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!
Hey y'all, I come here both as a friend and with an agenda. I'm scary.
See I have a crazy pet theory... (and yes it's a TOE, fancy that!)
...and I'd love to give it a small home on the Internet. Here?
This like to share it with you because this community seems to be be the proper blend of open minded and skeptical. Which is what the damn thing needs.
Anyways I've lurked for quite awhile, and you guys have been great at opening my mind to a lot of things. I figure this might be good enough and crazy enough to give something back.
As a personal note, I'm currently an engineer who is wondering if he should go back to school to become an academic. When I was a college student at a big faceless university, I was too awkward, clueless, and erratic to navigate the system in a way that got me attention so grabbed my degree and ran.
BTW I'm not one of those foaming at the mouth mofos who will debate endlessly and fruitlessly in an attacking manner toward anyone who dare criticize his crackpot theory. I'm more like "man, why does this idea have to be so damn compelling, better get it out on the web". I've also posted it extremely little thus far, I do not design to spray it all over the internet.
The response to your theory, though, will depend on whether it's one of those. And the response to "should I tell you my new theory" will depend on the fact that such theories have some probability of being one of those. Ultimately, you have to tell us the theory to know how we'll react.