If you're reading through some of the posts in the core sequences and understanding them pretty well then you're not dumb. Even if it requires lots of thinking and re-reading.
There's an idea that being smart means that you can understand anything quickly and easily, but that's not really true (at most, it is sometimes one unreliable sign of intelligence). Being good at something doesn't mean that it's always easy for you, it means that you can work to meet the challenges that you face. With intelligence, a big part of that is being able to recognize when you don't understand something, and to keep thinking it through and investigating it until you've figured it out. Which sounds like what you're doing.
If a new idea comes quickly to someone, a lot of the time that's because it's already relatively familiar to them - they have the necessary background knowledge and know about related concepts, so it's relatively easy for them to add this one new piece of knowledge. (If you've gotten to the posts on inferential distance then this will sound familiar to you.) Your educational background means that a lot of the topics being discussed on LW will be less familiar to you than they are to many other people on LW, so of course it's going to take more work for you to figure them out. The fact that you're putting in that work and figuring them out is a sign of your ability to learn. It doesn't mean that you're dumb.
If this post is inappropriate, I apologize.
I stumbled upon this site after reading "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality". The story so far has really moved me on multiple levels and sent me here in a quest to learn more about rationality as a philosophy/way of thinking about the world. I have read Ayn Rands published works and loved the stories and most of the message. The characters always seemed like titans that were far and above me, but now, I've seen a character that is a bit more approachable.
I've started to go through the "Map and Territory" section of the "Core Sequences" and this whole project and community makes me ecstatic. I'm currently working my way through the Bayes's Theorem article with some success. The more I read, the more I realize I may have a problem.
I'm pretty dumb.
Is higher level reasoning "use it or lose it" ? I like learning new things and love reading but any new ideas require a ton of thought and re-reading. I think I have enough interest to keep plugging away at it, but I'm not sure I'm going at things the right way. Is there a "Kid's Table" for lesswrong.com?
For "Priors": I'm 28 years old, white male, married, no children, poor economic upbringing, solid emotional upbringing, currently lower to middle class, high school diploma, US Navy, currently a civilian electronics technician, raised Baptist currently Agnostic/Atheist (recently).
I guess that's it. Thanks!
--John