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

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

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

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

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