(Thread A for January 2017 is here, this was created as a duplicate but it's too late to fix it now.)
Hi, do you read the LessWrong website, but haven't commented yet (or not very much)? Are you a bit scared of the harsh community, or do you feel that questions which are new and interesting for you could be old and boring for the older members?
This is the place for the new members to become courageous and ask what they wanted to ask. Or just to say hi.
The older members are strongly encouraged to be gentle and patient (or just skip the entire discussion if they can't).
Newbies, welcome!
The long version:
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!
re: self evident. If no one is left alive to question, then there are no more questions from us. Tree-falling in the woods. Does it fall is no-one notices? Yes. Do we care? On what foundation do we judge this new lack of tree?
We "know" so little, or at least know our knowledge is imperfect, so we also know that we would form more coherent/accurate/cogent value judgements if we had more information which was accurate. Our present judgements on moral value are likely to change with a greater understanding of reality.
If, right now, we don't value human existence as much as we ought to, we can only discover how correct that judgement is, with more data/information.
We don't know what we are wrong about, and what we are wrong about informs our value judgement.
If a person is a misanthropist, the pursuit of accurate knowledge is the pursuit of proving one's own bias irrational.
That process is valuable. In order to validate the "choices" we make now, someone needs to be able to learn from them, and validate them, or not. Continued human existence, is a core of moral philosophy. Morality cannot exist in a void. Morality exists because we do.
Questioning is intrinsically definitive of human value, because without it, our existence is without experience. The difference between experience and reality, is the unknown.
So what?
Equivalent: If, right now, we value human existence more than we ought to, we can only discover how correct that judgement is, with more data/information.
As you yourself point out, "we don't know what we are wrong about".
Sure, but again, so what? You treat the existence of mo... (read more)