A few notes about the site mechanics
A few notes about the community
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:
- The Worst Argument in the World
- That Alien Message
- How to Convince Me that 2 + 2 = 3
- Lawful Uncertainty
- Your Intuitions are Not Magic
- The Planning Fallacy
- The Apologist and the Revolutionary
- Scope Insensitivity
- The Allais Paradox (with two followups)
- We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think
- The Least Convenient Possible World
- The Third Alternative
- The Domain of Your Utility Function
- Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality
- The True Prisoner's Dilemma
- The Tragedy of Group Selectionism
- Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided
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!
People try to do that all the time. One of the best ways is to simply ask other people to change their reactions, and explain why - some people will listen (especially if you point out how the new environment will benefit them as well) while others won't. (Mind you, even the ones that listen will probably be slow to change their reactions... habits are not easily broken)
I'd also suggest, at the same time, changing your reactions to match your preferred environment; give everyone around you an example to follow.
If you have a position of authority (e.g. a university lecturer in a classroom) you could even use that authority to mandate how students are allowed to react - again, it would help to point out how the ability to change your mind is helpful to the students.
I think that it can be right to attempt to change peoples' reactions, if that change is to their benefit and the means employed to effect the change are ethical (i.e. ask them to change, don't put a gun to their head and force them to change).
Just asking seems a little to plain to work, but I do know some very few people who would listen. The thing is that, by doing so, they are somewhat already reacting rationally. Now I'm thinking maybe I should gather a couple of those people and someone who is less inclined to change his mind and try to "convert" him by providing an environment in which it is ok to be mistaken and good to be corrected... Then I just repeat this process inductively until we take over he world, don't I?
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