Welcome to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013)

KnaveOfAllTrades

30 Welcome to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013)

26th Jul 2013

7 min read

30

If you've recently joined the Less Wrong community, please leave a comment here and introduce yourself. We'd love to know who you are, what you're doing, what you value, how you came to identify as an aspiring rationalist or how you found us. You can skip right to that if you like; the rest of this post consists of a few things you might find helpful. More can be found at the FAQ.

A few notes about the site mechanics

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However, it can feel really irritating to get downvoted, especially if one doesn't know why. It happens to all of us sometimes, and it's perfectly acceptable to ask for an explanation. (Sometimes it's the unwritten LW etiquette; we have different norms than other forums.) Take note when you're downvoted a lot on one topic, as it often means that several members of the community think you're missing an important point or making a mistake in reasoning— not just that they disagree with you! If you have any questions about karma or voting, please feel free to ask here.

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It's definitely worth your time commenting on old posts; veteran users look through the recent comments thread quite often (there's a separate recent comments thread for the Discussion section, for whatever reason), and a conversation begun anywhere will pick up contributors that way. There's also a succession of open comment threads for discussion of anything remotely related to rationality.

Discussions on Less Wrong tend to end differently than in most other forums; a surprising number end when one participant changes their mind, or when multiple people clarify their views enough and reach agreement. More commonly, though, people will just stop when they've better identified their deeper disagreements, or simply "tap out" of a discussion that's stopped being productive. (Seriously, you can just write "I'm tapping out of this thread.") This is absolutely OK, and it's one good way to avoid the flamewars that plague many sites.

EXTRA FEATURES:

There's actually more than meets the eye here: look near the top of the page for the "WIKI", "DISCUSSION" and "SEQUENCES" links.

LW WIKI: This is our attempt to make searching by topic feasible, as well as to store information like common abbreviations and idioms. It's a good place to look if someone's speaking Greek to you.

LW DISCUSSION: This is a forum just like the top-level one, with two key differences: in the top-level forum, posts require the author to have 20 karma in order to publish, and any upvotes or downvotes on the post are multiplied by 10. Thus there's a lot more informal dialogue in the Discussion section, including some of the more fun conversations here.

SEQUENCES: A huge corpus of material mostly written by Eliezer Yudkowsky in his days of blogging at Overcoming Bias, before Less Wrong was started. Much of the discussion here will casually depend on or refer to ideas brought up in those posts, so reading them can really help with present discussions. Besides which, they're pretty engrossing in my opinion.

A few notes about the community

If you've come to Less Wrong to discuss a particular topic, this thread would be a great place to start the conversation. By commenting here, and checking the responses, you'll probably get a good read on what, if anything, has already been said here on that topic, what's widely understood and what you might still need to take some time explaining.

If your welcome comment starts a huge discussion, then please move to the next step and create a LW Discussion post to continue the conversation; we can fit many more welcomes onto each thread if fewer of them sprout 400+ comments. (To do this: click "Create new article" in the upper right corner next to your username, then write the article, then at the bottom take the menu "Post to" and change it from "Drafts" to "Less Wrong Discussion". Then click "Submit". When you edit a published post, clicking "Save and continue" does correctly update the post.)

If you want to write a post about a LW-relevant topic, awesome! I highly recommend you submit your first post to Less Wrong Discussion; don't worry, you can later promote it from there to the main page if it's well-received. (It's much better to get some feedback before every vote counts for 10 karma—honestly, you don't know what you don't know about the community norms here.)

Alternatively, if you're still unsure where to submit a post, whether to submit it at all, would like some feedback before submitting, or want to gauge interest, you can ask / provide your draft / summarize your submission in the latest open comment thread. In fact, Open Threads are intended for anything 'worth saying, but not worth its own post', so please do dive in! Informally, there is also the unofficial Less Wrong IRC chat room, and you might also like to take a look at some of the other regular special threads; they're a great way to get involved with the community!

If you'd like to connect with other LWers in real life, we have meetups in various parts of the world. Check the wiki page for places with regular meetups, or the upcoming (irregular) meetups page. There's also a Facebook group. If you have your own blog or other online presence, please feel free to link it.

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:

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!}

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30 Welcome to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013)

by KnaveOfAllTrades

26th Jul 2013

7 min read

518

30

A few notes about the site mechanics

EXTRA FEATURES:

There's actually more than meets the eye here: look near the top of the page for the "WIKI", "DISCUSSION" and "SEQUENCES" links.

A few notes about the community

A list of some posts that are pretty awesome

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!

_{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!}

Open Threads

Personal Blog

30

New Comment

Rendering 0/518 comments, sorted by

top scoring

(show more) Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 2:47 PM

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LawrenceC12y100

Hi, everyone. I'm Lawrence and I'm a college freshman. I like to read, program, and do math in my spare time.

I grew up in the Bay Area with science and religion as my two ideals. My family was religious and went to church every Sunday, but at the same time they put a strong emphasis on learning science - by the time I was in fourth grade, the amount of science books my parents bought me (and that I read) filled an entire bookshelf. I loved religion because I felt like it gave meaning to the world, teaching us to be kind and to respect one another. But, perhaps paradoxically, that made me love science as well, for science gave us medicine, technologies, and other ways to help the poor and heal the sick, things that God commanded us to do.

My faith in religion took a hit in 5th grade, when a close family member was diagnosed with cancer. Neither the prayers of our Christian friends nor the medicine of her doctors helped. We moved to China to pursue alternate treatment, but in the end nothing could save her, and she passed away. I pleaded with God to bring her back, to enact some miracle. No miracles happened. Some of our Christian friends told us that it was all God's plan, and that she was with God now. But I remembered asking myself, if God is so great, why did He cause us so much suffering?

I asked myself this question, and I found no answer. I read the Bible again and I looked online, but still, no answer. In fact, I found many arguments against the existence of God, and against my faith. Most famous scientists, I discovered, also didn't believe that God existed. And so I slowly, painfully moved away from my faith.

Having turned myself away from God, I devoted myself to doing good in the world. I resolved to help end suffering, I told my family. They called me crazy. The suffering in the world wasn't going to end itself, I retorted angrily. They were amused. After that, I weighed the options before me: either I could study science, and maybe maybe invent something that could help the world, or, I could try to become rich, and then donate my money to charities and researchers who could then help the world. I decided to choose the latter. So I set down my science books and picked up economics books and biographies.

However, I always felt there was more time. After all, I was making some money off my investments, I read a lot more books than most of my peers, and I had taught myself calculus by 8th grade. My classes were easy. I started slacking off. I stopped reading as many books as I used to. I am ashamed to say this, but I lost my ambition. It was only through a combination of talent, prior knowledge, and luck that I managed to make it all the way through middle and high school.

I discovered LessWrong around December of last year, through HPMOR. I quickly tore through all the sequences in less than three months. Boy, did it have an effect. The things said here resonated with me. After reading Challenging the Difficult, I realized how far I had to improve, and how complacent I had become. After How to Actually Change Your Mind, I looked out at the world and saw how many problems there were to fix. After reading My Coming of Age, I felt that spark again, the will to do good in the world and to fight against poverty, ignorance, and death.

LessWrong made me panic, because it gave me a sense of how great these problems are. It also gave me hope, because it showed me a path to self-improvement. It was the first time I felt truly awed and outclassed, but also really motivated. Truly, there would be no god to save us. If we don't work hard enough, if we aren't smart enough, we can and will die.

Today I'm trying to improve myself. I've been doing two hours of math a day - I am almost done with multivariate calculus and am looking to begin probability theory soon. I finished a course on R a while ago and halfway through Learn You a Haskell For Great Good. Like Harry at the end of HPMOR, I am climbing the power ladder, albeit from very far down.

People ask me sometimes, what motivates you? Why don't you go out and have fun? And to them I reply with a quote from John Donne. “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

I am involved in mankind. I'm going to fight for it, and I'm not going to give up we reach the stars or die trying. It's not going to be easy. I know it's not. But it's not a fight we can give up on.

I look forward to contributing here!

[anonymous]12y10

Hello and welcome to LessWrong!

Thank you for sharing your story. You're passion is quite clear and I'm glad you've decided to join in the conversation. Your drive is impressive. And infectious. It's the sort of energy we (or, at least, I) feed off of around here. You will definitely find people who share you're need for desperate action. I'm curious what you're current plans after college are. Do you have an idea what it is you want to do with your skills and knowledge? You seem to already have the "get rich" thing sewn up so that it's no longer ... (read more)

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