this blog through HP:MoR.

My ultimate social value is freedom, by which I mean the power of each person to control their own life. I believe in something like a utilitarian calculus, where utility is freedom, except that I don't really believe that there is a common scale in which one person's loss of freedom can be balanced by another person's gain. However, I find that freedom is usually very strongly positive-sum on any plausible scale, so this flaw doesn't seem to matter very much.

Of course, freedom in this sense can only be a social value; this leaves it up to each person to decide their own personal values: what they want for their own lives. In my case, I value forming and sustaining friendships in meatspace, often with activities centred around food and shared work, and I also value intellectual endeavours, mostly of an abstract mathematical sort. But this may change with my whims.

I might proselytise freedom here from time to time. There would be no point in proselytising my personal values, however.

I recently found Less Wrong through Eliezer's Harry Potter fanfic, which has become my second favorite book. Thank you so much Eliezer for reminding my how rich my Art can be.

I was also delighted to find out (not so surprisingly) that Eliezer was an AI researcher. I have, over the past several months, decided to change my career path to AGI. So many of these articles have been helpful.

I have been a rationalist since I can remember. But I was raised as a Christian, and for some reason it took me a while to think to question the premise of God. Fortunately as soon as I did, I rejected it. Then it was up to me to 1) figure out how to be immortal and 2) figure out morality. I'll be signing up for cryonics as soon as I can afford it. Life is my highest value because it is the terminal value; it is required for any other value to be possible.

I've been reading this blog every day since I've found it, and hope to get constant benefit from it. I'm usually quiet, but I suspect the more I read, the more I'll want to comment and post.

Hi, my name is Dave Whitlock, I have been a rationalist my whole life. I have Asperger's, so rationalism comes very easily to me, too easily ;) I have a blog

http://daedalus2u.blogspot.com/

Which is mostly about nitric oxide physiology, but that includes a lot of stuff. Lately I have been working a lot on neurodevelopment and especially on autism spectrum disorders.

I comment a fair amount in the blogosphere, Science Based Medicine, neurologica, skepchick, Left brain-right brain and sometimes Science blogs; pretty much only under the daedalus2u pseudonym. Sb seems to be in a bit of turmoil right now, so it is unclear how that will fall out.

I am extremely liberal and I think I come by that completely rationally coming from the premise that all people have the same human rights and the same human obligations to other humans (including yourself). This is pretty well codified in the universal declaration of human rights (which I think is insufficiently well followed in many places).

Hey y'all!

My name is Andy. I'm 19, in college in southeast USA, majoring in Materials Science and Engineering, and graduating in May 2012. I do research in computer modeling of biological systems.

I was homeschooled and lived a substantial portion of my childhood and adolescence in Spain as my parents were (and continue being) missionaries there. Though I was raised fundamentalist in the Plymouth Brethren nondenomination, I feel I received considerable training in rationalism growing up. I never believed in Santa Claus, for instance, and I was always taught to check ideas back with the facts (which were naturally considered to by synonymous with the Bible), and make certain that I could defend my worldview (1 Peter 3:15). I became an atheist in late 2008 when I stopped wanting to believe in Christianity after several months of guarded doublethink finished off by reading TalkOrigins' marvelous 29+ Evidences of Macroevolution. I alternatively describe myself as a naturalistic pantheist, since the Wikipedia article on it nails my self-perception on the head, not to mention it's less confrontational ("What is pantheism? It must be harmless." hehe). I've seen Christianity at its best and at its worst (well, kinda), and think atheists in general often do a tidy job of misunderstanding it.

I dabble in many different fields such as math, linguistics, sexuality, philosophy, biology, computer science, geology, physics, music, religion, and sometimes fancy myself a polymath. I know so much about so many things that I truly understand how tiny is the percentage of all knowledge that I actually possess. I'm also kinda small minded; I don't have any dramatic goals in life like some of the people on here, and I find enjoyment mainly in the simple pleasures.

Seeing that these are common themes on LessWrong, perhaps I should note that I do not embrace transhumanism, cryonics, or singularitarianism (perhaps because I'm small minded hehe). I think moral questions concerning entire species, including humans, are rather meaningless. My moral philosophy would be a cross between rights theory ("rights protect interests") and utilitarianism. My political philosophy would be north (libertarian) and slightly west (left) of center. And if I had to describe my worldview in one word, it would be "nonessentialist" (perhaps also "monist"; but I like to emphasize my denial of essentialism).

I found LessWrong through Gene Expression. I don't know how involved I shall become with the website, but I liked many of the topics that were being discussed as I perused old and new articles, and I thought, "what the heck, I'll register!" This looks like a great community.

Hello! I'm Sam. I'm 17, a newly minted high school graduate, and I'll be heading off to Reed College in Portland, Oregon next month.

I discovered Less Wrong through a link (whose origin I no longer remember) to "A Fable of Science and Politics" a couple of months ago. The post was rather striking, and the site's banner was alluring, so I clicked on it. The result, over the past couple of months, has been a massive accumulation of bookmarks (18 directly from Less Wrong at the time of this writing) accompanied by an astonishing amount of insight.

This place is probably the most intellectually stimulating site I've ever found on the internet, and I'm very much looking forward to discovering more posts, as well as reading through the ones I've stored up. I have, until now, mostly read bits and pieces that I've seen on the main page or followed links to, partially because I haven't had time and partially because some of the posts can be intimidatingly academic (I don't have the math and science background to understand some of what Eliezer writes about), but I've made this account and plan to delve into the Sequences shortly.

To some degree, I think I've always been a rationalist. I've always been both inquisitive and argumentative (captain of my school's debate team, by the way), and those qualities combined tend to lead one to questioning established thought. Although my parents are mildly religious, I don't think I ever actually believed in God (haven't gone to synagogue since my Bar Mitzvah), and that lack of belief hardened into strong atheism.

I'm very fond of logic, and I've argued myself from atheism to materialism and hence to determinism, with utilitarianism thrown in along the way. They're not popular viewpoints, but they're internally consistent, and the world becomes much clearer and simpler when seen from them. I'm still trying to refine my philosophies to create a truly coherent view of the world. I very much enjoy Less Wrong both because it's a hub of my low-percentage philosophy and because it's uniquely clarifying in its perspectives.

I enjoy psychology and philosophy, the former of which I'm considering as a major, and was heavily influenced by reading The Moral Animal (which I highly recommend if you haven't already read it) during my freshman year of high school. I love reading, practice introspection, and am continually attempting to incorporate as much information as I can into my worldview.

I actually already have about one and a half posts ready (one on consciousness, one on post rem information), but I'll readily wait until I've read through the Sequences and accumulated some karma before I publish them.

I've written too much already, so I'll cut this off here. Once again: Hi everyone! My mind is open.

Hi all, I'm Jen, an Australian Jewish atheist, and an student in a Computer Science/Linguistics/Cognitive Science combined degree, in which I am currently writing a linguistics thesis. I got here through recommendations from a couple of friends who visit here and stayed mostly for the akrasia and luminosity articles (hello thesis and anxiety/self-esteem problems!) Oh and the other articles too, but the ones I've mentioned are the ones that I've put the most effort into understanding and applying. The others are just interesting and marked for further processing at some later time.

I think I was born a rationalist rather than becoming one - I have a deep-seated desire for things to have reasons that make sense, by which I mean the "we ran some experiments and got this answer" kind of sense as opposed to the "this validates my beliefs" kind of sense. Although having said that I'm still prey to all kinds of irrationality, hence this site being helpful.

At some point in the future I would be interested in writing something about linguistic pragmatics - it's basically another scientific way of looking at communication. There's a lot of overlap between pragmatics and the ideas I've seen here on status and signalling, but it's all couched in different language and emphasises different parts, so it may be different enough to be helpful to others. But at the moment I have no intention of writing anything beyond this comment (hello thesis again!), the account is mostly just because I got sick of not being able to upvote anything.

Hi all.

I found this site through Methods of Rationality (as I suspect many have, of late). I've been reading through the sequences and archives for a while, and am finally starting to feel up to speed enough to comment here and there.

My name is Sam. I'm a programmer, mostly interested in writing and designing games. Oddly enough, my username derives from my much-neglected blog, which I believe predated this website.

I've always relished discovering that I'm wrong; if there's a better way to consistently improve the accuracy of one's beliefs, I'm not aware of it. So the LW approach makes an awful lot of sense to me, and I'm really enjoying how much concentrated critical thinking is available in the archives.

I'm also polyamorous, and so I'm considering a post or two on how polyamory (and maybe other kinds of alternative sexualities) relates to the practice of rationality. Would there be any interest in that sort of thing? I don't want to drag a pet topic into a place it's unwanted.

Furthermore, I am overfond of parentheses and semicolons. I apologize in advance.

Hi there,

My name is Lachlan, 25 years old, and I too am a computer programmer. I found less wrong via Eliezer's site; having been linked there by a comment on Charles Stross's blog, if I recall correctly.

I've read through a lot of the LW backlog and generally find it all very interesting, but haven't yet taken the time and effort to try to apply the useful seeming guidelines to my life and evaluate the results. I blame this on having left my job recently, and feeling that I have enough change in my life right now. I worry that this excuse will metamorphose into another though, and become a pattern of not examining my thinking as best as possible.

All that said, I do often catch myself thinking thoughts that on examination don't hold up, and re-evaluating them. The best expression of this that I've seen is Pratchett's first, second, third thoughts.

Heikki, 30, Finnish student of computer engineering. Found Less Wrong by via the IRC-channel of the Finnish Transhumanist Association, which was found by random surfing ("Oh, there's a name for what I am?")

As for becoming a rationalist, I'd say the recipe was no friends and a good encyclopedia... Interest in ideas, unhindered by the baggage of standard social activities. One of the most influential single things was probably finding evolution quite early on. I remember (might be a false memory) having thought it would sure make sense if a horse's hoof was just one big toe, and then finding the same classic observation explained in the mentioned encyclopedia... That or dinosaurs. Anyway, fast forward via teenage bible-bashing and a fair amount of (hard) scifi etc. to now being here.

As the first sentence might suggest, I'm not doing nor have done anything of much interest to anyone. Well. Back to lurking, thanks to SilasBarta for the friendly welcome :) .

Hello. I'm 35, Russian, work as very applied programmer. I end up here by side effect of following path RNN -> RBM -> DBN -> G. E. Hinton -> S. Legg's blog.

I was almost confident about my biases, when "Generalizing From One Example" take me by surprise (some time ago I noticed that I cannot visualize abstract colored cube without thinking color's name, so I generalized. Now I generalized this case of generalization, and had a strange feeling). I'd attention switch and desided to explore.

Hi, everyone, you can call me Gigi. I'm a Mechanical Engineering student with a variety of interests ranking among everything from physics to art (unfortunately, I know more about the latter than the former). I've been reading LW frequently and for long sessions for a couple of weeks now.

I was attracted to LW primarily because of the apparent intelligence and friendliness of the community, and the fact that many of the articles illuminated and structured my previous thoughts about the world (I will not bother to name any here, many are in the Sequences).

While the rationalist viewpoint is fairly new to me (aside from various encounters where I could not identify ideas as "rationalist"), I am looking forward to expanding my intellectual horizons by reading, and hopefully eventually contributing something meaningful back to the community.

If anyone has recommendations for reading outside LW that may be interesting or relevant to me, I welcome them. I've got an entire summer ahead of me to rearrange my thinking and improve my understanding.

Hi, I'm Daniel. I've read OB for a long time and followed on LW right in the beginning, but work /time issues in the last year made my RSS reading queue really long (I had all LW posts in the queue). I'm a Brazilian programmer, long time rationalist and atheist.

I'm Valerie, 23 and a brand new atheist. I was directed to LW on a (also newly atheist) friend's recommendation and fell in love with it.

Since identifying as an atheist, I've struggled a bit with 'now what?' I feel like a whole new world has opened up to me and there is so much out there that I didn't even know existed. It's a bit overwhelming, but I'm loving the influx of new knowledge. I'm still working to shed old patterns of thinking and work my way into new ones. I have the difficulty of reading something and feeling that I understand it, but not being able to articulate it again (something left over from defending my theistic beliefs, which had no solid basis). I think I just need some practice :)

EDIT: Your link to the series of posts on why LW is generally atheistic is broken. Which makes me sad.

Hi, I`m Michèle. I'm 22 years old and studying biology in Germany. My parents are atheists and so am I.
I stumbled upon this blog, started reading and couldn't stop reading. Nearly every topic is very interesting for me and I'm really glad I found people to talk about these things! Sometimes I find myself over emotional and unable to get the whole picture of situations. I'm trying to work on that and I hope I could get some insight reading this blog.

Hi. I'm Cole from Maryland. I found this blog through a list of "greatest blogs of the year." I've forgot who published that list.

I'm in my 23rd year. I value happiness and work to spread it to others. I've been reading this blog for about a month. I enjoy reading blogs like this, because I'm searching for a sustainable lifestyle to start after college.

Cheers

Hi, I'm Sarah. I'm 21 and going to grad school in math next fall. I'm interested in applied math and analysis, and I'm particularly interested in recent research about the sparse representation of large data sets. I think it will become important outside the professional math community. (I have a blog about that at http://numberblog.wordpress.com/.)

As far as hobbies go, I like music and weightlifting. I read and talk far too much about economics, politics, and philosophy. I have the hairstyle and cultural vocabulary of a 1930's fast-talking dame. (I like the free, fresh wind in my hair, life without care; I'm broke, that's Oke!)

Why am I here? I clicked the link from Overcoming Bias.

In more detail, I'm here because I need to get my life in order. I'm a confused Jew, not a thoroughgoing atheist. I've been a liberal and then a libertarian and now need something more flexible and responsive to reason than either.

Some conversations with a friend, who's a philosopher, have led me to understand that there are some experiences (in particular, experiences he's had related to poverty and death) that nothing in my intellectual toolkit can deal with, and so I've had to reconsider a lot of preconceptions.

I'm here, to be honest, for help. I've had difficulty since childhood believing that I am valuable, partly because in mathematics you always have the example before you of people far better. Let me put it this way: I need to find something to do or believe that doesn't crumble periodically into wishing I were dead, because otherwise I won't have a very productive future. That sounds dismal, but really it's a good problem to have -- I'm pretty fortunate otherwise. Still, I want to solve it. I like this community, I think there's a lot to learn here, and my inclination is always to solve problems by learning.

Huh, I guess I should have come here earlier...

I'm Lorenzo, 31, from Madrid, Spain (but I'm Italian). I'm an evolutionary psychologist, or try to be, working on my PhD. I'm also doing a Master's Degree in Statistics, in which I discovered (almost by accident) the Bayesian approach. As someone with a longstanding interest in making psychology become a better science, I've found this blog a very good place for clarifying ideas.

I've been a follower of Less Wrong after reading Eliezer's essays on Bayesian reasoning some 3-4 months ago. I've known the Bayes theorem for quite a long time, but little or nothing about the bayesian approach to propability theory. The frecuentist paradigm dominates much of psychology, which is a shame, because I think bayesian reasoning is much better suited to the study of mind. There is still a lot of misunderstanding about what a bayesian approach entails, at least in this part of the world. Oh, well. We'll deal with it.

Thanks and keep up the good work!

My name is Taiyo Inoue. I am a 32, male, father of a 1 year old son, married, and a math professor. I enjoy playing the acoustic guitar (American primitive fingerpicking), playing games, and soaking up the non-poisonous bits of the internet.

I went through 12 years of math study without ever really learning that probability theory is the ultimate applied math. I played poker for a bit during the easy money boom for fun and hit on basic probability theory which the 12 year old me could have understood, but I was ignorant of the Bayesian framework for epistemology until I was 30 years old. This really annoys me.

I blame my education for leaving me ignorant about something so fundamental, but mostly I blame myself for not trying harder to learn about fundamentals on my own.

This site is really good for remedying that second bit. I have a goal to help fix the first bit -- I think we call it "raising the sanity waterline".

As a father, I also want to teach my son so he doesn't have the same regret and annoyance at my age.

Hello from the lurking shadows!

Some stats: * Name: Samuel Clamons * Birth Year: 1990 * Location: College of William and Mary or northern VA, depending on the time of year * Academic interests: Biology, mathematics, computer science *Personal interests: Science fiction, philosophy, understanding quantum mechanics, writing.

I've pretty much always been at least an aspiring rationalist, and I convinced myself of atheism at a pretty early age. My journey to LW started with my discovery of Aubrey de Gray in middle school and my discovery of the transhumanism movement in high school. Some internet prodding brought me to SL4, but I was intimidated with the overwhelming number of prior posts and didn't really read much of it. The little I did read, however, led me to Eliezer's Creating Friendly AI, which struck me on perusal as the most intelligently-written thing I'd read since The Selfish Gene. Earlier this year, the combination of reading through a few of Gardner Dozois' short "best of" short story collections and the discovery of Google Reader brought me to some of Eliezer's posts on AI and metaethics, and I've been reading through LW ever since. I'm currently plowing slowly through Eliezer's quantum physics sequence while trying not to fall behind too much on new threads.

My primary short-term goal is to learn as much as I can while I'm still young and plastic. My primary mid-range goals are to try to use technology to enhance my biology and to help medical immortality become practical and available while I'm still alive. My long-term goals include understanding physics, preserving what's left of the environment, and maximizing my happiness (while remaining within reasonable bounds of ethics).

I also have a passing but occasionally productive interest in writing science fiction, as well as a strong interest in reading it.

I'm a philosophy PhD student. I studied math and philosophy as an undergrad. I work on ethics and a smattering of Bayesian topics. I care about maximizing the sum of desirable experiences that happen in the future. In less noble moments, I care more immediately about advancing my career as a philosopher and my personal life.

I ran into OB a couple years ago when Robin Hanson came and gave a talk on disagreement at a seminar I was attending. I started reading OB, and then I drifted to LW territory a few months ago.

At first, much of the discussion here sounded crazy to me. It often still does. But I thought I'd give it a detailed look, since everyone here seems to have the same philosophical prejudices as me (Bayesian utilitarian atheist physicalists).

I like discussion of Bayesian topics and applied ethics best.

Bueno! I'm Jason from San Antonio, Texas. Nice to say 'hi' to all you nice people! (Nice, also, to inflate the number of comments for this particular post - give the good readers of Less Wrong an incrementally warmer feeling of camaraderie.)

I've been reading Overcoming Bias and Less Wrong for over a year since I found a whole bunch of discussions on quantum mechanics. I've stayed for the low, low cost intellectual gratification.

I (actually, formally) study physics and math, and read these blogs to the extent that I feel smarter...also, because the admittedly limited faculties of reason play out a fascinating and entertaining show of bravery against their own project of rationality. What I learn about these shortcomings helps to buttress my own monoliths, as much as what I learn might should could erode these pillars' unsubstantial foundations. It's a thrilling undertaking.

Thanks, all!

Greetings. Since this is more of a "blog" than a forum, I have hesitated to join the conversation. But since this is an open invitation I figured I would introduce myself.

I've been "lurking" on this site for over a year. I am a young professional working in the Philadelphia area as a computer programmer, though my background is in Engineering. I also consider myself an amateur philosopher. I stumbled upon the Overcoming Bias blog sometime in 2008 and found many of the posts to be thought-provoking and insightful. I have both OvercomingBias and LessWrong on my RSS feed.

I am interested in Artificial Intelligence, Ontology, Epistemology, General Semantics, Cognition, and many other aspects of rationalism. I am particularly interested in following the work of the Singularity Institute, and I wish them success.

I also occasionally participate in the "Thothica" online Philosophy community in Second Life. If there is a LessWrong or Singularity Institute contingent in Second Life, I would love to hear about it.

Cheers. :-)

Hello, Less Wrong.

My name is Zachary Vance. I'm an undergraduate student at the University of Cincinnati, double majoring in Mathematics and Computer Science--I like math better. I am interested in games, especially board and card games. One of my favorite games is Go.

I've been reading Less Wrong for 2-3 months now, and I posted once or twice under another name which I dropped because I couldn't figure out how to change names without changing accounts. I got linked here via Scott Aaronson's blog Shtetl-Optimized after seeing a debate between him and Eliezer. I got annoyed at Eliezer for being rude, forgot about it for a month, and followed the actual link on Scott's site over here. (In case you read this Eliezer, you both listen to people more than I thought (update, in Bayesian) and write more interesting things than I heard in the debate.) I like paradoxes and puzzles, and am currently trying to understand the counterfactual mugging. I've enjoyed Less Wrong because everybody here seems to read everything and usually carefully think about it before they post, which means not only articles but also comments are simply amazing compared to other sites. It also means I try not to post too much so Less Wrong remains quality.

I am currently applying to work at the Singularity Institute.

Hi! I've been on Less Wrong since the beginning. I'm finally getting around to posting in this thread. I found Less Wrong via Overcoming Bias, which I (presumably) found by wandering around the libertarian blogosphere.

• real life name: Aaron Brown
• location: metropolitan Detroit (Michigan, US)
• sex: male
• birth year: 1973
• profession: computer programmer
• avocation: musician
• some other interests: Ayn Rand, Breaking Bad, Esperanto, progressive rock, Vim
• see also: arundelo.com, arundelo.livejournal.com

Hello everyone!

Name: Tuesday Next Age: 19 Gender: Female

I am an undergraduate student studying political science, with a focus on international relations. I have always been interested in rationalism and finding the reasons for things.

I am an atheist, but this is more a consequence of growing up in a relatively nonreligious household. I did experiment with paganism and witchcraft for several years, a rather frightening (in retrospect) display of cognitive dissonance as I at once believed in science and some pretty unscientific things.

Luckily I was able to to learn from experience, and it soon become obvious that what I believed in simply didn't work. I think I wanted to believe in witchcraft both as a method of teenage rebellion and to exert some control over my life. However I was unable to delude myself.

I tried to interest myself in philosophy many times, but often became frustrated by the long debates that seemed divorced from reality. One example is the idea of free will. Since I was a child (I have a memory of trying, when I was in elementary school, of trying to explain this to my parents without success) I have had a conception of reality and free will that seemed fairly reasonable to me and I never understood what all the fuss was about.

It went something like this: The way things did turn out is the only way things could have turned out, given the exact pre-existing circumstances. In particular, when one person makes a decision they presumably do so for a reason, whether that reason is rational or not; if that decision is not predetermined by the situation and the person, then it is random. If a decision is random, this is not free will because the choice is not a result of a person's decision; rather it is a result of some random phenomenon involving the word "quantum."

But since no two situations are alike, and it is impossible for anyone to know everything, let alone extrapolate from knowledge of the present to figure out what the future will be, there is no practical effect from this determinism. In short, we act as if we have free will and we cannot predict the future. It is the same thing with reality. Whether it is "real" or not is irrelevant.

The practical consequences of this, for me at least, are that arguing about whether we have free will or not misses the point. We may be able to predict the "future" of a simple computer program by knowing all the conditions of the present, but cannot do the same for the real world; it is too complex.

I finally found this articulated, to my great relief that I was not crazy for believing it, in Daniel Dennet's "Freedom Evolves." This is what got me interested in philosophy again.

I am also interested in how to change minds (including my own). I have always had fairly strong (and, in retrospect, irrational) political beliefs. When I took an Economics course, I found many of my political beliefs changing significantly.

I even found myself arguing with a friend (who like me is fairly liberal), and he later praised me for successfully defending a point of view he knew I disagreed with. (The argument in question was about a global minimum wage law; I was opposed.) I found this disconcerting as I was in fact arguing what I honestly believed, though I do have a tendency to play "Devil's Advocate" and argue against what I believe.

This forced me to confront the fact that some of my political views had actually changed. Later, when I challenged some of the basic assumptions that Economics class made, like the idea that markets can be "perfect," I found myself reassessing my political views again. I am trying to get in the habit of doing this to avoid becoming dogmatic.

Anyway, I think that's enough for now; if anyone has any questions I would be happy to address them.

--Tuesday

Hi everyone!

I'm graduating law school in May 2010, and then going to work in consumer law at a small firm in San Francisco. I'm fascinated by statistical political science, space travel, aikido, polyamory, board games, and meta-ethics.

I first realized that I needed to make myself more rational when I bombed an online confidence calibration test about 6 years ago; it asked me to provide 95% confidence intervals for 100 different pieces of numerical trivia (e.g. how many nukes does China have, how many counties are in the U.S., how many species of spiders are there), and I only got about 72 correct. I can't find the website anymore, which is frustrating; I like to think I would do better now.

I am a pluralist about what should be achieved -- I believe there are several worthy goals in life, the utility of which cannot be meaningfully compared. However, I am passionately convinced that people should be consciously aware of their goals and should attempt to match their actions to their stated goals. Whatever kind of future we want, we are flabbergastingly unlikely to get it unless we identify and carry out the tasks that can lead us there.

Despite reading and pondering roughly 80 LW articles, together with some of their comments, I continue to believe a few things that will rub many LW readers the wrong way. My confidence in these beliefs has gone down, but is still over 50%. For example, I still believe in a naturalistic deity, and I still believe in ontologically basic consciousness. I am happy to debate these issues with individuals who are interested, but I do not plan on starting any top-level posts about them; I do not have the stamina or inclination to hold the field against an entire community of intelligent debaters all by myself.

I am not sure that I have anything to teach LW in the sense of delivering a prepared lecture, but I hope to contribute to discussions about how to best challenge Goodhart's Law in various applied settings.

Finally, thanks to RobinZ for the warm welcome!

• Persona: Rain
• Age: Late 20s
• Gender: Unrevealed
• Location: Eastern USA
• Profession: Application Administrator, US Department of Defense
• Education: Business, Computers, Philosophy, Scifi, Internet
• Interests: Gaming, Roleplaying, Computers, Technology, Movies, Books, Thinking
• Personality: Depressed and Pessimistic
• General: Here's a list of my news sources

Rationalist origin: I discovered the scientific method in highschool and liked the results of its application to previously awkward social situations, so I extended it to life in general. I came up with most of OB's earlier material by myself under different names, or not quite as well articulated, and this community has helped refine my thoughts and fill in gaps.

Found LW: The FireFox add-on StumbleUpon took me to EY's FAQ about the Meaning of Life on 23 October 2005, along with Max More, Nick Bostrom, Alcor, Sentient Developments, the Transhumanism Wikipedia page, and other resources. From there, to further essays, to the sl4 mailing list, to SIAI, to OB, to LW, where I started interacting with the community in earnest in late January 2010 and achieved 1000 karma in early June 2010. Previous to the StumbleUpon treasure trove, I had been turned off the transhumanist movement by a weird interview of Kurzweil in Wired, but still hopeful due to scifi potentials.

Value and desire to achieve: I'm still working on that. The metaethics sequence was unsatisfactory. In particular, I have problems with our ability to predict the future and what we should value. I'm hoping smarter than human intelligence will have better answers, so I strongly support SIAI.

I go by Clarisse and I'm a feminist, sex-positive educator who has delivered workshops on both sexual communication and BDSM to a variety of audiences, including New York’s Museum of Sex, San Francisco’s Center for Sex and Culture, and several Chicago universities. I created and curated the original Sex+++ sex-positive documentary film series at Chicago’s Jane Addams Hull-House Museum; I have also volunteered as an archivist, curator and fundraiser for that venerable BDSM institution, the Leather Archives & Museum. Currently, I'm working on HIV mitigation in southern Africa. I blog at clarissethorn.wordpress.com and Twitter at @clarissethorn.

Besides sex, other interests include gaming, science fiction and fantasy, and housing cooperatives.

I've read some posts here that I thought had really awful attitudes about sexuality and BDSM in particular, so I'm sure I'll be posting about those. I would like it if people were more rational about sex, inasmuch as we can be.

I looked around for an FAQ link and didn't see one, and I've gone through all my preferences and haven't found anything relevant. Is there any way to arrange for followup comments (I suppose, the contents of my account inbox) to be emailed to me?

Hello.
My name is Dan, and I'm a 30 year old software engineer living in Maryland. I was a mostly lurking member of the Extropian mailing list back in the day and I've been following the progress of the SIAI sporadically since it's founding. I've made a few donations, but nothing terribly significant.

I've been an atheist for half my life now, and as I've grown older I've tended more and more to rational thinking. My wife recently made a comment that she specifically uses rational argument with me much more so than anyone else she has to deal with, even at work, because she knows that is what will work. (Obviously, she wins frequently enough to make it worth her while.)

I hope to have something minor to contribute to the akrasia discussion, although I haven't fully formulated it yet. I used to be an avid video game player and I don't play anymore. The last few times I played any games I didn't even enjoy it. I plan to describe the experiences that led to this state. Unfortunately for general applicability, one of those experiences is "grow older and have a child."

It's not the most altruistic of motives, but what most draws me to this community is that I enjoy being right, and there seem to be lots of things I can learn here to help me to be right more often. What I would dream about getting out of this community is a way to find or prepare for meaningful work that helped reduce existential risk. I have a one year old daughter and I was recently asking myself "What is most likely to kill my children and grandchildren?" The answer I came up with was "The same thing that kills everyone else."

Hi! Vectored here by Robin who's thankfully trolling for new chumps and recommending initial items to read. I note the Wiki would be an awesome place for some help, and may attempt to put up a page there: NoobDiscoveringLessWrongLeavesBreadcrumbs, or something like that.

My immediate interest is argument: how can we disagree? 1+1=2. Can't that be extrapolated to many things. I have been so happy to see a non-cocky (if prideful) attitude in the first several posts that I have great hopes for what I may learn here. We have to remember ignorance is an implacable enemy, and being insulting won't defeat it, and we may be subject to it ourselves. I've notice I am.

First post from me is coming shortly. - mark krebs

Hello All,

my name is Markus, and just decided, after, well, years? of lurk-jumping from sl4 to OvercomingBias to LessWrong that maybe I should participate in the one or another discussion; not doing so seems to lead to constant increase of things I have a feeling I know but actually fall flat on the first occasion of another person posing a question.

The process of finding to (then non-existing) LW started during senior high, when I somehow got interested into philosophy, soon enough into AI. The interest in AI lead to interest in Weiqi (Chess was publicly shot already a handful years ago), lead to an interest into eastern philosophy, lead to (interest, not really doing) Zen, lead to frustration, back to start. I was playing trumpet during those times, too; as a consequence of all interests, I did, well, not so much productive stuff. Procrastination is an often discussed topic here; I was and I am of type-A: do nothing. Well, I played Quake. Now I click links on Facebook.

I would still not call myself a rationalist by execution, but just by aspiration. However, from my philosophical gut-level feeling, just everything else does not make any sense.

I am somehow missing the real-life link; for people with IQ << 160, who are not working on AI or similarly hard topics, I cannot see the potential of the full-blown Bayesian BFG; just doing what is consensus being the best choice is most often the only thing one can do, lacking any data, even more often competence. I really do have a hard time seeing the practical benefits.

So, this one is getting too long already, I'm a chatty person...

Just for completeness, on "what you're doing": I'm currently working as a part-time software developer, and am a philosophy/math/computer science/electrical engineering college-dropout.

BTW, as English is not my mother-tongue, I often fall-back to the dictionary when writing in it; if some things seem to be taken from an overly strange thesaurus, or of especially unorthodox style, you now know why.

Hi. My name's Derrick.

I've been reading LW and HN for a while now but have only just started to learn to participate. I'm 23, ostensibly hold a bachelor's in economics, and interested in way too much - a dilettante of sorts. Unfortunately I have the talent of being able to sound like I know stuff just by quickly reading around a subject.

Pretty much have always been a Traditional Rationalist; kind of treated the site discussions as random (if extremely high impact) insights. Getting interested in Bayesian modeling sort of sent me on a path here. Lots of Eliezer's Coming of Age sequence reminds me of myself. Is 23 the magical age for Bayesian Enlightenment?

My current interest is in the Art of Strategy, in the way Musashi set down.

Just discovered the sequences and some recommended books! Think I'm going to be sidetracked for a while now...

Name: Karl Smith

Location: Raleigh, North Carolina

Born: 1978

Education: Phd Economics

Occupation: Professor - UNC Chapel Hill

I've always been interested in rationality and logic but was sidetracked for many (12+) years after becoming convinced that economics was the best way to improve the lives of ordinary humans.

I made it to Less Wrong completely by accident. I was into libertarianism which lead me to Bryan Caplan which lead me Robin Hanson (just recently). Some of Robin's stuff convinced me that Cryonics was a good idea. I searched for Cryonics and found Less Wrong. I have been hooked ever since. About 2 weeks now, I think.

Also, skimming this I see there is a 14 year-old on this board. I cannot tell you how that makes burn with jealousy. To have found something like this at 14! Soak it in Ellen. Soak it in.

Hi everyone.

My name is Alan Godfrey.

I am fascinated by rational debate and logical arguments, and I appear to have struck gold in finding this site! I am the first to admit my own failings in these areas but am always willing to learn and grow.

I'm a graduate of mathematics from Trinity Hall, Cambridge University and probability and statistics have always been my areas of expertise - although I find numbers so much more pleasant to play with than theorems and proofs so bear with me!

I'm also a passive member of Mensa. While most of it does not interest me the numerical, pattern spotting and spatial awareness puzzles that it is associated with have always been a big passion of mine.

I have a personal fascination in human psychology, especially my own in a narcissistic way! Although I have no skill in this area.

I currently work for a specialist insurance company and head the catastrophe modelling function, which uses a baffling mixture of all of the above! It was through this that I attended a brief seminar at the 21st Century School in Oxford which mentioned this site as an affiliation although I had already found it a few months previously.

I come to this site with open eyes and an open mind. I hope to contribute insightful observation, engage in healthy discussion and ultimately come away better than I came in.

Hi all, my name's Drew. I stumbled upon the site from who-knows-where last week and must've put in 30-40 hours of reading already, so suffice to say I've found the writing/discussions quite enjoyable so far. I'm heavily interested in theories of human behavior on both a psychological and moral level, so most of the subject matter has been enjoyable. I was a big Hofstader fan a few years back as well, so the AI and consciousness discussions are interesting as well.

Anyway, thought I'd pop in and say hi, maybe I'll take part in some conversations soon. Looks like a great thing you've got going here.

Hello.

Call me Thomas. I am 22. The strongest force directing my life can be called an extreme phobia of disorder. I came across overcoming bias and Eliezer Yudkowsky's writings, around the same time, in high school, shortly after reading GEB and The Singularity Is Near.

The experience was not a revelation but a relief. I am completely sane! Being here is solace. The information here is mostly systematized, which has greatly helped to organize my thoughts on rationality and has saved me a great amount of time.

I am good at tricking people into thinking I am smart, which you guys can easily catch. And I care about how you guys will perceive me, which means that I have to work hard if I want to be a valuable contributor. Something I am not used to (working hard), since I do good enough work with minimal effort.

My greatest vices are romantic literature, smooth language, and flowery writing. From Roman de la Rose, to The Knight's Tale, to Paradise Lost, to One Hundred Years of Solitude. That crap is like candy to me.

Bad music repulses me. I get anxious and irritable and will probably throw a fit if I don't get away from the music. Anything meticulous, or tedious, will make me antsy and shaky. Bad writing also has the same effect on me. Though, I am punctilious. There's a difference.

My favorite band it Circulatory System, which speaks directly to my joys and fears and hopes. If you haven't listened to them, I highly recommend you do so. The band name means "Human." It is about what is means to be us, about the circular nature of our sentience, and about the circles drawn in history with every new generation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_jidcdzXuU

I have opted out of college. I do not learn well in lectures. They are too slow, tedious, and meticulous. Books hold my attention better.

My biggest mistake? In school, never practicing retaining information. I do not have my months memorized and my vocabulary is terrible. It was much funner to use my intelligence to "get the grade" than it was to memorize information. Now, this is biting me on the butt. I need to start practicing memorizing stuff.

I am currently in a good situation. My mom got a job far from her house, and she has farm animals. I made a deal with her, where I watch her house and the animals for free if she lets me stay there. I will be in this position for at least another year.

I have enough web design skills to be useful to web design firms, which brings me my income. I am also a hobbyist programmer, though not good enough yet to turn that skill into money.

I want to teach people to be more rational; that's what I want to do with my life. I am far from being the writer I want to be, and I have not yet made my ideas congruent and clear.

Anybody with good recommendations on how to best spend this year?

Thomas.

Hi. My name's Kevin. I'm 23. I graduated with a degree in industrial engineering from the University of Pittsburgh last month. I have a small ecommerce site selling a few different kinds of herbal medicine, mainly kratom, and I buy and sell sport and concert tickets. Previously I started a genetic testing startup and I am gearing up for my next startup.

I post on Hacker News a lot as rms. kfischer &$ gmail *^ com for email and IM, kevin143 on Twitter, kfischer on Facebook.

I signed up for Less Wrong when it was first started but have just recently reached the linguistic level where I feel I can almost keep up with the conversation. 9 months ago I found myself bored by the nearly exclusive focus on meta-conversation and rationality. I would just read Eliezer's less meta stuff. But since graduating from school and having a job that requires me to work no more than 2 hours a day, I've been able to dedicate myself to social hedonism/relationship building and philosophy. I've learned more in one month of posting here than I did in my last two years of college classes.

I posted my rationalist origin story a while ago. http://lesswrong.com/lw/2/tell_your_rationalist_origin_story/74

• Handle: arbimote
• Gender: Male
• Age: 22 (born 1987)
• Location: Australia
• Occupation: Student of computer science

I've been lurking since May 2009. My views on some issues that are often brought up on LW are:

• It's a good idea to sign up to cryonics if you have the money, due to a Pascal's Wager type argument. I have not signed up, since I do not yet have the money (and AFAIK there are further complications due to being in Australia).
• It is possible and desirable for humans to create AGI.
• MWI seems intuitive to me, but I have not read enough about the subject to form an decent estimate on its correctness.

I feel like I should pad out this intro with more information, but that'll have to do for now.

Male, 26; Belgrade, Serbia. Graduate student of software engineering. Been lurking here for a few months, reading sequences and new stuff through RSS. Found the site through reddit, likely.

Self-diagnosed (just now) with impostor syndrome. Learned a lot from reading this site. Now registered an account to facilitate learning (by interaction), and out of desire to contribute back to the community (not likely to happen by insightful posts, so I'll check out the source code).

• Anthony
• Age 21
• Computer Science Student
• Seattle/Redmond area

I have been lurking LW and OB since summer and finally became motivated/bored enough to post. I do not remember exactly how I came to find this site, but it was probably from following a link on some atheist blog or forum.

I became interested in rationality after taking some philosophy classes my freshman year and discovering that I had been wrong about religion. Everything followed from that.

Interests that you probably do not care about: Gaming and game design in particular. I have thus far made a flash game and an iPhone game, both of which are far too difficult for most people.

I'm Ellen, age 14, student, planning to major in molecular biology or something like that. I'm not set on it, though.

I think I was browsing wikipedia when I decided to google some related things. I think I found some libertarian or anarchist blog that then had a link to Overcoming Bias or Lesswrong. Or I might've seen the word transhumanism on the wiki page for libertarianism and googled it, with it eventually leading here somehow. My memory is fuzzy as it was pretty irrelevant to me.

I'm an atheist, and have been for a while, as is typical for this community. I wasn't brought up religiously, so it was pretty much untheism that turned into atheism.

My rationalist roots... I've always wanted to be right, of course. Partly because I could make mistakes from being wrong, partly because I really, really hated looking stupid. Then I figured that I couldn't know if I was right unless I listened to the other side, really listened, and was careful. (Not enough people do even this. People are crazy, the world is mad. Angst, angst.) I found lesswrong which has given me tools to much more effectively do this. w00t.

I'm really lazy. Curse you, akrasia!

It should be obvious how I came up with my username. Aren't I original?

Some other hobbies I have are gaming and anime/manga. Amusingly enough, I barely ever watch any anime. The internet is very distracting.

• Name: Akshat Rathi
• Location: Oxford, UK
• Age: 22
• Education: B. Tech (Pharmaceutical Chemistry & Technology), currently studying towards a D. Phil. in Organic Chemistry

I grew up in India but in a family where religion was never forced on the individual. I think I became a rationalist the day I started countering superstition and its evils through reasoning. Now as a scientist I find myself rationalising every experimental outcome. As a chemist, I get angry every so often when I have to settle for an empirical outcome over a rational one.

I was introduced to less wrong by alexflint with whom I co-author a blog. I have always been interested in philosophy and hope to take it up as a subject of study very soon.

Hi,

I am FeministX of FeministX.blogspot.com. I found this blog after Eliezer commented on my site. While my online name is FeministX, I am not a traditional feminist, and many of my intellectual interests lie outside of feminism.

Lately I am interestedin learning more about the genetic and biological basis for individual and group behavior. I am also interested in cryonics and transhumanism. I guess this makes me H+BD.

I am a rationalist by temperament and ideology. Why am I a rationalist? To ask is to answer the question. A person who wishes to accurately comprehend the merits of a rationalist perspective is already a rationalist. It's a deeply ingrained thinking style which has grown with me since the later days of my childhood.

I invite you all to read my blog. I can almost guarenteee that you will like it. My awesomeness is reliably appealing. (And I'm not so hard on the eyes either :) )

Name: Matt Duing Age: 24 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Education: undergraduate

I've been an overcoming bias reader since the beginning, which I learned of from Michael Anissimov's blog. My long term goal is to do what I can to help mitigate existential risks and my short term goals include using rationality to become a more accurate map drawer and a more effective altruist.

Eh. Might as well.

Chris Capel (soon to be) Mount Pleasant, TX (hi MrHen!) Programmer

I've been following Eliezer since the days of CFAI, and was an early donor to SIAI. I struggle with depression, and thus am much less consistently insightful than I wish I'd be. I'm only 24 and I already feel like I've wasted my life, fallen permanently behind a bunch of the rest of you guys, which kind of screws up my high ambitions. Oh well.

I'd like to see a link explaining the mechanics of the karma system (like how karma relates to posting, for instance) in this post.

Hello! I'm Oliver, as my username should make evident. I'm 17 years old, and this site was recommended to me by a friend, whose LW username I observe is 'Larks'. I drift over to Overcoming Bias occasionally, and have RSS feeds to Richard Dawkins' site and (the regrettably sensationalist) NewScientist magazine. As far as I can see past my biases, I aspire to advance my understanding of the kinds of things I've seen discussed here, science, mathematics, rationality and a large chunk of stuff that at the moment rather confuses me.

I started education with a prominent interest in mathematics, which later expanded to include the sciences and writing, and consider myself at least somewhat lucky to have escaped ten years of light indoctrination from church-school education, later finding warm comfort in the intellectual bosom of Richard Dawkins. I've also become familiar with the likes of Alan Turing, Steven Pinker and yet others, from fields of philosophy, mathematics, computing and science.

I'm currently at college in the UK studying my second year of Mathematics, Philosophy, English Language and entering a first year of Physics (I have concluded a year of Computing). As much as I enjoy and value philosophy as a mechanism for genuine rational learning and discovery, I often despise the canon for its almost religious lack of progression and for affixing value to ultimately meaningless questions. It is for this reason that I value having access to Less Wrong et alia. Mathematics is a subject which I learned (the hard way) that I cannot live without.

I think I've said as much here as I can and as much as I need to, so I'll conclude with a toast: to a future of enlightenment, learning, overcoming biases and most importantly fun.

Handle: Larks (also commonly Larklight, OxfordLark, Artrix)
Name: Ben
Sex: Male
Location: Eastbourne, UK 
Age: at 17 I suspect I may be the baby of the group?
Education: results permitting (to which I assign a probability in excess of 0.99) I'll be reading Mathematics and Philosophy at Oxford
Occupation: As yet, none. Currently applying for night-shift work at a local supermarket

I came to LW through OB, which I found as a result of Bryan Caplan's writing on Econlog (or should it be at Econlog?). I fit much of the standard pattern: atheist, materialist, economist, reductionist, etc. Probably my only departure is being a Conservative Liberal rather than a libertarian; an issue of some concern to me is the disconnect between the US/Econlog/OB/LW/Rationalist group and the UK/Classical Liberal/Conservative Party group, both of which I am interested in. Though Hayek, of course, pervades all.

In an impressive display, I suppose, of cognitive dissidence, I realised that the Bible and Evolution were contradictory in year 4 (age:8), and so came to the conclusion that the continents had originally been separated into islands on opposite sides of the planet. Eden was on one side, evolution on the other, and then continental drift occurred. I have since rejected this hypothesis. I came to Rationalism partly as a result of debating on the NAGTY website.

There are probably two notable influences OB/LW have had on my life. Firstly, I've begun to reflexively refer to what would or would not be empirically the case under different policies, states of affairs, etc., thus making discourse notably more efficient (or at least, it makes it harder for other people to argue back. Hard to tell the difference.)

Secondly, I've given up trying out out-argue my irrational Marxist friend, and instead make money off him by making bets about political and economic matters. This does not seem to have affected his beliefs, but it is profitable.

• Name: David
• Space: SF Bay Area
• Time: 46
• Education: MS Econ, MS Mechanical Engr.
• Occupation: IT Consultant

I am interested in reason, how it works and how I can improve my own abilities. I have been an AI/Singularity skeptic but am reconsidering these ideas on reading Jaynes over the past year. Working on integrating the work of Rand, Aristotle, Jaynes, Turing, Godel and Shannon because I think all the essentials are covered in these author's work. Love the blog, especially the commitment to clear understanding but also clearly identifying that which we don't understand. Unfortunately many of the topics are too technical for me but I enjoy the discussion anyway.

Hello.

I've been reading Less Wrong from its beginning. I stumbled upon Overcoming Bias just as LW was being launched. I'm a young mathematician (an analyst, to be more specific) currently working towards a PhD and I'm very interested in epistemic rationality and the theory of altruist instrumental rationality. I've been very impressed with the general quality of discussion about the theory and general practice of truth-seeking here, even though I can think of places where I disagree with the ideas that I gather are widely accepted here. The most interesting discussions seem to be quite old, though, so reviving those discussions out of the blue hasn't felt like - for lack of a better word - a proper thing to do.

There are many discussions here of which I don't care about. A large proportion of people here are programmers or otherwise from a CS background, and that colors the discussions a lot. Or maybe it's just that the prospect of an AGI in recent future doesn't seem at all likely to me. Anyway, the AI/singularity stuff, the tangentially related topics that I bunch together with them, and approaching rationality topics from a programmer's point of view I just don't care about. Not very much, at least.

The self-help stuff, "winning is everything" and related stuff I'd rather not read. Well, I do my best not to. The apparent lack of concern for altruism in those discussions makes me even wish they wouldn't take place here in the first place.

And then there are the true failings of this community. I had been thinking of registering and posting in some threads about the more abstract sides of rationality, but I must admit I eventually got around to registering and posting because of the gender threads. But there's just so much bullshit going on! Evolutionary psychology is grossly misapplied (1). The obvious existence of oppressive cultural constructs (2) is flatly denied. The validity of anecdotes and speculation as evidence is hardly even questioned. The topics that started the flaming have no reason of even being here in the first place. This post pretty well sums up the failures of rationality here at Less Wrong; and that post has been upvoted to 25! Now, the failings and attitudes that surfaced in the gender debate have, of course, been visible for quite some time. But that the failures of thought seem so common has made me wonder if this community as a whole is actually worth wasting my time for.

So, in case you're still wondering, what has generously been termed "exclusionary speech" really drives people away (3). I'm still hoping that the professed rationality is enough to overcome the failure modes that are currently so common here (4). But unfortunately I think my possible contributions won't be missed if I rid myself of wishful thinking and see it's not going to happen.

It's quite a shame that a community with such good original intentions is failing after a good start. Maybe humans simply won't overcome their biases (5) yet in this day and age.

So. I'd really like to participate in thoughtful discussions with rationalists I can respect. For quite a long time, Less Wrong seemed like the place, but I just couldn't find a proper place to start (I dislike introductions). But now as I'm losing my respect for this community and thus the will to participate here, I started posting. I hope I can regain the confidence in a high level of sanity waterline here.

(Now a proper rationalist would, in my position, naturally reconsider his own attitudes and beliefs. It might not be surprising that I didn't find all too much to correct. So I might just as well assume that I haven't been mind-killed quite yet, and just make the post I wanted to.)

EDIT: In case you felt I was generalizing with too much confidence - and as I wrote here, I agree I was - see my reply to Vladimir Nesov's reply.

(1) I think failing to control for cultural influences in evolutionary psychology should be considered at least as much of a fail as postulating group selection. Probably more so.

(2) Somehow I think phrases like "cultural construct", especially when combined with qualifiers like "oppressive", trigger immediate bullshit alarms for some. To a certain extent, it's forgivable, as they certainly have been used in conjunction with some of the most well-known anti-epistemologies of our age. But remember: reversing stupidity doesn't make you any better off.

(3) This might be a good place to remind the reader that (our kind can't cooperate)[http://lesswrong.com/lw/3h/why_our_kind_cant_cooperate/]. (This is actually referring to many aspects of the recent debate, not just one.)

(4) Yes, I know, I can't cooperate either.

(5) Overcoming Bias is quite an ironic name for that blog. EDIT: This refers exclusively to many of Robin Hanson's posts about gender differences I have read. I think I saw a post linking to some of these recently, but I couldn't find a link to that just now. Anyway, this footnote probably went a bit too far.

Hi,

I'm Alex and I'm studying computer vision at Oxford. Essentially we're trying to build AI that understands the visual world. We use lots of machine learning, probabilistic inference, and even a bit of signal processing. I arrived here through the Future of Humanity Institute website, which I found after listening to Nick Bostrom's TED talk. I've been lurking for a few weeks now but I thought I should finally introduce myself.

I find the rationalist discussion on LW interesting both on a personal interest level, and in relation to my work. I would like to get some discussion going on the relationship between some of the concrete tools and techniques we use in AI and the more abstract models of rationality being discussed here. Out of interest, how many people here have some kind of computer science background?

Hi

I am Ajay from India. I am 23. I was a highly rebellious person(still am i think), flunked out college, but completed it to become a programmer. But as soon as i finished college, i had severe depression because of a woman. I than thought of doing Masters degree in US, and applied, but then dropped the idea.Then i recaptured a long gone passion to make music, so i started drumming. I got accepted to berklee college of music, but then i lost interest to make a career out of it, i have some reasons for it. Then i started reading a lot(parallel to some programming). I face all the problems that an average guy faces(from social to economic problems). I graduated from one of the top colleges in india and now don't do my degree any justice. sometimes i think about the fact that all my colleagues are happy working with companies like google, oracle, etc. In a spur to make a balance, i gave gmat and applied and got admit to some supposedly TOP MBA schools. But i again lost interest for pursuing that thing. Now i write a bit, and read and i teach primary school mathematics in a local school. I love music ranging from art tatum to balamurlikrishna to illayraja to blues. I have been to US once when i was working with Perot systems bangalore(i was campus placed there). I would like to travel more, but i dont see that happening in near future because of financial contraints and constraints by governments of this world.

So, i always keep searching for some interesting "cures" on internet. One fine day i found paul grahams website through some Ajax site. Then i was reading something on hacker news, something related to cult following and stuff. There was a name mentioned there--Eliezer yudkowsky(hope i spelled it right). So i wikied that name. i found his site and then from there to less wrong and overcoming bias. Since 2 months, i am really obsessed by this blog. I dont know how will this help me "practically", but i am quite happy reading and demystifying my brain on certain things.

One thing: I have noticed that this forum has people who are relatively intellectual. Lot of them seem to be from developed countries, who have got very less idea about how things work in a country like India. Sitting here, all these things that are happening in "developed" world seem incredulous to me. I get biased like lot of indians who think US or Europe is a better place. I dont need to say that there are millions of indians in these regions. Then i think some more. So far, i dont think anybody is doing things any differently when it comes to living a life. Even in this community i dont see we are living differently, i dont know whether we even need to!!

We are born, we live and we die, that is the only truth that appeals me so far. One might think that a different state of my mind would give different opinion about what my brain thinks is "truth", but i doubt that. But i love this site, if anybody doubts that whether this site has practical benefits or not---I say that it is very useful. Onething stands out, people here are open to criticism. Even if we don't get truth from this site, we have so many better routes to choose from!! This site seems to be a map. For a timeless travel. Dont give a shit about what others have to say. People can come with theories about everything it seems. And i dont like when people have -ve stuff to say about this forum. I am and would like to loyal to the forum which serves me good.

I hope something happens that we are able to live for atleast 500 years. I think that would be a good time to know few things( my fantasy)

i have recently started writing at http://ajayjetti.com/

thanks for reading if u have reached here!!

Greetings. To this community, I will only be known as "Whisper". I'm a believer in science and rationality, but also a polythiest and a firm believer that there are some things that science cannot explain. I was given the site's address by one Alicorn, who I've been trying to practice Far-Seeing with...with much failure.

I'm 21 years old right now, living in NY, and am trying to write my novels. As for who I am, well, I believe you'll all just have to judge me for yourself by my actions (posts) rather than any self-description. Thankee to any of you who bothered to read.

Hello.

I'm Antoine Valot, 35 years old, Information Architect and Business Analyst, a frenchman living in Colorado, USA. I've been lurking on LW for about a month, and I like what I see, with some reservations.

I'm definitely an atheist, currently undecided as to how anti-theist I should be (seems the logical choice, but the antisocial aspects suggest that some level of hypocrisy might make me a more effective rational agent?)

I am nonetheless very interested in some of the philosophical findings of Buddhism (non-duality being my pet idea). I think there's some very actionable and useful tools in Buddhism at the juncture of rationality and humanity: How to not believe in santa, but still fulfill non-rational human needs and aspirations. Someone's going to have to really work on convincing me that "utility" can suffice, when Buddhist concepts of "happiness" seem to fit the bill better for humans. "Utility" seems too much like pleasure (unreliable, external, variable), as opposed to happiness (maintainable, internal, constant).

Anyway, I'm excited to be here, and looking forward to learning a lot and possibly contributing something of value.

A special shout-out to Alicorn: I read you post on male bias, and I dig, sister. I'll try to not make matters worse, and look for ways to make them better.

Hello.

My name is Joni Hanski, I'm 21 years old, I study mathematics at Helsinki University, Finland, I'm male...

So, yeah. Reason behind my interest in rationality would probably be something that is likely to earn me ADHD-diagnosis in near future. Since I've been mentally impaired to some weird degree, I've tried to find a Way to overcome that. My earlier efforts weren't all that effective, but now that I found a site that gathers results of systematic study around this field, I expect a lot.

My school grades were about medium throughout my life. I enjoy a board game called "go" a lot, and I used it to find and eliminate some biases and cognitive mistakes(I'm Finnish shodan). Other than math, I like psychology, I also find transhumanism very interesting topic, and I have many times thought that I could make my own super-AI. I like computers, I know superfically some programming languages, but I haven't had any larger projects on any real languages(Some 500 line scripts occasionally).

I found this site through irc-channel for Finnish transhumanist movement. Whole notion of "refining the art of human rationality" was like a dream come true. I try to avoid commenting to avoid quality of discussion dropping, so for the months to come, I'll be mostly doing my homework to gather some basic knowledge.

Ignoring the more obvious jokes people make in introduction posts: Hi. My name is Robin. I grew up in the Eastern Time Zone of the United States, and have lived in the same place essentially all my life. I was homeschooled by secular parents - one didn't discuss religion and the other was agnostic - with my primary hobby being the reading of (mostly) speculative fiction of (mostly) quite high quality. (Again, my parent's fault - when I began searching out on my own, I was rather less selective.) The other major activity of my childhood was participation in the Boy Scouts of America.

I entered community college at the age of fifteen with an excellent grounding in mathematics, a decent grounding in physics, superb fluency with the English language (both written and spoken), and superficial knowledge of most everything else. After earning straight As for three years, I applied to four-year universities, and my home state university offered me a full ride. At present, I am a graduate student in mechanical engineering at the same institution.

In the meantime, I have developed an affection for weblogs, web comics, and online chess, much to the detriment of my sleep schedule and work ethic. I suspect I discovered Overcoming Bias through "My Favorite Liar" like everyone else, but Eliezer Yudkowsky's sequences (and, to a lesser extent, Robin Hanson's essays) were what drew me in. I lost interest around when EY jumped to lesswrong.com, but was drawn back in when I opened up the bookmark again in the past day or so, particularly thanks to a few of Yvain's contributions.

Being all of twenty-four and with less worldly experience than the average haddock, I imagine I shan't contribute much to the conversation, but I'll give it my best shot.

(P.S. I am not registered for cryonics and I'm skeptical about the ultimate potential of AI. I'm an modern-American-style liberal registered as a Republican for reasons which seemed good at the time. Also, I am - as is obvious in person but not online - both male and black.)

Hi, I'm James, 24, male, and a Information Technology student in my last year of my degree, and live in Australia, Central Queensland. I have been trying to answer big questions like "What is the meaning of life?", "What is Intelligence?", and trying to come up with a Grand Theory Of Everything, for as long as I can remember. I have written a lot on my theory's and hypotheses but everything I have ever written is saved on my computer and I have never shared any of my ideas with anyone, it has just been a private hobby of mine. I'm hoping I'll be able to learn so more by reading the posts on Less Wrong and maybe eventually post some of my own ideas.

I have read on here that a few people are signed up for cryonics, I think cryonics sounds interesting and I might sign up for it as well one day, but I think more of my self living on through knowledge. By that I mean If you say a person is made up by there knowledge and experience and not by there body, then if I can write my knowledge and experiences down, and then once I die people read and learn that knowledge and about my experiences, then I see it as a ship of theseus paradox, my knowledge and experience still exists just in a different body.

• Name: Luke Parrish
• Age: 26 next month
• Sex: Male
• Personality: INTP (Socionics INTJ)
• Location: Idaho, USA
• Ideas I like: Cryonics, Forth, Esperanto, Socionics.

I became skeptical of God when I realized that as a philosophical construct his existence would present some unanswerable questions. Also it helped when I decided I was not going to hell over asking a few logical questions. I don't typically position myself as an atheist -- why should I be defined by what I don't accept? Instead I attempt to be someone who is willing to evaluate any logical question and expect consistent answers.

I believe advancing the cause of cryonics and/or life extension is important from a moral perspective, since if they take longer to develop or be accepted, that translates to more people dying. I haven't yet signed up for cryonics but definitely intend to.

Hi, I'm Hrishi, 26, male. I work in air pollution modelling in London. I'm also doing a part-time PhD.

I am an atheist but come from a very religious family background.

When I was 15, I once cried uncontrollably and asked to see God. If there is indeed such a beautiful supreme being then why didn't my family want to meet Him? I was told that their faith was weak and only the greatest sages can see God after a lot of self-afflicted misery. So, I thought nevermind.

I've signed up for cryonics. You should too, or it'll just be 3 of us from LW when we wake up on the other side. I don't mind hogging all the press, but inside me lives a shiny ball of compassion which wants me to share the glory with you.

I wish to live a happy and healthy life.

(This is in response to a comment of brynema’s elsewhere; if we want LW discussions to thrive even in cases where the discussions require non-trivial prerequisites, my guess is that we should get in the habit of taking “already discussed exhaustively” questions to the welcome thread. Or if not here, to some beginner-friendly area for discussing or debating background material.)

brynema wrote:

So the idea is that a unique, complex thing may not necessarily have an appreciation for another unique complexity? Unless appreciating unique complexity has a mathematical basis.

Kind of. The idea is that:

• Both human minds, and whatever AIs can be built, are mechanistic systems. We’re complex, but we still do what we do for mechanistic reasons, and not because the platonic spirit of “right thing to do”ness seeps into our intelligence.
• Goals, and “optimization power / intelligence” with which to figure out how to reach those goals, are separable to a considerable extent. You can build many different systems, each of which is powerfully smart at figuring out how to hit its goals, but each of which has a very different goal from the others.
• Humans, for example, have some very specific goals. We value, say, blueberry tea (such a beautiful molecule...), or particular shapes and kinds of meaty creatures to mate with, or particular kinds of neurologically/psychologically complex experiences that we call “enjoyment”, “love”, or “humor”. Each of these valued items has tons of arbitrary-looking details; just as you wouldn’t expect to find space aliens who speak English as their native language, you also shouldn’t expect an arbitrary intelligence to have human (as opposed to parrot, octopus, or such-and-such variety of space aliens) aesthetics or values.
• If you’re dealing with a sufficiently powerful optimizing system, the question isn’t whether it would assign some value to you. The question is whether you are the thing that it would value most of all, compared to all the other possible things it could do with your atoms/energy/etc. Humans re-arranged the world far more than most species, because we were smart enough to see possibilities that weren’t in front of us, and to figure out ways of re-arranging the materials around us to better suit our goals. A more powerful optimizing system can be expected to change things around considerably more than we did.

That was terribly condensed, and may well not make total sense at this point. Eliezer’s OB posts fill in some of this in considerably better detail; also feel free, here in the welcome thread, to ask questions or to share counter-evidence.

• Handle: Alexandros
• Name: Alexandros Marinos
• Location: Guildford, UK
• Age: 27
• Gender: Male
• Education/Occupation: Currently in 3rd year of PhD in Computing
• Links: Blog, FriendFeed

Hi all,

I spent the first 25 years of my life in a christian quasi-fundamentalist environment. As time went by I was increasingly struggling to reach a consistent mindset within the christian belief-constraints. Over time, I kept removing elements of the belief system while nominally retaining the fundamentals even if simply as shells. At some point, I lost someone deeply important to me due to not providing her definition of a spiritual relationship, a situation similar to MBlume's even if predating my explicit conversion to atheism. This led me to distance myself from the christian circles, as I considered being truly accepted without effectively leading a double life an impossibility. About a year later, discovering Eliezer's writings provided me with the mature articulation of many thoughts that had existed in embryonic unexpressed form in my mind and added many others. In this sense it provided the coup de grâce to my theistic beliefs.

Simultaneously to the above, I am a programmer who has not seriously written code in the last three years. This is because I have hit on a problem the solution to which I need to thoroughly formulate before resuming my efforts. The essence of the problem is that whenever I code, my intuition is to take soft-coding to the extreme. That is, I see each (algorithm/process/program) as a compilation of items of source knowledge and try to factor each item out. Taken to its logical conclusion, this leads to something that could be called knowledge-oriented programming or some such. I did not consider this related to artificial intelligence but I am now not entirely certain.

Additionally, I am involved in Digital Ecosystem research, what I consider the effort to make control the property of networks rather than individual agents in the network. As an extension of this field, is my interest in social computing and the goal to make an unmoderated online community that allows freedom from coercion to its members while at the same time is able to collectively control itself. However, among the three, if I had to state only one goal, it would certainly be the effort to achieve 'extreme soft coding'

I recently have grown increasingly unsatisfied by the contents of my feed reader, I find in this community a higher a satisfaction-to-noise ratio than even Hacker News, and intend to try and participate as much as I can, although I don't expect to have any major contributions any time soon.

Hello,

My name is Margus Niitsoo and Im a 22 year old Computer Science doctorial student in Tartu, Estonia. I have wide interests that span religion and psychology as well (I am a pantheist by the way.. so somewhat religious but unaffected by most of the classical theism bashing). I got here through OB which I got to when reading about AI and the thing that shall not be named.

I do not identify myself as a rationalist for I only recently understood how emotional a person I really am and id like to enjoy it before trying to get it under control again. However, I am interested in understanding human behaviour as best I can and this blog has given me many new insights I doubt I could have gotten somewhere else.

Howdy.

My name's Schuyler. I'm a 22 year old 1st year law student in NYC, with my undergraduate degree in Economics and Philosophy. I spend my free time as a volunteer fireman/EMT out on Long Island.

Stumbled over to OB in the beginning of September, as I fleshed out my Google Reader in preparation for the upcoming year of law school (gotta kill time in class somehow). The Babyeaters got me hooked, and when LessWrong opened up I started lurking here, as well. Never posted or commented on either site, except to express my appreciation for the Babyeaters series. Always been kind of intimidated, to be honest.

I suppose I became interested in rationality when I started taking my Econ theory courses. The first assumption of economics is that people are rational - and in my class, as well as all the others I've TA'ed for, the students invariably respond 'No, they aren't.' Immediately. So when I branched out into my second major, and reading Friedman and Nozick, I tried to both understand why people aren't rational, and try to bring myself closer to that ideal.

I don't think I've done such a good job, all told. But I am grateful to the contributors on this website and over at OB for helping so frequently.

Hello all. I don't think I identify myself as a "rationalist" exactly -- I think of rationality more as a mode of thought (for example, when singing or playing a musical instrument, that is a different mode of thought, and there are many different modes of thought that are natural and appropriate for us human animals). It is a very useful mode of thought, though, and worth cultivating. It does strike me that the goals targeted by "Instrumental Rationality" are only weakly related to what I would consider "rationality" and for most people things like focus, confidence, and other similar skills far surpass things like Bayesian update for the practical achievement of goals. I also fear that our poor ability to gauge priors very often makes human-Bayesianism provide more of the appearance of rationality than actual improvement in tangible success in day-to-day reasoning.

Still, there's no denying that epistemic and instrumental rationality drive much of what we call "progress" for humanity and the more skilled we are in their use, the better. I would like to improve my own world-modeling skills.

I am also very interested in a particular research program that is not presently an acceptable topic of conversation. Since that program has no active discussion forum anywhere else (odd given how important many people here think it to be), I am hopeful that in time it will become an active topic -- as "rationality incarnate" if nothing else.

I thank all of the authors here for providing interesting material and hope to contribute myself, at least a little.

Oh, I'm a 45-year-old male software designer and researcher working for a large computer security company.

• Name: Jared Wigmore
• Age: 21
• Location: Hamilton, NZ
• Education: doing Honours in Computer Science at the University of Waikato I discovered LW from OB, which I have been following for some time. I'm a contributor to an open-source project that shall not be named. Incidentally, I know Python well.

James Cole

31, Brisbane Australia

Bachelor of info tech. Worked for a few years in IT research, now undertaking PhD on what information is.

I've always been interested in 'flawed thinking' and how to avoid it, and I've always thought flawed thinking was a great contributer to so many of the world's ills. Most of my life I hadn't come across many others with similar views, so it has been great to come across this community.

I came across this through Overcoming Bias, which I think I originally found via a link on reddit.

• Handle: Cyan
• Age: 31
• Species: Pan sapiens (male)
• Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
• Education: B.Sc. biochemistry, B.A.Sc. chemical engineering, within pages of finishing my Ph.D. thesis in biomedical engineering

• Occupation: statistical programmer (would be a postdoc if I were actually post the doc) at the Ottawa Institute of Systems Biology

  I'm principally interested in Bayesian probability theory (as applied in academic contexts as opposed to rationalist ones). I don't currently attempt to apply rationalist principles in my own life, but I find the discussion interesting.