Hi. I'm Gunnar. I'm from Germany. I'm lurking lesswrong since July 25th.

How did I become a rationalist? I always was. Or at least I continuously became.

I had a scientific interest as a child. My curiosity was satisfied by my parents with answers, experiments, construction toys and books, math courses and later boarding school (this was in germany when there was a hype on talent advancement).

I must have been eleven or twelve when I had one of the strongest aha moments I remember: The realization of the concept of continuous functions. That a relationship like 2x+1 can not only be applied to single numbers and tabulated but realizes continuous curves. All the possibilities hit me like a hammer: Movements, prices, all kinds of dependencies could be described arbitrarily fine.

That moment had a lasting effect on me. I always find myself wondering what lies between the known points. Between the extremes. In a way this has become part of my philosophy of seeing and valuing the in-between. Some higher level Goldilocks solution.

I read my fathers shelves of science and science fiction as a youth. I tend to absorb and accept 'facts' in books too easily. Luckily I have a skeptic friend to get me back down to earth.

During boarding school there was a significant transition from abstract mathematics to computer science which gave me significant insights into modeling, simulation, complex structures. And the feeling of power over the machine. Of course I later fell into the trap of conceiving my own super programming language operating system.

I remember being asked during boarding school (9th grade) about my best talent. I answered: My tolerance. I could understand almost any behavior. I couldn't necessarily empathize with it or feel it. But I knew it existed, was right for the person/persons acting and was in general part of life.

I didn't know then that I hadn't really experienced much of life - only read about it. And that real tolerance means not only to understand and connive but to accept and endure.

During university after absorbing computer science until soaked I finally broadend out to cognitive science (mind opener: 'explorations in the microstructure of cognition') and later social sciences (mind opener: 'judgement under uncertainty heuristics and biases'.

I learned about real life from and with my wife. Strong emotions, child education, hard work and more.

What did I think about all that I learned?

As a child I must have figured that everything can be understood - given enough time and effort.

I thought early and much about God and morality and spirituality.I wondered how God could fullfil his promises. How he could be the way he is – if he is. There was always doubt. There could be a God. And his promise could be real. But it also could be that this is all a fairy tale run amok in human brains searching for explanations where there are none. Which is right? It is difficult to put probabilities to stories. I see that I have slowly moved from 50/50 agnosticism to tolerent atheism.

I can hit small targets - especially if they are far away. And my objective is on healing, improvement. I admit that my utility function is centered on me, my family, my friends and 'social network' and fades out slowly toward society at large. I am not very altruistic to the public in general.I understand effective altruism. And I value it. But also I cannot go against my affection to my family and especially my four sons. That I got from my parents.

That's me. What do I expect of LW? What can you expect of me on LW? I'm not clear yet. I already knew much of what is on LW when I came here. But I enjoyed the crisp and detailed posts. Refreshing or deepening rationality never hurts. I esp. like EYs stories. They bring rationality 'to the masses'. I will definitely read hpmor to my sons when they are old enough.

I think I can enrich lesswrong with critical views on the singularity. I have some strong arguments and even empirical evidence that there might be inherent complexity limits to technology and cognition which essentially render super intelligence infeasible (I see UFAI as a risk nonetheless).

And then I have some ideas on AI which build on a synthesis of logic and neuronal (vague) models which I'd like to share and discuss.

Maybe I will also share life experience. It seems that I am fairly old for this community and can do something about the arrogance risk (which I myself feel too) and about life expectations.