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Evan_Gaensbauer comments on Open thread, Jan. 19 - Jan. 25, 2015 - Less Wrong
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Uhm. this is an rather weird way to describe how I think.. but, I feel like I've come full-circle. I'm automatically thinking of ways to optimize, automatically try to better understand the world about me. I'm reading LW articles and I sometimes think "yeah, I know about this".. I no longer feel the "Aha! How did I not realize this seemingly obvious thing I should have thought of already that hurts me nerd always-be-right ego!" but rather, I read mid-post and just feel like I know this stuff already.
Naturally, I still am not 100% perfect, but I still think I'm on the right path. I've been mostly a lurker and registered not long ago. Has anyone else gotten the same feel? This feeling isn't really backed up by anything other than having a "I know this already" thought.
I haven't "come full-circle", but I've had a similar experience. I haven't read all of LessWrong Sequences, maybe not even half. Some old friends of mine got me into the meetup at a time when I was studying microeconomics, and started majoring in cognitive science. So, I was enthralled by discussion, and went around the Internet and life learning about related topics. Occasionally, I read Sequences essays I haven't read before, and I realize I get the gist halfway through reading it.
That's my "yeah, I know about this...". It works for me epistemically. It might have helped that I tried to rationalize the existence of the Christian God as a child, up to the point of deism not specific to any religion, and finally to virtual atheism. I found by the time I encountered arguments for or against the existence of God in theology or philosophy in university, I wasn't phased by any of them because I'd generated all of them on my own before. That's another "yeah, I know about this" set of experiences, rather than a series of "Aha!'s" I expected. These mental exercises may have prepared me for future thinking on LessWrong.
Sometimes I'm not as curious as I used to be, and I don't often automatically think of ways to optimize. Instrumentally, I don't believe I'm "on the right path" for fulfilling my own goals. However, that is confounded by other factors of my own life I'm not willing to discuss publicly. So, I'm unsure how instrumentally rational I may or may not be.