Hi Everyone! I'm AABoyles (that's true most places on the internet besides LW).

I first found LW when a colleague mentioned That Alien Message over lunch. I said something to the effect of "That sounds like an Arthur C. Clarke short story. Who is the author?" "Eliezer Yudkowsky," He said, and sent me the link. I read it, and promptly forgot about it. Fast forward a year, and another friend posts the link to HPMOR on Facebook. The author's name sounded very familiar. I read it voraciously. I subscribed to the Main RSS feed and lurked for a year.

I joined the community last month because I wanted to respond to a specific discussion, but I've been having a lot of fun since I got here. I'm interested in finding ways to achieve the greatest good (read: reducing the number of lost Disability Adjusted Life Years), including Effective Altruism and Global Catastrophic Risk Reduction.

Hello community.

I've been aware of LW for a while, reading individual posts linked in programmer/engineering hangouts now and then, and I independently came across HPMOR in search of good fanfiction. But the decision to un-lurk myself came after I attended a CFAR workshop (a major positive life change) and realized that I want to keep being engaged with the community.

I'm very interested in anti-aging research (both from the effective altruism point of view, and because I find the topic really exciting and fascinating) and want to learn about it in as much depth as time permits. So far I would come across science articles about single related discoveries in specialized fields (molecular biology, brain science, ... ) but I haven't found a good resource (book, coursera course, whatever) where I can learn the necessary medicine/biology background and how it all comes together in the current state of the art (I'm thinking of something similar to all the remarkable physics books we have on the market). Any pointers are appreciated.

Hi I'm N. Currently a systems engineer. Lurked for sometime and finally decided to create an account. I am interested in mathematics and computer science and typography. Fonts can give me happiness or drive me crazy.

I am currently in SoCal.

This account is used by a VA to post events for the Melbourne Meetup group. Comment is to accrue 2 karma to allow posting.

I chose more_wrong as a name because I'm in disagreement with a lot of the lesswrong posters about what constitutes a reasonable model of the world. Presumably my opinions are more wrong than opinions that are lesswrong, hence the name :)

My rationalist origin story would have a series of watershed events but as far as I can tell, I never had any core beliefs to discard to become rational, because I never had any core beliefs at all. Do not have a use for them, never picked them up.

As far as identifying myself as an aspiring rationalist, the main events that come to mind would be: 1. Devouring as a child anything by Isaac Asimov that I could get my hands on. In case you are not familiar with the bulk of his work, most of it is scientific and historical exposition, not his more famous science fiction; see especially his essays for rationalist material.

1. Working on questions in physics like "Why do we call two regions of spacetime close to each other?", that is, delving into foundational physics.

2. Learning about epistemology and historiography from my parents, a mathematician and a historian.

3. Thinking about the thinking process itself. Note: Being afflicted with neurological and psychological conditions that shut down various parts of my mentality, notably severe intermittent aphasia, has given me a different perspective on the thinking process.

4. Making some effort to learn about historical perspectives on what constitutes reason or rationality, and not assuming that the latest perspectives are necessarily the best.

   I could go on but that might be enough for an intro.

   My hope is to both learn how to reason more effectively and, if fortunate, make a contribution to the discussion group that helps us to learn the same as a community. mw

Hello there! I really enjoyed HPMOR, because it expanded on some of my thoughts and made me feel less alone. I joined now to post a realization about Harry's (and my) personality. See my 1st post.

Hi! I read some articles here a few years ago, decided they were good, and moved on. I think I am a pretty practical person, and I have some ways of deciding things that are utility based (and some that are not).

I would like to ask the community for some help with a couple of reading recommendations:

1. how to leave for places (like work) on time and not get distracted;
2. general time- and direction-sense improvements, should any reliably exist; and
3. how to maintain composure when your body is making moods happen at you (dealing with becoming hangry).

Thanks very much, and I hope to be optimizing more things soon. It's nice to meet you!

Hi, I'm reposting my introduction here from 2 days ago, as it was moved for some reason, perhaps accidentally. Anyway, hello, my name is Zoltan Istvan. I'm a transhumanist, futurist, journalist, and the author of the philosophical novel "The Transhumanist Wager." I've been checking out this site for some time, but decided to create an account a few days ago to become closer to the community. I thought I'd start by posting an essay I recently wrote, which sums up some of my ideas. Feel free to share it if you like, and I look forward to interacting here. Cheers.

"When Does Hindering Life Extension Science Become a Crime—or even Genocide?"

Every human being has both a minimum and a maximum amount of life hours left to live. If you add together the possible maximum life hours of every living person on the planet, you arrive at a special number: the optimum amount of time for our species to evolve, find happiness, and become the most that it can be. Many reasonable people feel we should attempt to achieve this maximum number of life hours for humankind. After all, very few people actually wish to prematurely die or wish for their fellow humans' premature deaths.

In a free and functioning democratic society, it's the duty of our leaders and government to implement laws and social strategies to maximize these life hours that we want to safeguard. Regardless of ideological, political, religious, or cultural beliefs, we expect our leaders and government to protect our lives and ensure the maximum length of our lifespans. Any other behavior cuts short the time human beings have left to live. Anything else becomes a crime of prematurely ending human lives. Anything else fits the common legal term we have for that type of reprehensible behavior: criminal manslaughter.

In 2001, former President George W. Bush restricted federal funding for stem cell research, one of the most promising fields of medicine in the 21st Century. Stem cells can be used to help fight disease and, therefore, can lengthen lives. Bush restricted the funding because his conservative religious beliefs—some stem cells came from aborted fetuses—conflicted with his fiduciary duty of helping millions of ailing, disease-stricken human beings. Much medical research in the United States relies heavily on government funding and the legal right to do the research. Ultimately, when a disapproving President limits public resources for a specific field of science, the research in that field slows down dramatically—even if that research would obviously lengthen and improve the lives of millions.

It's not just politicians that are prematurely ending our lives with what can be called "pro-death" policies and ideologies. In 2009, on a trip to Africa, Pope Benedict XVI told journalists that the epidemic of AIDS would be worsened by encouraging people to use condoms. More than 25 million people have died from AIDS since the first cases began being reported in the news in the early 1980s. In numerous studies, condoms have been shown to help stop the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. This makes condoms one of the simplest and most affordable life extension tools on the planet. Unfathomably, the billion-person strong Catholic Church actively supports the idea that condom usage is sinful, despite the fact that such a malicious policy has helped sicken and kill a staggering amount of innocent people.

Regrettably, in 2014, America continues to be permeated with an anti-life extension culture. Genetic engineering experiments in humans often have to pass numerous red-tape-laden government regulatory bodies in order to conduct any tests at all, especially at publically funded universities and research centers. Additionally, many states still ban human reproductive cloning, which could one day play a critical part in extending human life. The current US administration is also culpable. The White House is simply not doing enough to extend American lifespans. The US Government spends just 2% of the national budget on science and medical research, while their defense budget is over 20%, according to a 2011 US Office of Management Budget chart. Does President Obama not care about this fact, or is he unaware that not actively funding and supporting life extension research indeed shortens lives?

In my philosophical novel The Transhumanist Wager, there is a scene which takes place outside of a California courthouse where transhumanist activists are holding up a banner. The words inscribed on the banner sum up some eye-opening data: "By not actively funding life extension research, the amount of life hours the United States Government is stealing from its citizens is thousands of times more than all the American life hours lost in the Twin Towers tragedy, the AIDS epidemic, and the Vietnam War combined. Demand that your government federally fund transhuman research, nullify anti-science laws, and promote a life extension culture. The average human body can be made to live healthily and productively beyond age 150."

Some longevity experts think that with a small amount of funding—$50 billion dollars—targeted specifically towards life extension research and ending human mortality, average human lifespans could be increased by 25-50 years in about a decade's time. The world's net worth is over $200 trillion dollars, so the species can easily spare a fraction of its wealth to gain some of the most valuable commodities humans have: health and time.

Unfortunately, our species has already lost a massive amount of life hours; billions of lives have been unnecessarily cut short in the last 50 years because of widespread anti-science attitudes and policies. Even in the modern 21st Century, our evolutionary development continues to be significantly hampered by world leaders and governments who believe in non-empirical, faith-driven religious doctrines—most of which require the worship of deities whose teachings totally negate the need for radical life extension science. Virtually every major leader on the planet believes their "God" will give them an afterlife in a heavenly paradise, so living longer on planet Earth is just not that important.

Back in the real world, 150,000 people died yesterday. Another 150,000 will cease to exist today, and the same amount will disappear tomorrow. A good way to reverse this widespread deathist attitude should start with investigative government and non-government commissions examining whether public fiduciary duty requires acting in the best interest of people's health and longevity. Furthermore, investigative commissions should be set up to examine whether former and current top politicians and religious leaders are guilty of shortening people's lives for their own selfish beliefs and ideologies. Organizations and other global leaders that have done the same should be scrutinized and investigated too. And if fault or crimes against humanity are found, justice should be administered. After all, it's possible that the Catholic Church's stance on condoms will be responsible for more deaths in Africa than the Holocaust was responsible for in Europe. Over one million AIDS victims died in Africa last year alone. Catholicism is growing quickly in Africa, and there will soon be nearly 200 million Catholics on the continent. Obviously, the definition of genocide needs to be reconsidered by the public.

As a civilization of advanced beings who desire to live longer, better, and more successfully, it is our responsibility to put government, religious institutions, big business, and other entities that endorse pro-death policies on notice. Society should stand ready to prosecute anyone that deliberately promotes agendas and actions that prematurely end people's useful lives. Stifling or hindering life extension science, education, and practices needs to be recognized as a legitimate crime.

Hi, My name is Zoltan Istvan. I'm a transhumanist, futurist, journalist, and the author of the philosophical novel "The Transhumanist Wager." I've been checking out this site for some time, but decided to create an account today to become closer to the community. I thought I'd start by posting an essay I recently wrote, which sums up some of my ideas. Feel free to share it if you like, and I hope you find it moving. Cheers.

"When Does Hindering Life Extension Science Become a Crime—or even Genocide?"

Every human being has both a minimum and a maximum amount of life hours left to live. If you add together the possible maximum life hours of every living person on the planet, you arrive at a special number: the optimum amount of time for our species to evolve, find happiness, and become the most that it can be. Many reasonable people feel we should attempt to achieve this maximum number of life hours for humankind. After all, very few people actually wish to prematurely die or wish for their fellow humans' premature deaths.

In a free and functioning democratic society, it's the duty of our leaders and government to implement laws and social strategies to maximize these life hours that we want to safeguard. Regardless of ideological, political, religious, or cultural beliefs, we expect our leaders and government to protect our lives and ensure the maximum length of our lifespans. Any other behavior cuts short the time human beings have left to live. Anything else becomes a crime of prematurely ending human lives. Anything else fits the common legal term we have for that type of reprehensible behavior: criminal manslaughter.

In 2001, former President George W. Bush restricted federal funding for stem cell research, one of the most promising fields of medicine in the 21st Century. Stem cells can be used to help fight disease and, therefore, can lengthen lives. Bush restricted the funding because his conservative religious beliefs—some stem cells came from aborted fetuses—conflicted with his fiduciary duty of helping millions of ailing, disease-stricken human beings. Much medical research in the United States relies heavily on government funding and the legal right to do the research. Ultimately, when a disapproving President limits public resources for a specific field of science, the research in that field slows down dramatically—even if that research would obviously lengthen and improve the lives of millions.

It's not just politicians that are prematurely ending our lives with what can be called "pro-death" policies and ideologies. In 2009, on a trip to Africa, Pope Benedict XVI told journalists that the epidemic of AIDS would be worsened by encouraging people to use condoms. More than 25 million people have died from AIDS since the first cases began being reported in the news in the early 1980s. In numerous studies, condoms have been shown to help stop the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. This makes condoms one of the simplest and most affordable life extension tools on the planet. Unfathomably, the billion-person strong Catholic Church actively supports the idea that condom usage is sinful, despite the fact that such a malicious policy has helped sicken and kill a staggering amount of innocent people.

Regrettably, in 2014, America continues to be permeated with an anti-life extension culture. Genetic engineering experiments in humans often have to pass numerous red-tape-laden government regulatory bodies in order to conduct any tests at all, especially at publically funded universities and research centers. Additionally, many states still ban human reproductive cloning, which could one day play a critical part in extending human life. The current US administration is also culpable. The White House is simply not doing enough to extend American lifespans. The US Government spends just 2% of the national budget on science and medical research, while their defense budget is over 20%, according to a 2011 US Office of Management Budget chart. Does President Obama not care about this fact, or is he unaware that not actively funding and supporting life extension research indeed shortens lives?

In my philosophical novel The Transhumanist Wager, there is a scene which takes place outside of a California courthouse where transhumanist activists are holding up a banner. The words inscribed on the banner sum up some eye-opening data: "By not actively funding life extension research, the amount of life hours the United States Government is stealing from its citizens is thousands of times more than all the American life hours lost in the Twin Towers tragedy, the AIDS epidemic, and the Vietnam War combined. Demand that your government federally fund transhuman research, nullify anti-science laws, and promote a life extension culture. The average human body can be made to live healthily and productively beyond age 150."

Some longevity experts think that with a small amount of funding—$50 billion dollars—targeted specifically towards life extension research and ending human mortality, average human lifespans could be increased by 25-50 years in about a decade's time. The world's net worth is over $200 trillion dollars, so the species can easily spare a fraction of its wealth to gain some of the most valuable commodities humans have: health and time.

Unfortunately, our species has already lost a massive amount of life hours; billions of lives have been unnecessarily cut short in the last 50 years because of widespread anti-science attitudes and policies. Even in the modern 21st Century, our evolutionary development continues to be significantly hampered by world leaders and governments who believe in non-empirical, faith-driven religious doctrines—most of which require the worship of deities whose teachings totally negate the need for radical life extension science. Virtually every major leader on the planet believes their "God" will give them an afterlife in a heavenly paradise, so living longer on planet Earth is just not that important.

Back in the real world, 150,000 people died yesterday. Another 150,000 will cease to exist today, and the same amount will disappear tomorrow. A good way to reverse this widespread deathist attitude should start with investigative government and non-government commissions examining whether public fiduciary duty requires acting in the best interest of people's health and longevity. Furthermore, investigative commissions should be set up to examine whether former and current top politicians and religious leaders are guilty of shortening people's lives for their own selfish beliefs and ideologies. Organizations and other global leaders that have done the same should be scrutinized and investigated too. And if fault or crimes against humanity are found, justice should be administered. After all, it's possible that the Catholic Church's stance on condoms will be responsible for more deaths in Africa than the Holocaust was responsible for in Europe. Over one million AIDS victims died in Africa last year alone. Catholicism is growing quickly in Africa, and there will soon be nearly 200 million Catholics on the continent. Obviously, the definition of genocide needs to be reconsidered by the public.

As a civilization of advanced beings who desire to live longer, better, and more successfully, it is our responsibility to put government, religious institutions, big business, and other entities that endorse pro-death policies on notice. Society should stand ready to prosecute anyone that deliberately promotes agendas and actions that prematurely end people's useful lives. Stifling or hindering life extension science, education, and practices needs to be recognized as a legitimate crime.

My name is Morgan. I was brought here by my brother and have been lurking for awhile. I've have read most of the sequences which have cleared up some of my confused thinking. There were things that I didn't think about because I didn't have an answer for them. Free will and morality used to confuse me and so I never thought much about them since I didn't have a guarantee that they were answerable.

Lesswrong has helped me get back into programming. It has helped me learn to think about things with precision. And to understand how an Cognitive algorithm feels from the inside to dissolve questions.

I am going to join this community and improve my skills. Tsuyoku Naritai.

Greetings!

I'm Brian. I'm a full-time police dispatcher and part-time graduate student in the marriage and family therapy/counseling master's degree program at the University of Akron (in northeast Ohio). Before I began studies in my master's program, I earned a bachelor's degree in emergency management. I am an atheist and skeptic. I think I can trace my earliest interest in rationality back to my high school days, when I began critically examining theism (generally) and Catholicism (in particular) while taking an elective religion class called "Questions About God." It turned out the class raised more questions than answers, for me.

I found LessWrong by way of browsing CFAR's website and wishing that I had the money to attend one of their workshops. With that being said, I haven't been lurking around LW proper for very long. Thus, I anticipate it will take some time for me to become acquainted with norms of this platform. However, after briefly browsing around, I get the sense that this is a thoughtful community of people that value rationality. That's exciting to me! I hope to get more involved, as time permits, and to eventually become a valuable contributor.

Hello,

I'm a 34 yo programmer/entrepreneur in Romania, with a long time interest in rationality - long before I called it by that name. I think the earliest name I had for it was "wisdom", and a desire to find a consistent, repeatable way to obtain it. Must admit at that time I didn't imagine it was going to be so complicated.

Spent some of my 20s believing I already know everything, and then I made a decision that in retrospect was the best I ever made: never to look at the price when I buy a book, but only at the likelihood of finishing it. Which is something I strongly recommend even (or especially) to cash-starved students. The first one happened to be Nassim Taleb's Black Swan, which was another huge stroke of luck. Not only it exposed me to some pretty revolutionary concepts and destroyed my illusions of omniscience, but he's a frequent name dropper and provided a lot of leads for future reading material. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Introduction aside, I'm a long time lurker and I actually came here with a request for comments. There is an often mentioned thought experiment in the sequences that compares a lot of harm done to a person (like torture) with minimum harm done to a lot of people, like a mote in the eye of a billion people. I've always found it a bit disturbing, but couldn't escape the conclusion that harm is additive and comparable. Except I now think it's not.

I've recently read Anti-fragile and found the concept of "hormesis", i.e. small harm done to a complex system generates an over-compensatory response, resulting in overall improvement. Simple examples: cold showers or lifting weights. So small harm done to a lot of people is possible to overall have net positive effects.

Two holes I see in this argument: some harms like going to the gym create hormesis, while motes in the eye don't. Also, you could just up the harm: use a big enough mote that the overall effect is a net negative, like maybe cause some permanent damage. But both holes are plugged by the fact that complex systems will always find ways to compensate. Small cornea damage gets compensated at processing level, muscle damage turns into new muscle, neuron damage means rerouting etc. There are tipping points and limits, but they're still counter-intuitive. Killing the n-th neuron will put somebody in a wheelchair, but their happiness level still bounces back. There is harm, but it's very non-linear in respect to the original damage. So I can't help but conclude that harm is simply non-additive and non-comparable, at least not easily.

Hello,

I'd like to get some opinions about my future goals.

I'm 21 and I'm a second-year student of engineering in Prague, Czech Republic, focusing mainly on math and then physics.

My background is not stunning - I was born in 93, visiting sporting primary school and then general high school. Until I was in second year of high school, I behaved as an idiot with below-average results in almost everything, paradoxically except extraordinary "general study presupposes" (whatever it means). My not so bad IQ - according to IQ test I took when I was 15 - is about 130 points. When I was 17, I realized that there is something about the world that needs to be done with. I started to study, mainly math and physics. I was horrible at it - I had very big disadvantage because I missed basics and wasn't able to recognize it. Anyway, I tried (but, unfortunately, not as much as I had to) and reached so-so level and I got on the technical university. Here I tried really hard and I achieved relatively good results and got into the best maths-focused student group. I'm below-average in this group (about 30 students) and my results are satisfactory. I'm quite popular thanks to collaborating on some non-study events for my schoolmates. I also created a presentation for high school students about engineering and I distributed it among faculty workers and students, who are connected to propagation.

About 10 years I obtained ECDL and it started my curiosity about informatics. But nothing special - I was autodidact in HTML and "computer administration" for regular usage. I was also very interested in economy, as my father is working in this area. I actively did cross-country skiing and play on piano and trombone.

I have high charisma, authority and ability to organize people and some bigger events, which I was usually asked to prepare (the graduate prom, matriculation etc.). I have good reasoning skills and ability to negotiate even under heavy pressure and stress. People usually enjoy time with me and appreciates me for my honesty, empathy and "cold-think" reasoning solutions, which in most time shows there were the best possible. I'm in healthy relationship for two years. My family is good background for my activities and support me. They also support me financially. My expense per month is not more than 300 USD including accommodation with in an apartment (university students, two of them from my university and domain), food and social activities.

Currently, apart from my school activities, I'm also attending some kind of philosophy group every week, where we usually discuss some topic about epistemology, relationships, culture, religions etc., we read some philosophic works (Platon), deal with art (classical music or paintings) or we write some kind of voluntary essays. I'm really interested in discussions about these topics and I try to develop my reasoning skills as often I can. For example, now I contacted a priest from local temple with whom I want to discuss some religion based questions. I autodidact psychology (last book I've read was Kahneman: Think fast and slow), rationality (started to read LW sequences), and programming. I enjoy using open source software on my Archlinux laptop and now I dived into Python as a scripting language. I also develop some web for my mother using Django and I also signed for a statistical research task about datamining in Python (pandas, numpy, scikit-learn...) or R. In school I have courses of C++ also. I'm not the most talented or generally best mathematician or programmer, but I have quite good learning (and also teaching) skills.

I've chosen my "path" - I'd like to do what's right and true and seek for the truth whenever it is possible. I feel that I'm not getting everything (e.g. from my school) I need for changing the world to a better place. I could do more. I can't decide where to focus and how to divide my attention and possibilities. Should I do aggressive autodidact of sequences? Should I focus on maths and algorithms or biases? Should I try to develop my social skills?

And the second question is simple:" Are there any Czechs who are interested in meetups in PRAGUE?"

Thank you

Hi I'm onderdonk, well ten years of hegel had me thinking positive things about rationalism, but thirty years as a schizophrenic made me change my mind. I'm a scientist and a rationalist, in my little pinky, on my left hand. the rest of me is a grand irrationalist, and I marvel at how the world thinks that's a bad thing, guess they don't understand my flavor. So I try to explain, I wrote up a "Declaration of Freedom for Human Irrationality and Insanity", after arguing the point in the schizophrenia forums for decades. Think I have a case here, though i also think you guys are the not the group who want to hear it. I'm guessing you self declared rationalists are kinda one sided about cultural things like that, the whole militart education industrial complex of yours ,you the WEIRD - western educated industrial rich democrats, you the worldly minded camarilla, if you count all the species across time, that science and reason stuff is pretty weird. I know I know, you think it gives you dignity, and you feel it gives you power over nature. well, i have been watching your species, and i have hopes and beliefs, I think one day you will set aside your "science" and your "reason", put them in a toybox to look at wistfully once in a while when a relative stops by from outer space, but for the most part, sit down and shut up, and come out of that test tube of human knowledge that your species tends to stay in, common out, common up, it's ok out here in the darkness of the universe, the world of shamanism and scnhizophrenia, of the two year olds and the spirits, the poet philosopher world, reason to be left at the doorway to the molten pool of madness that we dive into, we explorers of human unreason. Common up, join your brothers the trees, the animals, the shamans, the two year olds, the stars, the black holes in the dark sky, join us, as we pursue inner nature and destiny, and search for mystery and wonder.

(w)onderdonk(ey)

Hi,

I'm a philosopher (postdoc) at the London School of Economics who recently discovered Less Wrong. I am now reading through lots of old posts, especially Yudkowsky's and lukeprog's philosophy-related material, which I find very interesting.

I think lukeprog is right when he points out that the general thrust of Yudkowsky's philosophy belongs to a naturalistic tradition often associated with Quine's name. In general, I think it would be useful to situate Yudkowsky's ideas visavi the philosophical tradition. I hope to be able to contributre something here at some point (though I should point out that I'm not an expert in the history of philosophy).

lukeprog argues for these ideas in two excellent articles:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/4vr/less_wrong_rationality_and_mainstream_philosophy/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/4zs/philosophy_a_diseased_discipline/

I agree with most of what is said there, and am myself very critical of mainstream analytical philosophy. It also seems to me that the overall program advocated here - to let psychological knowledge permeate all philosophical arguments in a very radical way - is very promising. Though there are philosophers who make use of psychology, do experiments, etc., few let it influence their thinking as radically as it is done here.

The site seems very interesting in other respects as well. I am presently reading up on cognitive science (I found this site after googling on Stanovichs Rationality and the Reflective Mind, which I now have read) and am grateful for the info on this subject gathered on Less Wrong.

Greetings.

I'm a long-time singularitarian and (intermediate) rationalist looking be a part of the conversation again. By day I am an English teacher in a suburban American high school. My students have been known to Google me. Rather than self-censor I am using a pseudonym so that I will feel free to share my (anonymized) experiences as a rationalist high school teacher.

I internet-know a number of you in this community from early years of the Singularity Institute. I fleetingly met at a few in person once, perhaps. I used to write on singularity-related issues, and was a proud "sniper" of the SL4 mailing list for a time. For the last 6-7 years I've mostly dropped off the radar by letting "life" issues consume me, though I have continued to follow the work of the key actors from afar with interest. I allow myself some pride for any small positive impact I might have once had during a time of great leverage for donors and activists, while recognizing that far too much remains undone. (If you would like to confirm your suspicions of my identity, I would love to hear from you with a PM. I just don't want Google searches of my real name pulling up my LW activity.)

High school teaching has been a taxing path, along with parenting, and it has been all too easy to use these as excuses to neglect my more challenging (yet rewarding) interests. I let my inaction and guilt reinforce each other until I woke up one day, read HPMoR, and realized I had long-ago regressed into an NPC.

Screw that.

Other background tidbits: I'm one of those atheist ex-mormons that seem so plentiful on this page (since 2000ish). I'm a self-taught "hedge coder" who has successfully used inelegant-but-effective programming in the service of my career. I feel effective in public education, which is not without its rewards. But on some important levels teaching at an American public high school is also a bit like working security at Azkaban, and I'm not sure how many more years I'll be able to keep my patronus going.

I've been using GTD methodologies for the last eight years or so, which has been great for letting me keep my mind clear to work on important tasks at hand; however, my dearest personal goals (which involve writing, both fiction and non) live among some powerful Ugh Fields. If I had been reading LW more closely, I probably would've discovered the Pomodoro method a lot sooner. This is helping.

My thanks to all who share their insights and experiences on this forum.

Hello to you all, I am Chris.

I live in England and attend my local High school (well, in England we call the senior years/curriculums a sixth form). I take Mathematics, Further mathematics, physics and philosophy. I actually happened upon Lesswrong two years ago, when I was 16, whilst searching for interesting discussions on worldviews. Although I had never really been interested in rationality (up until that point I hasten to add!), I had a seething urge to sort out my worldview as quickly as I could. I just got so sick of the people who went to sunday school coming out with claims about the universe that didn't jive with the understanding of modern physics. So I read the reductionism sequence and realised I was a reductionist. The way Eliezer 'spelled it out' just really struck me as a great way to say what I had started to feel. Shortly afterwards naturalism , or rather metaphysical naturalism, became my first great love. I have a good collection of friends, but none of them have really cared for 'waxing on worldviews' like me. I guess I'm just really happy that I get to speak with a community that has stuff in common with me (not just worldviews, but other cool topics as well). I guess camaraderie is eagerly sought. I would love to talk with people of my age group (I suppose 15-24) but of course I should love to meet with anyone with a similar mindset to me. I live near Reading. If anyone would like to speak with me, whether it be through Lesswrong, Facebook or just meeting up for a chat, just message me and I shall do my utmost to entertain/be friendly with you. :)

Hi everybody,

My name is Eric, and I'm currently finishing up my last semester of undergraduate study and applying to Ph.D. programs in cognitive psychology/cognitive neuroscience. I recently became interested in the predictive power offered by formal rational models of behavior after working in Paul Glimcher's lab this past summer at NYU, where I conducted research on matching behavior is rhesus monkeys. I stumbled upon Less Wrong while browsing the internet for behavioral economics blogs. After reading a couple of posts, I decided to join.

Some sample topics that I like reading about and discussing include intertemporal choice, risk preferences, strategic behavior in the context of games, reinforcement learning, and the evolution of cooperation. I look forward to chatting with some of you!

Hello, LW,

One of my names is holist. I am 45. Self-employed family man, 6 kids, 2 dogs, 1 cat. Originally a philosopher (BA+MA from Sussex, UK), but I've been a translator for 19 years now... it is wearing thin. Music and art are also important parts of my life (have sold music, musically directed a small circus, have exhibited pictures), and recently, with dictatorship being established here in Hungary, politics seems increasingly urgent, too. I dabble in psychotherapy and call myself a Discordian. Recently, I started thinking about doing a PhD somewhere. My topic is very general: what has caused the increasingly hostile relationship between individual and culture, and what are the remedies available? My window of opportunity is a few years away: I am intermittently thinking about possible supervisors. I have a blog at holist.hu, some of it is in English and it has a lot of pictures. The discordians at PD kicked me out, I found the Secular Café to be indescribably boring, I am a keen MeFite, but I'd like something a little more discussioney. A friend pointed me at LW. I hope it works out.

For pointers, here's a slightly random list of some books that are very important to me: Fiction: Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, Ulysses by James Joyce, Karnevál by Béla Hamvas, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, The Diamong Age by Neal Stephenson. Non-fiction: The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff, The Facts of Life by R. D. Laing, Children of the Future by Wilhelm Reich, The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller, The Story of B by Daniel Quinn, Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich

I guess I'll start by lurking, but you never know :)

Hello, my name is Luke. I'm an urban planning graduate student at Cleveland State University, having completed an undergrad in philosophy at the University of New Hampshire a year ago. It was the coursework I did at that school which lead me to be interested in the nebulous and translucent topic of rationality, and I'm happy to see so many people involved and interested in the same conversations I'd spend hours having with classmates. Heck, the very question I was asking myself in something of an ontological sense--am I missing the trees for the forest--is what led me here, specifically to Eliezer's article on the fallacies of compression, which was somewhat helpful. Suffice to say, I tend to think I'm not missing the trees for the forest, and that in fact the original form of the idiom remains true for most other people, though thankfully, not many here.

I'm deeply interested in epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, and metaethics, all of which I attempt to approach in systemic ways. As for what led me to consider myself a rationalist in these endeavors...I'm not sure I do. In fact, I'm not sure anyone can or should think of themselves a rationalist, considering that basic beliefs, other than solipsism, are inductive and inferential, and thus fallible. We could argue in circles forever (as others have) what constitutes knowledge, but any definition seems, in my view, to be arbitrary and thus non-universal and therefore, again, fallible--even mathematical knowledge and formal logic.

Granted, I don't sit in a corner rocking back and forth sucking my thumb, driven mad by the uncertainty of it all, but I also operate with the knowledge that whatever I deem rational behavior and thought processes only seem rational because I've pre-decided what constitutes rational behavior (i.e., circularity, or coherentism at best...feeling like I'm writing a duplicate of a different post). Of course, all that seems like too easy an exit from a number of hard problems, so I keep reading to make sure that, in fact, I oughtn't be rocking back and forth in a corner sucking my thumb for the utility of it, turning into a kind of utility monster. An absurdist I remain, but one with a pretty strong intuitive consequentialist metaethical framework which allows me to find great joy in the topics covered on LW.

Hi, I have a site tech question. (Sorry if this is the wrong place to post that!—I couldn't find any other.)

I can't find a way to get email notifications of comment replies (i.e. when my inbox icon goes red). If there is one, how do I turn it on?

If there isn't one, is that a deliberate design feature, or a limitation of the software, or...?

Thanks (and thanks especially to whoever does the system maintenance here—it must be a big job.)

G'day

As you can probably guess, I'm Alex. I'm a high school student from Australia and have been disappointed with the education system here from quite some time.

I came to LW via HPMoR which was linked to me by a fellow member of the Aus IMO team. (I seriously doubt I'm the only (ex-)Olympian around here - seems just the sort of place that would attract them). I've spent the past few weeks reading the sequences by EY, as well as miscellaneous other stuff. Made a few (inconsequential) posts too.

I have very little in the way of controversial opinions to offer (relative to the demographics of this site) as just about all the unusual positions it takes I already agreed with (e.g. athiesm) or seemed pretty obvious to me after some thought (e.g. transhumanism). Maybe it's just hindsight bias.

I'm slightly disappointed with the ban on political discussion. I do agree that it should not be mentioned when not relevant but it seems a shame to waste this much rationality in one place by forbidding them to use it where it's most needed. A possible compromise would be to create a politics dicussion page to discuss pros and cons to particular ideologies. (If one already exists point me to it). A reason cited is that there are other sites to discuss politics - if any do so rationally I'd like to see them.

It is a relief to be somewhere where I don't have to constantly take into account inferential distance, and I shall try to make the most of this. I only resolve to write just that which has not been written.

Hello everyone,

My name is Mathias. I've been thinking about coming here for quite some while and I finally made the jump. I've been introduced to this website/community through Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and I've been quite active on it's subreddit (under the alias of Yxoque).

For a while now, I've been self-identifying as "aspiring rationalist" and I want to level up even further. One way I learn quickly is through conversation, so that's why I finally decided to come here. Also because I wanted to attend a meet-up, but if felt wrong to join one of a community I'm not a member of.

As for info on myself, I'm not sure how interesting that is. I've recently graduated as a Bachelor in Criminology at the University of Brussels and I'm currently looking for a suitable job. I still need to figure out my comparative advantage.

I'm also reading through a pdf of all the blog posts, currently I'm on the Meta-ethics sequence. In my free time I'm (slowly) working on annotating HPMOR and convincing people to write Rational!Animorphs fanfiction.

Hi there, I am Andrew, living in Hungary and studying to be an IT physicist some day in an utmost lazy way. I've just recently discovered this site and so far I can't really believe what I'm seeing. I have been thinking myself before about a website whose main purpose is basically making its users wiser and/or more rational. - about which my main question later will be put that if u could answer would be great; also, excuse my English, it's not my native language.

I believe rationality can be expressed as the set of "right" algorithms in a given context. The rightfulness of algorithms in this case is dependent on the goal which the context defines.

My question is that are the majority of people here generally conscious of the significance of finding the "fancy word for global, important and unique" goal, or as I shall put "pure wisdom" OR do they - or you - here just feel the necessity to lay down the healthy plain soil for building the "tower of wisdom" and care less about the actual adventure of building it.

My main point is that even tough our best tool to gain wisdom is through rational thinking - and a little extra - , how we react and how far we go on this road as rational beings is the function of each one of our unique perspective of life. Are there individuals here whose (main) point in life is to possess the right perspective of life?

For example if we accepted all sciences and set aside our big hopes like the one for afterlife, we may come to the conclusion that any kind of necessity other than our primal ones that have evolved in our ancestors over the millions of years are flawed or delusional. Not taking the alternative of nihilism -its reflection to humans- or physicalism as its sort of parallel philosophy into account is neither irrational nor rational, but unwise I believe even though the philosophy itself doesn't bring or promise much materialistic profit.

Here, my goals in the first place would - I mean: will - be to observe, learn and then adjust my knowledge and beliefs since inevitably I'm gonna bump into other people's belief systems which are built on a rational, in its broadest sense, and healthy ground. Looking forward to it. And looking forward getting to know other people's struggles achieving similar goals and their personalities, have a nice day :)

Hello!

I'm Jennifer; I'm currently a graduate student in medieval literature and a working actor. Thanks to homeschooling, though, I do have a solid background and abiding interest in quantum physics/pure mathematics/statistics/etc., and 'aspiring rationalist' is probably the best description I can provide! I found the site through HPMoR.

Current personal projects: learning German and Mandarin, since I already have French/Latin/Spanish/Old English/Old Norse taken care of, and much as I personally enjoy studying historical linguistics and old dead languages, knowing Mandarin would be much more practical (in terms of being able to communicate with the greatest number of people when travelling, doing business, reading articles, etc.)

Salutations!

My name is Aaron. I'm a college junior on the tail end of the cycle of Bar Mitzvah to New Atheist to info-omnivorous psychology geek to attempted systems thinker. Prospective Psychology/Cognitive Science major at Yale, very interested in meeting other rationalists in the New Haven area. I'm on the board of the Yale Humanist Community, I'm a research assistant in a neuroscience lab, and I do a lot of writing.

Big problems I've been thinking a lot about: Why are most people wildly irrational in the amount of time they're willing to devote to information search (that is, reducing uncertainty around uncertain decisions)? How can humanists and rationalists build a compelling community that serves adults of all ages as well as children? What sorts of media tend to encourage the "shift" from bad thinking to good thinking, and/or passive to active thinking (NPC vs. hero mindset, sort of--this one is complicated), and how can we get that media in the hands of more people?

I read HPMoR without really noticing Less Wrong, but have been linked to a few posts over the years. Last spring, I found "Privileging the Question", which rang so true that I went on to read the Sequences and much of the rest. I was never very certain in my philosophy before finding the site, but now I'm pretty sure I at least know how to think about philosophy, which is nice.

The next few years hopefully involve me getting a job out of college that will allow me to build savings while donating plenty, while aligning me to take a position in some high-upside sector of tech or in the rationalist arena, but a lot of people say that, and I'm very unsure about what will actually happen if I flunk my case interviews. Still, the future will be better than the past regardless, and that thought keeps me going (as does knowing how many people are out there working to avoid future-is-worse-than-past scenarios).

I am a celibate pedophile. That means I feel a sexual and romantic attraction to young girls (3-12) but have never acted on that attraction and never will. In some forums, this revelation causes strong negative reactions and a movement to have me banned. I hope that's not true here.

From a brief search, I see that someone raised the topic of non-celibate pedophilia, and it was accepted for discussion. http://lesswrong.com/lw/67h/the_phobia_or_the_trauma_the_probem_of_the_chcken/ Hopefully celibate pedophilia is less controversial.

I have developed views on the subject, though I like to think that I can be persuaded to change them, and one thing I hope to get here on LessWrong is reason-based challenges. Hopefully others will find the topics informative as well. In the absence of advice on a better way to proceed, I plan to make posts in Discussion now and then on various aspects of the topic.

I'm in my 50s and am impressed with the LessWrong approach in general and have done my best to follow some of its precepts for years. I have read most of the core sequences.

Hi, I am Olga, female, 40, programmer, mother of two. Got here from HPMoR. Can not as yet define myself as a rationalist, but I am working on it. Some rationality questions, used in real life conversations, have helped me to tackle some personal and even family issues. It felt great. In my "grown-up" role I am deeply concerned to bring up my kids with their thoughts process as undamaged as I possibly can and maybe even to balance some system-taught stupidity. I am at the start of my reading list on the matter, including LW sequences.

Hi, I always like to be less wrong and try to verify and falsify my own take on philosophical Modernism, which I have developed since my student days. (FYI, I am twice that age now.) I believe we should all have opinions about everything and look for independent confirmation, rational or emotional, both for the give and for the take, when earned, to find truth. When it doesn't happen, I try to improve on my theory. I have done so online for years at http://crpa.co. I would like you to try and find any or all flaws and make a case out of it. Thanks in advance. I will be critical too of your work if you would like me to. Best regards ~Ron dW.

Hi! Everyone below are superbly impressive! I'm a physicist, in my second year of teaching English and that's as much rationality as I can provide at the moment. Looking to relocate to China in an effort to be superhuman. Would really appreciate a few pointers on teaching institutions to avoid/ embrace.

Excellent reading here, thanks! Nas

Hi. I've been a distant LW lurker for a while now; I first encountered the Sequences sometime around 2009, and have been an avid HP:MOR fan since mid-2011.

I work in computer security with a fair bit of software verification as flavoring, so the AI confinement problem is of interest to me, particularly in light of recent stunts like arbitrary computation in zero CPU instructions via creative abuse of the MMU trap handler. I'm also interested in applying instrumental rationality to improve the quality and utility of my research in general. I flirt with some other topics as well, including capability security, societal iterated game theory, trust (e.g., PKI), and machine learning; a meta-goal is to figure out how to organize my time so that I can do more applied work in these areas.

Apart from that, lately I've become disillusioned with my usual social media circles, in part due to a perceived* uptick in terrible epistemology and in part due to facing the fact that I use them as procrastination tools. I struggle with akrasia, and am experiencing less of it since quitting my previous haunts cold turkey, but things could still be better and I hope to improve them by seeking out positive influences here.

*I haven't measured this. It's entirely possible I've become more sensitive to bad epistemology, or some other influence is lowering my tolerance to bad epistemology.

Hey, my name is Roman. You can read my detailed bio here, as well as some research papers I published on the topics of AI and security. I decided to attend a local LW meet up and it made sense to at least register on the site. My short term goal is to find some people in my geographic area (Louisville, KY, USA) to befriend.

Hi!

I’ve been interested in how to think well since early childhood. When I was about ten, I read a book about cybernetics. (This was in the Oligocene, when “cybernetics” had only recently gone extinct.) It gave simple introductions to probability theory, game theory, information theory, boolean switching logic, control theory, and neural networks. This was definitely the coolest stuff ever.

I went on to MIT, and got an undergraduate degree in math, specializing in mathematical logic and the theory of computation—fields that grew out of philosophical investigations of rationality.

Then I did a PhD at the MIT AI Lab, continuing my interest in what thinking is. My work there seems to have been turned into a surrealistic novel by Ken Wilber, a woo-ish pop philosopher. Along the way, I studied a variety of other fields that give diverse insights into thinking, ranging from developmental psychology to ethnomethodology to existential phenomenology.

I became aware of LW gradually over the past few years, mainly through mentions by people I follow on Twitter. As a lurker, there’s a lot about the LW community I’ve loved. On the other hand, I think some fundamental, generally-accepted ideas here are limited and misleading. I began considering writing about that recently, and posted some musings about whether and how it might be useful to address these misconceptions. (This was perhaps ruder than it ought to have been.) It prompted a reply post from Yvain, and much discussion on both his site and mine.

I followed that up with a more constructive post on aspects of how to think well that LW generally overlooks. In comments on that post, several frequent LW contributors encouraged me to re-post that material here. I may yet do that!

For now, though, I’ve started a sequence of LW articles on the difference between uncertainty and probability. Missing this distinction seems to underlie many of the ways I find LW thinking limited. Currently my outline for the sequence has seven articles, covering technical explanations of this difference, with various illustrations; the consequences of overlooking the distinction; and ways of dealing with uncertainty when probability theory is unhelpful.

(Kaj Sotala has suggested that I ask for upvotes on this self-introduction, so I can accumulate enough karma to move the articles from Discussion to Main. I wouldn’t have thought to ask that myself, but he seems to know what he’s doing here! :-)

O&BTW, I also write about contemporary trends in Buddhism, on several web sites, including a serial, philosophical, tantric Buddhist vampire romance novel.

Hi All LessWrongers, My name is Rupesh and I have PhD in mathematics. I been lurking here for a long time. The posts are of really very high quality. After visiting here for a while, I realised that rationality is not something you do just 9 to 5 at work, it must seep into your whole lifestyle.

Hello then.

I am a political science and international development undergrad student, residing mainly in Vienna, Austria. The story of how I came here is probably a rather common one - it started on TvTropes, where I am an on-off forum contributor and editor, where I first heard of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. After reading it, I decided to look further into the rationalist community, partly because of my interest for philosophy, ethics, politics and debating, but also hoping to find novel, intelligent and helpful approaches to several key questions I have been struggling with for a while.

I hope to be able to contribute soon in an efficient and constructive way - even though I have a lot of catching up to do. There's probably going to be a bit of an archive panic moment, what with having the sequences to finish. Lots to learn, and eager to do so. See you around!

Hi everyone, my name is Sara!

I am 21, live in Switzerland and study psychology. I am fascinated with the field of rationality and therefore wrote my Bachelor thesis on why and how critical thinking should be taught in schools. I started out with the plan to get my degree in clinical- and neuropsychology but will now change to developmental psychology for I was able to fascinate my supervising tutor and secure his full support. This will allow me to base my Master project on the development and enhancing of critical thinking and rationality, too. Do you have any recommendations?

After my Master's degree I still intend on getting an education as therapist (money reasons) or going into research (pushing the experimental research on rationality) and on giving a lot of money to the most effective charities around. I wonder if as therapist it would be smarter to concentrate on children or adults; both fields will be open for me after my university education (which will take me about 2.5-3 more years). I speak German, Swiss German, Italian, French and English (and understand some more languages), which will give me some freedom in the choice where to actually work in future.

...but I'm not only looking for advice here. I'm (mainly) interested in educating myself (and possibly other people around me). In fact, I am part of a Swiss group that translates less wrong articles into German, making the content available for more people in our surroundings (Switzerland, Germany, Austria).

I've learned a lot from this community and it has strongly shaped who I have become. There's no way I'd want to go back to my even more biased past self :)

Indeed, I am looking forward to learning more!

I'm a Swiss medical student. I've read HPMoR and a large part of the core sequences. I've attended LW meetups in several US cities and met quite a few of you in the Bay Area and/or at the Effective Altruism Summit. I've interned for Leverage Research. I co-founded giordano-bruno-stiftung.ch (outreach organisation with German translations of some LessWrong blog posts, and other posts about rationality). Looking forward to participating in the comment section more often.

I am a maximum-security ex-con who studied and used logic for pro se, civil-rights lawsuits. (The importance of being a maximum-security ex-con is that I was stubborn iconoclast who learned and used logic in all seriousness.) Logic helped me identify the weak links in my opponent's arguments and to avoid weak links in my own arguments, and logic helped my organize my writing and evidence. I also studied and learned to use “The Option Process” for eliminating my negative emotions and to understand other people's negative emotions. The core truth of “The Option Process” is that we choose to have negative emotions for reasons, not randomly, and not even necessarily. So, our rationality is very much a part of our emotions, and, as such, good reasoning can utterly remove negative emotions at the core of their raison d'être. However, some of my emotional and intellectual challenges have resisted solutions via logic and “The Option Process.” For example, I could not figure out how to stay objective and to behave objectively while trying to gamble for profit (not for fun). So, I began reading widely about self-control, discipline, integrity, neuroeconomics, etc. And, in the process, I found this LessWrong website.

I have only recently identified what may be at the root of my problem with gambling and why it resists both logic and “The Option Process.” Freud called it “childhood megalomania.” In our early years, whenever we cried and sniveled, the universe of Mom and Dad and others rushed to our needs. That inner baby rarely grows up well in any of us, and we still whine, snivel, and howl at the universe when things don't go our way, and we can get down right obstinate about doing so until the universe listens! The universe, in turn, responds favorably often enough to keep our inner babies convinced of our magic, temper-tantrum powers over reality.

I figured out that when I get frustrated, afraid, and challenged by the difficulties of gambling, I would rather feel safe, powerful and warm, and so I often lapse into an obstinate insistence on continuing to gamble because I want to believe and feel that I can successfully gamble whenever I want, even during objectively bad, fear-inducing, and frustrating conditions.

The universe has not been kind in that regard, but with my recent insight, I at least hope that my inner baby has grown one year older. The rest of the problem, the frustration and fear, will easily fall prey to the power of logic and “The Option Process.”

I'm Pasha, a financial journalist based in Tokyo.

I recently found out about this blog from this post on The View From Hell: http://goo.gl/DCNX4U

A few years in a school specialized in math and physics in the former Soviet Union have convinced me to seek my fortunes in liberal arts. (It's those kids in my class who would yell out an answer to a physics problem even before the teacher has finished reading the question.)

Covering the semiconductor industry here in Japan has sparked a renewed appreciation of the scientific method and revived my interest in rationality, math and computation. ... One thing leads to another and here I am ~

Hello, I am a 46 yr old software developer from Australia with a keen interest in Artificial Intelligence.

I don’t have any formal qualifications, which is a shame as my ideal life would be to do full time research in AI - without a PhD I realise this won’t happen, so I am learning as much as I can through books, practice and various online courses.

I came across this site today from a link via MIRI and feel like I have struck gold - the articles, sequences and discussions here are very well written, interesting and thoughtful.

My current goals are to build a framework that would allow a machine to manage its information (goals, tasks, raw data, external biases, weightings, and eventually its “knowledge”). As I understand it the last bit hasn’t been solved yet as it implies the machine needs a consciousness, but I am having fun playing around with it.

Hey, I'm dirtfruit.

I've lurked here for quite a while now. LessWrong is one of the most interesting internet communities I've observed, and I'd like to begin involving myself more actively. I've been to one meetup, in NYC, a few months ago, which was nice. I've read most of the sequences (I think I've read all of them at least once, but I haven't looked hard enough to be super-confident saying that). HPMOR is cool, I enjoyed reading it and continue to check for updates. I've tried to read most of what Eliezer has written, but gave up early on anything extremely technical, as I don't have the background for it. EY seems like a righteous dude to me. I dig his cause, and would like to make myself available to help, in what ways I can.

I'm currently 21 years old. I was born and raised on the west coast of the united states, and am now attending a college on the east coast studying fine art, with a concentration in drawing. I've always read a lot. When I was young; analog fiction, mostly. Now I most often find myself reading nonfiction online .

I'd like to find ways for artists (specifically me, but also other interested artists(to a lesser degree)) to be useful to the general cause of rationality; raising waterlines and whatnot. I believe there exists a general feeling among lesswrong users that artists can be fun, but are not very instrumentally useful to their particular cause. If this belief is misplaced, I'd be overjoyed to adjust it properly. I'm obviously biased, but I believe this feeling to be more than a few shades off from correct. Pictorial communication can be super intuitive. It can communicate very quickly relative to the written word, can be very memorable, and is capable of transcending many written/spoken language barriers. It's main downsides include: time-expense (drawing a picture generally takes longer than describing something verbally(spoken or written)); and scarcity of expertise - drawing and painting's difficulty curves seems roughly similar to that of writing, but they are practiced far less often than writing, and (nowadays, in the fine art world at least) held to very different standards. Experts in visual communication should be very instrumentally useful, for clarifying concepts not well suited to words, and also for attracting/aiding/communicating with those beyond the reach of literacy. I'm not claiming expertise (I'm still building my skills as a student), but at the very least I have some experience in crafting understandable, detailed pictures to something of a high standard. I'm also somewhat talented with words; integrating textual communication with visual communication (and visa versa) is something I'm sensitive to and interested in.

I also just really like the spirit and conventions of debate here, and would very much like to hear any and all thoughts about what I just wrote. :D thanks!

(also I think we need a new welcome thread? either that or I failed to find the proper one. This thread has far exceeded 500 posts...)

So: Here goes. I'm dipping my toe into this gigantic and somewhat scary pool/lake(/ocean?).

Here's the deal: I'm a recovering irrationalic. Not an irrationalist; I've never believed in anything but rationalism (in the sense it's used here, but that's another discussion), formally. But my behaviors and attitudes have been stuck in an irrational quagmire for years. Perhaps decades, depending on exactly how you're measuring. So I use "irrationalic" in the sense of "alcoholic"; someone who self-identifies as "alcoholic" is very unlikely to extol the virtues of alcohol, but nonetheless has a hard time staying away from the stuff.

And, like many alcoholics, I have a gut feeling that going "cold turkey" is a very bad idea. Not, in this case, in the sense that I want to continue being specifically irrational to some degree or another, but in that I am extremely wary of diving into the list of readings and immersing myself in rationalist literature and ideology (if that is the correct word) at this point. I have a feeling that I need to work some things out slowly, and I have learned from long and painful experience that my gut is always right on this particular kind of issue.

This does not mean that linking to suggested resources is in any way not okay, just that I'm going to take my time about reading them, and I suppose I'm making a weak (in a technical sense) request to be gentle at first. Yes, in principle, all of my premises are questionable; that's what rationalism means (in part). But...think about it as if you had a new, half-developed idea. If you tell it to people who tear it apart, that can kill it. That's kind of how I feel now. I'm feeling out this new(ish) way of being, and I don't feel like being pushed just yet (which people who know me might find quite rich; I'm a champion arguer).

Yes, this is personal, more personal than I am at all comfortable being in public. But if this community is anything like I imagine it to be (not that I don't have experience with foiled expectations!), I figure I'll probably end up divulging a lot more personal stuff anyway.

I honestly feel as if I'm walking into church for the first time in decades.

So why am I here then? Well, I was updating my long-dormant blog by fixing dead links &c, and in doing so, discovered to my joy that Memepool was no longer dead. There, I found a link to HPMOR. Reading this over the next several days contributed to my reawakening, along with other, more personal happenings. This is a journey of recovery I've been on for, depending on how you count, three to six years, but HPMOR certainly gave a significant boost to the process, and today (also for personal reasons) I feel that I've crossed a threshold, and feel comfortable "walking into church" again.

Alright, I'll anticipate the first question: "What are you talking about? Irrationality is an extremely broad label." Well, I'm not going to go into to too terribly much detail just now, but let's say that the revelation or step forward that occurred today was realizing that the extremely common belief that other people can make you morally wrong by their judgement is unequivocally false. This (that this premise is false) is what I strongly believed growing up, but...well, perhaps "strongly" is the wrong word. I had been raised in an environment that very much held that the opposite was true, that other people's opinion of you was crucial to your rightness, morality and worth as a human being. Nobody ever said it that way, of course, and would probably deny it if put that way, but that is nonetheless how most people believe. However, in my case it was so blatant that it was fairly easy to see how ridiculous it was. Nonetheless, as reasonable as my rational constructions seemed to me, there was really no way I could be certain that I was right and others were wrong, so I held a back-of-my-head belief, borne of the experience of being repeatedly mistaken that every inquisitive child experiences, that I would someday mature and come to realize I had been wrong all along.

Well, that happened. Sort of. Events in my life picked at that point of uncertainty, and I gave up my visceral devotion to rationality and personal responsibility, which led slowly down into an awful abyss that I'm not going to describe at just this moment, that I have (hopefully) at last managed to climb out of, and am now standing at the edge, blinking at the sunlight, trying to figure out precisely where to go from here, but wary of being blinded by the newfound brilliance and wishing to take my time to figure out the next step.

So again, then, why am I here? If I don't want to be bombarded with advice on how to think more rationally, why did I walk in here? I'm not sure. It seemed time, time to connect with people who, perhaps, could support me in this journey, and possibly shorten it somewhat.

I also notice that this thread has gone waaay beyond 500 comments; perhaps someone with more Karma than I can make a new Welcome thread?

Hi, I'm Denise from Germany, I just turned 19 and study maths at university. Right now, I spend most of my time with that and caring for my 3-year-old daughter. I know LessWrong for almost two years now, but never got around to write. However, I'm more or less involved with parts of the LessWrong and the Effective Altruism community, most of them originally found me via Okcupid (I stated I was a LessWrongian), and from there, it expanded.

I grew up in a small village in the middle of nowhere in Germany, very isolated without any people to talk to. I skipped a grade and did extremely well at school, but was mostly very unhappy during my childhood/teen years. Though I had free internet access, I had almost no access to education until I was 15 years old (and pregnant, and no, that wasn't unplanned), because I had no idea what to look for. I dropped out of school then and prepared for the exams -when I had time (I was mostly busy with my child)- I needed to do to be allowed to attend university. In Germany that's extremely unusual and most people don't even know you can do it without going to school.

When I was 15, I discovered enviromentalism (during pregnancy, via people who share my parenting values) and feminism. Since then, I seriously cared about making the world „a better place“. I was already very nerdy in my special fields of interest then, though still very uneducated and lacking basic concepts. Thankfully, I found LessWrong when I was just 17 and became very taken with it. I started to question my beliefs, became a utilitarian, adopted a somewhat transhumanist mindset and the usual, but the breakthrough only came last year after I started spending time with people from the community. Since then I am totally focused. Most people who have met me this year or at the end of 2012 are very surprised by this, I noticed that a lot of people completely overestimate my past selves (which is somewhat relieving, though I still feel like everyone from the LW/EA who is usually quite taken with me overestimates me). Until the beginning of this year, I even considered enviromentalism the most important problem (which is completely ridiculous for me now). Well, I had been a serious enviromentalist for three years, then I talked half an hour with another LessWrongian about it, who explained to me why it isn't the most important problem, so I dropped it on the same day. After thinking about it myself and talking to several LW/EAs (e.g. 80,000hours) I decided it's the best thing for me to study maths (my minor will be in computer science). People always tell me I worry too much about my future and I am already at a very good position, being so driven, etc. but I often think I have lost so many years now and there is so much to read and so much I don't know and so little time. Especially considering that I lose about 70% of my time awake to caring for my daughter (which people do never take into account at all. They just have no idea. Before last October, it was even 90%). I often felt extremely incompetent and lazy because other people get so much done in comparison to me. Well, I do feel a bit better after actually thinking about how big my disadvantages are, but it's still quite bad. Several people have asked me to consider internships, etc., but I mostly still feel too incompetent, and the even bigger problem, too socially awkward.

Rationality was very helpful in the past with personal problems (e.g., I have a very static mindset, which hasn't really been a problem so far because I always was able to do things despite of it, without having to work for them, but now, doing my maths degree, it doesn't work as well as in the past) and has heavily reduced them, though enough still remain. My productivity has increased a lot. There are a lot of things to do waiting for me, I can't afford losing time to personal inconveniences. (Though anyway most of my time and energy goes into my child and there isn't really much I can do about that.)

I'm very happy that I found LessWrong and like-minded people. If you have reading recommendations, please tell me. I am familiar with all the basic material (the Sequences, of course, the EA stuff, the self-improvement stuff, Bostrom's work, Kahneman...). If you have any other advice, I would also love to hear it.

Hi, I'm a second year engineering student at a university of California. I like engaging in rational discussions and find importance in knowing about what's going on in the world and gain more insight on controversial issues such as abortion, gay rights, sexuality, immigration, etc. Someone on Facebook directed me to this site but I easily get bored so I may or may not be much of a contribution.

Hello! I’m a 15 year old sophomore in high school, living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was introduced to rationality and Less Wrong while interning at Leverage Research, which was about a month ago.

I was given a free copy of Chapters 1-17 of HPMOR during my stay. I was hooked. I finished the whole series in two weeks and made up my mind to try and learn what it would be like being Harry.

I decided to learn rationality by reading and implementing The Sequences in my daily life. The only problem was, I discovered the length of the Eliezer’s posts from 2006-2010 was around around 10 Harry Potter books. I was told it would take months to read, and some people got lost along the way due to all the dependencies.

Luckily I am very interested in self improvement, so I decided that I should learn speed reading to avoid spending months dedicated solely to reading The Sequences. After several hours of training, I increased my reading speed (with high comprehension) five times, from around 150 words per minute to 700 words per minute. At that speed, it will take me 33.3 hours to read The Sequences.

It seems like most people advise reading The Sequences in chronological order in ebook form. Is using this ebook a good way to read The Sequences? Also, If I could spend 5 seconds to a minute after each blog post doing anything, what should I do? I was thinking of making some quick notes for myself to remember everything I read, perhaps with a spaced repetition system, or figuring out all the dependencies to smooth the way for future readers, perhaps leading to the easier creation of a training program...

Thanks for all your help, and I look forward to contributing to Less Wrong in the future!

Hello, Less Wrong, I'm Anna Zhang, a high school student. I found this site about half a month ago, after reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. On Mr. Yudkowsky's Wikipedia page, I found a link to his site, where I found a link to this site. I've been reading the sequence How to Actually Change Your Mind, as Mr. Yudkowsky recommended, and I've learned a lot from it (though I still have a lot to learn...)

Hi, Less Wrong.

I am idea21, I am from Spain and I apologize for my defective english.

I got acquainted with the existence of this forum thanks to the kindness of mister Peter Singer, he recommended me to expose my own idea about altruistic cultural development after questioning him whether he knew something similar about. Apparently there is nothing similar being discussed anywhere, which turned to be very dissapointing to me. But I still feel that "it" makes sense, at least from a logical point of view.

I will post here some excerpts of the message I wrote to Peter Singer, I hope any suggestion or comment from yours could be enlightening.

"Cultural changes about ethics have happened very slowly across history. According to some people they are motivated by economic issues (land´s property, trading, industrial development…) or political ones, also connected to economy. But although I read what Norbert Elias wrote about, it disturbs me the idea that the real change happens first in the people´s minds, influencing then to economics and politics, and not the other way around.

Primitive men started to create arts in Paleolithic previous to start agriculture in Neolithic. They decided to create arts, probably for the same reasons they decided to try to settle down: social needs, sharing emotional and intellectual activity in bigger groups. Agriculture was the economic answer to the practical problem of how affording sedentary way of life.

Norbert Elias (and Steven Pinker then) explains that an economic and political necessity urged authorities in the Middle Age to try to promote values of cooperation and less violent human relationships: that idea of the “civilité”, gentlemanliness, new rules of behavior advancing to modern humanism. But it seems to me that Elias and Pinker forget that rules to control individual aggression were created previous to the date they give (XIII century, as the European kings courts promoted the new gentle habits). The real origin of that is in monasticism, San Benito´s Rules are from VI Century, and monasticism did not start with the fall of the Roman Empire either. It did not start with Christianity, as a matter of fact. Buddhism started it.

All this reminded me what Miss Karen Armstrong wrote about “compassionate religions” and the “Axial Age”. So, the thing could be this way: First, intellectual changes happened (arts, communitarian life, ethics), and then new economic phenomena came, developing social, cultural, ideological forms; second, as social life increased human relationships, a new adaptation of individual behavior is demanded to control aggression.

It seems that monasticism is the answer to the need of developing new ways to control human behavior for the benefit of outside society, the same way that animals are tamed to be used by men. Monasticism is, basically, a "High-Performance Center" for behavior, producing “new men” able to control better the violent behavior and teaching these new discoveries for the outside people.

According to some current psychologists, like Simon Baron-Cohen, there are many people bearing features of “super-empathy”, being the opposite equivalent to the psychopaths, but unlike psychopaths, who can enjoy their own fitted sub-cultural environments (the underworld of criminality), there is not today a particular sub-cultural environment fitted for people particularly able to develop self-control of aggression and antiaggressive, affectionate and altruistic behavior. But in monasticism, these “super-empathic” people were specially fitted to develop patterns of aggression self-control: that psychological personal feature proved to be adaptive.

My idea (I hope not only mine…) is that monasticism should be re-invented.

A new monasticism of XXI century could be attractive for many young people, as providing them with emotional, intellectual and affectionate experiences that probably they could find nowhere else. It must be kept in mind that old monasticism existed because, at some extent, it fulfilled this kind of social needs for many people, particularly the young ones. Nobody compromises on the hard search for a future better world if they are not expecting to get, in that process, some kind of psychological reward in the present.

A monasticism of the XXI century would be, of course, very different from that of XVII century. It should be rational, atheist and non-authoritarian, emphasizing in affectionate and cooperative behavior by secluding from mainstream society. That could make much more against poverty that all the current NGO and every current humanitarian trend.

Human behavior is the “raw material” of humanitarianism. Not only because they could influence the mainstream society by demonstrating that a full antiagressive way of life is possible and emotionally rewarding, but also because the economic activity of “super-empathic” people culturally organized would be totally focused on altruistic work. Using modern technology, extremely cooperative organization and concentration of work resources (like in a “economy of war”) the results should be very good.

Remember that in Spain, in XVII century, there was a 2 % of population secluded from “civil life”, as monks, nuns or priests (and remember also the very committed communist activists of the first half of XX century). Can you imagine what a 2 % of this planet population could do with our technology, if rationally concerned to dedicate their lives only to ease human sufferance only in exchange for emotional, affectionate and intellectual rewards? Psychopaths are between 2 and 4 %: how many people “super-empathic” ones could exist? It would be worth trying to get them organized, culturally evolving for the whole world´s benefit.

Don´t underestimate young people idealism. The problem today is that they have not an alternative to start to create a better world outside our cultural, social and political mainstream limitations."

This idea could be develop much deeper, but I hope you will understand that it deals with the creation of a last religion, rational and of course atheist, in order to allow a furtther enhancing of human abilities for mutual cooperation.

As I mean "religion", I mean the necessity of developing an own system of cultural symbols and understandable patterns of social behaviour, which could not be the same as those of the current mainstream society (which is competitive, non-idealist and still irrational). As highly cooperative society could be based only on extreme trust and mutual altruism, it could be a bit similar to some traditions of the old compassionate religions, but now detached from any irrationality, any tradition and based on rational knowledge about human behaviour.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Hi everyone! I've been lurking around here for a few years, but now I want to be more active in the great discussions that often occur on this site. I discovered Less Wrong about 4 years ago, but the Methods of Rationality fanfic brought me here as a more attentive reader. I've read some of the sequences, and found them generally to use clear reasoning to make great points. If nothing else, reading them has definitely made me think very carefully about the way nature operates and how we perceive it.

In fact, this site was my first exposure to cognitive biases, and since then I've had the chance to study them further in college and read about them independently. This has been tremendously useful for me to understand why I and others I know behave the way we do.

I recently graduated college with a major in computer science and a decent exposure to math, having done some small independent research projects in machine learning. I'll soon begin a job as a software engineer at a late-stage startup that brings machine learning to the field of education.

I find that my greatest weakness with online communities is my tendency to return to lurking, even if I find the content very engaging. I hope to avoid that problem here, and at least continue participating in the comment threads.

Hello, everyone. I stumbled upon LW after listening to Eliezer make some surprisingly lucid and dissonance-free comments on Skepticon's death panel that inspired me to look up more of his work.

I've been browsing this site for a few days now, and I don't think I've ever had so many "Hey, this has always irritated me, too!" moments in such short intervals, from the rant about "applause lights" to the discussions about efficient charity work. I like how this site provides some actual depth to the topics it discusses, rather than hand the reader a bullet list of trivialities and have them figure out the application.

I am working as a direct marketing consultant, in the process of getting my MBA (a decision I've started to regret; my faith in the scientific validity of academic management begins to resemble a Shepard Tone) and with future ambitions in entrepreneurship, investing, scaling and other things that fit in the "things I've never done yet smart people are supposed to be good at" box.

I'm a member of Mensa, casual Poker (winning) and Mahjong (losing) player, enjoy lifting weights, cooking (in an utterly unscientific way that would make Heston Blumenthal weep) and martial arts. I also have an imaginary -5yo son/daughter who keeps me motivated to put in more hours at work so we won't have financial worries once they get born.

There are a bunch of things I'd like to do with my life long-term, with varying amounts of megalomania, but I'm generally content with focusing on increasing my financial and (practical) intellectual power in the short- to mid-term and let the future decide just how far off my predictions and plans turn out to be. Estimates range from very to utterly.

Here's hoping LW will help me with that, and that I'll be helpful to others.

Hello! I'm here because...well, I've read all of HPMOR, and I'm looking for people who can help me find the truth and become more powerful. I work as an engineer and read textbooks for fun, so hopefully I can offer some small insights in return.

I'm not comfortable with death. I've signed up for cryonics, but still perceive that option as risky. As a rough estimate, it appears that current medical research is about 3% of GDP and extends lifespans by about 2 years per decade. I guess that if medical research spending were increased to 30% of current GDP, then most of us would live forever while feeling increasingly healthy. Unfortunately, raising taxes to achieve this is not realistic -- doubling taxes for an uncertain return is a hard sell, and I have been unable to find research quantifying the link between public research spending and healthcare technology improvements. Another approach is inventing a technology to increase the overall economy size by 10x, by creating a practical self-replicating robot. This is possible in principle (as demonstrated by Hod Lipson in 2006 and by FANUC robot arm factories daily) but I am currently not a good enough programmer to design and build a fully automated RepRap assembly system in a reasonable amount of time. Also, there are many smart and innovative people at Willow Garage, FANUC and other similar organizations, and it seems unlikely I could exceed the slow and incremental progress of those groups. A third option, trying to create super-level AI to make self-replicating robots for me, is even more difficult and unlikely. A fourth option, not taking heroic responsibility, would make me uncomfortable because I'm not that optimistic about the future. As it is, since dropping out of a PhD program I'm not confident in my ability to complete such a large project. Any practical help would be appreciated, as I would prefer not to rely on the untestable promises of quantum immortality, or on the faith that life is a computer game.