I have a rather personal introduction that I will X-Post from Welcome to LessWrong (For highschoolers) I will edit it slightly for this context and edit more as appropriate once I finish my essay due in 5 hours.
My name is Matt and I recently graduated from Poway High School about one and a half years ago in Southern California . I have always studied my own interests and tend not to pay to close attention to what my teachers were asking the class. This often forced them to ask me questions just as often as I questioned them which usually sets us up as having some kind of discourse which leads to mentor-friendship. I quickly learned if the appearance of your intellect is large then you can usually form a friendly relationship with your teachers and they wont fail you if you put in a modicum of effort. I never really worried about my GPA in high-school and carried an SAT study book around about a week before my exam to force myself to study and absorb some of the carbon atoms through diffusion while I slept on the book. Somehow I got a good score and ended up at a nice cost effective CSU that people tell me is one of the best in the state. In college my GPA has been a good letter grade or so higher than high school but it feels like I'm doing a ton less work so I just applied for a few transfers to top tier schools because being lazy and getting accepted to good schools is what currently keeps my family supplying me with funds.
Eliezer was the first writer to ever draw me away from the endless super-stimuli of the internet long enough to make me feel bad about not being more altruistic. Once I met him and saw how overworked you guys are compared to my lazy lifestyle I started a fun plan to hopefully be able to supply SIAI and myself with useful amounts of capital till I am out of school which recently has taken a $400 hit after initial successes. I will persist as long as I can delude myself into the sunk cost fallacy however so don't worry too much about me :)
My family is amazing and I would give anything to be able to pay for their cryonics payments today but right now we are still trying to put my brothers and I through school. Once I graduate and can put my engineering degree to work I hope I can work with my father who has a brilliant work ethic that I have previously been able to copy in his presence and convince them to let me pay for their cryonics as well as continuing to hobby in coding and supporting SIAI through the primary unit of caring.
I game competitively, mainly in MOBA style games with my hometown friends when I have free time. We have won several prizes to date from tourneys but have never gotten to the #1 spot. I have always felt like I waste time gaming especially since I read LW literature about super stimuli, and recently succeeding in tourney's has greatly bolstered my hopes at being able to game in my free time and someday profit from it but I still would quit if I had a urgent need to acquire more than a steady cashflow of funds.
Thanks for reading :)
I got to go to California once with my high school marching band. It was fun! What do you think about living in California? Is it at all like the rest of the US thinks it is? Have you gotten to travel anywhere interesting?
One of the things I loved about studying liberal arts is that you actually got to know your professors. They would discuss their personal experiences in a topic ("Here's what I did during the feminist movement.."), you might get slide shows from their vacation in the country of study, or even invited to their house for a group dinner.
Going into engineering was rather jarring for me in that regard. The vast majority of professors would come to class, lecture on the topic, and that would be it. They might share what their specific field of study was, but they rarely shared any personal details. It actually made it harder for me to learn, because it was like "Who is this person who is talking to me?"
(I think a large part of this for me personally was because I am motivated by a desire to please, and so if I liked my professors, then I wouldn't want to inconvenience them by handing things in late, or bore them by giving them another sub-par paper to read. But that's another discussion...)
I've noticed that Less Wrong is similar in some ways. We may know about each other's views on particular topics, and general fields of study, but we know very little about each other as people, unless a personal topic happens to be related to a particular rationalist study. Even the intro thread set up here focuses mainly on non-personal information.
For example, a Generic Intro post right now would be something like: "I'm X years old. From place Y. The fields I study/want to study are Z. Here's what college/HS was/is like for me. I have akrasia." Pretty boring, right? INSTEAD, the things I would be interested in knowing about my fellow LWers include: "On my time off I enjoy underwater basketweaving and climbing Mt Kilamanjaro. I have 6 young daughters and a dog named Grrr. I love pesto. etc"
From a rational perspective, an argument could be made that it's easier to have constructive arguments that remain civil when you humanize the people you are speaking with.
I was wondering how other LWers feel on the subject. Do you like that our discussions are un-hampered by personal data? Do you like the idea of providing personal intros? Do you not want to provide personalish information for safety reasons, or because you don't think it's anyone business?
If you think you might need help writing a personal intro, I wrote [a general guide](http://lesswrong.com/lw/8nq/more_personal_introductions/5d4e) on the topic in the comments below.
Note: I predict there will be two types of response to this post. People discussing how they feel about this (Meta-Comments), and people giving personal introductions (Intros). To make navigating the responses easier, I am trying an experiment where I set up a meta-comment thread and a personal introduction thread.
PLEASE PLACE COMMENTS ABOUT THIS IDEA IN META-COMMENT THREAD, AND COMMENTS INTRODUCING YOURSELF IN INTRO THREAD.
Edited to make it more clear to focus on personality, hobbies, likes/dislikes, and NOT on what you study, or school.
ETA- Added link to "How to Write Personal Intro" comment