Hi Algernoq,

Thanks for writing this. This sentence particularly resonated:

LW members who are conventionally successful (e.g. PhD students at top-10 universities) typically became so before learning about LW, and the LW community may or may not support their continued success (e.g. may encourage them, with only genuine positive intent, to spend a lot of time studying Rationality instead of more specific skills).

I was definitely explicitly discouraged from pursuing a PhD by certain rationalists and I think listening to their advice would have been one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Unfortunately I see this attitude continuing to be propagated so I am glad that you are speaking out against it.

EDIT: Although, it looks like you've changed my favorite part! The text that I quoted the above was not the original text (which talked more about dropping out of PhD and starting a start-up).