Welcome to Less Wrong! (July 2012)

Paul Crowley

31 Welcome to Less Wrong! (July 2012)

18th Jul 2012

6 min read

31

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, what you value, how you came to identify as a rationalist or how you found us. You can skip right to that if you like; the rest of this post consists of a few things you might find helpful. More can be found at the FAQ.

(This is the fourth incarnation of the welcome thread, the first three of which which now have too many comments. The text is by orthonormal from an original by MBlume.)

A few notes about the site mechanics

Less Wrong comments are threaded for easy following of multiple conversations. To respond to any comment, click the "Reply" link at the bottom of that comment's box. Within the comment box, links and formatting are achieved via Markdown syntax (you can click the "Help" link below the text box to bring up a primer).

You may have noticed that all the posts and 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. This immediate easy feedback mechanism helps keep arguments from turning into flamewars and helps make the best posts more visible; it's part of what makes discussions on Less Wrong look different from those anywhere else on the Internet.

However, it can feel really irritating to get downvoted, especially if one doesn't know why. It happens to all of us sometimes, and it's perfectly acceptable to ask for an explanation. (Sometimes it's the unwritten LW etiquette; we have different norms than other forums.) Take note when you're downvoted a lot on one topic, as it often means that several members of the community think you're missing an important point or making a mistake in reasoning— not just that they disagree with you! If you've any questions about karma or voting, please feel free to ask here.

Replies to your comments across the site, plus private messages from other users, will show up in your inbox. You can reach it via the little mail icon beneath your karma score on the upper right of most pages. When you have a new reply or message, it glows red. You can also click on any user's name to view all of their comments and posts.

It's definitely worth your time commenting on old posts; veteran users look through the recent comments thread quite often (there's a separate recent comments thread for the Discussion section, for whatever reason), and a conversation begun anywhere will pick up contributors that way. There's also a succession of open comment threads for discussion of anything remotely related to rationality.

Discussions on Less Wrong tend to end differently than in most other forums; a surprising number end when one participant changes their mind, or when multiple people clarify their views enough and reach agreement. More commonly, though, people will just stop when they've better identified their deeper disagreements, or simply "tap out" of a discussion that's stopped being productive. (Seriously, you can just write "I'm tapping out of this thread.") This is absolutely OK, and it's one good way to avoid the flamewars that plague many sites.

EXTRA FEATURES:

There's actually more than meets the eye here: look near the top of the page for the "WIKI", "DISCUSSION" and "SEQUENCES" links.

LW WIKI: This is our attempt to make searching by topic feasible, as well as to store information like common abbreviations and idioms. It's a good place to look if someone's speaking Greek to you.

LW DISCUSSION: This is a forum just like the top-level one, with two key differences: in the top-level forum, posts require the author to have 20 karma in order to publish, and any upvotes or downvotes on the post are multiplied by 10. Thus there's a lot more informal dialogue in the Discussion section, including some of the more fun conversations here.

SEQUENCES: A huge corpus of material mostly written by Eliezer Yudkowsky in his days of blogging at Overcoming Bias, before Less Wrong was started. Much of the discussion here will casually depend on or refer to ideas brought up in those posts, so reading them can really help with present discussions. Besides which, they're pretty engrossing in my opinion.

A few notes about the community

If you've come to Less Wrong to discuss a particular topic, this thread would be a great place to start the conversation. By commenting here, and checking the responses, you'll probably get a good read on what, if anything, has already been said here on that topic, what's widely understood and what you might still need to take some time explaining.

If your welcome comment starts a huge discussion, then please move to the next step and create a LW Discussion post to continue the conversation; we can fit many more welcomes onto each thread if fewer of them sprout 400+ comments. (To do this: click "Create new article" in the upper right corner next to your username, then write the article, then at the bottom take the menu "Post to" and change it from "Drafts" to "Less Wrong Discussion". Then click "Submit". When you edit a published post, clicking "Save and continue" does correctly update the post.)

If you want to write a post about a LW-relevant topic, awesome! I highly recommend you submit your first post to Less Wrong Discussion; don't worry, you can later promote it from there to the main page if it's well-received. (It's much better to get some feedback before every vote counts for 10 karma- honestly, you don't know what you don't know about the community norms here.)

If you'd like to connect with other LWers in real life, we have meetups in various parts of the world. Check the wiki page for places with regular meetups, or the upcoming (irregular) meetups page.

There's also a Facebook group. If you've your own blog or other online presence, please feel free to link it.

If English is not your first language, don't let that make you afraid to post or comment. You can get English help on Discussion- or Main-level posts by sending a PM to one of the following users (use the "send message" link on the upper right of their user page). Either put the text of the post in the PM, or just say that you'd like English help and you'll get a response with an email address.
* Normal_Anomaly
* Randaly
* shokwave
* Barry Cotter

A note for theists: you will find the Less Wrong community to be predominantly atheist, though not completely so, and most of us are genuinely respectful of religious people who keep the usual community norms. It's worth saying that we might think religion is off-topic in some places where you think it's on-topic, so be thoughtful about where and how you start explicitly talking about it; some of us are happy to talk about religion, some of us aren't interested. Bear in mind that many of us really, truly have given full consideration to theistic claims and found them to be false, so starting with the most common arguments is pretty likely just to annoy people. Anyhow, it's absolutely OK to mention that you're religious in your welcome post and to invite a discussion there.

A list of some posts that are pretty awesome

I recommend the major sequences to everybody, but I realize how daunting they look at first. So for purposes of immediate gratification, the following posts are particularly interesting/illuminating/provocative and don't require any previous reading:

More suggestions are welcome! Or just check out the top-rated posts from the history of Less Wrong. Most posts at +50 or more are well worth your time.

Welcome to Less Wrong, and we look forward to hearing from you throughout the site.

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31 Welcome to Less Wrong! (July 2012)

by Paul Crowley

18th Jul 2012

6 min read

850

31

(This is the fourth incarnation of the welcome thread, the first three of which which now have too many comments. The text is by orthonormal from an original by MBlume.)

A few notes about the site mechanics

EXTRA FEATURES:

There's actually more than meets the eye here: look near the top of the page for the "WIKI", "DISCUSSION" and "SEQUENCES" links.

A few notes about the community

There's also a Facebook group. If you've your own blog or other online presence, please feel free to link it.

A list of some posts that are pretty awesome

More suggestions are welcome! Or just check out the top-rated posts from the history of Less Wrong. Most posts at +50 or more are well worth your time.

Welcome to Less Wrong, and we look forward to hearing from you throughout the site.

Open Threads

Personal Blog

31

New Comment

Rendering 0/850 comments, sorted by

top scoring

(show more) Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 9:10 AM

Some comments are truncated due to high volume. (⌘F to expand all)Change truncation settings

Moderation Log

More from Paul Crowley

Curated and popular this week

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Welcome to Less Wrong! (July 2012) — LessWrong

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Xachariah14y-20

Nnat zntvpnyyl tvirf Xbeen ure oraqvat onpx nsgre Nzba gbbx vg njnl, naq gurer ner ab creznarag pbafrdhraprf gb nalguvat.

V gubhtug vg jnf irel rssrpgvir. Gubhtu irvyrq fb xvqf jba'g pngpu vg, univat gur qnevat gb fubj n znva punenpgre pbagrzcyngvat naq nyzbfg nggrzcgvat fhvpvqr jnf n terng jnl gb pybfr gur nep. Gurer'f nyernql rabhtu 'npgvba' pbafrdhraprf qhr gb gur eribyhgvba, fb vg'f avpr onynapvat bhg univat gur irel raq or gur erfhygvat punatrf gb Xbeen'f punenpgre. Jura fur erwrpgf fhvpvqr nf na bcgvba, fur ernyvmrf gung fur ubyqf vagevafvp inyhr nf n uhzna orvat engure guna nf na Ningne. Cyhf nf bar bs gur ener srznyr yrnqf va puvyqera'f gryrivfvba, gur qenzngvp pyvznk bs gur fgbel orvat gur qr-bowrpgvsvpngvba bs gur srznyr yrnq vf uhtr. Nyfb gur nagv-fhvpvqr zrffntr orvat gung onq thlf pbzzvg zheqre/fhvpvqr naq gur tbbq thlf qba'g vf tbbq gb svavfu jvgu. V'z irel fngvfsvrq jvgu gurz raqvat vg gung jnl.

Znal fubjf raq jvgu jvgu ovt onq orvat orngra. Fubjf gung cergraq gb or zngher unir cebgntbavfgf qvr ng gur raq. Ohg Xbeen'f raqvat vf bar bs gur bayl gung fgevxrf zr nf npghnyyl zngher, orpnhfr vg'f qverpgyl n zbeny/cuvybfbcuvpny ceboyrz ng gur raq.

Desrtopa14y-10

V funerq BaGurBgureUnaqyr'f qvfnccbvagzrag jvgu gur raqvat, naq V jnfa'g irel vzcerffrq jvgu Xbeen'f rzbgvbany erfbyhgvba ng gur raq. Fur uvgf n anqve bs qrcerffvba, frrzvatyl pbagrzcyngrf fhvpvqr, naq gura... rirelguvat fhqqrayl erfbyirf vgfrys. Fur trgf ure oraqvat onpx, jvgubhg nal rssbeg be cynaavat, naq jvgu ab zber fvtavsvpnag punenpgre qrirybczrag guna univat orra erqhprq gb qrfcrengvba. Gur Ovt Onq vf xvyyrq ol fbzrbar ryfr juvyr gur cebgntbavfgf' nggragvba vf ryfrjurer, naq Xbeen tnvaf gur novyvgl gb haqb nyy gur qnzntr ur pnhfrq va gur svefg cynp... (read more)

0Ajeya Cotra14y

Gung'f na vagrerfgvat jnl gb chg vg, naq V guvax V'z unccvre jvgu gur raqvat orpnhfr bs gung. Ubjrire, V jnf rkcrpgvat Frnfba Gjb gb or Xbeen'f wbhearl gbjneq erpbirel (rvgure culfvpny be zragny be obgu) nsgre Nzba gbbx njnl ure oraqvat. Vg'f abg gung V qba'g jnag ure gb or jubyr naq unccl; vg'f whfg gung vg frrzrq gbb rnfl. V gubhtug Nzba/Abngnx naq Gneybpx'f fgbel nep jnf zhpu zber cbjreshy. Va snpg, gurve zheqre/fhvpvqr frrzrq gb unir fb zhpu svanyvgl gung V svtherq vg zhfg or gur raq bs gur rcvfbqr hagvy V ernyvmrq gurer jrer fvk zvahgrf yrsg. Va bgure jbeqf, vg'f terng gung gur fgbel yraqf vgfrys gb gur vagrecergngvba gung vg jnf nobhg vagevafvp jbegu nf n uhzna orvat qvfgvapg sebz bar'f cbjref, ohg gurl unq n jubyr frnfba yrsg gb npghnyyl rkcyvpvgyl rkcyber gung. Nnat'f wbhearl jnf nobhg yrneavat gb fgbc ehaavat njnl naq npprcg gur snpg gung ur vf va snpg gur Ningne, naq ur pna'g whfg or nal bgure xvq naq sbetrg nobhg uvf cbjre naq erfcbafvovyvgl. Xbeen'f wbhearl jnf gb or nobhg npprcgvat gung whfg orpnhfr fur vf gur Ningne, naq fur ybirf vg naq qrevirf zrnavat sebz vg, qbrfa'g zrna fur'f abguvat zber guna n ebyr gb shysvyy. Vg sryg phg fubeg. Nnat tnir vg gb Xbeen; fur qvqa'g svaq vg sbe urefrys.

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