A few notes about the site mechanics
A few notes about the community
If English is not your first language, don't let that make you afraid to post or comment. You can get English help on Discussion- or Main-level posts by sending a PM to one of the following users (use the "send message" link on the upper right of their user page). Either put the text of the post in the PM, or just say that you'd like English help and you'll get a response with an email address.
* Normal_Anomaly
* Randaly
* shokwave
* Barry Cotter
A note for theists: you will find the Less Wrong community to be predominantly atheist, though not completely so, and most of us are genuinely respectful of religious people who keep the usual community norms. It's worth saying that we might think religion is off-topic in some places where you think it's on-topic, so be thoughtful about where and how you start explicitly talking about it; some of us are happy to talk about religion, some of us aren't interested. Bear in mind that many of us really, truly have given full consideration to theistic claims and found them to be false, so starting with the most common arguments is pretty likely just to annoy people. Anyhow, it's absolutely OK to mention that you're religious in your welcome post and to invite a discussion there.
A list of some posts that are pretty awesome
I recommend the major sequences to everybody, but I realize how daunting they look at first. So for purposes of immediate gratification, the following posts are particularly interesting/illuminating/provocative and don't require any previous reading:
- The Worst Argument in the World
- That Alien Message
- How to Convince Me that 2 + 2 = 3
- Lawful Uncertainty
- Your Intuitions are Not Magic
- The Planning Fallacy
- The Apologist and the Revolutionary
- Scope Insensitivity
- The Allais Paradox (with two followups)
- We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think
- The Least Convenient Possible World
- The Third Alternative
- The Domain of Your Utility Function
- Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality
- The True Prisoner's Dilemma
- The Tragedy of Group Selectionism
- Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided
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!
Once a post gets over 500 comments, the site stops showing them all by default. If this post has 500 comments and you have 20 karma, please do start the next welcome post; a new post is a good perennial way to encourage newcomers and lurkers to introduce themselves. (Step-by-step, foolproof instructions here; takes <180seconds.)
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, a big thank you to everyone that helped write this post via its predecessors!
Hi! I first saw LW as a node on a map of neoreactionary web sites. Which I guess is a pretty weird way to find it, since I'm not myself a neoreactionary and LW doesn't seem to fit the map. You have to stretch pretty far to connect some of those nodes.
Fortunately, I took a look at the Less Wrong community, and it's been really interesting to explore. I figured I should introduce myself, since I posted in another thread. I'm in my early 30's and I'm studying in the life sciences at the postgraduate level. I'm a Christian. I'm also a married father, and a veteran. So. Probably somewhat atypical (I peeked at the survey results.)
I'm excited by several of the big problems that seem to animate LW: minimizing cognitive bias day-to-day, optimizing philanthropy, and working through received ideology. I know zip about AI, but addressing existential risk is really interesting to me indirectly, as it relates to forecasting and mitigating mere catastrophes*, a challenge for wonks and technocrats and scientists (and everybody, of course). In fact, if anybody knows of LW'ers or other rationalists interested in policy problems of that nature I'd be super grateful for a pointer or a link.
In conclusion, I read ZeroHedge far too much, sometimes wear Vibrams, and am thrilled to meet all of you.
*is there a better word? My jargon is level 0.
That brings up some interesting questions. The last survey placed self-identified neoreactionaries as a very small percentage of LW readership (scroll down to "Alternate Politics Question"). Progressivism appears to be the most popular political philosophy around here, with libertarianism a strong competitor; nothing else is in the running.
That's not the first time I've heard LW r... (read more)