Hi. I've been a lurker since before Less Wrong existed, reading though the sequences as they existed on Overcoming Bias. I regularly read new posts on Less Wrong and have made it through a couple of the sequences, but have failed to internalize much.

I am very interested in the topics discussed here and have recently decided to take a more active role in the community as well as really learning the existing material.

A little about me personally. I'm a 23, male, computer programmer ('software engineer') that has essentially slacked off his entire life. I have extremely varied intellectual interests ranging from the arts, music, and design to computer programming, programming languages, mathematics, human intelligence augmentation, medicine, computer science, and artificial intelligence. It is rare that I find something that I am not in any way interested. I have studied mathematics and computer science formally.

I can't necessarily call myself a rationalist because I lack pretty much all instrumental rationality. I am generally very rational in thought, but not in action.

I think the materials available on Less Wrong are both awesome and intimidating. I feel like I have already learned a lot, but know that I have really only scraped the tip of the iceberg.

(Located in North Carolina)

Here are some answers to your question:

Less Wrong Q&A with Eliezer Yudkowsky: Video Answers

• Q: The only two legitimate occupations for an intelligent person in our current world? Answer
• Q: What's your advice for Less Wrong readers who want to help save the human race? Answer

Eliezer Yudkowsky explicitly mentions art in the first video.