byrnema comments on Engaging Intellectual Elites at Less Wrong - Less Wrong

11 Post author: lukeprog 13 August 2013 05:55PM

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Comment author: byrnema 13 August 2013 10:37:36PM *  3 points [-]

When I saw the title, "Engaging Intellectual Elites at Less Wrong" I thought -- woohoo, they're interested in being interesting again!

I return to Less Wrong very frequently but the topics don't seem to interest me as much as they did years ago. Most articles seem to be about meet-ups, and with some thought I could identify why some of the other topics (such as the ones about optimal charity) are less interesting to me.

I thought the topics on metaphysics were really fascinating. I'm not sure that's the correct term but metaphysical what-is-the-structure-of-the-universe-possibly-like and what are different ways I can imagine my role in the system in ways that stretch my brain? This seemed something very unique about the content here at Less Wrong when I started spending time here.

I find interesting stuff on the 'Recent on Rationality Blogs' section often and enjoy watching TED talks.

...I've been wondering for a while if this disconnect in interest means I'm belonging to a different subset than the typical target of this blog.

(The last sentence the most sincere and subtle way I could think of to distance myself from the immodesty of self-identifying as an intellectual elite. In contrast, I appreciate leplen's cavalier approach in the opening sentence.)

Fascinating topics include:

  • considering death and exploring ways that can be felt about it at different emotional/cognitive distances

  • the simulation hypothesis, levels of reality, layers of maps verses territory, etc

  • understanding values, stability of values, subjective verses extrinsic morality, wire-heading