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!
Hello all,
I found this site from a link in the comments section of an SCP Foundation post, which consequently linked to one of Eliezer's stranger allegorical pieces about the dangers of runaway AI intelligence getting the best of us. I've been hooked since.
Thanks to this site, I'm relearning university physics through Feynman, have plans to pick up a couple textbooks from the recommended list, and plan on taking the opportunity to meet some hopefully intellectually stimulating people in person if any of the meetups you guys seem to regularly have manage to ever make it closer to the general Massachusetts area.
I recently graduated with a B.S in Chemistry with the now odd realization that I haven't really learned anything during my experiences at university. I hope participating here will alleviate this void of knowledge I could have potentially learned.
Furthermore, if I'm lucky, I might get to contribute to the plethora of useful discussions that seem to populate this site. If I'm even luckier, those contributions will be positive. Let's just hope I learn fast enough to make sure luck isn't the deciding factor for such an outcome.
I am also curious as to the level of regular activity this site receives, perhaps a link to some statistics? Any reply would be greatly appreciated.
Also, I don't know if this is really relevant here, but I'd like to mention that I have a weird dream of someday inventing direct mental communication between people that doesn't involve the use of language, or at the very least help such a project along if any exist. I don't know if anybody will care for such news, or even if this is a realistic goal to strive for considering the multitude of other priorities I have in life, but hey, it is what it is. Supposedly, meeting such a goal would at least require some optimization of my own ability to think clearly and correctly. Yet another reason to come here, no doubt.
Well, here goes nothing! Hi guys!
Welcome!