Hello. I am a librarian of the public sphere. With my education recently completed, I hope to expand into other spheres of information work while I am still young. I am 24 and have spent a fourth of my life serving the public in libraries. I have built collections, websites, programs, and physical rooms for my libraries. I know I do not have to explain the joys of a library here. My goal since first learning to learn has always been to improve the world by offering it the very thing that improved me. If we are all finding ways to save the world, then I found that my way cuts through the middle of the information itself. I am currently working with a set of newspapers as a reporter and editor in order to gain experience in journalism and publication. I’ve found informational outreach, reporting, and media use to be severely lacking in librarians. I took on a job that will teach me those skills and as well as the many errors ignorance of them can bring.

Having read through the core sequences of LessWrong, I know this is a place that can sharpen me. Indeed, it already has. In the weeks I've spent absorbing the central sequences, I have eliminated many useless habits from my routines and introduced new ones. I first found LW years ago while researching AI basics. I stumbled upon the AI Box experiment discussions. I’ll admit, I thought the community overly serious and overconfident and ignored it (also ignoring the “they might have a point” trepidation in the back of my mind). I recently reanalyzed the LW articles I read, my own private studies having convinced me of points I took as silly years ago. I’ve decided I don’t want to just watch. I want to be part of a dynamic group willing to improve and improve on improvement. I don’t want to only read about the thoughts of people with the same values as me. I want to be able to talk with them.

I’ll introduce myself with my first real thought. My first “I’m thinking this” thought. I made it as a toddler when I stood up in my bed and looked out a window. We lived in a trailer in my grandparents' backyard. The trailer sat by a small pond. Across the pond, my grandfather had built a shed surrounded by rows of chickens on tethers. A light hung on the shed corner, illuminating the chicken’s tiny houses and the water beside. One night, I wanted to see the shed in the dark. I saw it in the daytime daily, but I wanted to see it at night because I knew it would be different. The chickens would be inside, the shed would be closed, and the pond still. I thought that the scene would be spooky, like the pictures I saw in books. So, I stood up and looked out and loved it. I still remember how it all looked that night, though a bit like a watercolor painting now. I’d taken what I knew about the world from picture books, experience, and personal feelings, predicted something (“It’ll look spooky and I’ll enjoy the sight”), and acted on it.

Shockingly, I didn't become a rationalist then. My real thoughts at the time were most likely “Cool light” and “I like to see things.” I didn't take on any advance techniques for thinking until my mid-teens, when I sat through a creationism seminar. After watching an eight-hour video series (by the preeminent Kent Hovind, for the curious), I considered that if creationism were true, this must mean something in the real world of facts. Rocks, plants, cultures, and space ought to resemble a world so young and lately wetted by floods. When I examined the world, I saw that they did not. I understood that my beliefs, the ideas I accepted as true, must reflect the real facts of the world. I began to teach myself and started to break apart the reliance on authority for knowledge that we are taught in school. Though I didn’t vocalize it, I understood that my best lessons (perhaps my only lessons) I had taught myself. That real learning couldn’t be handed down from on high but needed to be ferreted up from the world. I also found that research is much more fun than homework, though I still preferred games to learning for a few years more.

By college, I had taken on the title of a “reasonable” person (I did not use the word “rationalist” because, as a student of C.S. Lewis' theological writings, I had come to associate it with an atheism that is emotional, circular, and self-defeating). I rejected dogma, holy text literalism, and the “us vs. them” mentality of politics because they did not reflect the reality. I thought myself very utilitarian, very deep.

I had a conversation with a friend (at the time, a near stranger) about the evolution of the mind. The topic of the evolution of religion came up, and, with him an atheist and I a theist, there was some tension. I defended the merits of theism and he answered with explanations of how religion and similar ideas can come from flaws in human psychology rather than from a reflection of real facts. The turn in the conversation came when I said something along the lines of, “Even if religion, or any idea, is only a creation of the human mind, it can still be worth believing. I’ll still believe it.” When I said the words and heard them out loud, I knew I could not accept them. Because I had spoiled the trick of self-deceit. I could not believe any set of facts if I also admitted that they did not reflect reality.

My face must have changed to reflect my thoughts. Instead of growing frustrated with me, my friend smiled and said, “I love a person who thinks.” I should not have to add that he and I are remarkably close now.

I want peers who continue to challenge me. I can only grow so close to someone who accepts me as I am and does not offer me more than myself. I want to be part of a group where I am not the best. I was the best in high school. I did not learn nearly enough. I was one of the best in college. I learned more, but still not enough. The people I have seen here challenge me. That challenge is stunning sometimes (the habits of certain LWers gives me an envy that later turns to joy to know such minds exist). I have found that every stunned shock brought on by an LWer is often followed by a personal realization of my own. That is the greatest reward: to feel myself improve. I have accepted the responsibility of bringing the catalog that charts the world to other humans. To do so, I need a group of cartographers not content with only the coastlines we know.

So, once again, hello!