the thing that bothered me most about Harry was his overuse of formal techniques instead of just trying to grok the whole situation in a more organic fashion; that just seems like a good way to miss something.
I can't speak to how well this works out for Harry (I haven't read HPMoR) but I think I can guess why this bites people in real life.
The methods that work for someone tend to be the ones they're already familiar with. Why? At least two reasons. The boring one is that people are less likely to stick with methods that obviously don't work, so obviously bad methods get forgotten about and become unfamiliar again. The more interesting reason is that using a method makes it "better": practice allows you to apply it more quickly when it's relevant, you learn to recognize more quickly the situations where the method's relevant, and you get better at integrating what you learn from that method with your other thoughts.
This is why it can be safer to organically accrete a system of thinking piece by piece than to install a fully-fledged system in one go; you only have to keep one piece in your head at a time, and you can focus on that one piece for a while until you're used to it and can apply it without much conscious effort. By contrast, trying to take on a complete system in one go means you're constantly having to think hard about which parts of it are relevant to each problem you confront. It's the difference between seeing a loose screw sticking out of something and knowing you need a screwdriver to tighten it, and seeing a loose screw sticking out of something and emptying your toolbox on the floor so you can try each tool one-by-one.
The important distinction isn't so much between formal methods and organic methods, but between methods you've fully internalized and methods you haven't. A formal method that's permanently imprinted into your mind through practice is likely to be quicker to use, easier to use, and more effective than an informal method you've only just heard about. Eventually, if you practice a technique enough, formal or not, there's a good chance your brain will automatically reach out and apply it in the normal course of grokking a whole situation organically. (For example, if I need to predict or reason about some recurrent event in my life, I often automatically apply reference class forecasting without much thought, and I readily integrate that information with any other information I can glean about the event.)
So I think it makes sense to take this stuff at whatever pace feels comfortable. Certainly, when I first landed on LW, I didn't shoot off and read all of the sequences of core posts in one go. I just clicked around, read recent discussions, and when people referred to individual posts in the sequences while discussing other things, I'd click through and read the post they linked to. (And then if I felt like reading more, I'd look at the other posts linked by that post!)
I'll definitely keep reading.
Enjoy the site!
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
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* 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!
Note from orthonormal: MBlume and other contributors wrote the original version of this welcome post, and I've edited it a fair bit. If there's anything I should add or update on this post (especially broken links), please send me a private message—I may not notice a comment on the post. Finally, once this gets past 500 comments, anyone is welcome to copy and edit this intro to start the next welcome thread.