(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!
"Yes Minister" showed us all that the notion of an ideologue in politics is a fallacy. Whatever values a person has, those values are constantly compromised and neutered, because the way politics "really" works, is more about compromise based on career goals, not some sort of ideological purity.
Self interest kills idealistic goals.
Bureaucracy and the status quo render idealism untenable.
So, relying on politicians to create significant socioeconomic change in society, and the world, must rely on a person doing an impossible job. There is no point electing a different person to do the same job, if the job is actually impossible.
Economic power is political power. Wealth equates to political power. Democracy and Capitalism are incompatible concepts.
Princeton proved this in 2014. There is no democracy in the US, and there is no particular reason to think any other Western country is particularly different. For your consideration: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
No democracy, really? Or would it be more accurate to say that US democracy falls short of some sort theoretical ideal?