Welcome to Less Wrong!

48 Post author: MBlume 16 April 2009 09:06AM

If you've recently joined the Less Wrong community, please leave a comment here and introduce yourself. We'd love to know who you are, what you're doing, or how you found us. Tell us how you came to identify as a rationalist, or describe what it is you value and work to achieve.

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(Note from MBlume: though my name is at the top of this page, the wording in various parts of the welcome message owes a debt to other LWers who've helped me considerably in working the kinks out)

Comments (1953)

Sort By: Controversial
Comment author: AspiringKnitter 19 December 2011 07:28:45AM 3 points [-]

Hello. I expect you won't like me because I'm Christian and female and don't want to be turned into an immortal computer-brain-thing that acts more like Eliezer thinks it should. I've been lurking for a long time. The first time I found this place I followed a link to OvercomingBias from AnneC's blog and from there, without quite realizing it, found myself archive-binging and following another link here. But then I stopped and left and then later I got linked to the Sequences from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

A combination of the whole evaporative cooling thing and looking at an old post that wondered why there weren't more women convinced me to join. You guys are attracting a really narrow demographic and I was starting to wonder whether you were just going to turn into a cult and I should ignore you.

...And I figure I can still leave if that ends up happening, but if everyone followed the logic I just espoused, it'll raise the probability that you start worshiping the possibility of becoming immortal polyamorous whatever and taking over the world. I'd rather hang around and keep the Singularity from being an AI that forcibly exterminates all morality and all people who don't agree with Eliezer Yudkowsky. Not that any of you (especially EY) WANT that, exactly. But anyway, my point is, With Folded Hands is a pretty bad failure mode for the worst-case scenario where EC occurs and EY gets to AI first.

Okay, ready to be shouted down. I'll be counting the downvotes as they roll in, I guess. You guys really hate Christians, after all. (Am I actually allowed to be here or am I banned for my religion?) I'll probably just leave soon anyway. Nothing good can come of this. I don't know why I'm doing this. I shouldn't be here; you don't want me here, not to mention I probably shouldn't bother talking to people who only want me to hate God. Why am I even here again? Seriously, why am I not just lurking? That would make more sense.

Comment author: [deleted] 19 December 2011 07:54:39AM 1 point [-]

Welcome!

I'm Christian and female and don't want to be turned into an immortal computer-brain-thing that acts more like Eliezer thinks it should.

Only one of those is really a reason for me to be nervous, and that's because Christianity has done some pretty shitty things to my people. But that doesn't mean we have nothing in common! I don't want to act the way EY thinks I should, either. (At least, not merely because it's him that wants it.)

You guys really hate Christians, after all. (Am I actually allowed to be here or am I banned for my religion?)

If you look at the survey, notice you're not alone. A minority, perhaps, but not entirely alone. I hope you hang around.

Comment author: XangLiu 19 December 2011 03:23:24PM 33 points [-]

"Only one of those is really a reason for me to be nervous, and that's because Christianity has done some pretty shitty things to my people."

Oh, don't be such a martyr. "My people..." please. You do not represent "your people" and you aren't their authority.

Comment author: [deleted] 19 December 2011 06:22:14PM *  2 points [-]

Whoa, calm down.

I'm not claiming any such representation or authority. They're my people only in the sense that all of us happen to be guys who like guys; they're the group of people I belong to. I'm not even claiming martyrdom, because (not many) of these shitty things have explicitly happened to me. I'm only stating my own (and no one else's) prior for how interactions between self-identified Christians and gay people tend to turn out.

Comment author: XangLiu 19 December 2011 06:46:26PM 30 points [-]

The point has been missed. Deep breath, paper-machine.

Nearly any viewpoint is capable of and has done cruel things to others. No reason to unnecessarilly highlight this fact and dramatize the Party of Suffering. This was an intro thread by a newcomer - not a reason to point to you and "your" people. They can speak for themselves.

Comment author: Vaniver 19 December 2011 07:36:36PM 2 points [-]

They can speak for themselves.

Unless, of course, it's in an intro thread by a newcomer. ;)

Comment author: [deleted] 22 December 2011 05:38:34AM 5 points [-]

They can speak for themselves.

Why berate him for doing just that, then? He's expressing his prior: members of a reference class he belongs to are often singled out for mistreatment by members of a reference class that his interlocutor claims membership with. He does not appear to believe himself Ambassador of All The Gay Men, based on what he's actually saying, nor to treat that class-membership as some kind of ontological primitive.

Comment author: Bongo 19 December 2011 06:57:48PM *  5 points [-]

I wonder how this comment got 7 upvotes in 9 minutes.

EDIT: Probably the same way this comment got 7 upvotes in 6 minutes.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 09 January 2012 09:49:24PM 0 points [-]

Though it's made more impressive when you realize that the comment you respond to, and its grandparent, are the user's only two comments, and they average 30 karma each. That's a beautiful piece of market timing!

Comment author: TheOtherDave 19 December 2011 06:59:49PM 11 points [-]

To the extent that you're saying that the whole topic of Christian/queer relations was inappropriate for an intro thread, I would prefer you'd just said that. I might even agree with you, though I didn't find paper-machine's initial comment especially problematic.

To the extent that you're saying that paper-machine should not treat the prior poor treatment of members of a group they belong to, by members of a group Y belongs to, as evidence of their likely poor treatment by Y, I simply disagree. It may not be especially strong evidence, but it's also far from trivial.

And all the stuff about martyrdom and Parties of Suffering and who gets to say what for whom seems like a complete distraction.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 28 December 2011 12:40:38AM -1 points [-]

You know, I was right.

I'll probably just leave soon anyway. Nothing good can come of this.

You guys are fine and all, but I'm not cut out for this. I'm not smart enough or thick-skinned enough or familiar enough with various things to be a part of this community. It's not you, it's me, for real, I'm not saying that to make you feel better or something. I've only made you all confused and upset, and I know it's draining for me to participate in these discussions.

See you.

Comment author: TidPao 28 December 2011 12:58:20AM 11 points [-]

Stick around. Your contributions are fine. Not everyone will be accusatory like nyan_sandwich.

Read through the Sequences and comment on what seems good to you.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 28 December 2011 03:07:13AM -1 points [-]

Not everyone will be accusatory like nyan_sandwich.

It's fine, I'm not pitching a fit about a little crudeness. I really can take it... or I can stay involved, but I don't think I can do both, unlike some people (like maybe you) who are without a doubt better at some things than I am. Don't blame him for chasing me off, I know the community is welcoming.

And I'm not really looking for reassurance. Maybe I'll sleep on it for a while, but I really don't think I'm cut out for this. That's fine with me, I hope it's fine with you too. I might try to hang around the HP:MoR thread, I don't know, but this kind of serious discussion requires skills I just don't have.

All of that said, I really appreciate that sweet comment. Thank you.

Comment author: thomblake 29 December 2011 05:02:49PM 3 points [-]

I don't know, but this kind of serious discussion requires skills I just don't have.

But remember, fixing this sort of problem is ostensibly what we're here for.

If we fail at that for reasons you can articulate, I at least would like to know.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 29 December 2011 05:14:37PM 2 points [-]

But remember, fixing this sort of problem is ostensibly what we're here for.

Education is ostensibly what high school teachers are there for, but if a student shows up who can't read, they don't blame themselves because they're not there to teach basic skills like that.

Comment author: [deleted] 29 December 2011 06:11:21PM 3 points [-]

I know a few high school teachers. I think they'd consider illiteracy a freakin' emergency, not an annoying inconvenience. Blame wouldn't enter into it.

Comment author: orthonormal 28 December 2011 05:50:37AM 5 points [-]

I hope you're not seeing the options as "keep up with all the threads of this conversation simultaneously" or "quit LW". It's perfectly OK to leave things hanging and lurk for a while. (If you're feeling especially polite, you can even say that you're tapping out of the conversation for now.)

(Hmm, I might add that advice to the Welcome post...)

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 28 December 2011 06:36:05AM 3 points [-]

Okay. I'm tapping out of everything indefinitely. Thank you.

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 24 December 2011 03:00:31AM 3 points [-]

I'll bet US$1000 that this is Will_Newsome.

Comment author: katydee 26 December 2011 01:34:30AM 4 points [-]

Wow. Now that you mention it, perhaps someone should ask AspiringKnitter what she thinks of dubstep...

Comment author: katydee 26 December 2011 02:26:04AM 3 points [-]

Holy crap. I've never had a comment downvoted this fast, and I thought this was a pretty funny joke to boot. My mental estimate was that the original comment would end up resting at around +4 or +5. Where did I err?

Comment author: wedrifid 26 December 2011 11:30:12AM 6 points [-]

I left it alone because I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Dubstep? Will likes, dislikes and/or does something involving dubstep? (Google tells me it is a kind of dance music.)

Comment author: katydee 26 December 2011 06:56:46PM *  7 points [-]
Comment author: Will_Newsome 27 December 2011 11:09:07AM 7 points [-]

(Er, well, math intuitions in a few specific fields, and only one or two rather specific dubstep videos. I'm not, ya know, actually crazy. The important thing is that that video is, as the kids would offensively say, "sicker than Hitler's kill/death ratio".) newayz I upvoted your original comment.

Comment author: katydee 27 December 2011 11:01:16PM 2 points [-]

Post edited to reflect this, apologies for misrepresenting you.

Comment author: thomblake 27 December 2011 05:17:27PM 7 points [-]

sicker than Hitler's kill/death ratio

Do we count assists now?

Comment author: TheOtherDave 27 December 2011 05:29:44PM 2 points [-]

And if so, who gets the credit for deaths by old age?

Comment author: [deleted] 24 December 2011 03:03:28AM *  2 points [-]

You're clearly out of touch with the populace. :) I'm only willing to risk 10% of my probability mass on your prediction.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 December 2011 10:17:43AM 4 points [-]

That's really odd. If there were some way to settle the bet I'd take it.

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 26 December 2011 11:01:21AM 7 points [-]

It used to be possible - perhaps it still is? - to make donations to SIAI targeted towards particular proposed research projects. If you are interested in taking up this bet, we should do a side deal whereby, if I win, your $1000 would go to me via SIAI in support of some project that is of mutual interest.

Comment author: steven0461 26 December 2011 11:31:24PM *  7 points [-]

For what it's worth, I thought Mitchell's hypothesis seemed crazy at first, then looked through user:AspiringKnitter's comment history and read a number of things that made me update substantially toward it. (Though I found nothing that made it "extremely obvious", and it's hard to weigh this sort of evidence against low priors.)

Comment author: TheOtherDave 27 December 2011 02:34:42AM 1 point [-]

Out of curiosity, what's your estimate of the likelihood that you'd update substantially toward a similar hypothesis involving other LW users? ...involving other users who have identified as theists or partial theists?

Comment author: shminux 26 December 2011 02:42:22AM 3 points [-]

Here is an experiment that could solve this.

If someone takes the bet and some of the proceeds go to trike, they might agree to check the logs and compare IPs (a matching IP or even a proxy as a detection avoidance attempt could be interpreted as AK=WN). Of course, AK would have to consent.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 December 2011 02:57:03AM *  2 points [-]

I can't believe I'm getting involved in this, but...

Will could know someone in AK's supposed location who is posting for him (from emails). Is Mitchell_Porter willing to donate $1000 to airfare for either AK or an impartial third party to converse with AK in person about similar-level subject matter? Even this wouldn't be airtight.

Comment author: wedrifid 26 December 2011 11:27:35AM *  -2 points [-]

Comment author: Emile 26 December 2011 04:51:06PM *  0 points [-]

Yes, it may be legal to check people's IP addresses, but that doesn't mean it's morally okay to do so without asking; and if one does check, it's best to do so privately (i.e. not publicize any identifying information, only the information "yup, it's the same IP as another user").

Comment author: wedrifid 26 December 2011 05:23:04PM *  3 points [-]

Yes, it may be legal to check people's IP addresses, but that doesn't mean it's morally okay to do so without asking

No, but it still is morally ok. In fact it is usually the use of multiple accounts that is frowned upon, morally questionable or an outright breach of ToS - not the identification thereof.

Comment author: Emile 26 December 2011 05:56:13PM 3 points [-]

I don't think sock puppets are always frowned down upon - if Clippy and QuirinusQuirrel were sock puppets of regular users (I think Quirrell is, but not Clippy), they are "good faith" ones (as long as they don't double downvote etc.), and I expect "outing" them would be frowned upon.

If AK is a sock puppet, then yeah, it's something morally questionable the admins should deal with. But I wouldn't extend that to all sock puppets.

Comment author: wedrifid 26 December 2011 06:12:42PM 2 points [-]

if Clippy and QuirinusQuirrel were sock puppets of regular users (I think Quirrell is, but not Clippy)

Clippy is too.

If AK is a sock puppet, then yeah, it's something morally questionable the admins should deal with.

Weren't you just telling me that it is morally wrong for the admins to even look at the IP addresses?

But I wouldn't extend that to all sock puppets.

When it comes to well behaved sockpuppetts "Don't ask, don't tell" seems to work.

Comment author: katydee 26 December 2011 07:25:35PM 3 points [-]

Quirrell overtly claims to be a sock puppet or something like one (it's kind of complicated), whereas Clippy has been consistent in its claim to be the online avatar of a paperclip-maximizing AI. That said, I think most people here believe (like good Bayesians) that Clippy is more likely to be a sockpuppet of an existing user.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 26 December 2011 07:00:58PM 2 points [-]

Huh. Can you clarify what is morally questionable about another user posting pseudonymously under the AK account?

For example, suppose hypothetically that I was the user who'd created, and was posting as, AK, and suppose I don't consider myself to have violated any moral constraints in so doing. What am I missing?

Comment author: Emile 26 December 2011 07:47:41PM 4 points [-]

Having multiple sock puppets can be a dishonest way to give the impression that certain views are held by more members than in reality. This isn't really a problem for novelty sockpuppets (Clippy and Quirrel), since those clearly indicate their status.

What's also iffy in this case is the possibility of AK lying about who she claims to be, and wasting everybody's time (which is likely to go hand-in-hand with AK being a sockpuppet of someone else).

If you are posting as AK and are actually female and Christian but would rather that fact not be known about your more famous "TheOtherDave" identity, then I don't have any objection (as long as you don't double vote, or show up twice in the same thread to support the same position, etc.).

Comment author: [deleted] 26 December 2011 09:23:37PM -2 points [-]

Hmm. I am generally a strong supporter of anonymity and pseudonymity. I think we just have to accept that multiple internet folks may come from the same meatspace body. You are right that sockpuppets made for rhetorical purposes are morally questionable, but that's mostly because rhetoric itself is morally questionable.

My preferred approach is to pretend that names, numbers, and reputations don't matter. Judge only the work, and not the name attached to it or how many comments claim to like it. Of course this is difficult, like the rest of rationality; we do tend to fail on these by default, but that part is our own problem.

Sockpuppetry and astroturfing is pretty clearly a problem, and being rational is not a complete defense. I'm going to have to think about this problem more, and maybe make a post.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 26 December 2011 08:12:06PM 2 points [-]

OK, thanks for clarifying.

I can see where double-voting is a problem, both for official votes (e.g., karma-counts) and unofficial ones (e.g., discussions on controversial issues).

I can also see where people lying about their actual demographics, experiences, etc. can be problematic, though of course that's not limited to sockpuppetry. That is, I might actually be female and Christian, or seventeen and Muslim, or Canadian and Theosophist, or what-have-you, and still only have one account.

Comment author: lessdazed 28 December 2011 05:09:56PM 1 point [-]

Why didn't you suggest asking Will_Newsome?

Comment author: shminux 28 December 2011 10:09:43PM 1 point [-]

DIdn't think about it. He would have to consent, too. Fortunately, any interest in the issue seems to have waned.

Comment author: wedrifid 28 December 2011 07:21:53PM 1 point [-]

Why didn't you suggest asking Will_Newsome?

Ask him what? To raise his right arm if he is telling the truth?

Comment author: lessdazed 29 December 2011 12:23:13AM 1 point [-]

I missed where he explicitly made a claim about it one way or the other.

The months went by, and at last on a day of spring Ged returned to the Great House, and he had no idea what would be asked of him next. At the door that gives on the path across the fields to Roke Knoll an old man met him, waiting for him in the doorway. At first Ged did not know him, and then putting his mind to it recalled him as the one who had let him into the School on the day of his coming, five years ago.

The old man smiled, greeting him by name, and asked, "Do you know who I am?"

Now Ged had thought before of how it was always said, the Nine Masters of Roke, although he knew only eight: Windkey, Hand, Herbal, Chanter, Changer, Summoner, Namer, Patterner. It seemed that people spoke of the Archmage as the ninth. Yet when a new Archmage was chosen, nine Masters met to choose him.

"I think you are the Master Doorkeeper," said Ged.

"I am. Ged, you won entrance to Roke by saying your name. Now you may win your freedom of it by saying mine." So said the old man smiling, and waited. Ged stood dumb.

He knew a thousand ways and crafts and means for finding out names of things and of men, of course; such craft was a part of everything he had learned at Roke, for without it there could be little useful magic done. But to find out the name of a Mage and Master was another matter. A mage's name is better hidden than a herring in the sea, better guarded than a dragon's den. A prying charm will be met with a stronger charm, subtle devices will fail, devious inquiries will be deviously thwarted, and force will be turned ruinously back upon itself.

"You keep a narrow door, Master," said Ged at last. "I must sit out in the fields here, I think, and fast till I grow thin enough to slip through"

"As long as you like," said the Doorkeeper, smiling.

So Ged went off a little way and sat down under an alder on the banks of the Thwilburn, letting his otak run down to play in the stream and hunt the muddy banks for creekcrabs. The sun went down, late and bright, for spring was well along. Lights of lantern and werelight gleamed in the windows of the Great House, and down the hill the streets of Thwil town filled with darkness. Owls hooted over the roofs and bats flitted in the dusk air above the stream, and still Ged sat thinking how he might, by force, ruse, or sorcery, learn the Doorkeeper's name. The more he pondered the less he saw, among all the arts of witchcraft he had learned in these five years on Roke, any one that would serve to wrest such a secret from such a mage.

He lay down in the field and slept under the stars, with the otak nestling in his pocket. After the sun was up he went, still fasting, to the door of the House and knocked. The Doorkeeper opened.

"Master," said Ged, "I cannot take your name from you, not being strong enough, and I cannot trick your name from you, not being wise enough. So I am content to stay here, and learn or serve, whatever you will: unless by chance you will answer a question I have."

"Ask it."

"What is your name?"

The Doorkeeper smiled, and said his name: and Ged, repeating it, entered for the last time into that House.

--A Wizard of Earthsea Ursula K. LeGuin

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouDidntAsk

Comment author: dlthomas 28 December 2011 07:30:15PM 1 point [-]

This was my initial interpretation as well, but on reflection I think lessdazed meant "ask him if it's okay if his IP is checked." Although that puts us in a strange situation in that he's then able to sabotage the credibility of another member through refusal, but if we don't require his permission we are perhaps violating his privacy...

Briefly, my impulse was "but how much privacy is lost in demonstrating A is (probably - proxies, etc) not a sock puppet of B"? If there's no other information leaked, I see no reason to protect against a result of "BAD/NOTBAD" on privacy grounds. However, that is not what we are asking - we're asking if two posters come from the same IP address. So really, we need to decide whether posters cohabiting should be able to keep that cohabitation private - which seems far more weighty a question.

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 29 December 2011 05:14:07AM 4 points [-]

I said

I'll bet US$1000 that this is Will_Newsome.

I think it's time to close out this somewhat underspecified offer of a bet. So far, AspiringKnitter and Eliezer expressed interest but only if a method of resolving the bet could be determined, Alicorn offered to play a role in resolving the bet in return for a share of the winnings, and dlthomas offered up $15.

I will leave the possibility of joining the bet open for another 24 hours, starting from the moment this comment is posted. I won't look at the site during that time. Then I'll return, see who (if anyone) still wants a piece of the action, and will also attempt to resolve any remaining conflicts about who gets to participate and on what terms. You are allowed to say "I want to join the bet, but this is conditional upon resolving such-and-such issue of procedure, arbitration, etc." Those details can be sorted out later. This is just the last chance to shortlist yourself as a potential bettor.

I'll be back in 24 hours.

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 30 December 2011 05:30:20AM 12 points [-]

And the winners are... dlthomas, who gets $15, and ITakeBets, who gets $100, for being bold enough to bet unconditionally. I accept their bets, I formally concede them, aaaand we're done.

Comment author: Solvent 30 December 2011 06:52:21AM 2 points [-]

And thus concludes the funniest thread on LessWrong in a very long time. Thanks, folks.

Comment author: wedrifid 30 December 2011 06:43:43AM 7 points [-]

You know I followed your talk about betting but never once considered that I could win money for realz if I took you up on it. The difficulty of proving such things made the subject seem just abstract. Oops.

Comment author: ITakeBets 30 December 2011 05:32:07AM 1 point [-]

Thank you.

Comment author: Steve_Rayhawk 30 December 2011 05:12:30AM 2 points [-]

I'll stake $500 if eligible.

When would the answer need to be known by?

Comment author: ITakeBets 29 December 2011 05:25:36AM *  2 points [-]

I am interested.

Edit: Putting up $100, regardless of anyone else's participation, and I'm prepared to demonstrate that I'm not Will_Newsome if that is somehow necessary.

Comment author: gwern 24 December 2011 03:04:30AM 7 points [-]

That's remarkably confident. This doesn't really read like Newsome to me (and how would one find out with sufficient certainty to decide a bet for that much?).

Comment author: wedrifid 26 December 2011 11:38:07AM *  6 points [-]

That's remarkably confident.

Just how confident is it? It's a large figure and colloquially people tend to confuse size of bet with degree of confidence - saying a bigger number is more of a dramatic social move. But ultimately to make a bet at even odds all Mitchell needs is to be confident that if someone takes him up on the bet then he has 50% or more chance of being correct. The size of the bet only matters indirectly as an incentive for others to do more research before betting.

Mitchell's actual confidence is some unspecified figure between 0.5 and 1 and is heavily influenced by how overconfident he expects others to be.

Comment author: gwern 26 December 2011 04:18:56PM 1 point [-]

Risk aversion and other considerations like gambler's ruin usually mean that people insist on substantial edges over just >50%. This can be ameliorated by wealth, but as far as I know, Porter is at best middle-class and not, say, a millionaire.

So your points are true and irrelevant.

Comment author: wedrifid 26 December 2011 04:20:12PM 1 point [-]

So your points are true and irrelevant.

We obviously use the term 'irrelevant' to mean different things.

Comment author: Maelin 30 December 2011 09:11:19AM *  3 points [-]

But ultimately to make a bet at even odds all Mitchell needs is to be confident that if someone takes him up on the bet then he has 50% or more chance of being correct. The size of the bet only matters indirectly as an incentive for others to do more research before betting.

This would only be true if money had linear utility value [1]. I, for example, would not take a $1000 bet at even odds even if I had 75% confidence of winning, because with my present financial status I just can't afford to lose $1000. But I would take such a bet of $100.

The utility of winning $1000 is not the negative of the utility of losing $1000.

[1] or, to be precise, if it were approximately linear in the range of current net assets +/- $1000

Comment author: FAWS 26 December 2011 11:00:24PM *  1 point [-]

In a case with extremely asymmetric information like this one they actually are almost the same thing, since the only payoff you can reasonably expect is the rhetorical effect of offering the bet. Offering bets the other party can refuse and the other party has effectively perfect information about can only lose money (if money is the only thing the other party cares about and they act at least vaguely rationally).

Comment author: Caspian 28 December 2011 05:07:28AM -1 points [-]

I have a general heuristic that making one on one bets is not worthwhile as a way to gain money, as the other party's willingness to bet indicates they don't expect to lose money to me. I would also be surprised if a bet of this size, between two members of a rationalist website, paid off to either side (though I guess paying off as a donation to SIAI would not be so surprising). At this point though, I am guessing the bet will not go through.

Was there supposed to be a time limit on that bet offer? It seems like as long as the offer is available you and everyone else will have an incentive not to show all the evidence as a fully-informed betting opponent is less profitable.

Comment author: dlthomas 27 December 2011 10:05:51PM 1 point [-]

I'll take up to $15 of that, at even odds. Possibly more, if the odds can be skewed in my favor.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 26 December 2011 09:50:51PM 7 points [-]

Why did you frame it that way, rather than that AspiringKnitter wasn't a Christian, or was someone with a long history of trolling, or somesuch? It's much less likely to get a particular identity right than to establish that a poster is lying about who they are.

Comment author: [deleted] 25 December 2011 08:58:56PM *  33 points [-]

Wow. Some of your other posts are intelligent, but this is pure troll-bait.

EDIT: I suppose I should share my reasoning. Copied from my other post lower down the thread:

Hello, I expect you won't like me, I'm <group you dislike for allegedly irrational reasons>

Classic troll opening. Challenges us to take the post seriously. Our collective 'manhood' is threatened if react normally (eg saying "trolls fuck off").

dont want to be turned onto an immortal computer-brain-thing that acts more like Eliezer thinks it should

Insulting straw man with a side of "you are an irrational cult".

I've been lurking for a long time... overcoming bias... sequences... HP:MOR... namedropping

"Seriously, I'm one of you guys". Concern troll disclaimer. Classic.

evaporative cooling... women... I'm here to help you not be a cult.

Again undertones of "you are a cult and you must accept my medicine or turn into a cult". Again we are challenged to take it seriously.

I just espoused, it'll raise the probability that you start worshiping the possibility of becoming immortal polyamorous whatever and taking over the world.

I didn't quite understand this part, but again, straw man caricature.

I'd rather hang around and keep the Singularity from being an AI that forcibly exterminates all morality and all people who don't agree with Eliezer Yudkowsky. Not that any of you (especially EY) WANT that, exactly. But anyway, my point is, With Folded Hands is a pretty bad failure mode for the worst-case scenario where EC occurs and EY gets to AI first.

Theres a rhetorical meme on 4chan that elegantly deals with this kind of crap:

implying we don't care about friendliness
implying you know more about friendliness than EY

'nuff said

Okay, ready to be shouted down. I'll be counting the downvotes as they roll in, I guess. You guys really hate Christians, after all.

classic reddit downvote preventer:

  1. Post a troll or other worthless opinion
  2. Imply that the hivemind wont like it
  3. Appeal to people's fear of hivemind
  4. Collect upvotes.

You guys really hate Christians, after all. (Am I actually allowed to be here or am I banned for my religion?)

again implying irrational insider/outsider dynamic, hivemind tendencies and even censorship.

Of course the kneejerk response is "no no, we don't hate you and we certainly won't censor you; please we want more christian trolls like you". EDIT: Ha! well predicted I say. I just looked at the other 500 responses. /EDIT

I'll probably just leave soon anyway. Nothing good can come of this. I don't know why I'm doing this. I shouldn't be here; you don't want me here, not to mention I probably shouldn't bother talking to people who only want me to hate God. Why am I even here again? Seriously, why am I not just lurking? That would make more sense.

And top it off with a bit of sympathetic character, damsel-in-distress crap. EDIT: Oh and the bit about hating God is a staw-man. /EDIT

This is not necessarily deliberate, but it doesn't have to be.

Trolling is a art. and Aspiring_Knitter is a artist. 10/10.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 01:50:45AM 6 points [-]

Wow, I don't post over Christmas and look what happens. Easiest one to answer first.

  1. Wow, thanks!
  2. You're a little mean.

You don't need an explanation of 2, but let me go through your post and explain about 1.

Classic troll opening. Challenges us to take the post seriously. Our collective 'manhood' is threatened if react normally (eg saying "trolls fuck off").

Huh. I guess I could have come up with that explanation if I'd thought. The truth here is that I was just thinking "you know, they really won't like me, this is stupid, but if I make them go into this interaction with their eyes wide open about what I am, and phrase it like so, I might get people to be nice and listen".

dont want to be turned onto an immortal computer-brain-thing that acts more like Eliezer thinks it should

Insulting straw man with a side of "you are an irrational cult".

That was quite sincere and I still feel that that's a worry.

Also, I don't think I know more about friendliness than EY. I think he's very knowledgeable. I worry that he has the wrong values so his utopia would not be fun for me.

classic reddit downvote preventer:

Post a troll or other worthless opinion Imply that the hivemind wont like it Appeal to people's fear of hivemind Collect upvotes.

Wow, you're impressive. (Actually, from later posts, I know where you get this stuff from. I guess anyone could hang around 4chan long enough to know stuff like that if they had nerves of steel.) I had the intuition that this will lead to fewer downvotes (but note that I didn't lie; I did expect that it was true, from many theist-unfriendly posts on this site), but I didn't think consciously this procedure will appeal to people's fear of the hivemind to shame them into upvoting me. I want to thank you for pointing that out. Knowing how and why that intuition was correct will allow me to decide with eyes wide open whether to do something like that in the future, and if I ever actually want to troll, I'll be better at it.

And top it off with a bit of sympathetic character, damsel-in-distress crap.

Actually, I just really need to learn to remember that while I'm posting, proper procedure is not "allow internal monologue to continue as normal and transcribe it". You have no idea how much trouble that's gotten me into. (Go ahead and judge me for my self-pitying internal monologue if you want. Rereading it, I'm wondering how I failed to notice that I should just delete that part, or possibly the whole post.) On the other hand, I'd certainly hope that being honest makes me a sympathetic character. I'd like to be sympathetic, after all. ;)

This is not necessarily deliberate, but it doesn't have to be.

Thank you. It wasn't, but as you say, it doesn't have to be. I hope I'll be more mindful in the future, and bear morality in mind in crafting my posts here and elsewhere. I would never have seen these things so clearly for myself.

10/10.

Thanks, but no. LOL.

I'd upvote you, but otherwise your post is just so rude that I don't think I will.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 27 December 2011 03:09:34AM 3 points [-]

For what it's worth, I generally see some variant of "please don't flame me" attached only to posts which I'd call inoffensive even without it. I'm not crazy about seeing "please don't flame me", but I write it off to nervousness and don't blame people for using it.

Caveat: I'm pretty sure that "please don't flame me" won't work in social justice venues.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 27 December 2011 02:25:41AM 18 points [-]

Note that declaring Crocker's rules and subsequently complaining about rudeness sends very confusing signals about how you wish to be engaged with.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 02:49:57AM 0 points [-]

Thank you. I was complaining about his use of needless profanity to refer to what I said, and a general "I'm better than you" tone (understandable, if he comes from a place where catching trolls is high status, but still rude). I not only approve of being told that I've done something wrong, I actually thanked him for it. Crocker's rules don't say "explain things in an insulting way", they say "don't soften the truths you speak to me". You can optimize for information-- and even get it across better-- when you're not trying to be rude. For instance,

And top it off with a bit of sympathetic character, damsel-in-distress crap.

That would not convey less truth if it weren't vulgar. You can easily communicate that someone is tugging people's heartstrings by presenting as a highly sympathetic damsel in distress without being vulgar.

Also, stuff like this:

Ha! well predicted I say. I just looked at the other 500 responses.

That makes it quite clear that nyan_sandwich is getting a high from this and feels high-status because of behavior like this. While that in itself is fine, the whole post does have the feel of gloating to it. I simultaneously want to upvote it for information and downvote it for lowering the overall level of civility.

Here's my attempt to clarify how I wish to be engaged with: convey whatever information you feel is true. Be as reluctant to actively insult me as you would anyone else, bearing in mind that a simple "this is incorrect" is not insulting to me, and nor is "you're being manipulative". "This is crap" always lowers the standard of debate. If you spell out what's crappy about it, your readers (including yours truly) can grasp for themselves that it's crap.

Of course, if nyan_sandwich just came from 4chan, we can congratulate him on being an infinitely better human being than everyone else he hangs out with, as well as on saying something that isn't 100% insulting, vulgar nonsense. (I'd say less than 5% insulting, vulgar nonsense.) Actually, his usual contexts considered, I may upvote him after all. I know what it takes to be more polite than you're used to others being.

Comment author: cousin_it 27 December 2011 06:35:06PM *  14 points [-]

That doesn't sound right. Here's a quote from Crocker's rules:

Anyone is allowed to call you a moron and claim to be doing you a favor.

Another quote:

Note that Crocker's Rules does not mean you can insult people; it means that other people don't have to worry about whether they are insulting you.

Quote from our wiki:

Thus, one who has committed to these rules largely gives up the right to complain about emotional provocation, flaming, abuse and other violations of etiquette

There's a decision theoretic angle here. If I declare Crocker's rules, and person X calls me a filthy anteater, then I might not care about getting valuable information from them (they probably don't have any to share) but I refrain from lashing out anyway! Because I care about the signal I send to person Y who is still deciding whether to engage with me, who might have a sensitive detector of Crocker's rules violations. And such thoughtful folks may offer the most valuable critique. I'm afraid you might have shot yourself in the foot here.

Comment author: thomblake 27 December 2011 05:03:49PM 8 points [-]

Crocker's rules don't say "explain things in an insulting way", they say "don't soften the truths you speak to me". You can optimize for information-- and even get it across better-- when you're not trying to be rude.

A lot of intelligent folks have to spend a lot of energy trying not to be rude, and part of the point of Crocker's Rules is to remove that burden by saying you won't call them on rudeness.

Comment author: TimS 27 December 2011 05:26:33PM *  1 point [-]

Not all politeness is inconsistent with communicating truth. I agree that "Does this dress make me look fat" has a true answer and a polite answer. It's worth investing some attention into figuring out which answer to give. Often, people use questions like that as a trap, as mean-spirited or petty social and emotional manipulation. Crocker's Rule is best understood as a promise that the speaker is aware of this dynamic and explicitly denies engaging in it.

That doesn't license being rude. If you are really trying to help someone else come to a better understanding of the world, being polite helps them avoid cognitive biases that would prevent them from thinking logically about your assertions. In short, Crocker's Rule does not mean "I don't mind if you are intentionally rude to me." It means "I am aware that your assertions might be unintentionally rude, and I will be guided by your intention to inform rather than interpreting you as intentionally rude.

Comment author: thomblake 27 December 2011 05:39:35PM 2 points [-]

In short, Crocker's Rule does not mean "I don't mind if you are intentionally rude to me." It means "I am aware that your assertions might be unintentionally rude, and I will be guided by your intention to inform rather than interpreting you as intentionally rude.

Right, I wasn't saying anything that contradicted that. Rather, some of us have additional cognitive burden in general trying to figure out if something is supposed to be rude, and I always understood part of the point of Crocker's Rules to be removing that burden so we can communicate more efficiently. Especially since many such people are often worth listening to.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 27 December 2011 03:51:22AM *  12 points [-]

OK.
FWIW, I agree that nyan-sandwich's tone was condescending, and that they used vulgar words.
I also think "I suppose they can't be expected to behave any better, we should praise them for not being completely awful" is about as condescending as anything else that's been said in this thread.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 03:58:11AM 7 points [-]

Yeah, you're probably right. I didn't mean for that to come out that way (when I used to spend a lot of time on places with low standards, my standards were lowered, too), but that did end up insulting. I'm sorry, nyan_sandwich.

Comment author: Jonii 26 December 2011 01:50:40AM 1 point [-]

I had missed this. The original post read as really weird and hostile, but I only read after having heard about this thread indirectly for days, mostly about the way how later she seemed pretty intelligent, so I dismissed what I saw and substituted what I ought to have seen. Thanks for pointing this out.

Upvoted

Comment author: Crux 26 December 2011 02:33:43AM *  5 points [-]

Excellent analysis. I just changed my original upvote for that post to a downvote, and I must admit that it got me in exactly every way you explained.

Comment author: wedrifid 19 December 2011 09:49:20AM 6 points [-]

You guys really hate Christians, after all.

The ten people I care about most in the world all happen to be Christians - devout, sincere Christians at that.

Comment author: EvelynM 26 December 2011 10:45:55AM 7 points [-]

What do you aspire to knit?

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 01:54:57AM 5 points [-]

Sweaters, hats, scarves, headbands, purses, everything knittable. (Okay, I was wrong below, that was actually the second-easiest post to answer.) Do you like knitting too?

Comment author: EvelynM 27 December 2011 04:54:30PM 1 point [-]

Yes, I do. This year, I'm mostly doing small items, like scarves and hats.

Knitting is an over-learned skill for me, like driving, and requires very little thought. I like both the process and the result.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 December 2011 03:38:07AM 8 points [-]

Hello. I expect you won't like me because I'm Christian and female and don't want to be turned into an immortal computer-brain-thing that acts more like Eliezer thinks it should.

I don't think you'll be actively hated here by most posters (and even then, flamewars and trolling here are probably not what you'd expect from most other internet spaces)

it'll raise the probability that you start worshiping the possibility of becoming immortal polyamorous whatever and taking over the world.

I wouldn't read polyamory as a primary shared feature of the posters here -- and this is speaking as someone who's been poly her entire adult life. Compared to most mainstream spaces, it does come up a whole lot more, and people are generally unafraid of at least discussing the ins and outs of it.

(I find it hard to imagine how you could manage real immortality in a universe with a finite lifespan, but that's neither here nor there.)

You guys really hate Christians, after all. (Am I actually allowed to be here or am I banned for my religion?)

You have to do a lot weirder or more malicious than that to get banned here. I frequently argue inarticulately for things that are rather unpopular here, and I've never once gotten the sense that I would be banned. I can think of a few things that I could do that would get me banned, but I had to go looking.

You won't be banned, but you will probably be challenged a lot if you bring your religious beliefs into discussions because most of the people here have good reasons to reject them. Many of them will be happy to share those with you, at length, should you ask.

I probably shouldn't bother talking to people who only want me to hate God.

The people here mostly don't think the God you believe in is a real being that exists, and have no interest in making you hate your deity. For us it would be like making someone hate Winnie the Pooh -- not the show or the books, but the person. We don't think there's anything there to be hated.

Why am I even here again? Seriously, why am I not just lurking? That would make more sense.

I'm going to guess it's because you're curious, and you've identified LW as a place where people who claim to want to do some pretty big, even profound things to change the world hang out (as well as people interested in a lot of intellectual topics and skills), and on some level that appeals to you?

And I'd further guess you feel like the skew of this community's population makes you nervous that some of them are talking about changing the world in ways that would affect everybody whether or not they'd prefer to see that change if asked straight up?

Comment author: Emile 19 December 2011 09:44:12AM *  15 points [-]

Welcome to LessWrong!

You guys really hate Christians, after all. (Am I actually allowed to be here or am I banned for my religion?)

Do we? Do you hate Hindus, or do you just think they're wrong?

One thing I slightly dislike about "internet atheists" is the exclusive focus on religion as a source of all that's wrong in the world, whereas you get very similar forms of irrationality in partisan politics or nationalism. I'm not alone in holding that view - see this for some related ideas. At best, religion can be about focusing human's natural irrationality in areas that don't matter (cosmology instead of economics), while facilitating morality and cooperative behavior. I understand that some Americans atheists are more hostile to religion than I am (I'm French, religion isn't a big issue here, except for Islam), because they have to deal with religious stupidity on a daily basis.

Note that a Mormon wrote a series of posts that was relatively well received, so you may be overestimating LessWrong's hostility to religion.

Comment author: thomblake 19 December 2011 03:41:13PM 17 points [-]

people who only want me to hate God

I don't think there are any of those around here. Most of us would prefer you didn't even believe in gods!

Comment author: Ezekiel 26 December 2011 11:04:07AM 10 points [-]

Hi, AspiringKnitter!

There have been several openly religious people on this site, of varying flavours. You don't (or shouldn't) get downvoted just for declaring your beliefs; you get downvoted for faulty logic, poor understanding and useless or irrelevant comments. As someone who stopped being religious as a result of reading this site, I'd love for more believers to come along. My impulse is to start debating you right away, but I realise that'd just be rude. If you're interested, though, drop me a PM, because I'm still considering the possibility I might have made the wrong decision.

The evaporative cooling risk is worrying, now that you mention it... Have you actually noticed that happening here during your lurking days, or are you just pointing out that it's a risk?

Oh, and dedicating an entire paragraph to musing about the downvotes you'll probably get, while an excellent tactic for avoiding said downvotes, is also annoying. Please don't do that.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 02:13:08AM 6 points [-]

As someone who stopped being religious as a result of reading this site, I'd love for more believers to come along.

Uh-oh. LOL.

My impulse is to start debating you right away, but I realise that'd just be rude.

Normally, I'm open to random debates about everything. I pride myself on it. However, I'm getting a little sick of religious debate since the last few days of participating in it. I suppose I still have to respond to a couple of people below, but I'm starting to fear a never-ending, energy-sapping, GPA-sabotaging argument where agreeing to disagree is literally not an option. It's my own fault for showing up here, but I'm starting to realize why "agree to disagree" was ever considered by anyone at all for anything given its obvious wrongness: you just can't do anything if you spend all your time on a never-ending argument.

The evaporative cooling risk is worrying, now that you mention it... Have you actually noticed that happening here during your lurking days, or are you just pointing out that it's a risk?

Haven't been lurking long enough.

Oh, and dedicating an entire paragraph to musing about the downvotes you'll probably get, while an excellent tactic for avoiding said downvotes, is also annoying. Please don't do that.

In the future I will not. See below. Thank you for calling me out on that.

Comment author: Emile 27 December 2011 11:47:01AM 3 points [-]

I'm starting to fear a never-ending, energy-sapping, GPA-sabotaging argument where agreeing to disagree is literally not an option.

There isn't a strong expectation here that people should never agree to disagree - see this old discussion, or this one.

That being said, persistent disagreement is a warning sign that at least one side isn't being perfectly rational (which covers both things like "too attached to one's self-image as a contrarian" and like "doesn't know how to spell out explicitly the reasons for his belief").

Comment author: Incorrect 27 December 2011 03:45:07AM *  2 points [-]

I tried to look for a religious debate elsewhere in this thread but could not find any except the tangential discussion of schizophrenia.

However, I'm getting a little sick of religious debate since the last few days of participating in it.

Then please feel free to ignore this comment. On the other hand, if you ever feel like responding then by all means do.

A lack of response to this comment should not be considered evidence that AspiringKnitter could not have brilliantly responded.

What is the primary reason you believe in God and what is the nature of this reason?

By nature of the reason, I mean something like these:

  • inductive inference: you believe adding a description of whatever you understand of God leads to a simpler explanation of the universe without losing any predictive power

  • intuitive inductive inference: you believe in god because of intuition. you also believe that there is an underlying argument using inductive inference, you just don't know what it is

  • intuitive metaphysical: you believe in god because of intuition. you believe there is some other justification this intuition works

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 04:04:39AM 1 point [-]

I tried to look for a religious debate elsewhere in this thread but could not find any except the tangential discussion of schizophrenia.

It's weird, but I can't seem to find everything on the thread from the main post no matter how many of the "show more comments" links I click. Or maybe it's just easy to get lost.

What is the primary reason you believe in God and what is the nature of this reason?

None of the above, and this is going to end up on exactly (I do mean exactly) the same path as the last one within three posts if it continues. Not interested now, maybe some other time. Thanks. :)

Comment author: TheOtherDave 27 December 2011 02:22:33AM 12 points [-]

Talk of Aumann Agreement notwithstanding, the usual rules of human social intercourse that allow "I am no longer interested in continuing this discussion" as a legitimate conversational move continue to apply on this site. If you don't wish to discuss your religious beliefs, then don't.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 02:52:02AM 5 points [-]

Ah, I didn't know that. I've never had a debate that didn't end with "we all agree, yay", some outside force stopping us or everyone hating each other and hurling insults.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 27 December 2011 03:30:24AM 2 points [-]

Jeez. What would "we all agree, yay" even look like in this case?

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 03:36:56AM 6 points [-]

I suppose either I'd become an atheist or everyone here would convert to Christianity.

Comment author: lessdazed 27 December 2011 04:32:52PM 3 points [-]

Beliefs should all be probabilistic.

I think this rules out some and only some branches of Christianity, but more importantly it impels accepting behaviorist criteria for any difference in kind between "atheists" and "Christians" if we really want categories like that.

Comment author: Prismattic 27 December 2011 04:57:57AM 8 points [-]

The assumption that everyone here is either an atheist or a Christian is already wrong.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 05:01:11AM 5 points [-]

Good point. Thank you for pointing it out.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 27 December 2011 04:13:56AM 3 points [-]

Hm.

So, if I'm understanding you, you considered only four possible outcomes likely from your interactions with this site: everyone converts to Christianity, you get deconverted from Christianity, the interaction is forcibly stopped, or the interaction degenerates to hateful insults. Yes?

I'd be interested to know how likely you considered those options, and if your expectations about likely outcomes have changed since then.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 05:00:39AM 7 points [-]

Well, for any given conversation about religion, yes. (Obviously, I expect different things if I post a comment about HP:MoR on that thread.)

I expected the last one, since mostly no matter what I do, internet discussions on anything important have a tendency to do that. (And it's not just when I'm participating in them!) I considered any conversions highly unlikely and didn't really expect the interaction to be stopped.

My expectations have changed a lot. After a while I realized that hateful insults weren't happening very much here on Less Wrong, which is awesome, and that the frequency didn't seem to increase with the length of the discussion, unlike other parts of the internet. So I basically assumed the conversation would go on forever. Now, having been told otherwise, I realize that conversations can actually be ended by the participants without one of these things happening.

That was a failure on my part, but would have correctly predicted a lot of the things I'd experienced in the past. I just took an outside view when an inside view would have been better because it really is different this time. That failure is adequately explained by the use of the outside view heuristic, which is usually useful, and the fact that I ended up in a new situation which lacked the characteristics that caused what I observed in the past.

Comment author: Lauryn 22 March 2013 07:23:32PM 2 points [-]

Hello all. I'm Lauryn, a 15-year old Christian- and a Bayesian thinker. Now, I'm sure that I'm going to get criticized because I'm young and Christian, but I undertand a lot more than you might first think (And a lot less than I'd like to). But let me finish first, yeah? I found LessWrong over a year ago and just recently felt that I just might fit in just enough to begin posting. I'd always considered myself clever (wince) and never really questioned myself or my beliefs, just repeated them back. But then I read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, and was linked over here... And you can guess most of the story from there on. I devoured the sequences in less than a month, and started reading gobs and gobs of books by people I'd never heard of- but once I did, I realized that they were everywhere. Freud, Feynman, Orwell... And here I am, a good year later, a beginning rationalist. Before I get attacked, I'd like to say that I have seriously questioned my religon (as is implied above), and still came back to it. I do have ways that I believe Christianity could be disproved (I already posted some here ), and I have seen quite a bit of evidence for evolution. All right, NOW you may attack me.

Comment author: CCC 22 March 2013 07:43:35PM 1 point [-]

Hello all. I'm ... a ... Christian- and a Bayesian thinker.

Hey. Me too.

Just so you know you're not the only one. I think I've seen one or two others around as well.

Comment author: Nanani 17 April 2009 04:29:31AM *  2 points [-]
  • Handle: Nanani

  • Location: Japan

  • Age: 25

  • Gender: Female (not that it matters)

  • Education: BSc Astrophysics

  • Occupation: Interpretation/Translation (Mostly English and Japanese, in both directions)

  • Goal : To Win.

I found this site through Overcoming Bias, and had already been lurking at the latter for years beforehand. When I first came across Overcoming Bias, it was for too difficult for me. I have since become stronger, enough to read most of its archives and become even stronger. I intend to keep this positive cycle active.

I must say that I hardly feel like a newcomer due to those years of lurking in the shadows. Let's see how the light feels.

Comment author: byrnema 16 April 2009 08:55:17PM *  2 points [-]
  • Handle: byrnema

My Rationalist Origin Story

In this context, I think of "rational" as being open to questioning your assumptions. (I adore Simulacra's first step described as "separation of ideas from the self".) I agree with the general view here that being rational is a result of cognitive dissonance -- if your map doesn't fit the landscape then you're motivated to find a new map. The amount of cognitive dissonance throughout my life has been really extraordinary. I suspect that this is true for most people here.

I think I am rational enough, in the sense of being open to new ideas, as I have somewhat fewer assumptions than I need to get by comfortably already. As a small kid scaring myself with extreme philosophical views, I happily observed that afterwards I could just go downstairs and have a turkey sandwich.

I don't feel very well adapted to the real world. I often feel like everyone got a rule book and I didn't. (I recall once in elementary school that some kids said that when God was passing out brains I was hold holding the door open. I had a reputation for asking stupid (obvious) questions and, bewilderingly, I was holding the door open.) So from my point of view, LW is an amazing social micro-niche where it is OK to ask about the rulebook. In fact, you guys are analyzing the rulebook.

That’s the over-arching (hopeful) goal for being here. On a local level, I really enjoy debating and learning about stuff. Regarding learning, I don’t think we are pooling our resources in the most efficient way to get to the bottom of things. I think it would be cool to develop some kind of group strategy to effectively answer questions that should have answers:

“Given a controversial question in which there are good and bad arguments on both sides, how do you determine the answer when you’re not yourself an expert in the subject?”

Comment author: hamflask 16 April 2009 08:15:29PM 2 points [-]
  • Handle: hamflask
  • Name: Eric Hofreiter
  • Location: Champaign/Urbana, IL
  • Age: 19
  • Education: 2nd year in electrical engineering

I started with OB after being linked to Eliezer's series on quantum physics, and I've been absorbed with OB and now LW ever since. I'm more of a lurker, and I've never really commented at OB for fear that my input would be deemed useless. Perhaps I'll begin commenting here on LW now that we have a voting system.

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 16 April 2009 06:11:02PM 0 points [-]

Many of the people sharing their info in this thread seem to have been around for a while (like me.) It's not that I mind reading about y'all, but MBlume was asking for people who've recently joined, right?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 16 April 2009 05:15:45PM 4 points [-]

Perhaps take out the "describe what it is that you protect" part. That's jargon / non-obvious new concept.

Comment deleted 16 April 2009 04:57:26PM [-]
Comment author: thomblake 16 April 2009 02:05:17PM *  2 points [-]
  • Handle: thomblake
  • Name: Thom Blake
  • Location: New Haven, CT (USA)
  • Age: 30
  • Occupation: Programmer, doctoral candidate in computer ethics

Found on the web at http://thomblake.com and http://thomblake.mp. Twitter: @thomblake

My dissertation is on the philosophical foundations of building ethical robots. It's not quite done.

I'm trained as a philosopher, with special emphasis on virtue ethics/ ethical individualism and computer ethics. I've often characterized myself as a Romantic and an irrationalist. Nietzsche and Emerson FTW.

ETA: link to my origin story and closet survey

Comment author: gjm 16 April 2009 02:04:06PM 2 points [-]

OK, let's continue with the introductions.

  • Handle: gjm (gjm11 on the wiki)
  • Name: Gareth McCaughan
  • Location: Cambridge, UK
  • Age: 38
  • Occupation: mathematician (in industry), though I've done a fair bit of programming in my time too.

Lifelong rationalist, at least in principle, though I somehow managed to remain (actively) religious for many years. Political leftie (especially by US standards). Interests include: everything. "Found" LW by being a regular at OB since long before LW was mooted. Gently skeptical about cryonics, imminent technological singularities, and suchlike.

Comment author: red75 06 June 2010 10:18:05AM 3 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Whisper 22 July 2009 06:56:31AM 3 points [-]

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.

Comment deleted 18 April 2009 06:06:05PM [-]
Comment author: Pierre-Andre 17 April 2009 05:59:27PM *  3 points [-]
  • Handle: Pierre-Andre
  • Name: Pierre-André Noël
  • Age: 26
  • Gender: Male.
  • Location: Québec City, Québec, Canada
  • Education: B.Sc. Physics, M.Sc. Physics and currently midway through Ph.D. Physics.
  • Research interests: Dynamics, networks, dynamics over networks, statistical mechanics.
  • Newcomb: Commited to one-box if facing a decent Omega.
  • Prisoner: Cooperate if I judges that the other will.

I discovered OB some months ago (don't remember how) and reads both OB and LW. For now, I am mostly a lurker.

I have been raised as a Catholic Christian and became atheist midway through high school. I think that Science should take a clear position on the topic of religions, for the good of mankind.

I plan to write top-level posts on some of the following topics when I will have the time (and the karma) to do so.

  • Beyond the fad: the word "emergence" carries > 0 information.
  • Telling the truth.
  • Universal priors.
  • Many Bayesian-related topics.

By the way, does the "be half accessible" request holds for LW too?

Comment author: ciphergoth 16 April 2009 09:44:34AM 7 points [-]

This community is too young to have veterans. Since this is the first such post, I think we should all be encouraged to introduce ourselves.

Thanks for doing this!

Comment author: MBlume 16 April 2009 09:49:20AM 0 points [-]

Since this is the first such post, I think we should all be encouraged to introduce ourselves.

Wonderful idea =)

Comment author: DanielH 11 July 2012 03:00:02AM *  4 points [-]

TL;DR: I found LW through HPMoR, read the major sequences, read stuff by other LWers including the Luminosity series, and lurked for six months before signing up.

My name, as you can see above if you don't have the anti-kibitzing script, Daniel. My story of how I came to self-identify as a rationalist, and then how I later came to be a rationalist, breaks down into several parts. I don't remember the order of all of them.

Since well before I can remember (and I have a fairly good long-term memory), I've been interested in mathematics, and later science. One of my earliest memories, if not my earliest, is of me, on my back, under the coffee table (well before I could walk). I had done this multiple times, I think usually with the same goal, but one time in particular sticks in my memory. I was kicking the underside of the coffee table, trying to see what was moving. This time, I moved it, got out, and saw that the drawer of the coffee table was open; this caused me to realize that this was what was moving, and I don't think I crawled under there again.

Many years later, I discovered Star Trek TNG, and from that learned a little about Star Trek. I wanted to be more rational from the role models of Data and Spock, and I did not realize at the time how non-rational Spock was. It was very quickly, however, that I realized that emotions are not the opposite of logic, and the first time I saw the TOS episode that Luke references [here][http://facingthesingularity.com/2011/why-spock-is-not-rational/], I realized that Spock was being an idiot (though at the time I thought it was unusually idiotic, not standard behavior; I hadn't and still haven't seen much of the original series). It was around this time that I thought I myself was "rational" or "logical".

Of course, it wasn't until much later that I actually started learning about rationalism. Around Thanksgiving 2011, I was on fanfiction.net looking for a Harry Potter fanfic I'd seen before and liked (I still haven't found it) that I stumbled upon Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I read it, and I liked it, and it slowly took over my life. I decided to look for other works by that author, and went to the link to Less Wrong because it was recommended (not realizing that the Sequences were written by the same person as HPMoR yet). Since then, I've read the sequences and most other stuff written by EY (that's still easily accessible and not removed), and it all made sense. I finally understood that yes, in fact, I and the other "confused" students WERE correct in that probability class where the professor said that "the probability that this variable is in this interval" didn't exist, I noticed times when I was conforming instead of thinking, and I noticed some accesses of cached thoughts. At first I was a bit skeptical of the overly-atheistic bit (though I'd always had doubts and was pretty much agnostic-though-I-wouldn't-admit-it), until I read the articles about how unlikely the hypothesis of God was and thought about them.

I did not know much about Quantum Mechanics when I read that sequence, but I had heard of the "waveform collapse" and had not understood it, and I realized fairly quickly how that was an unnecessary hypothesis. When I saw one of the cryonics articles (I'm cryocrastinating, trying to get my parents to sign up) taking the idea seriously, I thought "Oh, duh! I should have seen that the first time I heard of it, but I was specifically told that the person involved was an idiot and it didn't work, so I never reevaluated" (later I remembered my horror at Picard's attitude in the relevant TNG episode, and I've always only believed in the information-theoretic definition of "death").

After I read the major sequences, I read some other stuff I found through the Wiki and through googling "Less Wrong __" for various things I wanted the LW community opinion on. I found my favorite LW authors (Yvain, Luke, Alicorn, and EY) and read other things by them (Facing the Singularity and Luminosity). I subscribed to the RSS feed (I don't know how that'll work when I want to strictly keep to anti-kibitzing), and I now know that I want to help SIAI as much as possible (I was planning to be a computer scientist anyway); I'm currently reading through a lot of their recommended reading. I'm also about to start GEB, followed by Jaynes and Pearl. I plan to become a lot more active comment-wise, but probably not post-wise for a while yet. I may even go to one of the meetups if one is held somewhere I can get to.

Now we've pretty much caught up to the present. Let's see... I read some posts today, I read Luke's Intuitive Explanation to EY's Intuitive Explanation, I found an error in it (95% confidence), I sent him an email, and I decided to sign up here. Now I'm writing this post, and I'm supposed to put some sort of conclusion on it. I estimate that the value of picking a better conclusion is not that high compared to the cost, so I'll just hit th submit button after this next period.

Edit: Wow, I just realized how similar my story is to parts of Comment author: BecomingMyself's. I swear we aren't the same person!

Comment author: shminux 11 July 2012 04:57:42AM 1 point [-]

I did not know much about Quantum Mechanics when I read that sequence, but I had heard of the "waveform collapse" and had not understood it, and I realized fairly quickly how that was an unnecessary hypothesis.

I recommend learning QM from textbooks, not blogs. This applies to most other subjects, as well.

Comment author: DanielH 18 July 2012 02:03:47AM *  3 points [-]

I did not mean to imply that I had actual knowledge of QM, just that I had more now than before. If I was interested in understanding QM in more detail, I would take a course on it at my college. It turns out that I am so interested, and that I plan to take such a course in Spring 2013.

I also know that there are people on this site, apparently a greater percentage than with similar issues, who disagree with EY about the Many Worlds Interpretation. I have not been able to follow their arguments, because the ones I have seen generally assume a greater knowledge of quantum mechanics than I possess. Therefore, MWI is still the most reasonable explanation that I have heard and understood. Again, though, that means very little. I hope to revisit the issue once I have some actual background on the subject.

EDIT: To clarify, "similar issues" means issues where the majority of people have one opinion, such as theism, the Copenhagen Interpretation, or cryonics not being worth considering, while Less Wrong's general consensus is different.

Comment author: jacob_cannell 24 August 2010 08:45:14AM 4 points [-]

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.

Comment author: outlawpoet 16 April 2009 09:26:27PM *  4 points [-]
  • Handle: outlawpoet
  • Name: Justin Corwin
  • Location: Playa del Rey California
  • Age: 27
  • Gender: Male
  • Education: autodidact
  • Job: researcher/developer for Adaptive AI, internal title: AI Psychologist
  • aggregator for web stuff

Working in AI, cognitive science and decision theory are of professional interest to me. This community is interesting to me mostly out of bafflement. It's not clear to me exactly what the Point of it is.

I can understand the desire for a place to talk about such things, and a gathering point for folks with similar opinions about them, but the directionality implied in the effort taken to make Less Wrong what it is escapes me. Social mechanisms like karma help weed out socially miscued or incompatible communications, they aren't well suited for settling questions of fact. The culture may be fact-based, but this certainly isn't an academic or scientific community, it's mechanisms have nothing to do with data management, experiment, or documentation.

The community isn't going to make any money(unless it changes) and is unlikely to do more than give budding rationalists social feedback(mostly from other budding rationalists). It potentially is a distribution mechanism for rationalist essays from pre-existing experts, but Overcoming Bias is already that.

It's interesting content, no doubt. But that just makes me more curious about goals. The founders and participants in LessWrong don't strike me as likely to have invested so much time and effort, so much specific time and effort getting it to be the way it is, unless there were some long-term payoff. I suppose I'm following along at this point, hoping to figure that out.

Comment author: MBlume 16 April 2009 04:53:04PM *  4 points [-]

A couple of possible additions to the page which I'm still a bit unsure of:

You may have noticed that all the posts and all the comments on this site have buttons to vote them up or down, and all the users have "karma" scores which come from the sum of all their comments and posts. Try not to take this too personally. Voting is used mainly to get the most useful comments up to the top of the page where people can see them. It may be difficult to contribute substantially to ongoing conversations when you've just gotten here, and you may even see some of your comments get voted down. Don't be discouraged by this. If you've any questions about karma or voting, please feel free to ask here.

and

A note for theists: you will find a pretty uniformly atheist community here at LW. You may assume that this is an example of groupthink in action, but please allow for the possibility that we really truly have given full consideration to theistic claims and have found them to be false. If you'd like to know how we came to this conclusion, you might be interested to read (list of OB posts, probably including Alien God, Religion's Claim, Belief in Belief, Engines of Cognition, Simple Truth, Outside the Lab etc.) In any case, we're happy to have you participating here, but please don't be too offended to see other commenters treating religion as an open-and-shut case

Any thoughts?

Comment author: timtyler 16 April 2009 05:21:22PM 1 point [-]

Maybe single out the theists? Buddhism and Taoism are "religions" too - by most accounts - but they are "significantly" less full of crap.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 16 April 2009 11:31:10PM 2 points [-]

I'm not convinced Buddhism has less crap. It's just more evasive about it. The vast majority of Buddhist practitioners have no idea what Buddhism is about. When you come right down to it, it's a religion that teaches that the world is bad, love is bad, and if you work very hard for thousands of lifetimes, you might finally attain death.

Comment author: FeministX 07 November 2009 08:06:12AM 5 points [-]

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 :) )

Comment author: mni 24 July 2009 09:41:16PM *  16 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 25 July 2009 12:15:47PM 0 points [-]

I assume that you are overconfident about many of the statements you made (and/or underestimate the inferential gap). I agree with some things you've said, but about some of the things you've said there seems to be no convincing argument in sight (either way), and so one shouldn't be as certain when passing judgment.

Comment author: mni 27 July 2009 10:29:47AM 1 point [-]

I think I understand your point about overconfidence. I had thought of the post for a day or two but I wrote it in one go, so I probably didn't end up expressing myself as well as I could have. I had originally intended to include a disclaimer in my post, but for reasons that now seem obscure I left it out. When making as strong, generalizing statements as I did, the ambiguity of statements should be minimized a lot more thoroughly than I did.

So, to explain myself a little bit better: I don't hold the opinion that what I called "bullshit" is common enough here to make it, in itself, a "failing of this community". The "bullshit" was, after all, limited only to certain threads and to certain individuals. What I'm lamenting and attributing to the whole community is a failure to react to the "bullshit" properly. Of course, that's a sweeping generalization in itself - certainly not everyone here failed to react in what I consider a proper way. But the widest consensus in the multitude of opinions seemed to be that the reaction might be hypersensitivity, and that the "bullshit" should be discouraged only because it offends and excludes people (and not because it offends and excludes people for irrational reasons).

And as for overconfidence about my assessment of the "bullshit" itself, I don't really want to argue about that. Any more than I'd want to argue with people who think atheists should be excluded from public office. (Can you imagine an alternate LW in which the general consensus was that's a reasonable, though extreme, position to take? That might give an only slightly exaggerated example of how bizarrely out of place I considered the gender debate to be.) If pressed, I will naturally agree to defend my statements. But I wouldn't really want to have to, and restarting the debate isn't probably in anyone else's best interests either. So, I'll just have to leave the matter as something that, in my perspective, lessens appreciation for the level of discourse here in quite a disturbing way. Still, that doesn't mean that LW wouldn't get the best marks from me as far as the rationality of internet communities I know is considered, or that a lowered single value for "the level of discourse" lessened my perception of the value of other contributions here.

Now the latest top-level post about critiquing Bayesianism look quite interesting, I think I'd like to take a closer look at that...

Comment author: Z_M_Davis 26 July 2009 05:13:15AM 2 points [-]

I agree with some things you've said, but about some of the things you've said there seems to be no convincing argument in sight

Downvoted for lack of specifics.

Comment author: [deleted] 16 September 2011 05:45:09AM 1 point [-]

mni, I followed in your footsteps years later, and then dropped away, just as you did. I came back after several months to look for an answer to a specific question -- stayed for a bit, poking around -- and before I go away again, I'd just like to say: if this'd been a community that was able to keep you, it probably would have kept me too.

You seem awesome. Where did you go? Can I follow you there?

Comment author: Z_M_Davis 24 July 2009 11:08:35PM 1 point [-]

I'm still hoping that the professed rationality is enough to overcome the failure modes that are currently so common here[.] 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. [...] 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.

Oh, please stay!

Comment author: orthonormal 24 July 2009 10:43:48PM 6 points [-]

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.

Upvoted for this in particular.

Comment author: SoullessAutomaton 24 July 2009 11:33:58PM 6 points [-]

I appreciate your honest criticisms here, as someone who participated (probably too much) in the silly gender discussion threads.

I also encourage you to stay and participate, if possible. Despite some missteps, I think there's a lot of potential in this community, and I'd hate to see us losing people who could contribute interesting material.

Comment author: potato 15 June 2011 12:38:02PM 6 points [-]

Hello Less wrong.

I've been reading Yudkowsky for a while now. I'm a philosophy major from NJ and he's been quite popular around here since I showed some of my friends three worlds collide. I am here because I think I can offer this forum new and well considered views on cognition, computability, epistemology, ontology, valid inference in general and also have my views kicked around a bit. Hopefully our mutual kicking around of each others views will toughen them up for future kicking battles.

I have studied logic at high levels, and have an intricate understanding of Godel's incompleteness theorem and of Tarski's undefinability theorem. I plan to write short posts that might make the two accessible when I have the Karma to do so. So the sooner you give me 20 Karma the sooner you will have a non-logician friendly explanation of Godel's first incompleteness theorem.

Comment author: SoulAllnighter 26 September 2010 08:53:01AM 6 points [-]

G'day LW Im an Aussie currently studying at the Australian National University in Canberra. My name is Sam and i should point out that the 'G'day' is just for fun, most Australians never use that phase and it kinda makes me cringe.

At at this very moment i'm trying to finish my thesis on the foundations of inductive reasoning, which i guess is pretty relevant to this community. A big part of my thesis is to translate a lot of very technical mathematics regarding Bayesianism and Sollomonoff induction into philosophical and intuitive explanations, so this whole site is really useful to me in just seeing how people think about rationalism and the mechanics of beliefs.

Although I my entire degree has been focused on the rational side of the human spectrum I remain alot more open minded and I think our entire education system regards math and physics too highly and does not leave enough room for creativity. Although create subjects exist in the arts, the generally culture is to regard them as intellectually inferior in some sense which has led to a hugely skewed idea of intelligence.

The saying goes "the map is not the territory" and although we can continually refine our maps through science and math I think truly understanding the territory can only be achieved through direct experience.

Im also very worried about the state of the world and It is exactly through rational open forums such as this that much needed progress can be discussed and advanced.

I guess i have a lot to say and instead of posting it here I should save it for an actual post, whenever i get time. But Its refreshing to see such an interesting online community amongst the seemingly endless rubbish on the net.

Comment author: luminosity 17 June 2010 05:04:17AM 6 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Alicorn 17 June 2010 06:14:01AM 4 points [-]

Love the username!

Comment author: HughRistik 17 April 2009 06:42:32AM *  6 points [-]
  • Handle: HughRistik (if you don't get the joke immediately, then say "heuristic" out loud)
  • Age: 23
  • Education: BA Psychology, thinking of grad school
  • Occupation: Web programmer
  • Hobbies: Art, clubbing, fashion, dancing, computer games, too many others to mention
  • Research interests: Mate preferences, sex differences, sex differences in mate preferences, biological and social factors in homosexuality, and the psychology of introversion, social anxiety, high sensitivity, and behavioral inhibition

I came to Less Wrong via Overcoming Bias. I heard a talk by Eliezer around 2004-2005, and I've run into him a couple times since then.

I've been interested in rationality as long as I can remember. I obsessively see patterns in the world and try to understand it better. I use this ability to get good at stuff.

I once had social anxiety disorder, no social skills, and no idea what to do with women (see love-shyness; I'm sure there are people on here who currently have it). Thanks to finding the seduction community, I figured out that I could translate thinking ability into social skills, and that I could get good at socializing just like how I got good at everything else. Through observation, practice, and theories from social psychology, evolutionary psychology, and the seduction community, I built social skills and abilities with women from scratch.

Meanwhile, I attempted to eradicate the disadvantages of my personality traits and scientific approach to human interaction. For instance, I learned to temporarily disable analytical and introverted mental states and live more in the moment. I started identifying errors and limiting aspects of the seduction community's philosophy and characterization of women and female preferences. While my initial goal was to mechanistically manipulate people into liking me by experimenting on them socially, an unexpected outcome occurred: I actually became a social person. I started to enjoy connecting with people and emotionally vibing. I cultivated social instincts, so that I no longer had to calculate everything cognitively.

In the back of my head, I've been working on a theory of sexual ethics, particularly the ethics of seduction.

I will write more about heuristic and the seduction community as I've promised, but I've been organizing thoughts for a top-level post, and figuring out whether I'm going to address those topics with analytical posts, or with more of a personal narrative, and whether I would mix them. Anyone have any suggestions or requests?

Comment author: Skepxian 26 July 2010 03:44:45PM *  7 points [-]

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!

Comment author: RobinZ 26 July 2010 04:05:33PM 0 points [-]

Welcome! I imagine a number of us would be quite happy to argue the rectitude of Christianity with you whenever you are interested, but no big rush.

A while ago someone posted a question about introductory posts if you want a selection of reading material which doesn't require too much Less Wrong background. And yes, I posted many of those links. Hey, I'm enthusiastic!

Comment author: Skepxian 26 July 2010 05:07:12PM 3 points [-]

Thank you very much!

A small element of my own personal quirks (which, alas, I keep screwing up) is to avoid using the words 'argue' and 'debate'. Arguing is like trying to 'already be right', and Debate is a test of social ability, not the rightness of your side. I like to discuss - some of the greatest feelings is when I suddenly get that sensation of "OH! I've been wrong, but that makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE!" And some of the scariest feelings are "What? You're changing your mind to agree with me? But what if I'm wrong and I just argued it better?"

I'm not really looking to try to convince anyone of Christianities' less-wrongedness, but it seems to be a topic that pops up with a decent frequency. (Though admittedly I've not read enough pages to really get a good statistical assessment yet) Since it was directly mentioned in "Welcome to Less Wrong," I figured I'd make my obvious biases a bit of public knowledge. :) But I always do enjoy theological discussion, when it comes my way.

I look forward to discussing with you soon. :) I'm taking my time getting through the Sequences, at the moment, but I'll keep an eye on those introductory posts as well.

Comment author: Apprentice 26 July 2010 05:37:15PM 5 points [-]

Christian or atheist - in the end we all believe in infinite torture forever. Welcome!

Comment author: arthurlewis 16 April 2009 04:13:56PM 7 points [-]
  • Handle: arthurlewis
  • Location: New York, NY
  • Age: 28
  • Education: BA in Music.
  • Occupation: Musician / Teacher / Mac Support Guy
  • Blog/Music: http://arthurthefourth.com

My career as a rationalist began when I started doing tech support, and realized the divide between successful troubleshooting and what most customers tried to do. I think the key to "winning" is to challenge your assumptions about how to win, and what winning is. I think that makes me an instrumental rationalist, but I'm not quite sure I understand the term. I'm here because OB and LW are among the closest things I've ever seen to an honest attempt to discover truth, whatever that may turn out to mean. And because I really like the phrase "Shut up and calculate!"

Note to new commenters: The "Help" link below the comment box will give you formatting tips.

Comment author: Zvi 16 April 2009 08:37:53PM *  8 points [-]
  • Handle: Zvi
  • Name: Zvi Mowshowitz
  • Location: New York City
  • Age: 30
  • Education: BA, Mathematics

I found OB through Marginal Revolution, which then led to LW. A few here know me from my previous job as a professional Magic: The Gathering player and writer and full member of the Competitive Conspiracy. That job highly rewarded the rationality I already had and encouraged its development, as does my current one which unfortunately I can't say much about here but which gives me more than enough practical reward to keep me coming back even if I wasn't fascinated anyway. I'm still trying to figure out what my top level posts are going to be about when I get that far.

While I have told my Magic origin story I don't have one for rationality or atheism; I can't remember ever being any other way and I don't think anyone needs my libertarian one. If anything it took me time to realize that most people didn't work that way, and how to handle that, which is something I'm still working on and the part of OB/LW I think I've gained the most from.

Comment author: ThoughtDancer 16 April 2009 05:59:46PM *  10 points [-]
  • Handle: thoughtdancer
  • Name: Deb
  • Location: Middle of nowhere, Michigan
  • Age: 44
  • Gender: Female
  • Education: PhD Rhetoric
  • Occupation: Writer-wannabe, adjunct Prof (formerly tenure-track, didn't like it)
  • Blog: thoughtdances Just starting, be gentle please

I'm here because of SoullessAutomaton, who is my apartment-mate and long term friend. I am interested in discussing rhetoric and rationality. I have a few questions that I would pose to the group to open up the topic.

1) Are people interested in rhetoric, persuasion, and the systematic study thereof? Does anyone want a primer? (My PhD is in the History and Theory of Rhetoric, so I could develop such a primer.)

2) What would a rationalist rhetoric look like?

3) What would be the goals / theory / overarching observations that would be the drivers behind a rationalist rhetoric?

4) Would a rationalist rhetoric be more ethical than current rhetorics, and if so, why?

5) Can rhetoric ever be fully rational and rationalized, or is the study of how people are persuaded inevitably or inherently a-rational or anti-rational (I would say that rhetoric can be rationalized, but I know too many scholars who would disagree with me here, either explicitly or implicitly)?

6) Question to the group: to what degree might unfamiliar terminology derived from prior discussions here and in the sister-blog be functioning as an unintentional gatekeeper? Corollary question: to what degree is the common knowledge of math and sciences--and the relevant jargon terms thereof--functioning as a gatekeeper? (As an older woman, I was forbidden from pursuing my best skill--math--because women "didn't study math". I am finding that I have to dig pretty deeply into Wikipedia and elsewhere to make sure I'm following the conversation--that or I have to pester SoullessAutomaton with questions that I should not have to ask. sigh)

Comment author: pluto 22 February 2016 04:11:26PM 4 points [-]

Hello, my friends. I'm a brazilian man, fully blind and gay...

I knew Fanfiction.net, HP MOR and LessWrong. I hope to learn more :)

Comment author: lifelonglearner 30 December 2015 09:10:16PM 5 points [-]

Hey everyone,

My name is Owen, and I'm 17. I read HPMOR last year, but really got into the Sequences and additional reading (GEB, Thinking Fast and Slow, Influence) around this summer.

I'm interested in time management, with respect to dealing with distractions, especially with respect to fighting akrasia. So I'm trying to use what I know about how my own brain operates to create a suite of internalized beliefs, primers, and defense strategies for when I get off-track (or stopping before I get to that point).

Personally, I'm connected with a local environmental movement, which stems from a fear I had about global warming as the largest threat to humanity a few years ago. This was before I looked into other ex-risks. I'm now evaluating my priorities, and I'd also like to bring some critical thinking to the environmental movement, where I feel some EA ideals would make things more effective (prioritizing some actions over others, examining cost-benefits of actions, etc.).

Especially after reading GEB, I'm coming to realize that a lot of rather things I hold central to my "identity" are rather arbitrarily decided and then maintained through a need to stay consistent. So I'm reevaluating my beliefs and assumptions (when I notice them) and ask if they are actually things I would like to maintain. A lot of this ties back to the self-improvement with regards to time management.

In day-to-day life, it's hard to find others who have a similar info diet/ reading background as me, so I'm considering getting more friends/family interested in rationality a goal for me, especially my (apparently) very grades-driven classmates. I feel this would lead to more constructive discussions and a better ability to look at the larger picture for most people.

Finally, I also perform close-up coin magic, which isn't too relevant to most aspects of rationality, but certainly looks pretty.

I look forward to sharing ideas and learning from you all here!

Comment author: moridinamael 18 September 2014 05:50:33PM *  1 point [-]

snip

Comment author: GabrielC 18 September 2014 04:03:52PM 1 point [-]

Hi! I'm Gabriel, and i'm a 20 year old medical student in London. I (like many of you maybe) found my way here through HPMOR. Having spent the last few years of university mentally stagnating due to the nature of my studies this site and the resources were a breath of fresh air. I'm currently working my way through the sequences, where one comment led me to this thread - apologies if commenting on old posts is frowned upon.

I was born to an educated Muslim family, and until recently I had been blindly following the beaten track, although with little interest in the religion itself. It is only now that I have begun to think about what I know, and how I know it that I am forcing myself to adopt an objective and skeptical standpoint. Over the next 12 months or so, I plan to fully examine the texts and writings of both Islam and it's opponents, and aim to come to an unbiased, rational conclusion. It is my hope that I can update my map to define the true territory and I must thank Mr. Yudkowsky for being a catalyst for my intellectual re-awakening. Although perhaps I will get some flak when I try to give him some constructive criticism: I cannot be the only person in the position I find myself in, wanting to examine my religion and come to a true conclusion. It is abundantly helpful to read arguments for both sides which are logical, and well reasoned...but most of all, courteous. There are parties far more guilty than Mr. Yudkowsky, but it really is horrible when atheist writings have a strong undertone of contempt for those who follow a religion. I am indeed delighted that those atheists have given the matter some thought and come to conclusions that satisfy them (and indeed as Mr. Yudkowsky mentions above, consider theism an open-and-shut case!) but perhaps for those younger students of rationality such as myself, it would be wonderful if we could read these writings without being looked down upon as mind-numbingly stupid. Despite this, I very much enjoy reading Mr. Yudkowsky's writings and I look forward to reading much more!

I suppose I feel very comfortable with the anonymity provided by the internet and since I have given relatively little information about myself on a relatively smaller website I doubt anyone I know will see this and cry out in horror that I could potentially leave my faith. I would love to have some discussions with anyone on this website that has been in a similar position to me, although I have noticed a bias towards discussions around Christianity as I suppose many users here are American and that is a major force for you guys over the pond.

I think above all else, the reason i'm so happy to have found this intellectual sanctuary is because I don't have much else other than my trusty mind. Unlike my peers, chasing girls would be a fruitless effort, and small talk always seemed a bit pointless. Books, learning and thinking have always been my allies and I cannot wait to read about the biases I can try to eliminate. At the end of the day, if you have only one treasure in life it would be prudent to look after and improve it wherever possible.

Well met gents, and again I apologise if I shouldn't be commenting on a very old post!

Comment author: GloriaSidorum 06 March 2013 11:24:39PM 3 points [-]

Hello. My name is not, in fact, Gloria. My username is merely (what I thought was) a pretty-sounding Latin translation of the phrase "the Glory of the Stars", though it would actually be "Gloria Siderum" and I was mixing up declensions.

I read Three Worlds Collide more than a year ago, and recently re-stumbled upon this site via a link from another forum. Reading some of Elizier's series', I realized that most of my conceptions about the world were were extremely fuzzy, and they could be better said to bleed into each other than to tie together. I realized that a large amount of what I thought of as my "knowledge" is just a set of passwords, and that I needed to work on fixing that. And I figured that a good way to practice forming coherent, predictive models and being aware of what mental processes may affect those models would be to join an online community in which a majority of posters would have read a good number of articles on bias, heuristic, and becoming more rational, and will thus be equipped to some degree to call flaws in my thinking.

Comment author: Taily 07 December 2012 09:28:02PM 2 points [-]

Hello, please call me 'Taily' (my moniker does not refer to a "tail" or a cartoon character). I'm an atypical 30 year old psychology student, still working to get my PhD. I also spend a significant amount of time on thinking, writing, and gaming. Among other things.

One reason I am joining this community is my mother, oddly. She is a stay-at-home mom with few (if any) real life friends. She interacts on message boards. I...well I don't want to be like that at all honestly, and I've only on occasion been a part of a message-board community. But I recognize the value of social exchange and community, and as my real-life friends are limited by time and location in how we can meet, this forum may be a good supplement.

My MAIN reason though - why did I choose this 'place'? It seems Very Interesting. I've read a bunch of EY's writings (the five PDF files?), and I've gotten to the point where I've wanted to interact - to ask questions and give opinions and objections - and I'm hoping that's some of what this message board is about.

Also to note:

-I first became acquainted through this community via Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, as, Harry Potter fan-fiction is a 'guilty pleasure' of mine.

-I am not an atheist, although I personally cannot stand organized religion. I very much respect the idea of coming to conclusions and developing opinions without the aid of "religion" or "spirituality" though.

-I have read a significant amount of each of those aforementioned PDF files - fun theory and utopias, quantum physics, Bayesian, all that - but I'm not done yet (and I don't yet get quantum mechanics nearly as much as I would like to).

-I consider myself rather well-versed in psychology and associated theories and I am sure I have something to contribute in that area. I wish I were an expert on all the cognitive theories and heuristics/biases, but I'm not (yet). But that's one reason I became interested specifically in EY's writings and this message board.

-One of my main personal philosophies is on doubt and possibility. Nothing's a 100% certain, and considering the way the universe is made, I have trouble believing anything we 'know' is 100% accurate. Conversely, I don't believe 'anything' is 100% inaccurate. So...I tend to hedge a lot.

-I think that the general use of statistics in current psychological research is flawed, and I'm looking to learn more about how to refine psychology research practices, such as by using Bayes' Theorem and all that.

-That's probably more than enough of an introduction for now. I hope I find a place to fit in!

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 24 November 2012 08:45:14AM 10 points [-]

Hello! I'm a first-year graduate student in pure mathematics at UC Berkeley. I've been reading LW posts for awhile but have only recently started reading (and wanting to occasionally add to) the comments. I'm interested in learning how to better achieve my goals, learning how to choose better goals, and "raising the sanity waterline" generally. I have recently offered to volunteer for CFAR and may be an instructor at SPARC 2013.

Comment author: [deleted] 29 November 2012 02:30:44AM 2 points [-]

I've read your blog for a long time now, and I really like it! <3 Welcome to LW!

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 29 November 2012 02:49:25AM 2 points [-]

Thanks! I'm trying to branch out into writing things on the internet that aren't just math. Hopefully it won't come back to bite me in 20 years...

Comment author: aspera 08 October 2012 02:52:26AM 1 point [-]

Hi all. I'm a scientist (postdoc) working on optical inverse problems. I got to LW through the quantum sequence, but my interest lies in probability theory and how it can change the way science is typically done. By comparison, cognitive bias and decision theory are fairly new to me. I look forward to learning what the community has to teach me about these subjects.

In general, I'm startled at the degree to which my colleagues are ignorant of the concepts covered in the sequences and beyond, and I'm here to learn how to be a better ambassador of rationality and probability. Expect my comments to focus on reconciling unfamiliar ideas about bias and heuristics with familiar ideas about optimal problem solving with limited information.

I'll also be interested to interact with other overt atheists. In physics, I'm pretty well buffered from theistic arguments, but theism is still one of the most obvious and unavoidable reminders of a non-rational society (that and Jersey Shore?). In particular, I'm expecting a son, and I would love to hear some input about non-theistic and rationalist parenting from those with experience.

Comment author: aspera 08 October 2012 03:11:40AM 1 point [-]

By the way, I wonder if someone can clear something up for me about "making beliefs pay rent." Eliezer draws a sharp distinction between falsifiable and non-falsifiable beliefs (though he states these concepts differently), and constructs stand-alone webs of beliefs that only support themselves.

But the correlation between predicted experience and actual experience is never perfect: there's always uncertainty. In some cases, there's rather a lot of uncertainty. Conversely, it's extremely difficult to make a statement in English that does not contain ANY information regarding predicted or retrodicted experience. In that light, it doesn't seem useful to draw such a sharp division between two idealized kinds of beliefs. Would Eliezer assign value to a belief based on its probability of predicting experience?

How would you quantify that? Could we define some kind of correlation function between the map and the territory?

Comment author: TGM 10 July 2012 08:21:23PM 2 points [-]

I’m 20, male and a maths undergrad at Cambridge University. I was linked to LW a little over a year ago, and despite having initial misgivings for philosophy-type stuff on the internet (and off, for that matter), I hung around long enough to realise that LW was actually different from most of what I had read. In particular, I found a mix of ideas that I’ve always thought (and been alone amongst my peers in doing so), such as making beliefs pay rent; and new ones that were compelling, such as the conservation of expected evidence post.

I’ve always identified as a rationalist, and was fortunate enough to be raised to a sound understanding of what might be considered ‘traditional’ rationality. I’ve changed the way I think since starting to read LW, and have dropped some of the unhelpful attitudes that were promoted by status-warfare at a high achieving all-boys school (you must always be right, you must always have an answer, you must never back down…)

I’m here because the LW community seems to have lots of straight-thinking people with a vast cumulative knowledge. I want to be a part of and learn from that kind of community, for no better reason than I think I would enjoy life more for it.

Comment author: gunnervi 09 July 2012 02:00:24AM 1 point [-]

Hello!

I'm an 18 year old American physics undergraduate student (rising sophomore). I came here after reading HPMOR and because I think that being Rational will improve my ability as a scientist (and now I've realized, though I guessed it after reading Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, that I need to get better at not guessing the teacher's password I know a bit of pure mathematics but little of cognitive sciences (take this category as you will. If you think something might be in this category, then I likely don't know much more about it than core Sequences + layperson's knowledge).

Also, please yell at me if I make claims about history and give no sources. (one of my friends growing up was a huge history buff, so I have a bunch of half remembered historical facts in my head (mostly WWII and Roman era) that I tend to assume are not only true but undisputed and common knowledge). Even in informal settings I should link to, at the least, Wikipedia. (This also ensures that I am not making false claims)

Comment author: Ruairi 03 July 2012 01:48:43PM 2 points [-]

Hello!

I'm an 18 year old Irish high school student trying to decide what to do after I leave school. I want to make as much happiness as I can and stop as much suffering as I can but I'm unsure how to do this. I'm mostly here because I think reducing x risk may be a good idea, but to be honest I think there are other things which seem better, but anyway I hope to talk to people here about this!

Some of you may be members of 80000hours I imagine, so heres me on 80k : http://80000hours.org/members/ruairi-donnelly

Comment author: Laoch 03 July 2012 01:52:07PM 1 point [-]

Hey welcome to lesswrong.com fellow Irish person.

Comment author: Ruairi 03 July 2012 10:34:14PM 1 point [-]

Your name means "hero" in Irish! I have actually used the same username as you! on youtube for example! where do you live if you don't mind me asking? :)

Comment author: Laoch 04 July 2012 08:33:16AM 1 point [-]

I live in D4 actually. My Irish has faded drastically but then again it never really was that good, tá brón orm.

Comment author: Ruairi 08 July 2012 12:46:59AM 1 point [-]

Sure thats grand, personally I like speaking it and go to an Irish school but I think its pretty shocking that the government spends half a billion a year trying to keep it alive (and its not working) and apparently it takes up 15% of ones schooling time.

I live in Bray, Wicklow :) Maybe we can make a meet up sometime :)

Comment author: Ruairi 04 July 2012 12:35:31AM 1 point [-]

An bhfuil Gaeilge agat? Ha, I bet we know each other in some way.

Comment author: zslastman 24 June 2012 04:30:18PM 6 points [-]

I'm a 24 year old PhD student of molecular biology. I arrived here trying to get at the many worlds vs copenhagen debate as a nonspecialist, and as part of a sustained campaign of reading that will allow me to tell a friend who likes Hegel where to shove it. I'm also here because I wanted to reach a decision about whether I really want to do biology, if not, whether I should quit, and if I leave, what i actually want to do.

Comment author: kajro 23 June 2012 12:06:26AM 4 points [-]

I'm a 20 year old mathematics/music double major at NYU. Mainly here because I want to learn how to wear Vibrams without getting self conscious about it.

Comment author: Kevin 23 June 2012 01:11:12AM 3 points [-]

I get nothing but positive social affect from Ninja Zemgears. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=zemgear

Cheaper than Vibrams, more comfortable, less durable, less agile, much friendlier looking.

Comment author: Alicorn 23 June 2012 01:37:51AM 0 points [-]

The ninja shoes are much less abominable than Vibrams.

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 23 June 2012 01:05:22AM 3 points [-]
Comment author: kajro 23 June 2012 03:05:46AM 3 points [-]

Is this some kind of LW hazing, linking to academic papers in an introduction thread? (I joke, this looks super interesting).

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 23 June 2012 03:24:02AM *  1 point [-]

It was either that or the Psychology Today article. (Pretty sure Psychology Today is where I learned about the concept, but googling found the paper.)

Comment author: phonypapercut 20 June 2012 11:35:39PM 6 points [-]

Hello. I've been browsing articles that show up on the front page for about a year now. Just recently started going through the sequences and decided it would be a good time to create an account.

Comment author: SwingDancerMike 20 June 2012 07:37:47PM 7 points [-]

Hi everyone, I've been reading LW for a year or so, and met some of you at the May minicamp. (I was the guy doing the swing dancing.) Great to meet you, in person and online.

I'm helping Anna Salamon put together some workshops for the meetup groups, and I'll be posting some articles on presentation skills to help with that. But in order to do that, I'll need 5 points (I think). Can you help me out with that?

Thanks

Mike

Comment author: SwingDancerMike 20 June 2012 09:57:18PM 1 point [-]

Yay 5 points! That was quick. Thanks everyone.

Comment author: mapnoterritory 02 June 2012 07:02:11AM *  3 points [-]

Hi everybody,

I've been lurking here for maybe a year and joined recently. I work as an astrophysicist and I am interested in statistics, decision theory, machine learning, cognitive and neuro-psychology, AI research and many others (I just wish I had more time for all these interests). I find LW to be a great resource and it introduced me to many interesting concepts. I am also interested in articles on improving productivity and well-being.

I haven't yet attended any meet-up, but if there was one in Munich I'd try to come.

Comment author: kmacneill 15 February 2012 06:52:04PM 4 points [-]

Hey, I've been an LW lurker for about a year now, and I think it's time to post here. I'm a cryonicist, rationalist and singularity enthusiast. I'm currently working as a computer engineer and I'm thinking maybe there is more I can do to promote rationality and FAI. LW is an incredible resource. I have a mild fear that I don't have enough rigorous knowledge about rationality concepts to contribute anything useful to most discussion.

LW has changed my life in a few ways but the largest are becoming a cryonicist and becoming polyamorous (naturally leaned toward this, though). I feel like I am in a one-way friendship with EY, does anyone else feel like that?

Comment author: Alex_Altair 16 February 2012 05:05:04PM 2 points [-]

I am also in a one-way friendship with EY.

Comment author: [deleted] 14 February 2012 05:18:53PM 3 points [-]

Hello,

I am a world citizen with very little sense of identification or labelling. Perhaps "Secular Humanist" could be my main affiliation. As for belonging to nations and companies and teams... I don't believe in this thrust-upon, unchosen unity. I'm a natural expatriate. And I believe this site is awesomeness incarnate.

Though some lesswrongers really seem to go out of their way to make their readers feel stupid... though I'd guess that's the whole point, right?

Comment author: Dmytry 29 December 2011 06:56:04PM 4 points [-]

I am a video game developer. I find most of this site fairly interesting albeit once in a while I disagree with description of some behaviour as irrational, or the explanation projected upon that behaviour (when I happen to see a pretty good reason for this behaviour, perhaps strategic or as matter of general policy/cached decision).