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.
A few notes about the site mechanics
A few notes about the community
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* Normal_Anomaly
* Randaly
* shokwave
* Barry Cotter
A note for theists: you will find the Less Wrong community to be predominantly atheist, though not completely so, and most of us are genuinely respectful of religious people who keep the usual community norms. It's worth saying that we might think religion is off-topic in some places where you think it's on-topic, so be thoughtful about where and how you start explicitly talking about it; some of us are happy to talk about religion, some of us aren't interested. Bear in mind that many of us really, truly have given full consideration to theistic claims and found them to be false, so starting with the most common arguments is pretty likely just to annoy people. Anyhow, it's absolutely OK to mention that you're religious in your welcome post and to invite a discussion there.
A list of some posts that are pretty awesome
I recommend the major sequences to everybody, but I realize how daunting they look at first. So for purposes of immediate gratification, the following posts are particularly interesting/illuminating/provocative and don't require any previous reading:
- Your Intuitions are Not Magic
- The Apologist and the Revolutionary
- How to Convince Me that 2 + 2 = 3
- Lawful Uncertainty
- The Planning Fallacy
- Scope Insensitivity
- The Allais Paradox (with two followups)
- We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think
- The Least Convenient Possible World
- The Third Alternative
- The Domain of Your Utility Function
- Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality
- The True Prisoner's Dilemma
- The Tragedy of Group Selectionism
- Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided
- That Alien Message
More suggestions are welcome! Or just check out the top-rated posts from the history of Less Wrong. Most posts at +50 or more are well worth your time.
Welcome to Less Wrong, and we look forward to hearing from you throughout the site.
So I recently found LessWrong after seeing a link to the Harry Patter fanfiction, and I have been enthralled with the concept of rationalism since. The concepts are not foreign to me as I am a chemist by training, but the systematization and focus on psychology keep me interested. I am working my way through the sequences now.
As for my biography, I am a 29 year old laboratory manager trained as a chemist. My lab develops and tests antimicrobial materials and drugs based on selenium's oxygen radical producing catalysis. It is rewarding work if you can get it, which you can't, because our group is the only one doing it ;)
Besides my primary field of work, I am generally interested in science, technology, economics, and history.
I am looking at retirement from the 9-5 life in the next year or so, and am interested in learning the methods of rationality, which I feel would allow me to excel in other endeavors in the future. I already find myself linking to articles from here to explain and predict human behavior.
This place is overwhelming with its content. I don't think I have ever seen a website with a comment section so worth reading. I fear that I could spend the remainder of my life reading and never have the time to DO anything.
In the realm of politics, I would be considered an anarcho-capitalist, though I value any and all types of values between there and where the USA's politics currently lay. I am an atheist to the extent that I don't believe in an anthropomorphic god, though reading the "an alien god" (not quite sure how to post links here yet) sequence certainly made me realize that certain pervasive and extremely powerful processes do exist, so I am reexamining some of my long-held assumptions in that arena.
I spend quite a lot of my time in the online "Fight Club" that is Zerohedge's comment section, so apologies in advance if I come off as sharp in some of my remarks. I prefer appeals to logic and reason as a rule, but sometimes I resort to pathos and personal attack, especially when I feel that I am being personally attacked. This impulse has been greatly curbed by what I have read here, however, and I find that I am able to pierce through inflammatory arguments much more cool-ly, which I count as a positive result for all involved.
In any event, I generally try not to comment when I feel ill-informed on a subject, but when I think I have something to contribute, I will. I am really enjoying the site so far.
Now, back to reading. So much to read, so little time.