In general? Which beliefs don't?

The probability is the prior times the evidence ratio, so the higher the prior probability, the less evidence you need. If there's a lottery with one million numbers, and you have no evidence for anything, you'll think there's a 0.0001% chance of it getting 839772 exactly, a 50% chance of it getting 500000 or less, and a 99.9999% chance of it getting something other than 839772. Thus, you can be pretty sure it won't land on 839772 even without evidence.

I highly doubt that I'll be posting articles or even joining discussions anytime soon, since right now, I'm just getting started on reading the sequences and exploring other parts of the site, and don't feel prepared yet to get involved in discussions. However, I'll probably comment on things now and then, so because of that (and, honestly, just because I'm a very social person), I figured I might as well post an introduction here.

I appreciate the way that discussions are described as ending on here, because I've noticed in other debates that "tapping out" is seen as running away, and the main trait that gives me problems in my quest for rationality is that I'm inherently a competitive person, and get more caught up in the idea of "winning" than of improving my thinking. I'm working on this, but if I do get involved in discussions, the fact that they aren't seen as much as competitions here compared to other places should be helpful to me.

Anyway, I guess I'll introduce myself. I'm Alexandra, and I'm a seventeen year old high-school student in the United States (I applied to the camp in August, but I never received any news about it, so I assume that I wasn't accepted). Like many people here, I found out about this website through Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, but I've been interested in improving my rational thinking since I was young. I grew up in a secular and intellectual home, so seeing the world and myself realistically have always been major goals for myself, and I've always naturally tried to apply logical thinking and the scientific method to my problems, but I've never really formally studied rationality (though I did take statistics last year).

I'm pretty smart, but as a high school student (especially one who, due to various bad experiences with the school system, only really found motivation and purpose in school-work less than a year ago), I don't have too much technical knowledge, which I hope to change. I'm more experienced in aggressive self-awareness than I am in more technical ideas (such as the contrast between Bella from Luminosity and Harry in HPMOR). I'm not really interested in a future in rationality work (and, while I'm interested in transhumanism, I don't really see myself being pulled in that direction for a career), I just want to improve my own thinking in order to better use my mind as a tool to achieve my goals.

While I might come across it on here, I actually don't act very intellectual in my usual social interactions (especially compared to my younger brother, who's very openly and almost aggressively rational). I usually keep my rationality to myself except for certain situations, and use it internally to figure out the best way to approach situations, but I usually come across as much more flippant and frivolous than I actually am (especially since I'm very much an extrovert). I'm too misanthropic to expect rationality from others, so I prefer to use my inner logical side to figure out how to interact with people on their respective levels in a way that works best for me. I can understand the desire to appear as rational and intelligent as you truly are, I just am a very utilitarian person and have found that placing less emphasis on that side of myself works best for me.

I'm used to most people that I debate with being irrational and easily upset. It never used to bother me, because I consider my intelligence to be a mental tool of mine rather than a personality trait, and because my naturally competitive personality meant that I still enjoyed debates that fell into petty conflict, but recently (maybe because I'm maturing, maybe because I'm busier these days), I've found myself getting bored with that sort of thing. So I'm definitely interested in intellectual discussions on here, though I might not involve myself in them until I'm better prepared.

One thing that I've noticed about myself is that, in discussions, I tend to insist on responding to every single point made by others rather than just selecting some to focus on (before I realized that's what people were doing, it used to bother me that others wouldn't respond to every individual point I made). I'm not sure whether that's something shared by other members of this website or just a personal quirk.

This is getting rambly because I'm a long-winded person, but I'll add a bit more (mostly non-rationality-related) information. I'm not a theist or a spiritual person, but atheism seems obvious enough to me that I don't see much point in discussing it anymore (unless the more "New Age"-y members of my family get a little too pushy with me). I'm interested in physics, math, foreign languages, literature, singing, exploring urban areas, climbing things, transhumanism (especially life-extension, because I want to live forever) and throwing parties. I have a strong appreciation for the arts, but I don't personally do anything artistic (other than singing, which is just a hobby), and I'm easily entertained by the small pleasures in life (good food, pretty views, attractive people of either gender, and fluffy blankets). I really like cats and books and the nighttime, and I'm more interested in clothes and makeup than might be expected from an eccentric, science-loving rationalist with quite a few geeky interests, but people are complex. I tend to be a bit surreal when I'm not purposefully trying to be serious.

Hi,

My name is Hannah. I'm an American living in Oslo, Norway (my husband is Norwegian). I am 24 (soon to be 25) years old. I am currently unemployed, but I have a bachelor's degree in Psychology from Truman State University. My intention is to find a job working at a day care, at least until I have children of my own. When that happens, I intend to be a stay-at-home mother and homeschool my children. Anything beyond that is too far into the future to be worth trying to figure out at this point in my life.

I was referred to LessWrong by some German guy on OkCupid. I don't know his name or who he is or anything about him, really, and I don't know why he messaged me randomly. I suppose something in my profile seemed to indicate that I might like it here or might already be familiar with it, and that sparked his interest. I really can't say. I just got a message asking if I was familiar with LessWrong or Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (which I was not), and if so, what I thought of them. So I decided to check them out. I thought the HP fanfiction was excellent, and I've been reading through some of the major series here for the past week or so. At one point I had a comment I wanted to make, so I decided to join in order to be able to post the comment. I figure I may as well be part of the group, since I am interested in continuing reading and discussing here. :-)

As for more about my background in rationality and such, I like to think I've always been oriented towards rationality. Well, when I was younger I was probably less adept at reasoning and certainly less aware of cognitive biases and such, but I've always believed in following the evidence to find the truth. That's something I think my mother helped to instill in me. My acute interest in rationality, however, probably occurred when I was around 18-19 years old. It was at this point that I became an atheist and also when I began Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.

I had been raised as a Christian, more or less. My mother is very religious, but also very intelligent, and she believes fervently in following the evidence wherever it leads (despite the fact that, in practice, she does not actually do this). The shift in my religious perspective initially occurred around when I first began dating my husband. He was not religious, and I had the idea in my head that it was important that he be religious, in order for us to be properly compatible. But I observed that he was very open-minded and sensible, so I believed that the only requirement for him to become a Christian was for me to formulate a sufficiently compelling argument for why it was the true religion. And if this had been possible, it's likely he would have converted, but alas, this was a task I could not succeed at. It was by examining my own religion and trying to answer his honest questions that I came to realize that I didn't actually know what any good reasons for being a Christian were, and that I had merely assumed there must be good reasons, since my mother and many other intelligent relgious people that I knew were convinced of the religion. So I tried to find out what these reasons were, and they came up lacking.

When I found that I couldn't find any obvious reasons that Christianity had to be the right religion, I realized that I didn't have enough information to come to that conclusion. When I reflected on all my religious beliefs, it occured to me that I didn't even know where most of them came from. So I decided to throw everything out the window and start from scratch. This was somewhat difficult for me emotionally, since I was honestly afraid that I was giving up something important that I might not get back. I mean, what if Christianity were the true religion and I gave it up and never came back? So I prayed to God (whichever god(s) he was, if any) to lead me on a path towards the truth. I figured if I followed evidence and reason, then I would end up at the truth, whatever it was. If that meant losing my religion, then my religion wasn't worth having. I trusted that anything worth believing would come back to me. And that even if I was led astray and ended up believing the wrong thing, God would judge me based on my intent and on my deeds. A god who is good will not punish me for seeking the truth, even if I am unsuccessful in my quest. And a god who is not good is not worth worshipping. I know this idea has been voiced by many others before me, but for me this was an original conclusion at the time, not something I'd heard as a quote from someone else.

Another pertinent influence of rationality on my life occured during my second year of college. I had decided to see a counselor for problems with anxiety and depression. The therapy that counselor used was Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, and we often engaged in a lot of meaningful discussions. I found the therapy and that particular approach extremely helpful in managing my emotions and excellent practice in thinking rationally. I think it really helped me become a better thinker in addition to being more emotionally stable.

So it's been sort of a cumulative effect, losing my religion, going to college, going through counseling, etc. As I get older, I expose myself to more and more ideas (mostly through reading, but also through some discussion) and I feel that I get better and better at reasoning, understanding biases, and being more rational. A lot of the things I've read here are things that I had either encountered before or seemed obvious to me already. Although, there is plenty of new stuff too. So I feel that this community will be a good fit for me, and I hope that I will be a positive addition to it.

I have a lot of unorthodox ideas and such that I'd be happy to discuss. My interests are parenting (roughly in line with Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn), schooling/education (I support a Sudbury type model), diet (I'm paleo), relationships (I don't follow anyone here; I've got my own ideas in this area), emotions and emotional regulation (REBT, humanistic approach, and my own experience/ideas) and pretty much anything about or related to psychology (I'm reasonably educated in this area, but I can always learn more!). I'm open to having my ideas challenged and I don't shy away from changing my mind when the evidence points in the opposite direction. I used to have more of a problem with this, in so far as I was concerned about saving face (I didn't want to look bad by publicly admitting I was wrong, even if I privately realized it), but I've since reasoned that changing my mind is actually a better way of saving face. You look a lot stupider clinging to a demonstrably wrong position than simply admitting that you were mistaken and changing your ideas accordingly.

Anyway, I hope that wasn't too long an introduction. I have a tendency to write a lot and invest a lot of time and effort in to my writings. I care a lot about effective communication, and I like to think I'm good at expressing myself and explaining things. That seems to be something valued here too, so that's good.

The fascinating thing about priming is that it occurs at such a low level—priming speeds up identifying letters as forming a word, which one would expect to take place before you deliberate on the word's meaning.

I would not expect this to take place before deliberating on a word's meaning. Think about it. How would you know if a string of letters is a word? If it corresponds to a meaning. Thus you have to search for a meaning in order to determine if the string of letters is a word. If it were a string of letters like alskjdfljasdfl, it would be obvious sooner, since it's unpronouncable and visually jarring, but something like "banack" could be a word, if it only had a meaning attached to it. So you have to check to see if there is a meaning there. So it doesn't seem all that strange to me that if you prime the neural pathways of a word's meaning, you'd recognize it as a word sooner.