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
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:
- 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.
Hi! Given how much time I've spent reading this site and its relatives, this post is overdue.
I'm 35, male, British and London-based, with a professional background in IT. I was raised Catholic, but when I was about 12, I had a de-conversion experience while in church. I remember leaving the pew during mass to go to the toilet, then walking back down the aisle during the eucharist, watching the priest moving stuff around the altar. It suddenly struck me as weird that so many people had gathered to watch a man in a funny dress pour stuff from one cup to another. So I identified as atheist or humanist for a long time. I can't remember any incident that made me start to identify as a rationalist, but I've been increasingly interested in evidence, biases and knowledge for over ten years now.
I've been lucky, I think, to have some breadth in my education: I studied Physics & Philosophy as an undergrad, Computer Science as a postgrad, and more recently rounded that off with an MBA. This gives me a handy toolset for approaching new problems, I think. I definitely want to learn more statistics though - it feels like there's a big gap in the arsenal.
There are a few stand-out things I have picked out from LW and OB so far. "Noticing that I am confused", and running toward that feeling rather than away from it, has helped at work. "Dissolving the question" has helped me to clarify some problems, and I'd like to be better at it. The material on how words can mislead has helped me to pay more attention to what people mean in discussion.
Non-rationality stuff: my lust to learn new things runs ahead of my ability to follow through, so I have far too many books! Like many people here, I have akrasia issues. I am interested in what can be done to improve quantity and quality of life, as well as productivity, including fitness and mindfulness meditation. Lastly, I'm taking a long trip to LA, flying on August 1, and I'd like to meet up with the LW community there.